Friday Facts #189 - Specifying the 1.0

[mophydeen]

Blueprint based gameplay

This was just an idea, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. Special mode where you start with power armor MK2, personal roboports and construction robots that have the speed and cargo researches finished. Some additional starting items like extra miners or stone furnaces might be also added.

SL-extended autodownload/savefile mod has this:
- 4 p-roboports-mk2, 100 robots
- longreach
- improved upgrade planner
- autofill
- ...


new science:

Screenshot from 2017-05-06 00-04-11.png (66.84 KiB) Viewed 9279 times

Screenshot from 2017-05-05 23-59-07.png (2.13 MiB) Viewed 9279 times

[gghf]

Klonan, generally I really like all your ideas, especially the science changes are sensible.
As another poster has pointed out, perhaps the belt lengths need further consideration. As a main bus usually uses four lanes with two spaces between each lane bundle, a belt that goes eight spaces is probably fairly frustrating to play with. Yes, in the factory itself, there are going to be many uses for an underground space length of "only" eight, but I feel that it should be no harm to increase that length to 10 spaces instead of eight, allowing you to dodge two main bus lane bundles in one hop. I expect that this would add a certain level of satisfaction for having completed blue belt research every time you use them.

The blueprint based gameplay sounds pretty interesting, but I would make sure to allow people to play this mode on randomly generated maps as well - random is the name of the game for many. Starting with a fixed seed allows for competition, while having random maps allows to express creativity, both of which are essential to different players.

That mode would also alleviate some of the frustration of early game, by giving your access to robots immediately. For this purpose, however, it's at best a stopgap measure that feels half-assed. Still, better than nothing. What are the thoughts among the devs about early game robots? Have there been any decisions?

[Hidfirefight]

First time I felt kind of sad with the prospect of 1.0 coming out.
No more FFF to read on my laptop on a friday night.

Everything else of course is great. Fantastic job Dev's

[TripleOmega]

You seem to be assuming that the main use of 9-length (8 width) undergrounds will be to cross double bus lanes, but I doubt that is true, although it may be true for some people. But what I do expect is that people will build bus lanes that are wider, using the full 8 (or 10 if we following your suggestion) width.

How can you build bus lanes that are wider if you can't cross them with yellow and red belt? You really think people are going to build their bus one way and then change it once they are able to mass produce blue belt? That seems like an awful lot of work.

If it is 8, then the power of 2 will nicely break up the bus construction mechanics using the existing 2x2, 4x4 splitter combos. If we go to 10, folks will complain that they can't make a 2x5, 3x3+1, that topological bottlenecks have moved away from their existing sweet spot. So whichever way they go the devs can't win.

I'm not saying 8 width doesn't give problems, I am suggesting that if you look at the big picture you may find that 10 width isn't the band-aid you think it is. And if it is, yes there are always mods, but a vanilla game isn't bad just because some modder adds a bigger number to some game parameter, its up to the individual player to make that choice for themselves.

I never said that 10 would be the ideal number. In fact I think 10 might be good for red belt and maybe around 20 for blue. This is roughly what mods do and it works quite well.
I Understand that smaller numbers can also work, but I just don't think the upgrades from yellow to red to blue feel very significant at the moment. Longer lengths would make for a more satisfying upgrading experience in my opinion.

[Arucard]

Love the underground length extensions, not sure if a mod did that before but I remember thinking this was already a thing? Anyway, I look forward to them.

[factoriouzr]

How can I flag a station as a supply stop if it's missing resources based on filter inserters connected to the logistics network at the outpost. I have the inserters unloading from the train to passive providers if a quantity of an item is less then a value I set on the inserter. Can I reuse this limit? I would hate to have to redefine the limits again.

Also is there a way to set a constant combinator for eg. to how many of each good I want and have the train stop enabled based on that, and also have the filter inserters respect those amounts too? Ie. right now I have 2 stack filter inserters unloading 12 unique items into 12 passive providers per wagon. Is there an easier way to do this that's less configuring and micro managing?

I think the best way would be to have 12 deciders around a roboport that are linked in to it, and if any one of the deciders reads less than that quantity, it outputs some signal, and then the stop would be connected and set to enabled if there is at least 1 instance of that signal, so that any one of them would trigger it. That would be a little bit of work to set up, but you could save the whole thing as a blueprint to be reused. You could set a constant combinator that outputs a signal that all 12 deciders compare against for an easily changeable limit. You can also wire that same signal over to the inserters as well, would take a decent amount of wiring, but as before you can blueprint it as well. As for the unique items, that probably is the best way (to have 12 inserters), unless they implement item filters for chests.

