Factorio Forums

Right now, all this "burner" part of the game is kind of abandoned, though it's a cool part, mostly people skip this "level 0 steam" starting right from "level 1 electricity"

To let "enthusiasts" play this part with more fun (mostly for someone who are going for "lazy bastad")

• Make burner drill accessible on level 1 assembly machine.
• Make assembly machine accessible on level 1 assembly machine.

It'll allow people to build this nice steam factories without ruining achievement.

To force everyone to play more with "steamy" part, just move away all "electrical" stuff further on research tree and add unpowered version of laboratory.

Second proposal is questionable. But I'm sure the first one will be approved by part of players and unnoticed by another part. Anyway, just take another look on this part, probably your ideas will be better.

I think the start of the game is the most fun part.
When I play regular, Ill not go any further than blue science.

The reason for me is, the game tends to stretch out too much after what I consider mid game (blue tech).

What could be fun is an enlarged early game:

- Throughout the early game, steel plates are underused

- I think the step towards electricity is quite fast -> electric mining drill makes burner drills obsolete quite fast (except for coal backup production)
Electric mining drill should require its own research. Maybe after "Steel processing" and the recipe requiring steel plates?

- The step to a running power generation is also quite fast and your needs electric needs are oversatisfied in the early and undersatisfied in the mid game. (More stages of power generation would be nice)
"Engine" should only require "Steel processing", "Fluid handling" then requires "Engine" (because pumps will be reciprocating machines in .15, basically two strokes engines with different valves)

- The filter inserter can be acquired very early, which is good for all the circuit people!

I wish the power generation with steam had the possbility of circulatory water systems (easily doable, both direct and circulating systems CAN be built with the same devices), I would love to spend some time setting up efficient power plants in the early game!

This is more a balancing suggestion but I leave it here.
Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19985 Expand Early Game (Buildings - Rebalance - Energy)

Rinin wrote:add unpowered version of laboratory.

Howabout in-hand research? You perform research at a rate of 1 by using up science packs that are in your inventory. Now players don't have to get power to perform research, but they still want to at some point so they can stack up several laboratories to speed up the research.

Factorio is about automation, not self-crafting nor self-researching. I think there are many hundreds of games out there, that do that already...

ssilk wrote:Factorio is about automation, not self-crafting nor self-researching. I think there are many hundreds of games out there, that do that already...

And yet Factorio has hand-crafting. It's not a centerpiece, but a fallback option.

And no, there's really no other game out there where you can get an experience anything like playing Factorio while researching in-hand. Sure, I could play X-Com Enforcer and perform research by picking up science units, but that's entirely dissimilar from playing Factorio in every other way.

Well, I meant it differently. But it doesn't matter.
For a modder this could be a simple task to perform a research operation from hand, but how should that work in detail? How can you control what to research, if you don't have labs?

I think steampowered lab is better than research in hand, becaus it's realy game about automation. But steam automation is not developed enough

thereaverofdarkness wrote:

Rinin wrote:add unpowered version of laboratory.

Howabout in-hand research? You perform research at a rate of 1 by using up science packs that are in your inventory. Now players don't have to get power to perform research, but they still want to at some point so they can stack up several laboratories to speed up the research.

ssilk wrote:For a modder this could be a simple task to perform a research operation from hand, but how should that work in detail? How can you control what to research, if you don't have labs?

I was thinking just give the player a base research rate equal to one fully powered lab, as long as they have the needed science packs in their inventory. The in-hand research would simply be added to the lab total. You can already access the tech screen without having labs.

thereaverofdarkness wrote:

Rinin wrote:add unpowered version of laboratory.

Howabout in-hand research? You perform research at a rate of 1 by using up science packs that are in your inventory. Now players don't have to get power to perform research, but they still want to at some point so they can stack up several laboratories to speed up the research.

I like this idea. It might not be all that useful, but it woudn't hurt to "research" while you are running around... (taking field notes hehe)

Maybe we should not get held up with expanding or enlengthening any part of the game,
instead try to find parallels.
Example: The parallels in power production are solar and steam. While solar comes in late, many people dont bother about it, others go fully solar energy. - thats parallelism
What I find most boring about the later game is the lack of parallel ways of playing out the oil production. Now you have to get crude oil.

I would love to see a way to make coal to liquid in vanilla (Bergius or Fischer Tropsch),
or make plastics out of wood,
or make liquids out of wood.

