Friday Facts #180 - Map interaction

[trashcan]

I have seen several people requesting turret coverage as map view.

As someone who prefers using guns over lasers, I really really really would love a map view, that color codes how much ammo gun turrets are holding - blinking bright if they are out of ammo.

[MyrddinE]

Every week brings another reason I wish 0.15 was already out. I'm looking forward to this so much guys.

Though... I'm still sad you didn't go with Steam. I wanted steam and optional cooling towers. Ahh well.

[MyrddinE]

I have seen several people requesting turret coverage as map view.

As someone who prefers using guns over lasers, I really really really would love a map view, that color codes how much ammo gun turrets are holding - blinking bright if they are out of ammo.

You can add the blinking light and color-coding yourself (but not the range checking) with some wiring. Sounds like a good idea.

[Tanatos]

Thanks for Your work!

Idea for "The electric network visualisation": use color for electric line low/hight distance pole.
This will distinguish the main supply line from the local ones.

[Nich]

LOVE IT all great information to add to the map. keep it up

Only thing I could kind of think of is health bars of damaged objects on the map or maybe change the taking damage to orange > 50% red < 50%. Or just outright show the health bars of damaged objects

[BlackKnight]

Best FFF in a while, I am very enthusiastic about anything related to information aesthetics/graphics and I feel the map is an area that has been lacking and would really benefit from some revamps both in supplying a lot more useful information and adding new ways to interact - all to greatly increase usability.

FACTORY PLANNING
This is one area that it seems quite a few people are interested in - either via symbol notation or text. It would be great to have any advancement in this area - a polygon tool to block out planned advancements would be amazing for this but even the use of symbols would be great. Factory revisions, areas to expand to, resources to collect, (line tool) for train lines. This could possibly be transparent overlay on normal view as well.?

ICONS IN MAP VIEW
The FFF note about now being able to include icons in the map view made me think about how this could be automated to simplify the time consuming task of labelling a factory.
Auto display of Factory icon - possible solutions?:

• Each buildings could display an icon for the item being crafting in map view .. but this could end up requiring a lot more memory in the end.
• Op1: Auto tile icons in space without cropping whatever was being crafted in a space would display however many icons "filled" over it to create a patterned effect.
• Op2: Multiples of a building type adjacent to each other (eg 5+ refineries) could trigger an icon showing in Map View centered over the general area
• Op3: Leave it to the player to input their own
• Additionally, Custom Icons for blueprints! - would encourage use of blueprints more just for this convenience. So whenever someone used a blueprint it would display that icon.
  Icon Tile solution mention above.

MAP DISPLAY VIEWS / LAYERS
Instead of allowing all out customization which may result in players making the map much less useable, Preset Views could be available and toggle-able as layers. These views would dull? the background display to help the view colours/items stand out? Remember, all of these are in map mode.

• Pollution View - toggle should be independent of (alt mode)!
• Roboport View - display construction and logistic ranges, connected roboports (same as this FFF but with connections displayed)
• Electrical View - Display all powered/unpowered areas with different grouping overlay colors. Mouseover grouping would highlight all electrical wires connected (thinking veins in human body visual) and possibly buildings connected as well?
• Military View - Display walls, turrets etc, possibly their attack range, See Biter heatmap for related
• Train View - Displays all transportation related details - trains, their connected stations and their routes. Also making cars/tanks more obvious.? Also allow toggling of train station names!
• Bottlenecks -"A potentially very useful map would be a current machine state mode: Color* the map so that running machines are green, input blocked are red, and output blocked are yellow. This will give a very good way of spotting errors and problems in large setups like smelting. It's similar to the Bottleneck mod, but with no other distractions and on a larger scale."
• Network Views - Logistic, Electric.. etc - Bubble map grouping overlay layer of all areas from the same network together. If highlighting a grouping, would display all items highlight from that network.
• Filter View Mode - search/check on/off any items ingame from list. Allow gaining understanding of where improvements could be made or just locating items (perhaps all lower tier belts). Might be also useful to include this in the hybrid overlay (discussed below).

I add my vote to these ideas already proposed -- revised with my own input

• Moving the player in map view via WASD keys instead of moving the map
• Hide all unneeded UI elements from the Map view (toolbelts,minimap etc) except menu bar (top left, and research bar)
• Toggle on/off all UI Elements in Map / Normal view (including mod) via key would be very nice.
• Move in to/out of Map View via Zooming (Supreme Commander 2) (with hybrid view overlay inbetween?)
• Hybrid overlay - To build on some above items, Some map Symbols/overlays could persistence in hybrid view (which is basically map symbols in normal view mode 'plus') (also like Supreme Commander 2)
• Seamless transition zoom while in map modes (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1170)
• Normal view/Map tagging - notes to do - for self or for others, with Generic Symbols for the map (limited) - related to above, to help with annotations/notes.
• Urgency Borders for Map Symbols - dependant on state eg: Red/ Yellow/White (!!!/!!/!)
• Logistics controlled feedback symbols on the map (eg ItemX < 1 = Blinking Icon (with note/status) on map)
• Train Path Display - When mousing over a train on the map: * Show the path to its next destination. Optionally also highlight on map all train stops that train services.!
• Custom Colour alterations/Colour blindness solution - Allow via tweaking defaults via Game Menu/Ingame?
• Solution for Train station names overlapping each other. Maybe truncated until mouseover?... ??
• Blink if damaged on map - Built items blinking (typically turrets) if health is <100% or if item is being damaged

