Factorio for education - Licensing and all the Rest

[Cisz]

I'm for keeping it, because I don't want to diverge to much from vanilla. Maybe that's a bit moot, since the whole turreting up phase is removed anyway..

[Adeon Hawkwood]

I'd go with removing Military Science Packs entirely. The majority of the techs that require military science are going to need to be removed anyway. By my count there are only two techs which you would want to leave in that require Military Science, Rocket Silo and Power Armor 2. Everything else that uses it is related to combat in some form and leaving it in just for those two techs doesn't seem super useful.

[Neemys]

Editing recipe is no so much work code wise than deleting one. Although, since there is not a lot of non military technologie that use those pack, it seem unecessary to have a pack that have so low use, why making a chain to make it for almost nothing ? Since removing military stuff will make the game easier as a whole, why not when changing that pack to something else, add it to some other technologies so they are most costly as a whole to balance resources less needed because of no military technologies or war upkeep.

I will do a first version when I come back tuesday or wednesday, to at least have something to work on, we could tune/edit it afterwards depending on what is decided regarding science and military.

One thing to keep in mind, my mod can remove/edit recipe and entities, but can't remove graphics from the game folder. So students if they browse where the game is installed, can find those military graphics. Something to know in case it could be a problem.

[Cisz]

One thing to keep in mind, my mod can remove/edit recipe and entities, but can't remove graphics from the game folder. So students if they browse where the game is installed, can find those military graphics. Something to know in case it could be a problem.

Since turning off the mod is possible for an unsupervised player, that one should not be the problem imo.

[jackthesmack]

Very interesting. What do you plan on teaching using this game? I remember something like this was done with Sim City, to teach kids urban planning and resourcing.

[AcolyteOfRocket]

For the record I must protest at the use of using computer games for education like this.

Students are already being farmed by educational institutions giving them crappier educations than before for ever higher fees than before and now you want to substitute games for education at lower ages too ? Shame on you. Please teach them maths, physics and other useful stuff rather than hooking them on computer games and calling it school.

I can see some merit in making the game censor-friendly for lower ages groups, but the games mature adult themes do help people start to understand tradeoffs that come from industrialisation regarding pollution,land rights and other things, and taking these things out will dilute this. I can't see why wube would want to penetrate this market except to try to make more money, and lots of other companies try this without it paying off anyway.

I can't stop Wube supporting this, but if they want to become the kind of company that exploits this kind of educational degredation then it will be at the expense of my, admittedly very small, custom.

[Neemys]

While checking which research to disable, I took time took note all pack needed by those disabled technologies to see what a game with no military change ressources wise.

For information I noted that we need to disable the followings research : (if I forgot some or disable some that you want to keep, tell me, like is it necessary to remove walls/gate ?)

list

• military
• turrets
• walls
• Heavy armor
• Military 2
• gates
• laser
• flamethrower
• landmine
• combats robotic
• laser turret
• tanks
• Military 3
• explosive rocketry
• discharge defense
• personal laser defense
• combat robotics 2
• Military 4
• cluster grenade
• combat robotics 3
• bullet speed upgrades
• shotgun shell speed upgrades
• laser shooting speed
• rocket shooting speed 6-7 (1-5 kept for silo)
• uranium ammo
• cannon shell shooting speed
• nuclear bomb
• rocket damage
• cannon shell damage
• bullet damage
• grenade damage
• shotgun shell damage
• laser turret damage
• gun turret damage
• flamethrower damage
• combat robot damage
• follower robot count

I kept the following research, some will need a rename like rocket shooting speed :

• Flammable (for rocketry)
• Rocketry (for rocket shooting speed)
• Rocket shooting speed 1 to 5 (needed for rocket silo)
• Car (but removed tanks)
• All 3 modular armor (but not the heavy armor)
• Energy shield equipment (usefull to protect from train :p)

All non military and non infinite research costs :

Code: Select all

38490 science pack 1
38190 science pack 2
30600 science pack 3
4195 military science pack
22400 production science pack
13825 high tech science pack

for a raw cost of :

Code: Select all

3095428.75 iron ore
1943237.5 copper ore
183612.5 coal
3615656.25 petroleum gas (since there is multiple recipe to have it I haven't try to get crude oil cost)
168000 heavy oil
224000 stone
846781.25 water

All military research (non infinite) costs :

Code: Select all

30655 science pack 1
30395 science pack 2
25375 science pack 3
29375 military science pack
7450 production science pack
18200 high tech science pack

for a raw cost of :

Code: Select all

3037952.5 iron ore (a bit less than non military)
2187485 copper ore (12.56% more than non military)
290975 coal (58.47% more than non military)
3359750 petroleum gas (7% less)
55875 heavy oil (66.74% less)
74500 stone (66.74% less)
1114750 water (31.64% more)

Overall, removing military stuff remove nearly the half of needed resources to research all things. Knowing that in non military stuff, mining productivity alone take around a third of needed science pack. I fear that the game will be far more fast. I haven't count the number of research removed but the tree will likely have half less research in it since most of repeatable research will be removed.

