Friday facts #151 - The plans for 0.14

[Requia]

Isn't deuterium used as coolant, moderator and heat transfer medium in some high pressure reactors?

Terminology, 'Heavy Water' is D2O, and used for that, 'Deuterium' refers to D2, and isn't. (compare from 'Water', H20, and 'Hydrogen', H2). D2 would work in principle, but hydrogen cooled reactors are something only messed around with for the sake of making rockets, and Deuterium is shit for rockets (exactly the same downsides as hydrogen but twice the mass and vastly more expensive).

[neurofish]

If you introduce a possibility to change recipe of assemblers by easy automatic means you will ruin the game. Think, why.

I thought why [that would ruin the game]. How, exactly, would this ruin the game?

You can build an assembler and two chest besides it: one for input to assembler and one for output from it. Also you can set an inserter that would move anything from output chest to input chest. Voila! you have a simple system, that can assemble almost anything (except recipes, that demands liquids, chemistry and ore processing) and that for free with no need of all logistics, you only must have an complex control system, that shedules change of recipes. And, of course, some input of base materials (wood, plates and beams). All that means, that almost every logistic in game are useless starting from this point. That universal design is very cheap and can be constructed very early.

[afk2minute]

so how this design dont need logistics? you need to put alot of resources in that chest.

[Klonan]

If you introduce a possibility to change recipe of assemblers by easy automatic means you will ruin the game. Think, why.

I thought why [that would ruin the game]. How, exactly, would this ruin the game?

You can build an assembler and two chest besides it: one for input to assembler and one for output from it. Also you can set an inserter that would move anything from output chest to input chest. Voila! you have a simple system, that can assemble almost anything (except recipes, that demands liquids, chemistry and ore processing) and that for free with no need of all logistics, you only must have an complex control system, that shedules change of recipes. And, of course, some input of base materials (wood, plates and beams). All that means, that almost every logistic in game are useless starting from this point. That universal design is very cheap and can be constructed very early.

I think its fair to reward the time to setup the complicated wiring to make a setup like this work, and i think it adds new interesting gameplay oppourtunities

[hitzu]

If you introduce a possibility to change recipe of assemblers by easy automatic means you will ruin the game. Think, why.

I thought why [that would ruin the game]. How, exactly, would this ruin the game?

You can build an assembler and two chest besides it: one for input to assembler and one for output from it. Also you can set an inserter that would move anything from output chest to input chest. Voila! you have a simple system, that can assemble almost anything (except recipes, that demands liquids, chemistry and ore processing) and that for free with no need of all logistics, you only must have an complex control system, that shedules change of recipes. And, of course, some input of base materials (wood, plates and beams). All that means, that almost every logistic in game are useless starting from this point. That universal design is very cheap and can be constructed very early.

I think it is as fair as a simple no-brainer setup with a pair logistic chests for every item, though it requires a lot more thinking to set up wiring and penalizes you with the speed since you have only one assembler for every task.

[PKing Zombie Spy]

You can build an assembler and two chest besides it: one for input to assembler and one for output from it. Also you can set an inserter that would move anything from output chest to input chest. Voila! you have a simple system, that can assemble almost anything (except recipes, that demands liquids, chemistry and ore processing) and that for free with no need of all logistics,

Hmmm... :/

Can you actually provide a save file, that illustrates everything you describe, except for the part where the factory has its recipe changed (which, of course, does not exist yet)? That is, a faultless system that given the state of a circuit network(s), has the following properties:

• Can correctly decide what items needs to be produced next by this "smart factory," and
• Can have corresponding inputs for the item filling a single input chest in sufficient quantities and
• Makes no use of logistics?

I hope I am not an unusually dense person, but it is not clear to me how to solve this problem, at all, in any way more efficient than just having a bunch of idle factories.

[Woodmn]

Ps, if one of the devs happens to have read this far, could you possibly implement several pipes/valves for dealing with fluids? Even if it's just a one way pipe or valve like a pipe version of the switch, it could make fluids easier to work with.

