circuit network wires: allow both chain and star topology

[Moosfet]

In 0.13.5, the following change was made:

[*]When connecting circuit wires, the wire will re-anchor to the last entity clicked. (28096)

Several of us actually preferred the old (new) behavior, and seemingly everyone believes it would be best if both behaviors were available simultaneously. So in 28096 I suggested a compromise solution which seems to have unanimous support, so I post this to request that it be implemented.

This is my proposed solution:

Code: Select all

struct *a = "the first entity clicked on when attaching a wire";
struct *b = "the second entity clicked on when attaching a wire";
connect(a, b);
if (type(a) != POLE || type(b) == POLE) a = b;

This works much like it does in 0.13.5 in that when you click on a row of chests, the wire becomes anchored to each subsequent chest, but now the poles become "sticky" in that, once you click on one, the wire remains stuck to the pole when you connect it to other entities (like it did before 0.13.5), except when you connect it to another pole, then the wire becomes stuck to the new pole so that you can still run network wires down a long line of poles easily. So if you want chain topology, you start by connecting non-pole entities together, then finish by connecting them to a pole, but if you want star topology, you start by clicking a pole first, then the wire will remain attached to the pole as you click on each subsequent entity.

Just in case my psuedocode isn't clear enough, here's a description of the algorithm in plain albeit somewhat long-winded English: When the player has a wire already attached to one entity, then clicks on another entity to connect the wire between those two entities, first connect the two entities, then look at the types of the two entities to decide which entity the wire in the hand will be anchored to. If the first entity clicked on is not a pole, or the second entity clicked on is a pole, then cause the second entity to become the one which the wire in hand is anchored to. Otherwise, keep the wire in hand anchored to the first entity.

[Nexela]

Even though this is an Idea and not a bug I agree this would be some nice behavior if doable. the .12 way was a pain the first .13 way is even better, new reverted .13 with improvments (q not releasing from hand) is better yet! This proposed change would be the icing on the cake



mmmmmmm Cake........

[Rseding91]

"The new Youtube interface sucks!" ... 3 weeks later "What old interface? The current one is great"... 3 months later "The new Youtube interface sucks!"

Everyone likes something different.

It's not getting changed again.

[siggboy]

Everyone likes something different.

It's not getting changed again.

What do you mean by getting changed "again"? We're now back at the behaviour from 0.12 (which is fine), and he was asking for an improvement over 0.12.

The change in 0.13 that got reverted was not an improvement, so we can pretty much ignore it ever happened.

[Moosfet]

Everyone likes something different.

The whole "options" menu is full of stuff that could have been discounted with "everyone likes something different." Yet the options menu exists, because good software is about giving everyone what they want. So rather than say "no matter what we do, someone won't like it," someone instead went ahead and added those options to make the game's behavior configurable. (...and, BTW, I just noticed the option to make logistic network filters default to one item. Thanks whomever added that!)

What's proposed here is a change that works for everyone who has bothered to give their two cents about it. It doesn't even require another option, it's just a small change that causes the behavior to work for everyone whether they prefer chain topology or star topology or even switching between the two every ten seconds. So I don't understand the opposition to it. For some it's a positive change, for everyone else, it's at worst a neutral change, and they're OK with that neutral change because it helps other players. There's no down-side to it for anyone, so why not do it?

WRT web site redesigns: That problem stems from someone looking at a site that's been in development for ten years and saying "You know what it takes to replace ten years of development effort? A six-month redesign that tosses out the existing code base and re-implements all of the features I personally use with a slick new UI and all of the latest design fads." People may get used to the new look, but no one gets used to the new lack of functionality. While it may be a popular meme to say that users hate these redesigns just because they hate any and all change, the reality is that these redesigns do often make the site worse than it used to be and it often never recovers because the people in charge just don't understand what they did wrong. So they blame it on the users. "They just don't like change. They'll get used to it after a while." Well, people may be used to the new Flickr now, at least those who didn't move on to a new site or just find a new hobby, but everyone still hates it because it's still a nightmare to use vs. the old Flickr.

So it's just a matter of making incremental improvements rather than tossing out old functionality and replacing it with new functionality. What was done in 0.13 was to toss out the old behavior and replace it with the new behavior, then in 0.13.5 the new behavior was tossed out to replace it with the old behavior. What is suggested here is to keep the old behavior while adding the new behavior, creating a hybrid that supports what everyone wants to do. It's an actual improvement that helps everyone, whereas what was done in 0.13 and 0.13.5 was just tossing out what one person likes to replace it with what another person likes.

[siggboy]

So well put. +100.

Obviously the devs try hard to please us. It's so clear. I don't think that most of the people here who try to make constructive suggestions for improvements would ever deny that.