There is an issue even with the base implementation of this. If I set up two train stops as you describe, now the train is on it's way to my station and the condition changes and the stop becomes disabled, the train immediately stops and tries to go back to the first stop. The issue is that it might stop on a one way track or in an intersection. When it's not double headed, it won't find a path. I have to try this, but I might be able to get this to work if I add a roundabout somewhere in my rail network. Haven't built the network yet under 0.15 game.

Ah, hadn't run into that yet, guess my network isn't big enough, not sure if there is a good way around that one, other than just making sure there is plenty of space for trains to turn around and get back on the right track by going forward.

What I came up with is to have a constant combinator (actually multiple because I have a lot of items to supply) then set them up this way:

constant -> arithmetic (*-1) -> decider (input also includes roboport logistics items) (condition items < 0) -> filter inserters with condition specific item type < 0

What this does is makes all my requested item amounts negative, then adds them to the ones available in the logistics network, then each inserter checks for it's specific item and if the item value is negative it unloads the item. I also wired all this to the train stops to enable the stop if there is at least one item in the negative so the supply train comes. I have 3 supply trains in my outpost (1 for supply and garbage to take back to main base), and another 2 for supply only. I use 1 train and a bit for another right now, but I left room for expansion in case I want other stuff later and for stuff I might want from mods I might install in the future (trains are LLCCCC).

I was thinking that I would need a full roundabout at each intersection (T junction I currently use) for the 2 parallel single direction tracks to work when the train stops, but then I realized that each of my outposts has a loop to turn the trains around since they only go in one direction. As such, no matter where the train stops, it will still be able to go to the outpost it was originally heading for, and thus turn around.

I was also trying to come up with a system of using one inserter to unload all types of items from each cargo wagon. I made a prototype but I couldn't get it to work in a good way that I liked. The limitations I ran up against are from the base game unfortunately. They are:
1) can't iterate over each item one by one from a constant combinator. It would be great if there was something that would go through one by one and I could then use this to set the filters on the inserter periodically after a timer (already made this) goes off. So it would cycle through each item for say 2 seconds and unload for that long. There are workarounds but they require multiple constant combinators and setting 5 items on each and more logic. This is not worth it the way it is now for me so I decided against doing this. Too much complexity for nor much gain.
2) No way to easily track the counts of items unloaded. I needed this because I didn't want to get into a situation where the passive provider would get full from all the different item types and nothing else would be unloaded. So what I tried is adding multiple passive providers and a chain of inserters to move the items. The problem with this is that while the items are being moved from chest to chest, extra items would be unloaded and get too many. I tried logic with wiring the inserters and chests together and subtracting amounts but it wasn't reliable in all situations.

I really enjoyed developing this solution thanks for inspiring me to this solution. I also made some other cool improvements to my stations, though it would be nice to have the above 2 features in the vanilla game.

[factoriouzr]

I would like to see:

1) full support for making scenarios in the map editor, including the wave defense type scenarios which I think are really cool. I like that you guys added that to the game.
2) biter improvements, more types, better AI


And what about the remote roboport/outpost deployment though a rocket that was mentioned by one of the developers?

[factoriouzr]

Please, don't stop at 1.0!
I know that it won't be much profitable, but at least consider paid expansions, do not discard all the ideas you had because they are new features. I would gladly pay for expansions, I already gifted my friends with Factorio so many times as it feels as a nice reward for the devs of a SOFA KING GREAT GAME.
Keep up the good work!

I Would love a Starbound/Space Engineers/Factorio mashup.
We need to pollute galaxies, not a single planet.

More and more guns please.
It feels so easy to throw a lot of laser turrets on the defence line (nuclear reactors, anyone? pff), it should be more rewarding the hard way(LOTS and LOTS of cooper/steel foundries to feed an awful lot of assemblers throwing ammo thorough the base)... More turrets like a MK2 version of the initial one would be nice. Uranium ammo is nice, really nice. The turret range is awful, not to mention the time it loses to "pop up".

Thanks for this game devs, we really, really love you.

I agree with continuing after Factorio 1.0. I would gladly buy a reasonably priced expansion for Factorio. I already bought 2 copies of factorio. You guys (the devs) are the kinds of developers I want to support. You release DRM free games, listen to your fans and implement the features we want and care about making the game better. Plus I love the constant honest communication.

[Nofew]

What happened to dirty mining? D:

Same.

2. Dirty Mining

Agreed on both points

Totally agree

I agree, I feel like this is the only thing the game miss right now.

Are we ever going to get those space platforms and dirty mining you talked about?

We want dirty mining!



