Version 0.16.7

[Vykromod]

I was a neat feature, but I do not get why people complaining about it, just add more wagons if you really need it.

Usually you should have some space left to extend everything, sure it needs more work, but in the time you raged about it, you could fixed your save.

Of course it's not a problem that can't be solved, but why should we be forced to do it essentially without any valid justification whatsoever?

And that's not all as simple as it sounds either. Up until now all I needed is one locomotive and one tank wagon for my refinery base, and a modest station. There's no point making that station expandable beyond support for locomotive and 2 tank wagons, as when I reach peak performance of the outpost, all I need to do is to just set up another refinery outpost.

But now I need at least 3 wagons, and let's not forget these are way heavier than cargo wagons, so one locomotive will not do. So I need to make a large station for 5 wagon-train. At this point, I might as well tear down the whole station and railwork nearby because there never was any reason to make it compatible for expansion, or to accommodate for such a change that might come out out of the blue.

Again, I can do that, but for what reason should I be forced to do it? There's still no real reason given for removing a used feature like this. What are they going to remove next, combinators (because they are too complex) and then you're going to say "meh, I don't know why you complain, you can just do X to get around that"?

They mentioned a justification, I guess they have also in mind, if they rewrite this stuff properly, that there could be performance issues, since you need to calculate for each tank wagon 3 times, instead of 1 time.
You are not forced to do it, its just an alpha, not even release. There is a good chance that this decision is not final and they will reverse it.

Even then, I am sure there will be mods for it, if possible.

They provided a justification which doesn't make slightest sense. One of the simplest features, consisting of literally two toggles set to "not divided" by default are being described as "mechanic too complex for a new player". Also like others before me mentioned, if you don't find any use for it, the feature can be safely ignored with literally no impact on gameplay.

What performance issues are you talking about? How many fluid wagons are you using? Even if one counts as 3 in terms of calculating power, any practical amount is still going to be a droplet in the sea when compared to anything else, especially normal storage tanks. Fluid wagons are not exactly an item that's used en masse.

I've already mentioned in my previous post why mods shouldn't be considered in such discussions about vanilla content. In fact, otherwise we could have the entire suggestions section of the forum removed - why suggest anything if after all, for almost anything there's always a mod out there?

@Light

Exactly my thoughts about the whole situation.

[tk0421]

oh wow, 300 hours on a single map? respect. We usually playing 40-80 hours on a map, after that we start a new round.
Well, if you have no space and 100 stations, you are basically fucked, lets wait for the stable release.

When the blueprint library was introduced i went nuts...
I got carried away, and a good portion of the playtime of this one has been in non-productive time spent just playing around with blueprints trying to fully compress and beacon maximum output layouts for all in one science plops and refineries.

when i say non-productive though, it was 100% productivity on the fun time spent meter.

[TheRaph]

So is there any reason other than aesthetics to use the tank wagon now? Barrels in a cargo wagon carry more fluids, can be customized with item filters, and the cargo wagon is lighter than the tank wagon. It sounds like we could just get rid of the tank wagon all together if it offers no advantages.

What I have done honestly. Sure it is a bit of a pain to supply all those barrels to each outpost but that is a one time deal and once I get the hang of how many I need that should be easy enough. This will actually reduce my trains in length (playing with angels so lots of fluids/gasses). I mean even before using the tank wagon was more or less. well.. it looks cool. Because barrels where superiour in every way.. now? Yeah not building any more tank wagons.

If the devs feel the triple tank wagon was a hassle, then sure ok I can roll with it, i just don't understand the justification. I think that is what most of us are baffled about, give us a solid reason WHY you are removing it. Saying, you wouldn't miss it if it didn't exist isn't a good reason. I wouldn't miss factorio if it didn't exist either, but that isn't a reason to stop developing factorio? ^^ I love this game, 2100+ hours already.

+1 agree

[Oktokolo]

If it never existed people would have zero problems with that.

If Factorio never existed, people would have zero problems with that.
You are not that far away from Ubisoft when using that style of justification.

And does anyone honestly think, the user is not able to not click the buttons in that GUI and then becomes confused with seperate tanks?

I did not use the separate tanks feature (although i was fully aware of it and its workings since the introduction of the tanker) and will not miss it. I also do not object the removal itself.
But the justifications, that have been quickly invented, are obvious bullshit. Stop treating the reader like if he would buy that nonsense.
Switch back to honest communication please.

[Killcreek2]

This is a great example, of making the mistake of allowing a feature without making sure we really wanted that in the first place. If it never existed people would have zero problems with that.

To all people complaining the end of 3-liquid wagons is the end of Factorio, the real question is : would you have missed that feature that much if it had never existed, and the fluid wagon had from start been as it is now ? You mostly miss it because you got used to it.

Honestly, those strike me as facile arguments that could be applied to ANY part of the game. It was added, & it has been used by a large number of players already: same as filtering wagons, custom station names, inserter stack size override, &etc...