Still, if somebody like Moosfet obviously put a lot of thought behind a suggestion, even providing pseudo-code, it's just bad style to dismiss it outright, just for the reason that we've just had a change in the same area of the game.

What about being diplomatic about it, like "OK, we'll consider this for a future release, but right now we're busy doing other things, and also the team has not decided what the best approach is towards wiring circuits."

(Even if the part of "considering it" is a straight-up lie, it makes the users more happy. Just look at the bullshit that Riot Game gets away with on a daily basis, by promising they'll fix things even though everybody knows they'll never do it. )

[Moosfet]

The best explanation I can think of is that he only got as far as "several of us actually preferred the old (new) behavior" and thought "well, we can't have it both ways, so someone is going to be disappointed no matter what" and made his response based on the assumption that I just wanted the old (new) behavior restored.

(Even if the part of "considering it" is a straight-up lie, it makes the users more happy. Just look at the bullshit that Riot Game gets away with on a daily basis, by promising they'll fix things even though everybody knows they'll never do it. )

I'd rather hear the truth than be lied to. I can understand if the developers are too busy to read, and I can understand if they just don't like the idea, but lying about it would be inexcusable.

[Nexela]

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”

If somehow in the future connecting wires was done based on what you are thinking in your head somebody will be upset because at the same time they were wiring up their circuit wires they were thinking about eating spaghetti......

[Rseding91]

That's a lot of text...

It was *broken* in 0.13.0. The intended correct behavior is how it works in 0.12 and how it works now after it was fixed in 0.13.5.

[Xeteth]

That's a lot of text...

It was *broken* in 0.13.0. The intended correct behavior is how it works in 0.12 and how it works now after it was fixed in 0.13.5.

Just on a side note, I have noticed a change from 0.12 when working with circuit network wires on power poles. Previously you could chain power poles and KEEP the anchor point if you swap wire colors, but now it boots the anchor off if you switch colors, is this also intended or possibly broken?

[siggboy]

It was *broken* in 0.13.0. The intended correct behavior is how it works in 0.12 and how it works now after it was fixed in 0.13.5.

OK, but then why was your reply to his suggestion "we're not changing it AGAIN"? It's not being changed "again" since it has not been changed yet.

If you refuse to change game behaviour, then at least give a reason. Even if the reason is "Kovarex will be pissed because his gold fish just died and he's in a bad mood." (That's still better than "we're not going to change it, and now GTFO".)

You're pissing off people for absolutely no reason if you react to reasonable suggestions in this way. Not saying anything at all would have been better.

[ikarikeiji]

Just wanted to add my +1 for an option to keep the 0.13.0 behavior. I much much much prefer this and it seems this is a divisive issue among other players here from the posts I've read.

The change in 0.13.0 was not a fix, the change in 0.13.5 was not a fix either. Make both modes available via an option and everyone will be happy, it's not hard.

[siggboy]

Well, apparently, as far as I understand the devs, the change in behaviour was indeed not intended (bug), and it was supposed to work as in 0.12 all the time.

I also think if they hadn't changed it by accident, nobody would have even bothered to think about this issue. Now we've had a different behaviour for a few days and suddenly it has become huge point of contention .

Maybe it should just be made moddable, then a mod could add the respective hotkey or possibility to change the default behaviour.

[Moosfet]

I also think if they hadn't changed it by accident, nobody would have even bothered to think about this issue.

I was thinking about it in 0.12. It seemed totally broken to me, as the thought of chaining things together rather than using star topology was nowhere on my mind's radar, plus there was the added punishment that every time I hit Q to release the wire from the entity I just clicked on, I had to re-open my inventory and select the wire again. I just never made a post about it because if I made a post about everything I think is wrong with this game, I'd do nothing else besides write posts all day.

E.g.:

1. Is it actually possible, after investing time and resources into producing productivity 3 modules, then investing more into additional energy generation to account for the additional energy usage, then investing more into additional machinery to account for the slower machine speed, to actually come out ahead at some point such that it makes sense to make the modules? The trade-off between speed and production is the sort of trade-off that should be available by default, then producing the modules could be the tech that allows one to enable the productivity without taking a hit in speed and energy consumption. The same is true of the speed 3 module, where you're far better off just building more machines, though at least that one is useful to account for the fact that it's difficult to find enough oil on the map unless you're willing to just play slower so that 0.1/s seems like a higher rate than it is.

2. Why did someone put time and effort into creating the tank only to have it be such a fragile piece of useless junk? The same goes for the personal laser defense. ...and it actually went for virtually every piece of tactile equipment in 0.12, but in 0.13 they've improved the balance a lot. It's much better now that I don't have to turret creep everything, but can instead just quickly exterminate everything with the flamethrower.