I don't think just begging for it is enough, though. I feel like someone "caught the bug" for the "rush to 1.0" in the office and spread it to everyone, so I'll go more in-depth as to why I feel this feature is absolutely crucial to Factorio instead of just hopelessly begging for it.


So, remember how the rocket felt useless until you guys started using it for infinite research? Electric mining feels like that now. From the beginning of the game we have a series of progressions; Yellow belts to red to blue, Assembler 1 to 2 to 3, steam to solar to nuclear, gun turrets to lasers to flamethrowers, oil to advanced refining to cracking, cars to tanks to artillery trains (They're not in yet, obviously, but this is where they'd go), and the list goes on!

Except for mining!

Burner drills to electric drills. Nothing after it!

This is more than just having "three stages of advancement", though. The most clear example I can use to demonstrate what I'm talking about is steam, solar and nuclear power. In fact, there's probably someone who stopped reading three paragraphs ago to complain about what I'm about to cover and doesn't know I'm already trying to mention it: Some people don't do the middle tier. Some people skip over solar and go straight from steam to nuclear.

Likewise, a lot of people skip red belts and go straight to blue (Especially if they're running a main bus), some people never touch laser turrets, some people never bother setting up advanced oil refining until cracking's ready too, and so on. However, there is no such option to do this with mining at the moment, and lacking this option severely bothers me.

In all of these cases, the middle tier is either somewhat redundant (like upgrading belts) or a "fork" (like solar). In essence, the actual progress isn't "Good better best", but is "Good and available, better but unavailable for a few minutes, best but unavailable for hours". On top of all this, setting up any specific tier takes significant time, and knowing how to spend your time setting things up is how you become (or avoid becoming) your own bottleneck in later gameplay. I believe all of these things to be core elements of Factorio's gameplay that shouldn't be taken for granted or overlooked, and that they're what make the game feel like Factorio.

Now, clearly, mining is important.[citation needed] One might even say that mining is as much a part of Factorio as automation is. My issue though is that I currently feel like mining has become a "third wheel" that nobody can take seriously. I mean, think about it: When you have someone who's totally new to the game and you're 40+ hours in on your current map, you don't ever give them the task of plumbing an advanced oil refinery with cracking all by themselves, nor do you tell them to automate blue science production by themselves, and you definitely don't tell them to set up nuclear power by themselves!... But you can tell them to set mining up by themselves.

In my opinion, this should not be the case. If you're 40+ hours in on your current map and using super-duper advanced stuff, you should not have a single task that is so simple that a total newbie who's never played the game before can do it in a reasonable amount of time without any outside help. Furthermore, having *just one* thing that is is actually frustrating! If that's the *only* thing they can do, they're going to feel *utterly* useless, far more useless than if they'd have just been told to go to another server where they can actually contribute! I've been in this situation before, and it's how I felt, and I've put other people in this situation and have had them tell me (in so many words) that they feel the same way.

To simplify my previous paragraph, I'm saying you either need to cater to the lowest common denominator and super-buff steam power, assembly 1, red science, burner drills and gun turrets (Please for the love of all that's sane don't do this), or fix the one thing that isn't catering towards veteran players: Mining.

I don't even think it'd be that difficult to do, conceptually. You already have a great setup to build off of with nuclear power and the Kovarex Enrichment Process. You can take inspiration from that and use it for dirty mining. Heck, you can practically copy-pasta that!

Whoever suggested bringing water in via trains was exactly what I was hoping would happen. My assumption about how it'd work (Considering you outlined it in detail in one of your FFFs) is that you'd have a "deep mining" drill that is capable of harvesting both the surface and "deep" ore (Or optionally you can use the regular electric drills first to clear the surface ore before doing dirty ore) and that it'd put out regular ore (if there is any) and "dirty" ore, which you have to belt to a special building that takes it, runs it under water to clean the dirt off, and then puts out a totally normal ore. Perhaps you'd need two or three dirty ore to make one normal ore, and it may or may not require heat and may or may not also do smelting on the spot. The original idea also called for not increasing the surface ore count along with distance from spawn, but instead only increasing dirty ore count, and that the whole idea was to make it viable to build gigantic and complex mining facilities since there's no real motivation for doing that right now without turning up the richness globally, and turning that up pretty much ruins anyone's ability to take mining seriously.

Now, doesn't that sound a lot like uranium and nuclear power? It's not an identical clone, obviously, and it shouldn't be or we'd all have to question why you made unique graphics for it, but the added complication of having to run another train to the mining sites to deliver water (because if it takes three dirty ore to make one normal ore and the stack sizes are still the same it'd absolutely *murder* the efficiency of trains, which is by design to force the player to do the "cleaning" stage on-site) to the mining site and having to use different buildings for the purpose so it looks visually distinct from the previous tier is what I think all of us supporters are after. It'd also be a great gap between regular mining and uranium enrichment because we'd be supplying water rather than sulfuric acid, so that stage of the pipeline is less complicated.