HEATMAPS

• Railway Heat Map - highest throughput areas (to help find bottle necks, breaks in track)!!!
• Biter Heat Map - would show where most frequent attacks occur and from generally what direction (would require radar surveyed area to work)
• Electrical Heat Map - to show highest electrical use buildings/subfactories!!!
• Bot Heat Map - could show where more roboports would be useful to increase efficiency
  * useful also in hybrid view

ADDITIONAL IDEAS

• When launching a rocket, temporarily unhide a fairly large area on the map centered around the rockets launch pad. This would be logical as one could imagine there is likely a camera on the rocket giving feedback as it launches. This would also be a reward for launching rockets - providing a much larger area of view for that moment but not update again until the next launch.

NETWORK MOCKUP

• Quick mockup of electrical network display - would also be used for logistical and circuit networks. Could display as toggle or in hybrid map/normal view (?) -- just like multi unit selection clumping in Supreme Commander 2. *Obviously its not perfect - just photoshop to give a rough proof of concept

  

  factorio-fff-180-electric-network-visualisation.jpg (136.16 KiB) Viewed 9361 times

Re-Hybrid/Map view - Some inspirational text from a Supreme Commander page.

• "One of the big innovations Supreme Commander brings to the strategy table is its Strategic View. Essentially, this is the ability to be able to zoom out of the map until it effectively becomes a full screen minimap, or zoom in until the smallest units fill your screen. The amount of information you get here is quite mind-blowing, you can pretty much play an entire game from this perspective without any problems.". (Not sure if the last bit about complete control from the map view is the direction that people really want for Factorio, but at least some control from the map view would be very handy and especially the information feedback). A nice feature the Strategic view brings is it clumps icons/units together the further you zoom out to give a easy to understand summary of multiple units.

*EDIT: Improved readability via better formatting

[KrzysD]

What if from player view you can keep zooming out and it goes to map view?! that would be pretty cool!

edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG2To6R6zIQ like this!

[Vinnie_NL]

Since you asked if there are things we want for 0.15 so here are my suggestions (please excuse my bad english, im german)

I want to be able to tell my trains to only go to a train stop, if certain conditions are fulfilled, and otherwise skip that train stop and continue with the next stop. The conditions would either be things like:

1. the amount of an items the train has inside itself (similar to the already existing "waiting mechanic" at train stops)
2. any information provided by the logistics system
3. special conditions like the amount of available other train stops (explained further down)

With these conditions there would be much more freedom in long term planning for trains, and in automation in generall.
For example, i could tell trains to only refill their coal, if they have under 10 coal with them. One could then build a fuel refill station, that only gets visited by a train occasionally.
Also i could use the logistics system to tell my trains, to only come to a certain mine, or a station in generell, if there is stuff ready to be transported,
thereby reducing amount of needlessly waiting trains immensly, and making things overall more automated and smooth.

A problem with this mechanic could be the occurrence of Trains which have no vaiable train stops to go to in their list. This problem could be solved with the third kind of conditions i mentioned.
One could simply build an waiting station for trains which have nowhere else to go, and let them wait there for a fix amount of time or until other train stops become available

I think all of this is possible with the Smarter Trains mod. I found the standard train options in Factorio lacking so I searched for a suitable mod and found this. I completely reworked the main unloading stations near my main base to make it easier to expand and use the Smarter Trains mod to the fullest potential.

Then I found out that it was more complicated to get everything right with the station signals than I hoped for. I made a small test track with 4 stations and even then I couldn't get it to work.
I'm hoping that it will be easier to do this in vanilla, maybe with a more intuitive gui to explain which values to fill in where.
But if this functionality isn't added to vanilla I will try again in 0.15. I think it's the only way to expand your transport capacity while keeping it efficient. And when the signals are configured it's easy to add more trains to a schedule, instead of adding all the stops with the conditions seperately to each train, and update it in each train when you add an extra station to the schedule.

The functionality to only deliver iron and copper to a train stop when the stored amount there is below a certain threshold. So I have an unloading station at the start of my main bus, and a second unloading station somewhere halfway, to refill the main bus belts with iron and copper again. Otherwise I need to make the main bus like twice the amount of lanes, while most of the capacity halfway isn't used anyway.