2.5. Though I must say that the enemies respawn far too much still. The spawners are far to happy to reappear close to my base, being a constant unavoidable annoyance that distracts me from actually having fun building junk. ...and even the rate at which new enemies spawn out of the spawners is too high, e.g. the lame weapons of 0.12 might have been useful if it weren't that the enemies spawn from their spawners faster than they can be killed with any of the weapons, making it utterly pointless to focus the weapons on the enemies themselves, as the spawners are the real enemies, and the little bugs that run around are simply their ammo.

3. Why is it that stone, something this planet is surely mostly made out of, is so rare? I can never find enough of it. I can only guess that some people don't build a lot of walls or something, and they decided that since they don't need a lot of stone, there won't be a lot of stone.

4. WTF is with research being the primary consumer of resources? Well, it's second to modules if you make them, but it seems like most of the game is about collecting ores to be made into science packs so that they can vanish into research. In any event, it's just a huge resource sink for seemingly no goal other than to make the game harder. I think it would make a lot more sense if research were replaced with the concept of building the means of production, e.g. when you want green circuits, you need to build a special machine to produce green circuits, and it's costly to build this machine (rather than the few bits of iron and copper machines require now) and it requires ingredients from other machines you've built the same way, e.g. you need wire from your wire production machine to build the circuit production machine. Maybe even go so far as to require that the machine to produce electronic circuits requires electronic circuits, so you either have to produce them by hand, or perhaps scavenge them from a shipwreck. Similarly, the machine that produces gears is going to need some gears, and those will have to be made by hand. Indeed, the idea that some smart scientists from another planet arrives and doesn't just already basically know how to build all of this stuff is a little weird. The problem shouldn't be researching how to build things, the problem should be building the production line from scratch. However, the machines and belts and inserters take virtually no resources compared to what's sucked up by research.

5. I already posted about how the deconstruction time is pointless and unnecessary in another thread.

6. I'm sure we'd all be better off without that bar at the bottom of the screen that holds 10 to 20 items from our inventory, but I'll not make this any longer by trying to explain why.

7. Honestly, there's a lot of junk this game inherited from Minecraft that it would be better off without.

8. Making the car drive straight is virtually impossible. Perhaps it could steer more slowly when moving at high speeds (like a real car does) so that it's easier to keep it on a straight road through my factory?

9. Getting a single inserter to fill a train with multiple items is broken due to the inserter picking up a full stack even when the cargo wagon doesn't have room for it, so it locks up with the leftover items in its hand rather than continue to fill the cargo wagon with other items. I actually posted about this one, but it seems to have been ignored.

10. It would be insanely useful if filter inserters when set to "set filters" mode would use the counts to tell the inserter how many items to pick up at once, e.g. if the count is 1 then the inserter picks up no more than 1 of that item at a time, but if it is 100 then it picks up whatever is enabled by its current stack size upgrades. This would even provide a work-around for #9 there in that the inserter could be set to never pick up more than one of any item.

I think that's enough to make my point. Just because no one was talking about it before doesn't mean it wasn't bothering anyone.

The simple fact is that this level of opposition is what I'd expect to virtually any change I might suggest. So I pick my battles. This one seemed like low-hanging fruit due to being changed back to the old behavior seemingly on a whim, and after a month of play-testing by the devs where, if they hadn't intended the new behavior, it should have been obvious to them that it was wrong. So I assumed at least some of the devs wanted the new behavior and so they'd welcome a compromise that works for everyone.

...but, whatever, I was wrong I guess. It's clearly not low-hanging fruit.

If you refuse to change game behaviour, then at least give a reason.

Yes, exactly. ...and I must say that I'm not fond of "some people won't like it" as a reason, even though I don't think that'll be a problem. I think the more important question is "is it better this way?" So is it better this way? I think it is, and I'd love to at least hear a dev say that they don't think it would be better that way, and perhaps offer a tad of insight as to why they think it would be worse.

After all, that's the problem with those web site redesigns. If it were nothing more than that some people don't like the new look, then who cares? The problem is the loss of functionality, and that the site is most definitely not better off for having had most of its code base tossed out the window because someone thought it was useless cruft. If the changes just brought new features and more options for people, no one would complain.

[siggboy]

if I made a post about everything I think is wrong with this game, I'd do nothing else besides write posts all day.

There are still 1 million more things that are absolutely awesome about this game, than the few significant flaws (none of which are unfixable).

Is it actually possible, after investing time and resources into producing productivity 3 modules to actually come out ahead

Easily possible, check the thread "Productivity Module Math" where DaveMcW does the numbers.

[... complaints about combat ...]

