Friday Facts #140 - Soon

[The Phoenixian]

It seems that flamethrower is pretentious toy with no practical use in military operations if enemies sensitivity to fire is not increased by an order of magnitude or more. At least in showed video flame thrower has practically no health effect to large biters. They would have killed player after couple of seconds and fire did not kill any of them. And that was not a large swarm.

Look again: The first big biter obfuscates it, but it seems damage from fire actually is rather significant.

The reason is doesn't affect that first obvious biter so much is that its able to cross the fire patch before taking much damage. The others caught in the flame die quite quickly, as can be seen by looking at the ones running across bottom of the image.

[bNarFProfCrazy]

I disagree with "take all the time you need". This game is early access! You can release 0.13 whenever you want, even if some things are broken or missing graphics! If something needs fixing even after release, there's always 0.13.[1-30]

I guess we have a slightly different opionions on what Steam Early Access is for.
IMO its for playable games, that just need some more polishing and a few bugfixes.
Its not intended to make players pay for newborn games, that hardly work and crash all the time.

As a side notice you don't become the best rated game on Steam and keep the Top 10 ranking for long, if you release a buggy or unfinished game.
Currently this game is still ranked #5 (98% positive reviews).

There are a lot of AAA-games out there where you really pay a lot of money for.
On release they are really buggy or at least need some instant updates. (And this is mirrored in their ranking/reviews)

Factorio delivers quality. If they do a mayor mistake like releasing an unfinished game they loose their good reputation.
(Just imagine apple had to recall their latest iPown, due to an hardware failure. Nobody would pay their ridiculous expensive prices for future products anymore.)

Your users are already used to seeing bugs and problems.

Well, if they would be used to many bugs, they wouldn't rate the game that good. And having bugs once is no excuse to have them again.

That is exactly why most early access games are a steaming pile of crap, and factorio doesn't belong near them.

90% agreeing here. I'm just not sure if this is a "steaming" issue. Goggles are not bad just because you can find a lot of trash with it from far away.

"You guys are doing great work." <---- That I agree with.

100% agreeing here.

[golfmiketango]

0.13 is a private branch of a proprietary game, so it goes without saying that its developers have superior insight into release scheduling than gamers. There is every reason for us gamers to expect a somewhat buggy 0.13 release and every reason for us to rest comfortably in the belief that those bugs will get resolved expeditiously.

Since everyone is saying "take your time," I guess I'll be, sort of, a 50% contrarian and say: "I trust Wube to make a good business decision when deciding when to release, correctly balancing competing factors against the good-will factorio has accumulated by maintaining its track-record of well-above-par* quality-control."

Put another way, you don't seem to need advice on release scheduling, and although I can only speak for myself, I suspect even the people saying "don't rush" really are trying to express that they appreciate how you've done things in the past and trust your judgement. One other thing worth noting: although many people "can't wait" for 0.13, that's just a figure of speech. 0.13 sounds great, but we already have a fantastic game in 0.12. So another thing folks saying "don't rush" might be trying to get across is: the standard reason to rush out a game release (previous release unplayable) doesn't apply to factorio.

-----
*sorry for ugly mixed-sports-metaphor

[steinio]

Release is planned for 1st June, thats 3 days in the future.

How earlier would you get it? Today? Yesterday?

0.12 is out and everyone can play with it until release, so please be patient.

[Bi0nicM4n]

Circuit network additions look promising, can't wait to simplify my engineering train loading station.

Flamethrower seems somewhat capable of dealing with big biters but will it be effective against behemoths? This and the game needs resource sinks, so I'd like to see some kind of really expensive and ridiculously effective weaponry capable of clearing behemoth biters in maybe a couple of shots. Anyone for Factorio's own version of BFG (and/or BFG turrets)?

Offtopic: I've been watching speedruns of recently released DOOM for over a week now, and BFG there is really good - shreds mancubi simply with beams from main projectile passing by, and those take a s***ton of rockets to pacify. So I thought that a weapon launching an explosive plasmoid which radiates deadly beams at nearby foes is the best possible way to deal with many tough biters at once. And spectacular, should I say.

[Hannu]

Look again: The first big biter obfuscates it, but it seems damage from fire actually is rather significant.

You seem to be right. Biters really take more damage than I noticed at first time. Maybe flamethrower have some use during midgame before massive armies of large biter. At least if it get some researchable upgrades. And of course it will always be funny to barbecue enemies.

Huge flamethrower would also fit very well to tank.

[Escadin]

All I can say now is, that there is little bit more than a new graphics and you will like it

I sincerely hope it's armed trains which shoot flames, bullets and rockets in all directions

[V453000]

Offtopic: I've been watching speedruns of recently released DOOM for over a week now, and BFG there is really good - shreds mancubi simply with beams from main projectile passing by, and those take a s***ton of rockets to pacify. So I thought that a weapon launching an explosive plasmoid which radiates deadly beams at nearby foes is the best possible way to deal with many tough biters at once. And spectacular, should I say.[/size]

I was afraid the day of this suggestion would come.

[brunzenstein]

Offtopic: I've been watching speedruns of recently released DOOM for over a week now, and BFG there is really good - shreds mancubi simply with beams from main projectile passing by, and those take a s***ton of rockets to pacify. So I thought that a weapon launching an explosive plasmoid which radiates deadly beams at nearby foes is the best possible way to deal with many tough biters at once. And spectacular, should I say.[/size]

I was afraid the day of this suggestion would come.