Research will be quick, maybe too quick if we don't tweak it. We will see when I release the mod.

Also, there is not a lot of military pack used by non military research (only silo, rocketry, explosive, rocket speed upgrade, energy shield, fusion reactor, power armor) so unless when add it to other technologies or tweak their requirement, even if we change the recipe to be non military, there is little point in making a factory chain for it.

I also saw that there is only 2 infinite research left for the endgame and both don't need the military pack.

IMO we will need tweaks to make the game as enjoyable than vanilla.

PS : costs and requirement in science pack have been calculated from ingame number and is likely to contain error because I haven't double checked. I've done that to have an overall idea.

[cpy]

What kind of education are you getting out of this game?

[Zavian]

I think you could leave walls and gates in. That way you can do things like safe crossings for rail-lines, and wall off complicated combinator setups so that wayward cars don't destroy them.

Things like flammables and rocket shooting speed could be renamed rocket fuel, Rocket engine, and rocket guidance, rocket development 1, 2 etc. (Silo could be renamed launchpad). You could probably also collapse some of those down to one tech.

Overall I'm not sure that making the game shorter is a problem. But what the educators will want is their teaching moments, and I think the game will still be long enough for that. (Ultimately all of this needs the OP's inputs on his requirements).

[Neemys]

I think you could leave walls and gates in. That way you can do things like safe crossings for rail-lines, and wall off complicated combinator setups so that wayward cars don't destroy them.

Things like flammables and rocket shooting speed could be renamed rocket fuel, Rocket engine, and rocket guidance, rocket development 1, 2 etc. (Silo could be renamed launchpad). You could probably also collapse some of those down to one tech.

Overall I'm not sure that making the game shorter is a problem. But what the educators will want is their teaching moments, and I think the game will still be long enough for that. (Ultimately all of this needs the OP's inputs on his requirements).

Good point for gate/wall, I will not remove them unless OP ask it.

If I collapse some tech, it will only be if they have the same bottle requirement. Like I can make one tech that regroup explosive, rocketry, rocket shooting speed 1 and 2 that will cost 520 of red/green/black. and another after it that regroup the remaining rocket speed upgrade for 800 of red/green/blue/black. So we have a minimum of 2 tech. But we can split them in three or four if needed. But will wait for OP's input before doing anything in this regard, they will stay like vanilla in multiple tech for now.

Something we have to keep in mind, any change in name, new entity or such, will require us to get and maintain proper traduction for main language if we don't want student to have string in english in the liddle of their game in another language.

[Cisz]

Very interesting. What do you plan on teaching using this game?

Stuff like thinking of processes as sculptures in time, things that you can design and change/optimize. ("You planned your Factorio opening. Du you plan your openings for other games? How about finding a job - do you plan that?") Or representation of reality in media. ("How does steel processing work in real life? Why is it different in this game? How about the representation of violence in Games? Genders? Nations?" Maths. ("How much blue belts ore in for how much steel out with lv.3 productivity modules? Have you tried calculating you cell phone plan rates? Do you know how much food costs?") I have more.

For the record I must protest at the use of using computer games for education like this.

Students are already being farmed by educational institutions giving them crappier educations than before for ever higher fees than before and now you want to substitute games for education at lower ages too ? Shame on you. Please teach them maths, physics and other useful stuff rather than hooking them on computer games and calling it school.

I can see some merit in making the game censor-friendly for lower ages groups, but the games mature adult themes do help people start to understand tradeoffs that come from industrialisation regarding pollution,land rights and other things, and taking these things out will dilute this. I can't see why wube would want to penetrate this market except to try to make more money, and lots of other companies try this without it paying off anyway.

I can't stop Wube supporting this, but if they want to become the kind of company that exploits this kind of educational degredation then it will be at the expense of my, admittedly very small, custom.

I will answer this in more detail. I think what we have here is a case of false assumptions and fighting a strawman as a result. Please read my reply and answer, I am certain that I will have made false assumptions about your assumptions. I want this exchange to result in me understanding you.

You seem to assume that the time used for playing Factorio is taken out of the time used to learn stuff in school. This assumption would be false. I live in germany, where we are just now in a transformation of schools into all-day institutions. The afternoons are in part filled with extracuricular activities, basically wasting time while beeing supervised by an adult (like football, knitting, glueing stuff to each other). So what I intend is to remove part of the time used to fool around (like actual free time out of school, or making dream catchers) into cultural and media education.

