Friday Facts #211 - The little things

[Jap2.0]

I strongly support some way to blueprint with stuff you don't have. This is a bit of an extreme example, but what if you want to build a nuclear power plant, but all the reactors are int the logistics system? You wither have to craft one by hand (and you probably don't have 500 of each red circuits, copper, steel, and concrete on you), find it's location in the logistics network, or request it via bot. It would be nice if there was a much more simple way to do that.

That will be possible when the new inventory system comes, where your hotbar don't contain items anymore. You then can put anything in there even if you don't have it in your inventory. It then also shows how many of them you have in your inventory.

YES!

I think mirrored blueprints would be a nice QoL improvement.

I sign that as well[/quote]

See this. :/

[JohnyDL]

Good! Please finish it already and start Factorio 2 in 3D and VR

Hopefully they don't ever go that path.

That said if it's pseudo-3D using sprites in some kind of axonometric projection I might be able to live with it.

I have that opinion because in the past so many strategy/simulation/building games started to suck when they made a full 3d transition. For example I'd rather play SIm City 4 another 10 years because of its sprite charm (especially with community content)... than to consider playing one of the modern full 3D city builders which completely lack soul and which I'm losing interest to play after only a couple of weeks and which I never feel returning to.

Full 3D needs a crapton of post-processing shaders which kill performance and detailed artwork to make it appealing to the eye and to give it a unique feeling... and for me it's one of the main reasons why even a lot of the Triple A gamedevelopers who could afford going full 3D return to using a mixture of 3D and Sprite graphics.

I've actually joked around with people that some mod turning Factorio into a tabletop simulation would be cool in VR, strictly change nothing about the game's mechanics just the interface. In VR mode you get the abilities of Map mode, so BPing and interfacing with certain things, maybe seeing statistics or train schedules on clipboards, and someone in VR could be like a GM in TTRPGs doing the Co-ordinating of other people playing the game normally or taking control of the biter forces against the Players.

[TheRaph]

... and start Factorio 2 in 3D and VR

I hope they will never go that way. Maby there will be Map rotation (in 90 degree steps) but ... please not more than that.
(I remember c&c ts was a great game, where you can use mass of units ... then they go 3D and start to limit everything.)

[Chibiabos]

I posted a suggestion for awhile regarding ghost planners: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=52482

TL;DR - allow placing rail/chain signals (or rail/chain signal ghosts) on ghost rails. Its just frustrating having to wait for construction bots to bring the rail sections before you can place the signals you know you will need.

[TheRaph]

3. A re-think of Fission Power to make the ratios less arcane. I don't mind the Adjacency stuff, +100% and +200% and even +300%, that's fun, but all those decimal value multipliers...

Actually I hope they rework the Adjacency system altogether in the future to make different setups other than 2*n setups also viable. Because currently everything that doesn't follow the 2*n scheme is completely inefficient and not even worth trying except if you have so much Uranium that you simply don't care about wasting it.

Also I've already seen several people having trouble understanding the current adjacency system in the first place... either they didn't know that the reactors have to align perfectly with one another or that the efficiency increases the more reactors are placed into the 2*n scheme. So it lacks some straight-forward clarity about the mechanic as well.

I thought to riddle out things like this is one of the reasons why someone should play this game ... ?

[bobucles]

I think the pollution color coding should be more of an exponential or logarithmic scale than the linear color scale. Right now the center of a big base is just a solid blob of max red, with a tiny ring of changing color and a huge spread of the thinnest color. A more inclusive scale might look better.

[tazdu29]

Yes!

Please continue working on the little things! Please polish! You have created a superb game engine, but you haven't created a great game yet.

Honestly, the UI is very simplistic. It does do its job, but it is not always intuitive and straight forward. I propose a study from an usability expert that has an unobstructed view as an outsider. So no one with 250h of game time like myself.

I still do believe that you should invest man power into creating a campaign that introduces the complexity of the game little by little. I did love the existing campaign chapters that introduced me to trains and "far away" train stations. I would love to play multiple campaigns that would introduce me to networks.