Combat is not a selling point of Factorio. It will improve. I disable aliens when I'm not in the mood to deal with it.

3. Why is it that stone, something this planet is surely mostly made out of, is so rare? I can never find enough of it.

I've reduced the amount of stone in my new map, because usually there is too much

4. WTF is with research being the primary consumer of resources? In any event, it's just a huge resource sink for seemingly no goal other than to make the game harder.

The game has no goal except for researching everything and launching a rocket. Then you have to set your own goals. I consider research to be absolutely secondary now. It's being done while I think about how I'll design my megabase. Not an issue.

The fact that it took them 4 years to add a tech tree (*gasp*), but there is STILL no research queue, however, is staggering.

But the game needs more endgame, a broader set of goals. It's all going to be added over time.

5. I already posted about how the deconstruction time is pointless and unnecessary in another thread.

Yes, I agree, it's completely braindead. I eliminate it with a console command or mod.

6. I'm sure we'd all be better off without that bar at the bottom of the screen that holds 10 to 20 items from our inventory, but I'll not make this any longer by trying to explain why.

Again, I fully agree, the "tool belt" is a gigantic brainfart, and I wish it could be modded and replaced with a proper quickbar.

8. Making the car drive straight is virtually impossible. Perhaps it could steer more slowly when moving at high speeds (like a real car does) so that it's easier to keep it on a straight road through my factory?

Cars are always difficult to control without an analog input (like a game pad). If you could steer it with the mouse that would help a lot. Also you crash into trees all the time and into underground pipes (that is the worst). Pretty useless overall, but with exoskeleton you run as fast as you can drive anyway...

9. Getting a single inserter to fill a train with multiple items is broken due to the inserter picking up a full stack even when the cargo wagon doesn't have room for it, so it locks up with the leftover items in its hand rather than continue to fill the cargo wagon with other items. I actually posted about this one, but it seems to have been ignored.

Some guys are just working on the perfect combinator solution for this. I think limitations like this need to be in the game, otherwise you run out of problems to solve.

10. It would be insanely useful if filter inserters when set to "set filters" mode would use the counts to tell the inserter how many items to pick up at once

That's actually a really good idea, I think you should make a post about this.

The simple fact is that this level of opposition is what I'd expect to virtually any change I might suggest. So I pick my battles. This one seemed like low-hanging fruit

The devs are fighting on all fronts, this game is super complex and there are many users/players now. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Not all of the complaints that you made above are reasonable (some of them are very warranted, though). So there you go .

Some of the communication in response to change requests is not friendly, it could even be regarded as hostile. That's a major no-no. Maybe the team needs a community manager for talking to the people and stay out of the forums themselves (that's completely normal for many games with a vibrant community).

[Moosfet]

There are still 1 million more things that are absolutely awesome about this game, than the few significant flaws (none of which are unfixable).

Oh, absolutely. I've got probably 300 hours in this game (though it's probably going to stay there for a while as I feel rather burnt out now), which means that at $20, it cost 7 cents per hour of entertainment. It's a good game for sure. Entertainment doesn't come much cheaper than that.

Not all of the complaints that you made above are reasonable (some of them are very warranted, though). So there you go .

Yes, of course. The certainty that I'm correct is one of the factors in my decision not to bother posting about some of those things. I mean, I think I'm right about them all, but there's stuff I can make a firm case for, and there's stuff that is mostly just my opinion, and there's stuff that's such a diversion from what the game is now that it's silly to think that the devs would ever want to go there.

Easily possible, check the thread "Productivity Module Math" where DaveMcW does the numbers.

I'm too tired at this point to look at it in full detail, but I think he agrees with me. It looks like he's saying that level 1 modules are cheap enough to pay off in a reasonable time frame, but level 3 modules are so expensive that the time to break even is just too long to bother with them. There's no point if you'll tire of the map and start a new one before the modules pay for themselves. ...and indeed, once you've done all the research and made all the modules, 90% of what you needed resources for is gone, and so then you're going to have a really hard time making that investment pay off, unless you just happen to enjoy launching dozens of rockets.

Some of the communication in response to change requests is not friendly, it could even be regarded as hostile. That's a major no-no. Maybe the team needs a community manager for talking to the people and stay out of the forums themselves (that's completely normal for many games with a vibrant community).

I imagine an editor would help, as might some sort of voting system such that they can limit their attention to those suggestions which have wide appeal.

It really isn't easy. I've written my own (unpopular) game and so I know what a hell the forums are, and I only had to deal with like a dozen people. If the devs came in here every day all happy and friendly, I'd be wondering what drugs they're on.

That's actually a really good idea, I think you should make a post about this.

You can do so if you want. I don't believe it to be one of those battles I might win, so I'm not going to try.