This already exists: liquids will only move one way in a small pump, even if it is unpowered. I think liquids may not flow through a pump at all when it is unpowered, so you could use it as a switch by enabling / disabling (or powering, unpowering) it.

I know you can use pumps so refinery setups can only run when required/other uses, I would just like a passive 1 way valve that you can get reasonably early on that only relies on 'pressure' to push fluids through it. That and you need something like 5 small pumps for full pressurization of a pipe with maximum throughput.

[neurofish]

it is not clear to me how to solve this problem, at all, in any way more efficient than just having a bunch of idle factories

Why is it matter of no having of idle factories? Assembers are cheap (too cheap, for my opinion), and their operating cost is cheap. Single thing that balanced this is logistic stuff demanded for delivering a components to them and products from them. And player time to build that stuff, of course. I think, if we will to balance that situation we must increase cost of assemblers in orders of magnitude.

[neurofish]

Can you actually provide a save file, that illustrates everything you describe, except for the part where the factory has its recipe changed (which, of course, does not exist yet)? That is, a faultless system that given the state of a circuit network(s), has the following properties:
Can correctly decide what items needs to be produced next by this "smart factory," and
Can have corresponding inputs for the item filling a single input chest in sufficient quantities and
Makes no use of logistics?

I haven't such a construction just now, but i think, it can be interesting to design it.

Some notes:
First, we haven't obligation to have only one input chest, we can have 3, for example, 2 of them full of plates and beams. That narrowes task to constructing such a control system, that "Can correctly decide what items needs to be produced next by this "smart factory".
Second, of course, some logistic belts for delivering raw materials are remained. My point in arguing against recipe changing in that such design is simple and can be regularly copied. That offers no challenges in planning logistics for player.
Third, it would be two types of such controlled factories: first type just run producing shedule without controlling of amount of ingredients in input chest, second type controls that and decides whether to continue producing of intermediates or start producing a higher level materials. Only first type is prone of idling. Main difficulty in constructing such a system is subsystem, that memorizes and traverses across shedule and recipe prerequisites. May be, a complex controller demanded, may be, a Turing-complete.

[YoggYG]

All these plans look really cool, but for energy stuff it would also be nice to have improved versions of existing technologies (for example the long-anticipated upgrade of the "Basic accumulator").

Something completely different: I would like to see Electric locomotives in the game, requiring some sort of advanced rail/track pieces (track + iron rod = track with third rail), or using a power line above the tracks at regular intervals (would be a pain to set up manually, but this would be late game stuff, and then players have construction bots, so that is not an issue). It would also be cool if it were possible to load the current "Diesel locomotives" with actual liquid stuff (trains running on heavy/light oil, instead of my old wooden powerpoles). Or make the first tier locomotive an old-fashioned steam locomotive that can run on anything that burns (like the current DIesel one), and then have an upgraded Diesel locomotive that has to be fueled with some sort of oil. Then an upgrade above that would be the Electric locomotive, which would eliminate the problem of refueling the locomotives, but the Electric locomotive can only run on rails that have been upgraded (so to replace all trains with Electric ones, the player would have to replace/upgrade the entire rail system first).

On another note: why do pumps require electric engines? This makes pumps a pretty late game item, since it requires lubricant (like express belts), while it is the only way to regulate the flow of liquids in pipes. It also means the player cannot craft pumps on the fly (unless they have a supply of electric engines in their inventory, which some people might? I know I don't). This is not really an issue in .13, since the usefulness of pumps is not that high right now, but with the introduction of the liquid wagon in .14, I assume we will need pumps to load and unload these wagons. The fact that they are not craftable on the fly is weird when you compare them to stack inserters, which are amazing, and can be crafted from raw materials, in the player's pocket.

Another thing that would be nice is to have the ability to dig up the landfill that the player placed. Not necessarily the ability to create water, but only to recreate water where at some point there was water. Maybe this is possible by having the landfill not create dirt/soil, but a bridge type surface? This makes it clear that the water is still present, but that the surface now is buildable. This also would make it really clear which tiles can be converted back into water (just mine/deconstruct the "bridge" flooring, which obviously should not be possible if a structure is placed on top of it).

