Version 0.15.13

[daniel34]

Changes

• Most of the gui elements now work only with left mouse button, so other buttons might be used without intefering with gui.

Means I can no longer abort 5 items in my handcrafting queue at a time with right click.

This will be solved in 0.15.14 (48358), along with the other "right-click no longer working" reports.

[impetus maximus]

Hey, anyone has black map after update?

this happens in headless server (linux) when update from 0.15.12 -> 13, and linux client.

Slowly the black squares are removed by radars, but are annoying, there is some workaround for this?, TY

not sure about linux, but for me if i resize my playing window while the game is loading, or joining a server i get a black map.
wait till the game is loaded to resize or maximize your play window.

[Ojelle]

Can you give us a rough estimate of 1-10 (+-2) how kovarex-stable 0.15 already is?
Yiss, its soon to start asking already ^^
And really nice game guys. Over 500 hours played and still hooked.

[searker]

Can you give us a rough estimate of 1-10 (+-2) how kovarex-stable 0.15 already is?
Yiss, its soon to start asking already ^^
And really nice game guys. Over 500 hours played and still hooked.

Well, there are still lots of bugfixes per version, but - imho - the severity of those is decreasing. Since there are still active changes being made (e.g. the right-click-thingy), one can assume that more bugs will pop up.

[Martinowitsch]

While playing Factorio i had some moments ago an total system crash, I have no idea if this comes from factorio or if some other things crashed my system. My 2 Monitors showed only grey snow and nothing worked anymore, had to shut down the energie.
Where can i find the factorio intern bug report?

[searker]

While playing Factorio i had some moments ago an total system crash, I have no idea if this comes from factorio or if some other things crashed my system. My 2 Monitors showed only grey snow and nothing worked anymore, had to shut down the energie.
Where can i find the factorio intern bug report?

This is the forum to report Bugs. If possible, please provide the log-file that was created when the crash happened.
To find the file, follow this instruction.

[kovarex]

Can you give us a rough estimate of 1-10 (+-2) how kovarex-stable 0.15 already is?
Yiss, its soon to start asking already ^^
And really nice game guys. Over 500 hours played and still hooked.

This is impossible to guess. We are at 180 bug reports, and it is increasing at the same speed as we are fixing.

[elsasha]

Jajajaja every day a new update xD should give the record of daily updates longer games

[Vaider]

I have 2.0k space science pack in the rocket silo
I launch the rocket with satellite and space science pack not increase !!!

[HulkingUnicorn]

I have 2.0k space science pack in the rocket silo
I launch the rocket with satellite and space science pack not increase !!!

2 000 is the maximum that can be stored in the rocket silo - you shouldn't launch the rocket before removing the science.

[Vaider]

I have 2.0k space science pack in the rocket silo
I launch the rocket with satellite and space science pack not increase !!!

2 000 is the maximum that can be stored in the rocket silo - you shouldn't launch the rocket before removing the science.

Yep Oki 10x for answer.

[basementjack]

@kovarex

Suggestion: I propose that you limit how much solar power / accumulators can be on a single power grid.

I Suggest a max of 100 panels and whatever ratio of accumulators that works out to (84?)
Also add whatever UI elements are needed to alert users to this limitation and remind them that to use more, they need a new, separate power grid.

Gameplay rationale:
Prior to .15, Players used coal (High effort/maintenance) then solar (zero maintenance) Since solar works forever for free, once the player has automated it's components, it's pretty easy to just use solar to power everything - forever.

This means that nuclear doesn't really have a need/place in the current gameplay as it relates to power production.
1) Nuclear is harder to do than solar
2) Nuclear is more expensive to start than solar
3) Nuclear requires ongoing maintenance (mining) vs solar's use forever for free.

This is a gameplay problem.
Players should receive a benefit in gameplay for both power and weapons for setting up nuclear.

By limiting solar to 100 panels/84 accumulators per electric grid, you introduce a new gameplay puzzles into early/mid gameplay:

* A very small factory could be completely solar powered
* A small-medium sized factory could be solar powered if care is taken to feed different sections of the factory from different power grids.
* the larger a factory gets, the more inconvenient managing multiple power grids become, providing more and more incentive to 'go nuclear' as time goes on.

The last point is important - after a player has built multiple separate power grids they will start to tire of doing this and will want a way to not deal with this anymore - this provides a natural reason to use nuclear, while still allowing the player to continue going all solar if thats what they really want to do, albeit they'll start having challenges keeping wires from crossing

NOTE 100 is just a nice round number I pulled out of nowhere - maybe the real number is 200, maybe its 500, it probably shouldn't be less than 100, because it should be practical enough that early game players don't reach the limit and get frustrated right away.

I invite the feedback from all - how would this impact game play? Can this idea be improved upon? Do you like it? Would it make play more interesting for you? Does it make sense to introduce into the .15 branch?

[Floaf]

@kovarex
Gameplay rationale:
Prior to .15, Players used coal (High effort/maintenance) then solar (zero maintenance) Since solar works forever for free, once the player has automated it's components, it's pretty easy to just use solar to power everything - forever.

