Friday Facts #219 - Cliffs

[golfmiketango]

Wow, cliffs!

Bagger 288...

Wow, Bagger 288!

Such wow...

[Yinan]

I sure hope that the amount of cliffs is going to be configurable in the map creation menu when you start a new map.
Hopefully with an option like "no cliffs whatsoever".
Because unlike, as it seems, many many other people, I certainly don't look forward to those cliffs, like at all.

[Andrzejef]

While I really love cliffs I should definitely point out that player should be able to deal with them either on map generator level or by in-game tools.
Factorio is all about great scale designs late game and cliffs being permanent entities will definitely mess with big bases.
Landfill was introduced to deal with water being in the way of our hero engineer and what tools will our hero have to deal with cliffs?
So I do agree on a requirement to turn their density/completely off in map generator as well as introducing in-game tools to flatten the landscape. This might be some late game tech but it should be there.
Sure thing in early game a player can do nothing with them apart from using underground belts (which will be a pain as well due to short reach distance of a player.

Totally agree (and a fan of the in-game way), hence my suggestion - in order to landfill somewhere, you should need to dig somewhere else. Also, like lakes, the cliffs are obstacles on the way to progress. So why not connect those? Cliffs seem perfect for that purpose. Why not make you mine the cliff wall down, then dump it to the lake to "landfill" it (or to crates for storage for later use)? You shouldn't exactly be able to change water to land out of thin air, or disintegrate a whole section of cliff without a trace.


And about that bagger, that gives me another idea - great bagger to dig new canyons (for aesthetic purpose, mostly)

[ThorsDragon]

Wow. You guys are amazing. Everytime I think that Factorio is so cool, you guys produce something cooler to add to it. XD This is one of the best games, built by one of the best teams, IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. Beautiful work guys, please keep it up!!!

[factory33]

Hey Factorio community

Since we are talking about terrain I have several ideas:

If different terrain has more effect on gameplay and not only visually this would reward exploring even more. Why don't you make several resources more frequent in one biome than the other? For example more coal or more oil in the "green/ gras" biome.. That would increase the reward if one finds the needed biome.

I was also thinking a "white" snow and ice biome would look pretty cool in the first place. This could have impact on gameplay in various ways:

• - water will freeze in pipes and tanks if not heated in boilers from time to time.
  - bodies of water would be frozen -> one can walk and build on them and the water pump does not work but one could mine ice and melt it (in the boiler?) to get water.

Since biomes are not so huge and the map is endless probably nobody would melt ice but instead get water from a warmer spot on the map. This leads to my next suggestion:

It would be really cool to have something like a campaign where you travel with a launched rocket to the next planet. Lets say the far goal is to "planet hop" back to civilization or whatever. (Or planet -> space platform! -> planet hopping )
Now imagine planets differ in their biome mix or consist mainly only out of one biome. This would make gameplay more diverse since different approaches are required:

• -A frozen, ice planet would require you to melt ice and keep the water liquid if you want do produce anything water related
  - A planet with a really dusty, cloudy atmosphere so solar panels would be (almost) useless
  - A celestial body without any water at all. This would either require a new way to create water chemically, or some existing recipes would need tweaking or another workaround needs to exist to still get to the next map
  - A planet with an enemy lifeform that lives always near water so the player can choose to either fight against lots of enemies to get access to the water or use any of the existing workarounds to not having water.
  - A planet with a really dangerous lifeform which if attracted would destroy the factory with ease but doesn't expand. This would require the player to stay really low on pollution and use the resources nearby or "sneaking" around the enemy.

I think I stop here so chances are higher somebody actually reads and considers this
And I am sorry if many things here were already suggested or discussed...

PS: Of course this is mostly wishful (DLC) thinking. From the possible feature list I personally like the "food industry" most. The player was sent to a fertile planet to supply the population back on the barren/ destroyed home planet with food. This would also explain why we have so much water on the map. (How big are chances to randomly crash land on such a fertile planet?). When I was a little kid a drew factories producing orange juice from harvest to bottling. Having food on the belts in Factorio is now one of my grown up dreams.

[Introprospector]

Cliffs seem great so far, but there should be a slight yellow belt speed push at the base that moves you away and the ground needs to be textured differently at the top and bottom or else it just looks like pillars

[tk0421]

so, does this mean we will get bridges?

and if so, will bridges be able to be placed elsewhere away from cliffs?

would an underground belt at a cliff tunnel out of the face and transition to a normal belt?

so many questions.

[Tergiver]

Wow! Looks fantastic!

Now that you've added cliffs, you'll have to add a flying vehicle for getting around

[RobertTerwilliger]

Next feature to add are rivers and canyon rivers : )
Sure, they have to be somewhat further away from starting area, because
1) you can't properly deal with them at the beginning
2) they can make not-so-fair biter-proof wall
3) it'll be more interesting to explore (e.g.: I remember first time I've found underground canyon in Minecraft - I was really amazed)

BTW, you can add such kind of "amazing-to-explore" ground formations quietly, so once someone finds it, they make a screenshot, post it, then people start guessing, if it's intended, or a kind of cool bug in map gen - would be funny, I guess ; )

[Braxus]

I don't know the sereval times i call it so Thank you

[Floaf]

The cliffs look really nice! Reminds me of good old C&C:

Exactly my thought. It's simple but still effective. And looks great.

[Andrzejef]

so, does this mean we will get bridges?

and if so, will bridges be able to be placed elsewhere away from cliffs?

would an underground belt at a cliff tunnel out of the face and transition to a normal belt?

so many questions.

And tunnels I hope, at least for trains - it would be quite hard to manouver the railway placing between two sides of a cliff (or a ravine for that matter).

And maybe some offtop - is there a way to place curved tracks manually?

[3trip]

I don't know about rail tunnels, but bridges would be nice.

Oh and landfill should only turn shallow water into land and turn deep blue water into shallow water, that way the extra cost incentivizes building bridges rather than landfill.

[FasterJump]

Count me in the "not so excited" camp. Landscaping hasn't been a major part of Factorio and don't think it's needed to be.

Same, I don't see the gameplay value in cliffs. I hope i'm wrong, wait and see.

[hitzu]

Blowing cliffs away is a weird and not a very fun idea in my mind. Since cliffs are basically walls it would be better to make a special "cliff door" thing, like a drawbridge or something like this. But if you want to make space flat, it would be a lot more fun and challenging to move cliffs either by blowing/digging them up or using a large amount of landfill. I think this way you have many options to get rid of cliffs on your way each with its tradeoff. In the case of blowing them totally, you have simply one way to do this and this gives you no challenge and no reason to think and it's boring (not to say not believable).

[leoch]

Cliffs can't just be lines. There need to be jagged peaks and whole areas which are unwalkable.

[Serenity]

Is there some plan to be able to remove the "doodads"? I have turned them off because they are still there even when you place concrete over them. Which looks terrible.

The cliffs are great

[Oktokolo]

Wow, i am really exited about this year's XMAS update now!

[Satellence]

This is amazing!
You shuld add a way to build bridges, and cliffs with pipes and conveyor belts.
Wah:

[Satellence]

Also for better view upper terrain should be little bright.

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