All the best! I wish you all the success in the world, whichever path you may choose!

Imo, tutorials are better. It's quicker to do (no need to start a full map from zero). I learned trains by tutorials, and it was great !

[capester]

Regarding modded blueprints, would it possible to have the icons at the top show that there's 6 question marks? (as in your example) Basically I'd like it to show a different box for each unique entity with the count of that entity. That way if you've got both modded inserters and assembly machines it would have 2 icons at the top reflecting the two different entities.

If there's some metadata about the entities being saved anyway, I think it would be fairly straightforward to distinguish the number of different types of entities in the blueprint.

That's all, thanks for all the hard work you do!

[TheTom]

I think the pollution color coding should be more of an exponential or logarithmic scale than the linear color scale. Right now the center of a big base is just a solid blob of max red, with a tiny ring of changing color and a huge spread of the thinnest color. A more inclusive scale might look better.

Seconded. While not totally binary it effectively gets very close to this quite fast.

[Agomy]

You have created a superb game engine, but you haven't created a great game yet.

Have you played the game? Sure does not sound like it.
Also way to go to demotivate someone.
It is not helpful in any way.

[unobtanium]

>shouldnt the drawing and gamemechanics of entities be seperated to the point to use them independently?

It's generally good design to decouple things as you suggest; but apparently Factorio is so highly optimized that everything needs to be tightly coupled.

I see, that makes sense, but it is still weird to see 3 systems doing the same thing. Afterall, you should only have to determine the sprite of an entity once or twice: if it gets placed or if other entities interact with it (e.g. an pipe gets placed to the right of another pipe). It is not something an entity has to check each and every game update. Therefore, it feels off to need more than one system to determine the sprite.

>shouldnt the drawing and gamemechanics of entities be seperated to the point to use them independently?

Imagine how great Factorio was if the commenters on here were writing it...

Not sure if that is sarcastic :S
I was just curious about why there is no MVC type of concept used here, even thought i understand that the development goes under heavy prioritization and the developers probaly build one system upon another to get things done. Afterwards you always know better and many problems only arise once they accumulate or lead to restrictions.
I just wanted to know why it was done this way. It wasnt ment to criticize them. Again, i was curious and would liked to have some insight on the thought process and inner workings. I could learn a great deal from it, you know.

[Mendel]

Please give as much information as possible about the artillery train as soon as possible. Like what is the design like? How will it work? Does it use the vehicle equipment grid? Is it basically just a new wagon type or a whole independent train thingie?

[TeDeum]

modern full 3D city builders which completely lack soul

I mean not just change graphics, but build factory from a first person rather than from third person. Something like mix between Minecraft and Factorio 1. There is already such game, Fortresscraft Evolved (and perhaps mods for Minecraft), but it's not even close as good as Factorio. Idea is cool, you could build your factory in 3 dimensional space, you could dig underground to build a mine, but ideas always need proper implementation. Which can be done by Factorio team!

[bobucles]

Have you played the game? Sure does not sound like it.
Also way to go to demotivate someone.
It is not helpful in any way.

On the contrary. Haters mean you're good enough to attract negative attention.

Now i admit the intro seems a bit under whelming. There isn't much of a back story and what does exist could be better polished. Also I think there could be an opening cinematic ( staring at a loading screen isn't fun). But that's just me.

[gallomimia]

Damn. You're right the non-connected stuff is ugly as shit! I'm really glad you're fixing all that. Good work!

If the ghosted pipes still won't connect, can't you make fluid logic skip ghosts? I mean... the function to check how much fluid can flow in a ghost is always null-operation. It never flows in a ghost! Why does it come anywhere close to compromising performance?

[bobingabout]

Hey, it features an entity from my mod! Yays~
And even more yays for the fix!

[DeathSabre]

Those changes all look great.
The 2 largest problems i have with blueprints are:
If you place a blueprint over an area with a lot of shrubs/bushes/long grass, it is very difficult to see the blueprint through the foliage. (only an issue before construction bots)
the difference between the blueprints and regular buildings are also difficult to see. its very easy to miss an inserter or power pole when building a blueprint by hand.

