Friday Facts #183 - Aiming for the release date

[TrojanEnder]

Love everything that's going on here. Can't wait for the release!

I request some way to differentiate turret types and their respective ranges from the map view. For instance sometimes I like to have 2 perimeters: powered and un-powered. I would like to be able to know I have coverage for both types. I don't want laser turret range to cover up regular turret range. I have no idea how this could be implemented, just wanted to throw it out there.

Keep up the great work!

[ABOG19]

I love the little tweaks you are all making while the bigger projects are finishing up, actualy, I don't even mind the delay...

I got one question : Do we get more achievements, like for example finish death world and other difficulties?

What about: "finish death world using only flamethrower & flamethrower turrets" ("Hot as hell"?) and "Finish death world without building walls" ("Trumped!")

Trumped! Ha ha love it!

[ribsngibs]

We are considering whether it should be possible or not to build ghosts, blueprints and use deconstruction planner from the map, maybe it could be unlocked by specific research

That's what the satellite should unlock! Build a satellite and launch it into orbit, and then you get the ability to scroll around on the map wherever you like and give construct/deconstruct orders to robots.

[chris13524]

Do you guys use Git Flow? It might allow you to keep some of these features (such as nuclear power) on their own feature branches before merging to develop. That way you could make smaller releases, more often.

[kovarex]

Do you guys use Git Flow? It might allow you to keep some of these features (such as nuclear power) on their own feature branches before merging to develop. That way you could make smaller releases, more often.

Yes, we use git, but we both know how much work is it to keep active and big branch synced with the master for a long time.

[ThermicKestrel]

I suggested being able to see turret ranges in the map a few weeks ago, nice to see it added in

[StoneLegion]

I suggested Factorio about 10 years ago thanks so much for making it

[Nemoricus]

Is there a chance of users being able to make their own difficulty setting presets?

[ske]

They're already 3 weeks done. They are making up stories to keep us in the dark. Sitting on a pile of our money they play 0.15 all day long, while occasionally looking into the forums and laughing at us 0.14 peasants. They are the one percent. They are the ones who own all the code commits and bug reports. Once the gold bug has bitten them, they have lost all control. Just read the FFF. Ridiculous. They spend days making stuff up just smoke and mirrors to misguide us. Wake up creeples!

[StoneLegion]

They're already 3 weeks done. They are making up stories to keep us in the dark. Sitting on a pile of our money they play 0.15 all day long, while occasionally looking into the forums and laughing at us 0.14 peasants. They are the one percent. They are the ones who own all the code commits and bug reports. Once the gold bug has bitten them, they have lost all control. Just read the FFF. Ridiculous. They spend days making stuff up just smoke and mirrors to misguide us. Wake up creeples!

Lmao

[Alice3173]

As much as I really want to play 0.15 (and am considering even playing a new run without any mods because of the massive changes) I think you guys shouldn't have to worry so much about the release date stuff. Most of the people who are complaining about it likely have no experience with programming to begin with so they don't understand how easily an unforeseen issue can crop up, especially with something as complicated as Factorio. And those complaining about how you seem to be adding extra things and extending the development time clearly don't understand that not everyone working on a project like this does every job on it, as you explained. (Which isn't to imply you shouldn't try explaining it, hopefully they will learn something from that and be more patient in the future.) I actually had to explain that to someone else after the last FFF or the one before that on another forum because they didn't get it either.

They are the ones who own all the code commits and bug reports.

Well I'd certainly hope so. They are, after all, the game's developers, lol.

[StoneLegion]

Well I'd certainly hope so. They are, after all, the game's developers, lol.

I'm pretty sure that was a /s post.

[axelsword]

Could you add a new train condition that functions like a station hopper? It would be useful to have the train reach a station and not move to another without user input.

"Summon to station" would be great, too, i.e. when selecting a train via train station, that station would receive focus on the schedule so that clicking depart would send the train to that station.

There is a playthrough of factorio on youtube by a smart guy, Keith Ballard, where he couldn't figure out the offshore pump. Maybe add a flashing sign to the position where pipe should connect to indicate that water isn't flowing similar to how electricity "unplugged into network" icon works. Scroll to 16min 3sec in part 8 and 20min 35sec.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdSSi3P ... V&t=16m03s

A simple research queue would do wonders.
Thanks!

[dougdanger]

Will we be able to name and save world generation presets? If not for 0.15, will there at least be a folder where we can create our own definitions (like in JSON)?

[Roxor128]

Presets, hmm...

You know, one preset option which would be a good idea to have would be presets for starting equipment, so not only can you pick a world-generation preset, but also one for what you start with.