So in closing, I'd like to sum things up by re-iterating that there is a missing step in skill between regular mining and uranium processing/nuclear power that can be filled by dirty mining, that I personally didn't want or care for nuclear power at all and just wanted dirty mining to happen and it feels like you're ripping away all my Factorio-related hopes and dreams by not adding it (I know this is over-dramatic, but it's sincerely how I feel!), that I don't think it's fair that you teased dirty mining in FFFs at least three or four distinct times but artillery trains barely got two sentences in one FFF and somehow those are making it into the game from seemingly out of nowhere, and that I think it'd be epic to see gigantic mining drills boring into the earth and spitting giant clouds of dirt and soot into the air while they produce earth-laden chunks of metal and steam gushes out of nearby buildings while they clean the dirt off that ore and trains constantly come in to supply the whole operation (both the drills so they stay cool and the cleaning facility) with water. Bonus points if the mining towers are actual /towers/ that are taller than any other structure in the game and physically take up 6x6 or 7x7 tiles or something else massive like that just to show how deeply down into the planet they're drilling. Double-bonus points if we have to run water to each of them individually rather than just letting them touch and the mining range is extended by one square around the physical building just like electric miners so that the order we lay the structures and pipes down is important so we don't box ourselves in and momentarily decrease efficiency.

I'd also like to open an invitation up for more people to voice their opinion on how and why dirty mining is important (or not). Right now your voice (yes, your's!) is absolutely critical in gaining traction. We need reasons that aren't just "I think it'd be cool"; why would it be cool? What gaps and holes does it fill in the gameplay? Even simply quoting a part of someone else's post and saying "I agree with this" helps!

[factoriouzr]

I would like that you give the aliens some more attention for 1.0. I understand that many people don't like to kill enemy bases for science packs, but now there is no reward anymore if I clean the enemy bases which makes it frustrating. Would be nice if buildings (and biters) drop something useful again, nothing mandatory though. Maybe ammunition for some new alien gun? Or some ingredients for ammunition which improves it. Or maybe create fake aliens buildings from the purple stuff that limit enemy expansion.

For after 1.0 (as an addon) I'd love to see space factories. Of course they should be dependent on the planet factory as there should be products that require space and planet products. Anno 2070 was a nice example of joining two-layer production (surface and subsurface).

+1 I think the biters need more variety and challenge. More base types, more higher level biters. I don't think we need them to drop anything as that just leads back to collecting stuff from them. I think biters need better AI and more interesting types.

I personally don't care about space factories the way there were explained, as it's basically like just starting a whole new game but in space. I might as well just start a new game. I would rather see more content like vehicles, weapons, RTS direction of automatically buliding vehicles that you could program to seek out enemies and destroy them. If you could also have them auto-pick up dropped items from biters then optional items might work to drop from biters, though I don't think dropping things would be necessary. Also if biters dropped things, a timeout would have to be implemented (like 10 minutes then the item dissapears), otherwise it would lead to alien artifacts everywhere again like in the previous versions.

[factoriouzr]

arty train cool ... underground lengt... nice
but, why only "possible" about spidertron?
seriously i kinda dream of using it since i first see it in a FFF.. it could fit so perfectly now with nuclear power, like as exemple, his fuel could be uranium bars instead of coal.. a so big engine need some excessive power
or maybe later, like an add-on or extension.. or a mod

+1 I really want the spidertron as well since it was first mentioned in FF. The modding potential of this is big too. All kinds of cool walking vehicles.

[factoriouzr]

Oh god!!! PLEASE LET THE ARTILLERY TRAINS BE A PERMANENT FEATURE <3

Please make a cargo wagon that you can mount any turret onto, say 3 or 4 turrets for each wagon, then you could put machine guns, laser turrets, flame turrets and modded turrets on it. I could get fuel and ammo from other cargo wagons.

[factoriouzr]

I don't know what happens after 1.0.

I am damn sure there's more than enough of people willing to lob another 10 or 20$ in your direction just to keep you working on this wonder.
Of course you may choose any other project, but with Wube's track record whatever it will be it's a day-zero purchase for me.


And on topic of 1.0, do you have any plans for electric trains? They could fit greatly with nuclear power, since now coal can be eliminated from electric production altogether. Also there's barely any feeling of technological progress with trains, especially since among various greatly upgrading techs like T2 Electric Distibution or Kovarex Process rails sit indigently with two techs that are basically must-haves and one upgrade chain that's 100% optional. Higher tiers of rail engines and carriages could easily alleviate it.

