Friday Facts #205 - Teaching the things that everybody knows

[Klonan]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-205

[psihius]

Dat radar graphic is sweeeet af!

[Moderated by Koub]

[gmyx]

You are also assuming everyone know what the colours mean (or can even distinguish them)

What does red ream? Is is missing, or is the dependency too old / wrong version.
What about orange?

Use of colour is fine but you gotta add a bit more. Say what is wrong.

[Rhamphoryncus]

"Optional dependency" still seems like too strong of a wording. They're not a dependency at all, they're a load order constraint and a version match.

[Hamster]

The armor explanation looks great.

[Klonan]

You are also assuming everyone know what the colours mean (or can even distinguish them)

What does red ream? Is is missing, or is the dependency too old / wrong version.
What about orange?

Use of colour is fine but you gotta add a bit more. Say what is wrong.

There are also tooltips on the dependency labels themselves:

[innesm]

One thing I would never work out is that you can populate multiple armours with equipment, then swap armours (Note: I still don't know how to do that yet, I've just read you can do it. Haven't experimented much because I'm too scared to do that thing where you end up surrounded by hundreds of dropped items).

[MasterBuilder]

What would really be nice would be if you could include an extra string with the dependency for a "friendly name". To do nothing but show the user on that list instead of the id/name.

It would have to be set by mod authors but, if a user sees the full name, they should be easily able to tell "I know I don't have a mod by that name downloaded."

Some mods also have idNames that sort differently than their friendly names so that would also make then easier to find in the list.

[gmyx]

You are also assuming everyone know what the colours mean (or can even distinguish them)

What does red ream? Is is missing, or is the dependency too old / wrong version.
What about orange?

Use of colour is fine but you gotta add a bit more. Say what is wrong.

There are also tooltips on the dependency labels themselves:

Thats good, but maybe add why it's not satisfied. Missing or is it out of date.

[Dev-iL]

If you have had any of these experiences in the game or know of any of these 'unexplained' areas, please let us know.

Here's a glaring example of something that should be explained.

[Eode]

Why do all the new HR textures look 1 to 1 like the old one just HR... sounds silly I know but I liked it when they where tweeked and changed a little bit to make the most out of the HR

[Klonan]

If you have had any of these experiences in the game or know of any of these 'unexplained' areas, please let us know.

Here's a glaring example of something that should be explained.

It wasn't so difficult:

[MatHack]

• Middle mouse button filtering and which entities this works on.
• Shift+Click copying and which entities this works on. Especially stuff like copying an assembling machine to a requester chest.
• How to open the different info windows like electric network, kills, etc. Especially the windows with no button shortcut, but pure keyboard shortcut.
• How the purple bar (productivity module related) works, when it gains progress, what it does when it's full, etc.
• Different map features, including but not limited to: map markers, zooming + blueprinting from the map.
• Accumulators, what are they, when do you use them, power consumption/generation priorities.

Considering the questions I see from other players, just assume no new player checks the keybinds configuration and just starts playing the game.

[ledow]

Talking about "non-obvious" things, when do we get an explanation of removing circuit wires and/or copy-pasting circuit settings between items.

It REALLY needs a button, rather than a magic-modifier-key-combo.

[Dev-iL]

It wasn't so difficult:

Hehe.. at long last! Thanks!

[seanferd]

I literally have no idea what the red and green wires are supposed to be for. Along with combinators.

[topforce]

Option to automatically resolve mandatory dependencies would be nice, since most of the time latest versions work fine and most of the mods are on mod portal, and sorting them out manually can take a while.

[Selvek]

The new descriptions on the armor and modules look good, but I had one other thought-

The armor says "grid size 7x7". Changing that to "Equipment grid size 7x7" might make it more obvious that this is related to the "accepted equipment" below.

Similarly, on the shield, "dimensions" would possibly make a new player think those are the dimensions in the game world, ie the item is placed like a building. Changing that to "equipment grid space needed" (or something like that) might make it clearer. Basically, use similar words to make the logical links more obvious. Maybe eliminate "grid" completely and just use "equipment space" and "equipment size"?

Along these lines: The armor says "shield capacity 0" and the shield says "shield hitpoints 50". Should they use the same term? Is "shield capacity" somehow different from "shield hitpoints", like maybe it implies this particular armor can't actually accept shield modules because it has no shield capacity?

[PunkSkeleton]

How weapon works. I assumed space just fires at the nearest enemy while c is for manual targetting, while this is NOT true.

[nljr]

One thing I would never work out is that you can populate multiple armours with equipment, then swap armours (Note: I still don't know how to do that yet, I've just read you can do it. Haven't experimented much because I'm too scared to do that thing where you end up surrounded by hundreds of dropped items).

In EverQuest, people would swap gear for different situations. In raids, taking off your pants was actually a cause of death. (Pants tend to have a lot of hitpoints, so if you take them off while low on health, you could drop dead.)

The bad news is that you can cause an inventory explosion by accident in Factorio without even meaning to touch your armor. For a while, I couldn't even figure out what caused it.

I use the ammo slot for my assault rifle as a quick slot for moving ammo around. Misclick on the armor and BOOM, stuff everywhere.

The good news is it's easy to fix. Put your pants back on, hold F and run around a bit.