Here's a starter list:

1. Nothing.
2. Current defaults.
3. Basic electricity (pump, boiler, steam engine, electric miner, basic logistics equipment, lab, no research done yet)
4. Basic oil (basic automation equipment, pumpjack, refinery, a few chemical plants)

Maybe unlock each preset as you finish various levels in the campaign. If you haven't even played the first level of the "First Steps" campaign, the "Nothing" option will be the only one available. Finish the first level, and the current defaults one gets unlocked. Finish the "First Steps" campaign, and the basic electricity one gets unlocked. Finish "New Hope" and basic oil one gets unlocked.

[Alice3173]

I'm pretty sure that was a /s post.

Yup, I'm aware. I had hoped the fact that I was responding to one of the least relevant parts of the post would've made it clear I wasn't actually seriously responding myself.

[factoriouzr]

I love the map zoom feature and I'm sooooo glad you guys are finally improving the colours and readability of the map. It all looks great. I agree you should make the colours configurable, and moddable. That way players can download presets.

I love how you can't accidentally zoom to the map when zooming out, that would be extremely annoying.

There are a few features that I would love it if they made it into 0.15. These are relatively minor and are:

1) Combine logistics requests with auto trash on the same tab so that you can set two values, the minimum to keep (if you fall under, robots bring you more of the item), and a maximum, that if you go over, the excess gets auto trashed. Also have a checkbox that's checked by default that locks the two numbers and sliders and makes them the exact same value so you can easily say always keep 50 belts, etc
2) add more logistics request and auto trash slots (more tabs of them). See above item as well.
3) Add ability to make blueprints from the map view and the ability to place blueprints from the map view. This is a logical extension and was mentioned in this Friday facts. I love this idea and have wanted it for a long time. It would also allow taking and placing arbitrarily large blueprints, which would be awesome. Right now train outposts take up too much space. You need player access stops (1 for each player ideally), about 3 trains with 4 cargo wagons to bring all the materials to make the outpost self sufficient (eg turrets, robots, miners, walls, belts, solar panels etc). Then you surround all that with turrets and walls, and my outposts don't fit on one screen fully zoomed out. I needed to make 2 blueprints for each outpost. I would love the ability to make any size blueprints and place any size blueprints.
4) allow blueprints and deconstruction planner to be used right from the beginning of the game, and make them craftable right away. Also make it so that if the player is within range of a ghost item and they have it in their inventory, it will automatically be placed for free. Same if near a deconstruction order and the player has space in their inventory, they automatically pick up the item. This is a solution to a problem that has been discussed before, even my Factorio staff, which is to provide some sort of early robots. I think this is an elegant solution, as anything within player range, a player can manually place anyway, so why not have the game just do the tedious work of placing the item automatically for free. This way it's also still balanced as it's not large/unlimited range as when you get a robotic network set up, but it also allows using blueprints right from the start of the game.
5) Allow users to highlight a selected ore type on the map on map view. Just select Iron for eg. and all of them show up as lime green or something that sticks out

The following might be a bit more work, so it would be great to have this for 0.16
1) Improve train stops so you can group them together. I suggested this before, but basically say "station 1" has "iron loading", "player access", "supply stop 1", "supply stop 2", etc. Then label your train as an iron train, or "supply train 1" and just tell it to go to "station 1" and it will automatically go to the stop that matches the type of train it is.
2) make train gui's bigger, they are so small it's frustrating to use with more then a few or so outposts when editing schedules and stops

[donfussl]

I'd love to define my own presets, safe them, share them with friends etc. Are only your presets planned or will i be able to create custom ones?

[cpy]

My favorite part is multithreading and optimizations! Yeah and nuclear power!
Anyway as long as i get to build BIGGER and BADDER factories. You are my favorite game ever.

[IronCartographer]

Presets, hmm...

You know, one preset option which would be a good idea to have would be presets for starting equipment, so not only can you pick a world-generation preset, but also one for what you start with.

Here's a starter list:

1. Nothing.
2. Current defaults.
3. Basic electricity (pump, boiler, steam engine, electric miner, basic logistics equipment, lab, no research done yet)
4. Basic oil (basic automation equipment, pumpjack, refinery, a few chemical plants)

Maybe unlock each preset as you finish various levels in the campaign. If you haven't even played the first level of the "First Steps" campaign, the "Nothing" option will be the only one available. Finish the first level, and the current defaults one gets unlocked. Finish the "First Steps" campaign, and the basic electricity one gets unlocked. Finish "New Hope" and basic oil one gets unlocked.

That's an excellent line of reasoning, though it would complicate achievements if incorporated into the current Free Play campaign.

Instead of putting such settings on the world generation settings screen, maybe there should be a new scenario added to the game: Quick Start.

It would be like the Sandbox scenario with options given to receive items, but more flexible and with a character avatar, not god-mode. Then have all the options you mentioned instead of simple "Yes/No" for Items/Tech unlock dialog boxes.

Such a scenario could replace all the quick start / skip burner / skip first hour / skip to trains mods with a quick menu selection upon entering the world.

One more suggested dialog box: Select starting Equipment (armor).