You seem to assume that education is getting worse over time. This is wrong on multiple accounts. I studied educational history and at least for germany this is what we in the field call total nonsense. Not only have the actual outcomes (like alphabetization or mathematical skill levels) gone up over the decades and centuries, so have the participation in any education, participation in higher education, and quality of the actual academic skills on all ranks of education. We have nice records on what a doctorate degree required, because we still have the theses (and I had to look up that plural), and just as well we do have samples of what used to be passable as a highschool degree in the form of old tests and essays and assignments. I am very confident, that education levels and results in germany have been going up for at least two centuries (which is how long we have public access to larger parts of education). Maybe it would be a more accurate criticism to say, that in some countries some parts of the population lack access to good education. As in: In the US only the rich can afford proper schools. My guess would be that this is not really something new, only something you finally start to feel terrible about. In germany we have great social inequality in education, as in the rich are overly admitted to higher education. I agree with you, this needs fixing, and fast.

You seem to assume that the target demographic for these courses are below typical gaming age, that they are not allready addicted, and that their parents are keeping an eye out and guide them well. I plan for ages 10+, and I got the idea, because my nephew (still in elementary school) now started to play clash royale. Elementary school children pressure their parents into letting them play games with micropayments, lootboxes, trading card systems, clans (as in: features I highly suspect of promoting addiction to facilitate exploitation), and in-game advertisement not suited for children. So they allready play, and dangerous stuff. How about preventing them from playing shit like that by making it a supervised course that goes out of their daily media allowance (which is something that I will give the parents in writing and maybe have them sign). By giving the parents information about gaming and other media use, like media allowance schemes or addiction, I educate the parents about media as well, possibly for the first time in their life. The main addictive features of Factorio I can see are the constant presence of tasks and the far to long gamelength. I will ofc talk about those issues in the course and with the parents as well. I plan to have about 30%-50% of the course to be afk when dealing with 10yo children.

You seem to assume that nerfing the game is something I want to do to make the game more suitable for education. I would rather make the game more bleak and grown up, but german law prevents it (as I understand it atm). Maybe I can find a way to get permission for a "desert wasteland" mod with the pollution mechanic. I will work on this part, maybe I can get some wiggle room here. But I disagree with the idea (and assume so do you), that violence in games is typically a valubale educational opportunity, because in my experience, violence usually is a means for entertainment in games. A discussion of child-abuse in a game potantially can be great, and can be suited for educational settings assuming it is covered age aproriate (e.g. not to graphic, and at the same time not to subtle). A game with shooting children for points is not, imo. Splashing bugs for fun in Factorio is something that I would expect a 10yo to just about not understand the problem with.

You seem to assume that games are about monetary exploitation of children. That is true for many games, namely many or most browser-games and free to play games. It is most certainly not true for Factorio. There are no micro payments, there is no ladder or clan system (and never will be in an edu version I support). Factorio hits you with a steep learning curve and then leaves you allone wiht free choice of design ideas you have to have yourself. Imo Factorio is closer to a toolshed than to World of Warcraft or Farmville.

(Edited to correct spelling.)

[Cisz]

Good point for gate/wall, I will not remove them unless OP ask it.
(..)
Something we have to keep in mind, any change in name, new entity or such, will require us to get and maintain proper traduction for main language if we don't want student to have string in english in the liddle of their game in another language.

Walls are great for painting and making inscriptions. Pls keep.

Also, I plan to ruin the kids day with an english version.

[Jap2.0]

Good point for gate/wall, I will not remove them unless OP ask it.
(..)
Something we have to keep in mind, any change in name, new entity or such, will require us to get and maintain proper traduction for main language if we don't want student to have string in english in the liddle of their game in another language.

Walls are great for painting and making inscriptions. Pls keep.

Also, I plan to ruin the kids day with an english version.

They'll just look at the pictures and ignore the words.

This happens half the time even with people who speak english as their first language. If you need any help with english or anything, I think this is a cool idea and would be glad to help - I'm a high school student myself and don't really have anything better to do.

[AcolyteOfRocket]

@Cisz

Yes there are assumptions in my last missive, and if those assumptions are not valid, then neither are my complaints, I'm fine with that.

I am from the UK where we do have problems with poorer kids getting lesser educations, with school being more of jobs-for-teachers than serving-the-children - for the rich its different, but they can (and do) pay for the privilege.

I am a bit suspect of a school plan involving leaving kids alone for an afternoon - what are the teachers being paid to do ? Where are they ? But education systems in our countries are different and anyway I understand that some kids don't have good homes to go to, so when the state serves parental duties it makes sense to refrain burying the poor kids in more maths and other lessons just because they are not at home.