I have a total of 32 nuclear reactors powering my factory since it uses about 3,5 GW of Power. If i had gone solar, I had to landfill and placed solar arrays over extremely large areas. I did that last run, Before 0.15, and that kind of ruined the gameplay.I put productivity modules in Everything and kompensate speed loss with building 7x the amount of manufaturing Buildings. That demands Power to say at least
I'd say that as far as newcomers, solar is just fine, but when you are starting to optimize and expand production to really large scale, you do want to change from solar anyway. If you don't, you are not building big enough yet

[Mehve]

I invite the feedback from all - how would this impact game play? Can this idea be improved upon? Do you like it? Would it make play more interesting for you? Does it make sense to introduce into the .15 branch?

This is a solution in need of a problem. Introducing tripping stones and forced designs (like separate power grids) only makes the game awkward and annoys players, and punishes them for certain playstyles. The issues of solar's "place-and-forget" nature have been debated for a long time now, with no satisfactory solution offered, which is why things have remained stable through the various versions. Some people simply aren't interested in messing around with more complicated energy schemes as they design the rest of their factory, and it also offers a low CPU-usage option for people with weaker computers.

For the record, I'm a solar-free player myself, but I don't begrudge that other people prefer it.

[Patashu]

In so much as Factorio tries to be a realistic game more than an abstract/puzzle game, is there any physical basis for limiting how many solar panels can be on a given electrical network?

Maybe the real approach you should take is to change how accumulators work, so that THOSE are higher maintenance in some way. If the aim is for realism, make the accumulators model some realistic energy storage system.

[5thHorseman]

Changes

• Most of the gui elements now work only with left mouse button, so other buttons might be used without intefering with gui.

Means I can no longer abort 5 items in my handcrafting queue at a time with right click.

They really don't want you to use the handcrafting queue enough to need to manage how many items you're hand crafting on the fly.

[basementjack]

@kovarex
Gameplay rationale:
Prior to .15, Players used coal (High effort/maintenance) then solar (zero maintenance) Since solar works forever for free, once the player has automated it's components, it's pretty easy to just use solar to power everything - forever.

I have a total of 32 nuclear reactors powering my factory...

#1 Floaf, your factory sounds amazing!
#2 Thanks for chiming in.
Generally speaking, I'm newish to factorio, I've spent ~70 hours on the .15 branch.
You have good points and the only counter I think I could make is that there will be players like myself that enjoy the game but don't have a goal of producing a mega factory. In that play scenario, there wasn't incentive for me to build nuclear, and it would be cool if there was something tied to that in game play, to give me reason to use it.

[basementjack]

I invite the feedback from all - how would this impact game play? Can this idea be improved upon? Do you like it? Would it make play more interesting for you? Does it make sense to introduce into the .15 branch?

This is a solution in need of a problem. Introducing tripping stones and forced designs (like separate power grids) only makes the game awkward and annoys players, and punishes them for certain playstyles. The issues of solar's "place-and-forget" nature have been debated for a long time now, with no satisfactory solution offered, which is why things have remained stable through the various versions. Some people simply aren't interested in messing around with more complicated energy schemes as they design the rest of their factory, and it also offers a low CPU-usage option for people with weaker computers.

For the record, I'm a solar-free player myself, but I don't begrudge that other people prefer it.

Thanks Mehve for the feedback, and for the info on some of the past discussions around this topic.

It sounds like this has been debated before.

My initial thought /proposal was that solar should be removed.

If you think of pure gameplay mechanics -forget graphics, etc, solar and nuclear are kind of redundant, and nuclear offers materials that can be used for other parts of the game, so from a purely gameplay perspective, there is zero reason for solar.

That said, I like solar and there are a few good uses for it, even amongst all nuclear powered factories.

One such example would be to drive far from your factory, setup a few distant radars powered by solar and then come back- hopefully the radar will uncover more uranium.

I don't know that I have the right answers, but I hope the discussion can lead to a better finished product.

- Jack

[basementjack]

In so much as Factorio tries to be a realistic game more than an abstract/puzzle game, is there any physical basis for limiting how many solar panels can be on a given electrical network?

Maybe the real approach you should take is to change how accumulators work, so that THOSE are higher maintenance in some way. If the aim is for realism, make the accumulators model some realistic energy storage system.

Thanks Patashu for your comment, you have a great suggestion!

I don't think my suggestion was based on realism as much as having limitations in solar guide a player to nuclear.

We see limitations like this in the game already - for example - limits on throughput of yellow belts lead players to create and use red belts, then blue belts. Complications of belt layout often lead to the use of flying robots, etc..

As a new(er) player my feedback is that the game would benefit from a natural progression on power, just like there are with belts.

I like your idea of focusing on accumulators - maybe something where the batteries start to loose the ability to hold a charge after xx number of game cycles, or x number of power up/down uses - this is a pretty real world scenario. If there was a way to replace batteries, it would also give the game a new mechanic, and could be just enough resistance that long term, a player would then want to use nuclear power - very similar to how the yellow->red->blue belts progress today.

Thanks again Patashu for your suggestion - It's not something I'd originally thought of and I think your idea is better than the one I originally proposed.

- Jack

[mbritb]

I could've sworn you could right click, hold, and drag to remove items. I also thought you could right click one of the items under "components" and it would remove all that item from the BP. It's not doing either of those anymore. anyone else notice this? Or has it never done it and I'm just trippin'?!