Me too -
So please Factorio staff!: Stay focused on the many Factorio's unique and distinguished selling points - and that is certainly not to become a shooter

[orzelek]

Offtopic: I've been watching speedruns of recently released DOOM for over a week now, and BFG there is really good - shreds mancubi simply with beams from main projectile passing by, and those take a s***ton of rockets to pacify. So I thought that a weapon launching an explosive plasmoid which radiates deadly beams at nearby foes is the best possible way to deal with many tough biters at once. And spectacular, should I say.[/size]

I was afraid the day of this suggestion would come.

Me too -
So please Factorio staff!: Stay focused on the many Factorio's unique and distinguished selling points - and that is certainly not to become a shooter

But... but.. whats wrong with a good bfg ?

[Kewlhotrod]

But... but.. whats wrong with a good bfg ?

Hear, hear

[Bi0nicM4n]

Offtopic: I've been watching speedruns of recently released DOOM for over a week now, and BFG there is really good - shreds mancubi simply with beams from main projectile passing by, and those take a s***ton of rockets to pacify. So I thought that a weapon launching an explosive plasmoid which radiates deadly beams at nearby foes is the best possible way to deal with many tough biters at once. And spectacular, should I say.

I was afraid the day of this suggestion would come.

I'm not going to demand it or anything, I understand there are more important things for you guys to do. Just was thinking of a way to deal with heavy biters other than destroyers/turrets, also keeping in mind that personal weaponry in Factorio is not effective at offense, at least not against big+ biters. The problem is that making a mod with BFG acting properly seems impossible, since there is no suitable behaviour for this in Factorio (a problem of pretty much every single game with/without mod support).

[Hannu]

But... but.. whats wrong with a good bfg ?

I am not sure what is a BFG but I understood that it is some kind of overpowered weapon. Problem is that people have very different playstyles. If we get that BFG which kills every enemy easily, players who want harder military challenge begin to cry more difficult enemies. I would not develop Factorio to any more military game than it is. Current balance is quite well. If I take minimum values for enemies and max richness they cause quite minor problems during play. I have a strong base able to produce high amount of defense and military stuff before first attacks or needs for base clearing. And If I take maximum enemies, that is priority number 1 for every decision. And there is peaceful mode if I want to build something special which is difficult to defense and slow to grow, for example ten separate factories and large train network between them.

There are also some very high powered mods. Someone suggested some kind of orbital mass destruction weapon for me when I asked help for base clearing.

[nobodx]

But... but.. whats wrong with a good bfg ?

Nazis build BFGs... lots of them. And most of those superweapons turned out to be useless in the field

[RobertTerwilliger]

But... but.. whats wrong with a good bfg ?

Nazis build BFGs... lots of them. And most of those superweapons turned out to be useless in the field

Huh? BFG isn't a real weapon, is it? Prooflink?

[brunzenstein]

But... but.. whats wrong with a good bfg ?

Everything - as your here in the wrong theater.
Factorio stands for cleverness, thinking and is aimed at intelligent construction.
If you want a destroyer or a shooter your far better off with DOOM,WOW and comrades.

[nobodx]

But... but.. whats wrong with a good bfg ?

Nazis build BFGs... lots of them. And most of those superweapons turned out to be useless in the field

Huh? BFG isn't a real weapon, is it? Prooflink?

BFG is short for Big Fucking Gun and nazis build multiple Wunderwaffen, that should turn the tide in the second WW.
Take the Dora-Geschütz for example, the biggest cannonever build able to fire 8t bullets... Used only once.
Linky here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav

[RobertTerwilliger]

But... but.. whats wrong with a good bfg ?

Nazis build BFGs... lots of them. And most of those superweapons turned out to be useless in the field

Huh? BFG isn't a real weapon, is it? Prooflink?

BFG is short for Big Fucking Gun and nazis build multiple Wunderwaffen, that should turn the tide in the second WW.
Take the Dora-Geschütz for example, the biggest cannonever build able to fire 8t bullets... Used only once.
Linky here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav

Oh, you're about wunderwaffles [sic]...
Well, at least they've tried ; )
Consider some ideas, that were treated ridiculous in the past, now become reality.
But we shouldn't have super weapons in Factorio. If one doesn't want to bother with biters THAT much - he can simply turn them off on map creation.

[nobodx]

But... but.. whats wrong with a good bfg ?

Nazis build BFGs... lots of them. And most of those superweapons turned out to be useless in the field

Huh? BFG isn't a real weapon, is it? Prooflink?

BFG is short for Big Fucking Gun and nazis build multiple Wunderwaffen, that should turn the tide in the second WW.
Take the Dora-Geschütz for example, the biggest cannonever build able to fire 8t bullets... Used only once.
Linky here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav

Oh, you're about wunderwaffles [sic]...
Well, at least they've tried ; )
Consider some ideas, that were treated ridiculous in the past, now become reality.
But we shouldn't have super weapons in Factorio. If one doesn't want to bother with biters THAT much - he can simply turn them off on map creation.

In combat, bigger isn't necessarily better

[aka13]

Nothing, it's very important opinions and worldviews™ again with no reasoning whatsoever.