As for changing factorio, I realise you have good reasons for want to do this, and if you can do it in a way that works for you, and for the right reasons, then good luck with that. But German law is famous for being awkward and I suspect you might be better off finding another game that does comply with your countries laws. But your time, your quest.

However I still think that if you were really a German you would buy them a football instead

[Neemys]

@Cisz First version of the mod. Only remove most (not all yet) of the military stuff. The rest will follow after bugfixes and answer from you.

List of removed/edited stuff :

Removed stuff

• Removed all guns except the pistol (I must correct a bug before I can remove the pistol)
• Removed car's guns.
• Removed mines.
• Removed all ammunitions except firearm and piercing round magazines (used by military science pack).
• Removed all capsules except grenade (used by military science pack) and raw fish.
• Removed discharge and personal laser defense equipments.
• Removed all turrets except the gun turret (used by military science pack).
• Removed explosives intermediate resource.
• Removed tanks.
• Removed the followings technologies (including all their levels) :
  • Military.
  • Turrets (the gun turret is unlocked at the beginning of the game until removed).
  • Heavy armor.
  • Laser.
  • Flamethrower.
  • Land mine.
  • Combat robotics.
  • Laser turrets.
  • Tanks.
  • Personal laser defense.
  • Discharge defense.
  • Cluster grenade.
  • Bullet speed and damage upgrades.
  • Shotgun shell speed and damage upgrades.
  • Laser turret speed and damage upgrades.
  • Rocket speed and damage upgrades except the first five level of speed upgrade for silo prerequisite.
  • Cannon shell speed and damage upgrades.
  • Uranium ammo.
  • Atomic bomb.
  • Flamethrower damage upgrades.
  • Grenade damage upgrades.
  • Follower robots count.
• Edited ``Modular armor`` technology prerequisites to match ``Heavy armor`` prerequisites.
• Removed ``explosives`` intermediate unlock from the ``Explosives`` technology.
• Removed ``rocket launcher`` and ammo unlock from ``Rocketry`` technology.
• Moved ``Military science pack`` unlock to ``Advanced electronics`` technology.
• Removed the following achievements :
  • Raining bullets.
  • It stinks and they don't like it.
  • Pyromaniac.
  • Steamrolled.
  • Minions.

If I removed something you want to keep, or if I miss something, please tell me.

To continue on the mod I need to know what are we doing with the military science pack. I can remove it or change the recipe, ingredients and name to remove any military thing. But as I said before, it is not used a lot (4195 packs for all research), so if we keep it, we may need to change some research to include it or increase the cost of technology that use it already. Also No infinite research use this pack anymore since only military infinite research used it.

As you saw I disabled some achievement, 3 because not doable, and one (stinks and don't like it) because since there is no military, enemies will be disabled so letting it present may trouble people. And if you have idea for achievement (maybe education related) I could add them in the mod.

For the rocket silo technology prerequisite, there is 8 technology that only lead to it (as a chain) :

Flammables and explosives -> Rocketry -> rocket speed 1 -> rocket speed 2 -> rocket speed 3 -> rocket speed 4 -> rocket speed 5.

I can squish them into less number of more expensive technology (to keep the number of pack needed as vanilla) or let things as they are and only do a rename of the technologies.

When making military stuff disappear I had 2 choice :

• Only disable/hide the stuff, but let their definition in the game. If user load save done with the full game with military stuff in it, they will stay in the save and be usable. They also can give themself military stuff using commands. Less mods compatibility problem.
• Remove all definition of item/recipe/entity. That way, they can't give themselves stuff with command, can't keep military stuff on save created with full game but if you plan to add mod and they base their entity on removed entity, there migth be a problem at startup (I or the other mod author will still be able to do something to fix the problem though). It shouldn't happen if author write their mod correctly.

I choose the second one and make stuff disappear in the last phase of the loading screen to let other mods copy base mod definition if needed before I delete things. I can change for the first choice if you prefer.

Downlod link for the mod :

WARNING : Since achievement and entity are deleted from the base game, backup the achievement-modded.dat and blueprint storage files. The game should make a save of you blueprint storage as it detect that some of the blueprint contain unknown entity, but a bug can happen anytime. You achievement file will be reset so if you want to keep them, backup the file yourself.

factorio-educational-mod_0.0.1.zip

(6.41 KiB) Downloaded 152 times

You can keep an eye on the development on my git repository if you want : http://git.neemys.name/Neemys/factorio-educational-mod

[Cisz]

I'm so sorry for not beeing more active right now, but as I mentioned, I am in preparation for a congress.

I'll be back, in what turns out to be not just a quick question, but a whole project, pretty soon (like 2 weeks-ish).

[Neemys]

No problem, I'm pretty busy too. Good luck for your congress

[freddo63]

Did this mod ever get published?