Factorio Forums

Seeing from let's plays, a lot of players (even experienced ones) often accidentally close the "research" screen after research is complete and some go for over an hour before realizing that no research is conducted.

So what about having a notice sign with a beep appear in 2 following cases:

1. Research is complete but no new research has been selected in 30 seconds.
2. Research is in progress but has stopped at least 30 seconds after research packs have run out. When research is not in progress, the progress bar would turn red.

Of course if would be nice if these alarms would appear only for some moments and if you could toggle these alarms off. That latter option would be useful after reaching endgame after rocket defense is finished.

The problem I have is selecting a new tech does NOT start research. You must click the little "research" button.

I suggest we remove the "research" button, and instantly switch to whatever tech is selected.

If you are worried about accidentally losing progress on a tech, just save the progress on every tech independently. I'm sure this has been suggested before.

DaveMcW wrote:If you are worried about accidentally losing progress on a tech, just save the progress on every tech independently. I'm sure this has been suggested before.

You would have to save the progress for every laboratory independently. If this was done, every research for a project would have to be finished before switching to the other.

Nova wrote:You would have to save the progress for every laboratory independently. If this was done, every research for a project would have to be finished before switching to the other.

This is nice too, but not as important. I don't mind losing partial lab progress if I can at least keep the progress of labs that finished.

I think a queue / preselecting the research for the next ... hm ... 3 research tasks would help a lot.

Queuing researches would be nice. An alert would be annoying pretty fast. Sometimes (especially in the early game) I don't research anything, because I don't have the resources. At least you have to be able to disable the alert. Otherwise it would be a big bugger

I don't see how that's not enough. Just get in the habit of looking at your minimap more often. The research complete popup is annoying enough already. I'll say this again: I HATE THAT DAMN WINDOW! ssilk said "With multiplayer this must be changed of course. So this must be already in the queue." and I saw that slpwnd said,"This will have to be done eventually because stopping the game in multiplayer is not possible." So I waited patiently for multiplayer and it hasn't changed!! If you're annoyed seeing me complain about it again, imagine how I feel every time that window pops up.

Schorty wrote:Queuing researches would be nice. An alert would be annoying pretty fast. Sometimes (especially in the early game) I don't research anything, because I don't have the resources. At least you have to be able to disable the alert. Otherwise it would be a big bugger

Yep, an alarm with sounds would would get annoying fast. I already have with the sounds turn down really low because of the constant "wall under attack" alarms and the "research complete" sound. I think an alert, like the one that alerts you that turrets are attacking, would be okay, as long as it doesn't come up that often. Maybe something like 30 secs after your research completes, then 1m, then 2 min, then 5 min, then every 10 min - or something like that.

I believe that people happen to forget about research because the window happens to popup in very inconvenient times - like when you're setting up some machines, train schedules, etc. When you're busy doing something like that, you don't want to stop and lose your train of thought... you want to finish until you get to a good stopping point to take a pause and look over the research choices. How many times has the window popped up and you've taken the time to plan out your research? Examples:

"Finally almost done setting up these trains, let's see... this one needs to go here, and there... then" BOOM! STOP EVERYTHING! RESEARCH IS COMPLETE!!! "Cool! I want to get laser turrets asap this time, so I need this... but to get this I need to research that... Ok, done... now this train was going to... uh... let's see..." and you have retrace your steps and plan. - OR - you close that stupid popup so you can finish your trains, "I'll come back to research once I'm done with this train." Then you finish your train and continue with building other stuff and you forget research.

Another example of what happens: "I need a stack of iron plates, two stacks of copper and a stack of gear wheels." So you run back to your storage area and just as you get there, BOOM! STOP EVERYTHING! RESEARCH IS COMPLETE!!! "Cool! I want to get laser turrets asap this time, so I need this... but to get this I need to research that... Ok cool... I'm getting there. Now... I needed uh... iron plates and gear wheels." Run back to where you were working on only to realize you forgot the stupid copper plates because of the stupid research window!!!!!

I was watching an old YouTube video of Factorio and when research was complete, a friendly voice said, "Research complete" - almost like StarCraft - no popup no nothing, just a friendly message letting you know what happened. I looked through the mods section to see if that was a mod lol. It wasn't... So I asked if it was mod-able. No response from anyone cuz it probably isn't mod-able.

Either getting rid of the research finished window, or something, which enhances the brains of those players, which have problems to remember what was before it.
SCNR

To be honest I thought that this must be fixed, but now I see, that the game continues, while opening this window.

So with multiplayer I thought, that the players need to talk about,what to research next, but won't definitely talk about it every minute. There needs to be a long term research, something, where they can click once and then the needed research is performed. Like with the crafting.