That would add alternative possibilities and more use for ununtilized resources which are wood and also stone.

I support the idea!!!

.... and what about the new steam stuff. Using the new boiler system to make steam and burning mining drills running on steam instead of coal... or that could be the lvl 1 instead of electricity

>burner miners
>steam miners
>electric miners
And that could be the extending of the early game

thereaverofdarkness wrote:Howabout in-hand research? You perform research at a rate of 1 by using up science packs that are in your inventory. Now players don't have to get power to perform research, but they still want to at some point so they can stack up several laboratories to speed up the research.

Not a bad idea. I'd suggest making it as fast as a single lab with no effect from bonuses and researching by hand counts as hand-crafting, so it takes up a slot in your build queue and contributes to your count for hand-crafted things.

TheDagmaar wrote:I support the idea!!!

.... and what about the new steam stuff. Using the new boiler system to make steam and burning mining drills running on steam instead of coal... or that could be the lvl 1 instead of electricity

>burner miners
>steam miners
>electric miners
And that could be the extending of the early game

Ooh! I like that idea! Would fit in nicely with how technology developed in real life.

Roxor128 wrote:Not a bad idea. I'd suggest making it as fast as a single lab with no effect from bonuses and researching by hand counts as hand-crafting, so it takes up a slot in your build queue and contributes to your count for hand-crafted things.

Nah, it takes too long. Nobody should be prevented from hand-crafting just because they want to research. It's like handing the player an option, then punishing them for using it.

It'll fall by the wayside when research takes upwards of ten minutes per project even with over a dozen labs. Even if the player is still using it, it'll only be contributing a small fraction of their total research, and it'll be using inventory space to do it.

thereaverofdarkness wrote:

Roxor128 wrote:Not a bad idea. I'd suggest making it as fast as a single lab with no effect from bonuses and researching by hand counts as hand-crafting, so it takes up a slot in your build queue and contributes to your count for hand-crafted things.

Nah, it takes too long. Nobody should be prevented from hand-crafting just because they want to research. It's like handing the player an option, then punishing them for using it.

It'll fall by the wayside when research takes upwards of ten minutes per project even with over a dozen labs. Even if the player is still using it, it'll only be contributing a small fraction of their total research, and it'll be using inventory space to do it.

How could you possibly do manual research and building at the same time? We only have one pair of hands to work with. That's the whole point of automation: Enabling you to do more than you could manually.

The way Factorio's research works (X iterations of research, each requiring a certain number of inputs and a certain amount of time) lends itself well to being treated as a special case of crafting. One iteration, one craft (assuming you already have the required science packs in your inventory). Which would be fine for some of the early research, which you could do while wandering around, scouting out resources.

I don't think manual research was ever intended to be something you'd use all the way through the game. Just something you'd do in the start, then abandon for the labs once you've got automated setups worked out.

I'm just arguing for gameplay's sake. The research isn't really realistic in either case.

My two cents - make a burner research lab. I think it'd fit in nicely with a burner assembler; For example, look at the no-hand-crafting mod or the burner assembling machine mod. You could make it take red science, or even just take time and no other inputs. Since the player would already need to shove fuel into it, I think it'd offer a good ability to be automated, before leaving the burner stage of the game.

Agree with the idea to move most of the electrical equipment onto a research, instead of having the player start the game with it. The science lab, steam engine, normal inserter, electric mining drill, radar, green circuits - all researched. :)

Currently the requirement of electricity by research lab and later the assembler is the thing that forces people to rush to electricity.
Personally I do not enjoy the game start much but thats probably because I did it many times.
It can be fun though. But for that you got to introduce burner lab and burner assembler.

PacifyerGrey wrote:Currently the requirement of electricity by research lab and later the assembler is the thing that forces people to rush to electricity.
Personally I do not enjoy the game start much but thats probably because I did it many times.
It can be fun though. But for that you got to introduce burner lab and burner assembler.

100% AGREE!!!
I did a non-electricity-game a while ago and it ended sooner than anticipated, due to the fact that assembling machines ruin the coal only approach.
I should have known, that the game would end that soon ^^. Anyway a coal-powered lab should feature research that does not necessarily research electric stuff straight away, rather should prepare everything for the big "Electricity" research that unlocks generators and poles.