This obviously means that the blueprints can't be made more or less opaque as that would help one side and make the other more difficult to see.
Perhaps the long grass could be removed when we place a blueprint. Or be removed by using a deconstruction planner or something.
Or perhaps the Blueprint ghosts could get a solid background making them more obviously a blueprint at a glance and block the foliage at the same time.

Otherwise I'm really liking the changes. Especially the missing mods "fix". I might actually get around to organising and maintaining my blueprints better now. XD

[mp0011]

I wish there were an ingame blueprint editor. You click a button, and selected blueprint is transfered to "another dimension", just like the tutorial works, where You can zoom-in, edit and test everything, with everything is availiable in inventory...

[Demongornot]

This is great, but I think the Blueprint feature still need some important additions.
First, what about automatic/blueprint Landfill and ghost blueprint on ghost Landfill, there is actually no way to put Landfill other than by hand even if the endgame is more played with the map than with the character.
This is even more relevant for blueprint containing floor like brick.

I think you should push the blueprint entity not just toward calculating belt junctions, but also toward full creation, ok said like that this is not clear.
A little like mp0011 said.
What the blueprint preview was a sandbox by itself where we can place, rotate and modified object, like changing recipes, adding or removing modules, connecting or removing wires, setting conditions, modifying ground ?
There is so many times I needed to make a new blueprint just because I forgot a single thing, like a module, setting a recipe or a wrong number on a signal, or as simple as forgetting a single wire...
Sometime it can even force to close a regular game, load a creative save, put the blueprint, make the change, make the blueprint again, export the blueprint, save, load the previous game, and then finally place the blueprint maybe only to do it again...
Even if it only work for the blueprint and not the ghost, it would be so great and I guess it would be hard to do it with ghost because it would be difficult to isolate those actions from regular entity.

Inspired by the FFF-206, I think that a great function will be upgrade and downgrade, not only placing a blueprint where a blue belt is over a yellow belt when the shift key is pushed should automatically plan for deconstruction the old belt, inserter, assembling machine, storage and other object of the same size and category (so electric furnace or power station, sadly can't be part of that ) and place the blueprint of the new one on top of it.
But what if we could also make it so, for a blueprint, there is an option through checkbox or key combination to downgrade when placing to the last researched available part, for example we might not yet have blue belt, so having the blueprint placing a red belt instead would be nice !

It would be great if the deconstruction planner could fit inside the blueprint book or have its own book, now that filters are available for it, having multiple of them can quickly happen...

Could we have a key combination that make it so, when placing a blueprint, everything in our construction range which is in our inventory is placed ? Because before we have bot, it is almost impossible to place a complex circuit, and trying to place everything by hand over the ghost is sometime more a pain than a pleasure...
One of the reason is also an issue, when manually placing an object over it's ghost blueprint, it loose all informations, the assembling machine won't keep recipe or module, and any circuit related things are just gone...
Or if no auto placing, at least when clicking while pushing Shift or another key, that it construct what we hover with the cursor as long as we have it on our inventory !

Also please, can we have the possibility for blueprint to keep train stop name !!!

And finally, will we ever have an option to make some blueprint private ?
I have not play online yet, I wanted to, but I have some blueprint I really don't want to share yet...


And a question, is it an intended behaviour that when placing a blueprint of power pole with red or green wire over a pole without wire, it give it those wires even if the pole is outside any robot or player construction range ?

[meganothing]

If it would work similar to how Beacons boost nearby buildings then I guess it would be easier to understand.

Is easy to understand really the goal for one of the advanced technologies in F? For me it is the best thing in Factorio that I have to learn something new and use different configurations with every new tech type.

The problem with nuclear power at the moment is just that the rules of its complex behaviour (the 200 seconds run, the 500 and 1000 degree limits...) is not described in game but has to be read from the wiki, but that will be surely corrected in time.

Could we have a key combination that make it so, when placing a blueprint, everything in our construction range which is in our inventory is placed ?

Well, that would just make construction bots and the personal roboport nearly superfluous.