new very early stage unit: "engineer"

[wjessup]

What:

Basically this is a selectable unit like the sup com engineers. It is given a task queue ( build some things ) or a ferry order ( take things from here, move them to there, repeat ). These are available very early in the game, before your first yellow belts, and maybe you even start with 2. Their storage is maybe 10 things of one type ( up to 10 ore for example ). They can mine as well, about the same speed as the player.

Their speed is slowish and setting them on ferry is just a bit better than doing it yourself, but not as fast as even the most basic yellow belts, but its much more flexible.

for example, they can be used to mine ore and copper in the very beginning and ferry it to boilers in a very slow but automated way until you get around to building yellow belts.

Why:

First a bit more background: Right now players need to lay permanent buildings to automate anything - so you set down belts, assemblers, power, etc. but for newer players this is frustrating because they *want* to plan but don't know what comes next. Should I build this here or there? How can they know?

So the player sets down some stuff and realizes they need to extend to another intermediate, they merge some belts, make more spaghetti and only once they're completely in spaghetti land do they see some ways to optimize, but now its painful because it requires tearing down large functional portions of the base, trying to keep what you need to do in your memory and trying to re-create a more optimized solution.

Well isn't that the entire *point* of factorio you ask?

Well yes, but it doesn't mean it couldn't be done better for players both new and experienced.

With Engineers the stages of the game look like:

stage 1) flexible & slow ( engineers )
stage 2) inflexible & fast ( transport belts)
stage 3) flexible & slow ( flying robots )
stage 4) inflexible & superfast ( upgraded belts )
stage 5) flexible and fast ( upgraded flying robots )

This gives you a flexible method to choose before an inflexible method at each stage.

The question of “how many assemblers do I need for coils?” isn’t known until you understand that you need 10, but maybe you only need 1. So instead of setting up transport belts and 10 assemblers for coils then realizing you have to move it all, you can first use a flexible transport method to recognize that your 1,2,5 assemblers isn’t enough and you should “refactor” the base to have transport belts.

Maybe later you can upgrade to engineers MK2 that get some lower-powered combat guns and more storage etc.

[ssilk]

You are not alone: I added it to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19991 Collection of ideas around robots and self-moving objects


There are some very similar ideas. You should read them, cause the discussions go into direction of "why should those complex robots be there before the logistic robots?". Or "What does that bring for the game-play?"

but for newer players this is frustrating because they *want* to plan but don't know what comes next. Should I build this here or there? How can they know?
So the player sets down some stuff and realizes they need to extend to another intermediate, they merge some belts, make more spaghetti and only once they're completely in spaghetti land do they see some ways to optimize, but now its painful because it requires tearing down large functional portions of the base, trying to keep what you need to do in your memory and trying to re-create a more optimized solution.
Well isn't that the entire *point* of factorio you ask?

No the entire point of Factorio is the spagetthi. Not kidding. The devs said that. And as player you need to find out, that you can completely destruct anything and build it from scratch. You don't need to start a new game for that.

[Harkonnen604]

With 0.13 ghost-building is available right away (shift-click) so you can plan a lot stuff ahead at least for layout.