[cpy]

Gun turrets needs some love! Laser turrets are just better right now.

[StoneLegion]

What if from player view you can keep zooming out and it goes to map view?! that would be pretty cool!

edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG2To6R6zIQ like this!

Personally I feel like that be annoying for me. Would not have the same true effect as most games out there the map vs the in game not even close to being the same look wise and such so it would never feel right and be annoying when I'm trying max zoom out.

[esdanol]

I suspect that you have played roller coaster tycoon. It would be nice to have an alert history. Right now when you are attacked, for a sort time, there is an icon that will point out on the map where. If you miss the icon though I can be hard to find the damage done. I'd like to see a panel of previous map alerts.

[Winnetou]

Very nice changes. Can't wait for 0.15

As with so many others, I'd like to share my Yet Another List of Suggestions. More as possible ideas, for longer term:

- the ability on the map to click somehow on a spot and your character to start going there automatically
- after thinking about the above and about the occasions where I'd wish I could close a window/box in the game without the keyboard, because my left hand is greasy from chips, I'd say you might want to think about making the game playable with the mouse only (while keeping all the awesome keyboard shortcuts). This would be a pretty big change and quite challenging I assume. But it would certainly make the game more accessible
- (slightly inspired from Rimworld 0.16) make the playable map actually be a complete planet. Which you can explore fully. And enable players to race on a map seed for which is the fastest to mine out the whole planet. While periodically shipping all kinds of goods (not just satellites and fishes) into space for your overlords/homeworld/ISS. Or race on which is the most efficient and ships out the most resources from the planet in a specific timespan. I would love to have an end game/condition like that. While on that maybe make the minimum % oil patches have a small chance of draining up completely (checked every so often), so no longer infinite amounts. Don't know if any or all of these are currently possible from mods.
- maybe make all buildable things that are unlocked by the currently-available-to-research techs to show in the production popups ? With a note inside that you can't build it now because you lack tech X. This would greatly simplify next-stage planning as you'll be able to see much more easily what you need next. Going to the tech screen and back is kind of annoying
- while we're on the tech screen... can you add an option to remove it's pause feature ? Sometimes I have to wait until X finishes production or Y to be researched. So I'm thinking "hey, while I have to wait, let me check the tech screen to see what do I need / can research next / plan my next moves". Except that the game is paused while I do that, and I have to wait anyway I know I can make a multiplayer game for this, but... meh

Congrats for all the work so far

[Jürgen Erhard]

Roboport coverage! Thank you, kovarex, thank you thank you thank you! Been wanting, nay, needing this for so long...

... and obviously I'm not the only player who likes to have one humongous logistics network

[KepperMIEM]

Resource patch inspection

Mod "Hard crafting" https://mods.factorio.com/mods/judos/hardCrafting change mining result.

data.raw["resource"]["coal"].minable.result = nil
data.raw["resource"]["coal"].minable.results = {
{name = "coal", probability = 0.8, amount_min = 1, amount_max = 1, type = "item"},
{name = "coal-dust", probability = 0.2, amount_min = 1, amount_max = 2, type = "item"},
},
Will this create problems?
Or string "Copper ore 668k" made from entity.name and richness?

[kovarex]

Resource patch inspection

Mod "Hard crafting" https://mods.factorio.com/mods/judos/hardCrafting change mining result.

data.raw["resource"]["coal"].minable.result = nil
data.raw["resource"]["coal"].minable.results = {
{name = "coal", probability = 0.8, amount_min = 1, amount_max = 1, type = "item"},
{name = "coal-dust", probability = 0.2, amount_min = 1, amount_max = 2, type = "item"},
},
Will this create problems?
Or string "Copper ore 668k" made from entity.name and richness?

The tooltip is actually list of lines, where every line represents one resource. So this will work properly.

[RobertTerwilliger]

Have these symbols light up on the map on circuit conditions

Absolutely +1 to this! Possibilities are infinite for such feature = )

Probably should implement marker circuit entity for this.

[Shadus]

It would be nice to have an alert history. Right now when you are attacked, for a sort time, there is an icon that will point out on the map where. If you miss the icon though I can be hard to find the damage done. I'd like to see a panel of previous map alerts.

Ooh, yes. This. Add this to my wishlist.

[eradicator]

Also as a late afterthought it would be awesome to have a visual representation of the bot swarm as it moves around the factory. Although i imagine that would be somewhat computaionally expensive

[steinio]

Also as a late afterthought it would be awesome to have a visual representation of the bot swarm as it moves around the factory. Although i imagine that would be somewhat computaionally expensive

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/keyboard ... sible_Bots

[Coolsmoke]

The improved map will be nice. Particularly trees. It is a bit of a drag and hard on the eyes trying to quickly figure out the path with the least trees. Perhaps make trees darker or with higher contrast respect to its surroundings...

Being one of those poor colourblind players, I totally second this!