Friday Facts #220 - The best Friday Facts ever

[torham]

"With great power comes great responsibility."

With those artillery trains, would you add giant worms that usually cannot be removed using any tower weapon?

This would create No-Go-Areas during the early-mid-game where you cannot clean up the map but instead have to build defenses around those areas. Also the giant worms could be correlated with some resources (uranium?) that the player cannot get until the artillery train does its job.

I like this idea. Some kind of Primal nests or some Queen Biter Hive.

Game over man, Game over. I say we dust off and nuke the site with our giant ass cannon. It s the only way to be sure!

[uio]

Oh!

...

Crap!

*Rapidly makes plans*

When's the expected date of the release?

you mean deleting all plans...
GJ guys

[Kaiku]

Best devs ever!

[Andrzejef]

Oh!

...

Crap!

*Rapidly makes plans*

When's the expected date of the release?

you mean deleting all plans...
GJ guys

I think he means blueprints. You know, for new assembly plant - a few rail cannons, a wagonfull of rounds, it all needs to be produced....

[hitzu]

Cliffs to water transitions?

[casparvl]

In my opinion, Factorio's nature is automation, and therefore it allows & stimulates building very large bases. However, when my base reached (what I feel was) intermediate size, UPS started to drop. I played with a friend who has a faster PC (particularly: faster memory) than me, and whenever he would host, my game would never catch up, and when I would host, the game would eventually go below 30 UPS and he would experience lot's of issues (game not responding to his changes in direction while walking, etc, etc). Basically, we had two choices: start a new game (but we'd already done that a couple of times), or wait for optimizations before further expanding our base.

So, we promised to each other: lets put Factorio on the shelf for now and wait for optimizations before we pick it up again. This was just after a couple of big optimizations that you discussed on the FFFs, so we figured the timing was good. Then began the big wait. And I would see many, many FFFs on improved graphics, new objects, etc, etc. Of course, these were all very cool, but at the time, I couldn't really care less. More than anything, I just wanted to pick up the game again to expand my existing base, but because I needed the optimizations for that, I couldn't. I said to myself: "what are the devs thinking? Don't they realize that new/improved content is only nice when you can actually play your (big) base?"

One type of content that always gave me that feeling was the artillery train: to me, that felt like one weird, unrealistic object. So when I started reading the 'best Friday Facts ever', you can imagine my disappointment when it was about the artillery train. Again. And then... I reached the end of the FFF. And all my ill-feelings about new content and graphics were suddenly gone. In fact, knowing that I would now be able to build bigger bases, I was suddenly also very excited about all the new content that I wasn't able to appreciate before! And you know what: the artillery train actually looks super cool I immediately sent my friend a message, quoting the upcoming release, and containing plenty of smilies.

In summary: devs, I think you did (and are doing) an awesome job! In a day and age in which big studios launch crappy early access games, only to leave them half-finished once enough copies have been sold, you manage to have an 'early access' game that has a higher quality than many officially released games. Also, your continued dedication to further improving the game - even though I'm sure you've already sold plenty of copies to cover initial investments - shows that you're not in it for the money. Naturally, you need to be able to pay the bills - and you deserve it -, but it feels that to you, it is all about creating a super awesome game. And about creating that awesome game together with an active community, that you involve through your FFFs and by actually listening to feedback from players regarding your ideas.

Keep up the great work, and enjoy your holidays: I know I will, with Factorio 0.16!

[luziferius]

artillerytrain.png (2.68 MiB) Viewed 7300 times

[Sente]

Fully expect an update to the "Factorio Development Explained in GIFs" after/during this release to see what captures the insanity the devs are going through to deliver before the holidays!

[Ekelbatzen]

Will 0.16 be compatible with "old" 0.15 saves or do we need to start a new map?

[sOvr9000]

Yes!!

[Andrzejef]

It probably will be compatible - just looking weird, if you explore further than you have it generated already.

[meganothing]

It probably will be compatible - just looking weird, if you explore further than you have it generated already.

I assume the weird looking will only be at the borders between old and newly generated areas

[deer_buster]

Problem being, now I don't want to play Factorio until 0.16 comes out, since I would be wasting my time...hopefully it is earlier in the week, rather than later.

[blaine]

> The main reason for this range difference is to incentivize players to use manual mode

train rules but honestly i'd rather you guys incentivze automatic way of doing things in this game about awesome automation of everything

also, a speculation:

> Firing at the biters from far away isn't all consequence free, as they will come running to your train, so you will have to make sure there are some defences nearby

this kinda sounds like it is only feasible to deploy the artillery train to an already well defended outpost with turrets, supply lines etc.

So how is it functionally different from a regular (but very large) turret that you build in a regular way (sans the need for rail access obv)?

[Andrzejef]

You can redeploy it without mining it down
And hurt things while redeploying, if only things are stupid enough to get on rails

[Mday]

Yes! Good to hear we get to play with the new version during the holidays!

I was wondering though, is a full .16 changelog/featurelist already available somewhere? I'd love to see what neat stuff i'll be testing out.

[greaman]

this kinda sounds like it is only feasible to deploy the artillery train to an already well defended outpost with turrets, supply lines etc.
So how is it functionally different from a regular (but very large) turret that you build in a regular way (sans the need for rail access obv)?

(a) its vanilla, there are no very large turrets in vanilla

(b) mods like additional trrets require you to designate targets manually, which is optional for the train (gives you more range, but 200 something is already ten times laser turret range)

(c) I can have the train patrol areas automatically... i.e. I have an 0.13.x map I left alone for a week and my outer defenses got overrun by aliens... might leave it to the artillery train to clean the mess up

[Engimage]

The only benefit of an artillery train over regular artillery turret is the bundled logistics capabilities. If you had a common turret you would most probably need to supply it with shells via trains anyways so having a train with wait condition like (Cargo:cannon shells<100) which will go to rearm station is pretty logical.
I do hope that such a condition will be supported and cannon shells are readable as common cargo.

[Mday]

I love the Arty-train, though something tells me that, when I have to expand, I just plunk down four railway tracks and a (stationary) artillery train wagon with a couple of turrets surrounding it. But maybe that's the whole idea.

[xng]

I really need some script now that flashes lots of lights and plays jingle bells automatically when 0.16 is released.