These are some of the ideas I had in the past weeks that I can think of right now. It this comment seems rambly and incoherent then I'm sorry. It's 2:30 AM right now and I really need to sleep.

[jcranmer]

If you introduce a possibility to change recipe of assemblers by easy automatic means you will ruin the game. Think, why.

I thought why [that would ruin the game]. How, exactly, would this ruin the game?

You can build an assembler and two chest besides it: one for input to assembler and one for output from it. Also you can set an inserter that would move anything from output chest to input chest. Voila! you have a simple system, that can assemble almost anything (except recipes, that demands liquids, chemistry and ore processing) and that for free with no need of all logistics, you only must have an complex control system, that shedules change of recipes. And, of course, some input of base materials (wood, plates and beams). All that means, that almost every logistic in game are useless starting from this point. That universal design is very cheap and can be constructed very early.

Make the input chest a requester chest and the output chest a passive provider chest, get a stack of robots, and this already exists. If you enable god modules in Bob's Mods, you actually find out that it's almost impossible to have a fully-efficient factory (= all assemblers running all the time) without this setup. See, e.g., towards the end of the AMASS campaign.

You also underestimate the difficulty of building complex combinator systems. Using combinators to build only-as-requested is pretty easy, but there is a massive jump in difficulty when it comes to build exactly-as-many-as-requested. You need to worry precisely about timing (and getting inserters to count out exactly properly when you have stack size bonus is a PITA). In a single-assembler factory, you also need to be able to sort the inputs such that you build the first-tier items before attempting to build last-tier items; you might even need to do clever queue rearrangements to prevent chest overflow in the middle of production. Undoubtedly, people will try to build this universal-assembler factory (I probably will as well). But it's sufficiently complex that probably only around 1-5% of Factorio players could succeed in the first place.

[PKing Zombie Spy]

I haven't such a construction just now, but i think, it can be interesting to design it.

Could you please?

So the reason why I'm asking is that there was a specific claim made that this would be easy to do, and would ruin the game. It's unclear to me that it is easy, and my suspicion is that you might have just gotten a bit ahead of yourself in claiming something difficult was easy (as I myself have often done ) but I wanted to give you a chance to demonstrate it.

[Furan]

On another note: why do pumps require electric engines? This makes pumps a pretty late game item, since it requires lubricant (like express belts), while it is the only way to regulate the flow of liquids in pipes. It also means the player cannot craft pumps on the fly (unless they have a supply of electric engines in their inventory, which some people might? I know I don't). This is not really an issue in .13, since the usefulness of pumps is not that high right now, but with the introduction of the liquid wagon in .14, I assume we will need pumps to load and unload these wagons. The fact that they are not craftable on the fly is weird when you compare them to stack inserters, which are amazing, and can be crafted from raw materials, in the player's pocket.

Well that's the result of contorting the reality. Electric engines do not require lubricant (or a insignificant amount). Petrol engines do. Electric engines are not made of petrol engines, but exactly the opposite. The reason seems to be the need for a cheap transport, if the oil deposits are far away. Well, tough luck, you're gonna have to walk.
This is how it would actually look like: viewtopic.php?f=97&t=29538
A steam locomotive would be a partial remedy.

[EvilMushroom]

What I always found fascinating about nuclear power plants is that they require constant energy to prevent them from blowing up. Cut off electricity, water stops being pumped into the plant, the control rods are no longer cooled, control rods melt, nuclear fission increases, and you have a total meltdown. I don’t think it would be much fun to realistically irradiate the area, but it might be nice to let the thing blow up and wipe out everything a huge swath of the map if the water pump is cut off for too long. This adds some ‘playing with fire’ tension to using nuclear power, as well as adding a possible offensive use to expand into a new area.