Had the feature not existed, I would likely have not bothered with liquid wagons at all, & just stuck to barrels for fluids as I was doing before. The original fluid wagon mod I did not use either, as it did not have the brilliantly-simple-but-useful split-tanks feature. This feature was THE reason I used the liquid wagons ~ without it they are simply inferior to barrels imo [smaller total capacity & 3x the weight].


This issue is about it being suddenly removed without any good reason to explain why ~ this is partly the cause of the upset.
It is your game to do with as you please, however: lots of your players DO really like it ~ the volume of responses from veterans, the usually-silent majority, & new players in this thread & elsewhere speaks for itself ~ so if this unpopular & arbitrary cut is permanent then please at least ensure that there is api support to re-create it as a mod.


As always, Factorio is an excellent game that keeps getting better & you guys rule. Keep up the good work!

edit ~ Ok, devs responded in FFF222 with an explanation for the cut. Thank you for doing that, & happy holidays.

[Fushigidane]

Personally I think this is a step in the right direction. I think the root of the problem is that barrels have far too high capacity, as indicated by all the comments that the tank wagon is now useless and that they will just use barrels instead. Being forced to transport the mass of three wagons whenever I want to transport liquids in a tank wagon is a nuisance. I also like long trains but I rarely need more than one tank wagon as it is now. The natural solution in my view would be to nerf barrels to a point where they make sense if you want to transport a small amount of liquid or if you want to mix liquids in one wagon, maybe 10-20k liquids in a wagon full of barrels. Then a tank wagon with a capacity of 25k liquids would be very viable and at that point it would make sense both from a balance perspective and simplicity perspective to only have one compartment (even though I have to admit that the three compartment tank wagon is very cool.)

That being said I don't get why they remove the feature all of a sudden without making any other changes to compensate at the same time, but it's the experimental branch so weird things are to be expected.

[TerribleEngineer001]

@tmx - that is a different type of game. People who like easy games should play easy games.

I highly disagree with that.
Part of Factorio's awesomeness is its accessibility to all new players who get interested in its first premises and campaign introduction.
You can build a rocket with a wonky factory or x rockets/min with intelligently designed or brute force factories or just blueprints copy-pasted from the Internet.

Elitism is not something that Factorio as a game embraces in my views.

[Vykromod]

edit ~ Ok, devs responded in FFF222 with an explanation for the cut. Thank you for doing that, & happy holidays.

And their explanation on FFF for the cut is just as absurd as any other given so far.

[svmt]

Missing switch

screenshot

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[Loewchen]

Missing switch

This has been reported already. Please do not make bug reports here.

[sicklag]

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[Mr. Tact]

oh wow, 300 hours on a single map? respect. We usually playing 40-80 hours on a map, after that we start a new round.
Well, if you have no space and 100 stations, you are basically fucked, lets wait for the stable release.

300 hours?! Pfft. I have 1000+ hours on a base playing Vanilla. Not sure it would even qualify as a mega-base -- it has only one rocket silo.

[SilentStorm]

I am also quite disappointed with the fluid wagon change, it was a nice and easy feature to easily and compactly transport fluids around. I never used Barrels (wasn't playing before fluid wagons) and haven't bothered with it yet, so can't say how easy that would be to do. Guess one could use the same wagon for empty ones as well with some major circuit network magic.
When still using fluid wagons in 16.7 massive rework would have to be done to bases, pretty much a reconstruction entirely, depending on where fluid wagons go and the setup of the stations and any other station they go to, due to the increased size of trains and the (possible) necessity to run more locomotives on these trains. If you have stops that serve both cargo and fluid trains that would mean separating these stops (increased footprint, relocating surroundings) or redoing the other trains stopping there (which could then mean switching the entire rail network to +1 locomotive). So in the worst case you're reconstructing your entire base / outposts.

Obviously the "complexity" of 3 tank fluid wagons is non-existent on the user side of things as I am sure pretty much everyone agrees (certainly looks that way from the other 130 ish posts in this thread). Others already mentioned that the wagons didn't require any user interaction whatsoever to work as they do in 16.7 now. So those using it did so on purpose and because it was very useful in their situation.

With complexity being given as the official reason for it's removal, and assuming the devs don't just outright lie to us, what remains would be possible code complexity required to implement them. While I don't currently see how it would massively reduce code complexity by limiting the wagon to one fluid, I don't know their implementation details either so it might be possible. It may reduce check complexity to one third, and there probably was some overhead for checking which tanks are connected to each other, however all in all these should've been simple checks and it's unlikely to have any measurable performance impact (unless done millions of times).
Assuming the code was massively reduced in complexity as a result, and couldn't be rewritten in a less complex/more maintainable way, I guess I can learn to live with it as I realize code maintainability is important. Other than that though I struggle to see the reasoning involved in it's removal.


In any case happy holidays and thanks for all the work.