+100 for buying $10-$20 factorio expansion right away if you guys handle it the way you handled Factorio. You guys are awesome!!!

+10 for train improvements, including better GUI and more advanced train schedules, lines and train management
+10 for adding more varieties of biters and more interesting AI

[Sarkazeoh]

"...train and (probably) the spidertron."

What does this mean? I get images of this thing in my head...

https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEduVeIg ... /giphy.gif

Please let it be this.

[AndrewIRL]

"...train and (probably) the spidertron."

What does this mean? I get images of this thing in my head...

https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEduVeIg ... /giphy.gif

Please let it be this.

Pretty much, yes.



https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-120

[FasterJump]

I'd also like to open an invitation up for more people to voice their opinion on how and why dirty mining is important (or not). Right now your voice (yes, your's!) is absolutely critical in gaining traction. We need reasons that aren't just "I think it'd be cool"; why would it be cool? What gaps and holes does it fill in the gameplay? Even simply quoting a part of someone else's post and saying "I agree with this" helps!

I think the spirit of factorio is automation and building autonomous and durable stuff.

We decided to not do this, the mining productivity research seems to be solving the problem.

Personally, I disagree. Now I feel that we are forced to push the mining research, and put productivity modules on everything, before building a rocket and starting infinite research. (playing in default world options)
This is a huge slowdown to the mid-endgame. We are forced to have this stalling (and boring) phase, otherwise we know we are wasting our limited ore stock.

Also, If you try the 1RPM challenge with space science processing (or try just try your best in this direction), you know it's a race against time because you need to setup your factory before you run out of ore. Thus the best way to do the 1RPM challenge is to turn off the rocket launchs while you improve your base / rail network, and only after that you can enjoy your 1RPM during a limited time (because you'll run out of ore, or you won't be fast enough to claim new territory and build outposts)

In conclusion:
Without dirty mining, you are stressed because you know you're wasting ores and you will inevitably run out of it soon or later.
Dirty mining would be a durable reward for claiming new territory.
The RPM challenge, true goal of factorio, would become sustainable

[Kelderek]

This is the story of life in 0.15:

0.15.9 Iron shortage.jpg (162.04 KiB) Viewed 9153 times

When compared to 0.14.x, the iron usage for science packs is through the roof. My current map is only the first 5 science packs (no high tech or space science yet). I have almost 4 times the iron production compared to copper and that is nowhere near enough as you can see. So as you do balancing of what items to put into science packs, I hope you take a look at iron vs. copper usage. Whatever you decide on, I would hope that the map generation algorithm takes that into account and balances ore availability accordingly.

[MeduSalem]

When compared to 0.14.x, the iron usage for science packs is through the roof. My current map is only the first 5 science packs (no high tech or space science yet). I have almost 4 times the iron production compared to copper and that is nowhere near enough as you can see. So as you do balancing of what items to put into science packs, I hope you take a look at iron vs. copper usage. Whatever you decide on, I would hope that the map generation algorithm takes that into account and balances ore availability accordingly.

Probably they haven't looked into that one yet. I always wondered if they made the spawn of Iron Ore/Copper Ore balanced upon how much one is depending on one or the other throughout the game, but as it turns out they don't, which is why eventually you will have a major imbalance... you will have a lot of one but nearly none of the other and you desperately need to expand just for one ore type.

[GyroByte]

Do you know what I like about Factorio? Automation.
Do you know what I don't like? Setting up hundreds upon hundreds of electric miners to feed my factory in single-player.
I love automation and that's what Factorio is about. I can't automate ore collection and mining, with DIRTY MINING that would be possible.
You removed alien artifacts because people complained that they couldn't be automated. Mining can't be fully automated either. Sure, you can use some absurdly complex circuit network to place down robo-ports one after the other to expand and collect ore that way but the majority of people don't understand or don't know or don't have the time to learn/do that.
Dirty mining would fill that gap. You don't have to do it now, just PLEASE do it at some point.
I can't praise you more for how great this game is, but please, everyone would enjoy dirty mining.
(I don't want to sound like an a** but I honestly feel like someone is pushing the 1.0 just to get it out of the door and forget about everything. )

[bman212121]

I don't know if anyone has asked this yet or not, but I'm having a hard time understanding why the logistics system research requires 5 different types of science packs to unlock it. All of the items required to use it only require the first 2 science packs. It seems a bit overkill to require 3 new packs just to unlock that feature, and once you get it unlocked you can ignore all of that setup and research because it's not required to craft the items.