[TooMellow]

Heres a little idea that could be done to extend the game ten fold. it may be stupid, it may be lame. im just spit balling here. What if when they add a space station mechanic to vanilla, they have it to where you can actually go to space? you would have to send like 10 or 20 rockets first, then you would have to send up construction and logistic robots up in one of the rockets to build the initial space station. YOU can then ride up and start expanding the space station. (there would be a little loading screen like when you load the game for when you travel up there and back) or, not. you could just have a space station being the center point to go from earth to space back to earth and so on. you can build a small space ship (which would be the same mechanics as a car or tank, just without the friction and wind resistance to stop it on its own) and you can fly, maybe not to other planets, or moons and such (although, you DID crash land on this planet, would make sense if you had to go regroup with your own civilization to ACTUALLY beat the game) but maybe have meteors, asteroids, and other such stuff that can provide minerals to the player (which can then be sent down via a smaller space ship that cant be driven but can be programed with the logistics net work to send supplies to and from the space station (if they are easy and cheap to build, you could just have it to where it will only GO to earth, not come BACK to space) and then that opens a path way to adding minerals and new items to the game WITHOUT just adding more patches to the ground that weren't there before. this would make things neater (if you made it this far, remember, im not even expecting this to be read, im literally just spit balling here. i realize this is basically adding another game to factorio. but it would be a cool dlc to maybe add, id certainly buy it) im not that creative so i know there is so much more here that could be said to make this crazy idea sound more appealing, more useful, and maybe more needed? idk. maybe have it to where you can select a different part of the world (which is where you could add the new snow areas and new forest areas and stuff. there could be new and exotic aliens to deal with, new resources and so on. this game (like any other game) has unlimited potential. its not about if it can be done. its about if the developer has the time, money, and patience (also longing to improve the game to the max) to try to create such a MASSIVE game. i mean, it would still be smaller than the AAA games, so it wont cost more than 20 bucks to buy the game, but it could have either map packs, or (god forbid something be free in this world) it could just be a 3.0 update XD. ok, im done rambling about the impossible now. let me know what you think! idc if you say it sucks, i just want to know if people like or hate this idea

[Tev]

I'm wondering what are people describing in those walls of text . . . Factorio is quite complex already, no need to overcomplicate it.

I like the idea of reactor being simple "put in fuel and enjoy" building, with processing fuel/waste being the more complex parts.

Pollution (as in radioactivity) should only be issue when waste is improperly handled, or maybe when reactor loses power for longer time (semi-realistic and simple).

[dasiro]

What I always found fascinating about nuclear power plants is that they require constant energy to prevent them from blowing up. Cut off electricity, water stops being pumped into the plant, the control rods are no longer cooled, control rods melt, nuclear fission increases, and you have a total meltdown. I don’t think it would be much fun to realistically irradiate the area, but it might be nice to let the thing blow up and wipe out everything a huge swath of the map if the water pump is cut off for too long. This adds some ‘playing with fire’ tension to using nuclear power, as well as adding a possible offensive use to expand into a new area.

you should read more into nuclear power plants then, because there are literally hundreds of fail-safe mechanisms to prevent a meltdown. It takes extreme conditions for it to happen, not just a simple power outage, but a series of unexpected events.

[brunzenstein]

What I always found fascinating about nuclear power plants is that they require constant energy to prevent them from blowing up. Cut off electricity, water stops being pumped into the plant, the control rods are no longer cooled, control rods melt, nuclear fission increases, and you have a total meltdown. I don’t think it would be much fun to realistically irradiate the area, but it might be nice to let the thing blow up and wipe out everything a huge swath of the map if the water pump is cut off for too long. This adds some ‘playing with fire’ tension to using nuclear power, as well as adding a possible offensive use to expand into a new area.

+1 I like that. Plus the final storage problem of the still radiating rods.
Nuclear waste and used rods have to be taken care of for a few million years. A impossible task to begin with. Making that technology a crime in first place.

[afk2minute]

reactor is not a nuclear bomb.
It will not 'explode killing everything around', like you want to imagine.

[brunzenstein]

reactor is not a nuclear bomb.
It will not 'explode killing everything around', like you want to imagine.

Correct - Nuclear reactors and their waste kills invisible by radiation slowly, permanent and highly effective by damaging e.g. altering the DNA strings.If they don't melt down - what has the same result but the effect comes faster as it makes a wider landscape inhabitable for men for a few million years. Ants, bugs and scorpions survive high radiation (why is not know yet) - that's the positive side but only if your an ant