[henke37]

Guys, have you considered that it would be possible to make the wagon smaller? Just chop the existing model into three and glue together a smaller wagon. Then you can keep your existing setups and gameplay.

[Grimreaperx7]

When will 0.16.7 be available to the public game outside of the experimental version? Because i keep seeing updates to 0.16 but the game itself wont update past 0.15.4

[FalcoGer]

I'm not content with the fluid wagon changes. I don't see a problem with the three partitions. Instead of just cutting the size down by 66% and only having one partition, I would perhaps use 3 partitions with maybe 20 000 units instead of 25 000. getting 25 000 instead of 75 000 basically means that you need potentially three times as many wagons, while a single normal wagon can fit 50 * 40 barrels with 250 units each. that's 200 * 200 = 40 000. that's 15 000 more than a dedicated tanker wagon! That's just ridiculous, especially considering the geometry of the barrels, the added weight of the steel barrels and the extra weight because of the gaps between them.
A wagon full of barrels should never be more than a wagon full of liquid.
Generally barrels need some reworking, they allow more throughput in a yellow belts than with pipes, they allow higher quantity per area, they allow to transport more in trains with less wagons. And they allow partitioned transportation of up to 40 different fluids per wagon.
So basically except for the one time effort of making barrels and putting up the emptying and filling machines, barrels are now, again, better than tanker wagons in every way.
Please revert the changes, I don't understand the reasoning behind the change in the first place. It was a nice and intuitive system, maybe the capacity was a bit high, given the size of the normal tank, but cutting it down to 1/3 is just uncalled for.
I don't think fluid wagons are 'complex', that's just ridiculous. Certainly not on the user. I mean, come on, it's just 3 tanks on one wagon, and the interface is super simple. It certainly isn't any more complex than setting a filter or setting up a train schedule or even just setting up an assembler. From a coding perspective, I think it's rather trivial too. you have a fluid wagon object, inheriting from a wagon object. in it you have space for three fluids, the tanks can be merged. it interacts with pumps. how difficult could it be, especially since it's working fine already. why remove functionality?
I understand somethings need to be trimmed out and removed, such as the alien artifacts. that made sense.
this does not.
please revert the change.

[Kayanor]

When will 0.16.7 be available to the public game outside of the experimental version? Because i keep seeing updates to 0.16 but the game itself wont update past 0.15.4

0.16 versions won't be released for the general public until they are stable enough for that.
Until then it'll remain on the experimental branch, so users who don't care too much about bugs and possibly breaking savegames can opt into receiving 0.16 builds.

[badtouchatr]

... while a single normal wagon can fit 50 * 40 barrels with 250 units each. that's 200 * 200 = 40 000. that's 15 000 more than a dedicated tanker wagon!

I agree with the opinion that the decision to remove the fluid tank separation was pretty much ridiculous (based on any argument), but I wanted to point out your math was a little off. According to the Factorio Wiki, barrels stack in groups of 10, so 10 x 40 x 250 = 100K per cargo wagon. So, 25K more than the fluid wagon as it stands now (they haven't reduced the fluid wagon capacity yet).

I personally did use the barrel situation before they introduced the fluid wagon, and for me, it was a big mess and a small nightmare to manage. So I could see how reverting back to that would be another nightmare regarding rearranging things.

[greaman]

I'm not content with the fluid wagon changes. I don't see a problem with the three partitions. Instead of just cutting the size down by 66% and only having one partition, I would perhaps use 3 partitions with maybe 20 000 units instead of 25 000. getting 25 000 instead of 75 000 basically means that you need potentially three times as many wagons, while a single normal wagon can fit 50 * 40 barrels with 250 units each. that's 200 * 200 = 40 000. that's 15 000 more than a dedicated tanker wagon! That's just ridiculous, especially considering the geometry of the barrels, the added weight of the steel barrels and the extra weight because of the gaps between them.
A wagon full of barrels should never be more than a wagon full of liquid.
Generally barrels need some reworking, they allow more throughput in a yellow belts than with pipes, they allow higher quantity per area, they allow to transport more in trains with less wagons. And they allow partitioned transportation of up to 40 different fluids per wagon.

Yep, the argument regarding the fluid amount is utter nonsense.

I do understand though the added code complexity für die UI and the trouble it might be for the developers and I could live with removing the feature of having the split tanks as I am using single fluid trains mostly anyways ...

If anytging a tank wagon should have the same capacity/exceed the capacity of a train with the barrel solution - meaning the current tank waggons are rather to small in capacity than too big.

Bottom line: remove the option to split into three tanks - maybe, but nerf the tank waggons? please don't!

[kevmert]

id be fine either way this goes with the fluid wagon, but if they do keep it one fluid but still nerf it, id prefer if they made it lighter to reflect only carrying one tank cause its a bit of a drag on trains (almost made me want to add 3 engines just so it would be faster while also being 4 spots long like other trains in the system) from the last playthrough i did in 15.28 i think