Friday Facts #226 - New mod portal & other news

[Klonan]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-226

[deef0000dragon1]

we have come to the conclusion that we need more time

Calmer heads have prevailed. The solution to most problems is simply time, and I am grad to see that you are taking time here, if not to implement a more complex solution, at least to analyze what has been said more closely.

Good luck at the convention!!
Edit: oh, and thanks for the faster mod portal. WOO!!!

[Gergely]

I know why bots are better than belts.

They get infinite research. Belts however, do not.

It IS one reason, and I think is the most significant.

I agree that bots should not be the most optimal solution.

[Shenpen]

Devs are great

[Cyan_Leader]

Wait, is the splitter buff coming anytime soon or what that cancelled?

[Escadin]

we have come to the conclusion that we need more time

Calmer heads have prevailed. The solution to most problems is simply time, and I am grad to see that you are taking time here, if not to implement a more complex solution, at least to analyze what has been said more closely.

Good luck at the convention!!

Ha. Nothing's broken so I don't mind them taking their time to fix it

My only regret is I wasn't able to sell them the idea of making bots more complex (instead of less rewarding). Yet again. Because I really do want that to happen at some point and even before this discussion ever occoured. Well then.

Congrats to your convention! Make it count

[deef0000dragon1]

we have come to the conclusion that we need more time

Calmer heads have prevailed. The solution to most problems is simply time, and I am grad to see that you are taking time here, if not to implement a more complex solution, at least to analyze what has been said more closely.

Good luck at the convention!!

Ha. Nothing's broken so I don't mind them taking their time to fix it

My only regret is I wasn't able to sell them the idea of making bots more complex (instead of less rewarding). Yet again. Because I really do want that to happen at some point and even before this discussion ever occoured. Well then.

Congrats to your convention! Make it count

That is where taking time is nice. As I said, it might be because they ARE making them more complex, but it takes time to implement something like that. only time will tell what the final solution is.

[POPISowyNumer]

BUFF BELTS
U
F
F

B
E
L
T
S

If one can achieve 150% of blue belt throughput without placing even single roboport, only by using one kinda obscure 'bug-feature', then belts NEED a buff

[nemostein]

What about the Splitter changes? "Taking more time" means not implementing this for now?

[Elok]

I know why bots are better than belts.

They get infinite research. Belts however, do not.

It IS one reason, and I think is the most significant.

I agree that bots should not be the most optimal solution.

Actually, I think the fact that bot can technically get infinite output from a chest (you could have a thousand bot taking item at the same time) as opposed to a Robotic arm (4 robot maximum per chest, and it's not really pratical to have more than 2) is more at the center of the problem.

[Avezo]

What with inserter compressing belts though? I'm still holding from building new belt megabase because my smelting rows would look very diffferent for non-compressing inserters vs compressing.

[Wakaba-chan]

Nerf bots, please :c

[fishycat]

HanziQ did a great job, it is working so fast now! Also like the conclusions you have come to for now in the belt/bot case. *thumbs up*

I really hope you guys make some pictures in Taipei and post them here for us, maybe like a little diary, ...from Jitka, with love
Anyhow, have a save trip and lots of fun!

[juliejayne]

Shame... but understandable... but when will we get the 0.16.17 WITH filter splitters......PLEASE!

Oh and the mod portal.... I hadn't noticed. So is it better... don't know? How would I recognise the difference.

[Engimage]

There is an infinite wisdom in taking time on th Bots vs Belts as this topic definitely needs quality changes and not quick bandaids.

So I do applause standing to the most glorious dev team here!

And personal thanks HanziQ as new mod portal just works wonders!

Calm your heads, take your time and continue bringing joy to the community.

You are awesome and I am really glad Kovarex reverted master branch changes That was a gloriuos act of wisdom man!

All hail Wube!

[Koub]

Hah so THAT's why I found mod portal so responsive.
Excellent update indeed. It was yesterday or before yesterday, I got there to search some mods I had seen for a topic, and wow. I told to myself "Well most Factorio players must be in bed, because the portal is blazing fast".
Excellent result.

[cbhj1]

Why does the number 8 keep coming up when talking about inserter throughput on a single chest? If we are talking sustained throughput, then the max is 2 in, 2 out, burst would be 1 in, 3 out, and if you think of getting 4 out, then why not just use the bots that are already moving the stuff. This is coming from a vanilla perspective.

[orzelek]

Hah so THAT's why I found mod portal so responsive.
Excellent update indeed. It was yesterday or before yesterday, I got there to search some mods I had seen for a topic, and wow. I told to myself "Well most Factorio players must be in bed, because the portal is blazing fast".
Excellent result.

Quick give away of new portal was fixed mod version field in mod info.
And few things not working as before

I was hoping for new version with nicer splitters this week but it was only teasing on previous FFF.

[Tricorius]

Dammit. You guys just have to keep enhancing the mod system and bragging about it. Makes it really hard for me to keep my grumpy old man ways, yelling “hey you mods...get off my lawn!”

Gratz on the conference...that is awesome.

Thanks for taking time to think through the balancing issues. We have a very passionate community here, and I actually quite like that as well.

P.S. anyone have mod suggestions for an experienced player, but a mod newbie? (I hear Angels and Bob’s are excellent.)

[Zomis]

New mod portal
On Wednesday morning HanziQ quietly launched the much anticipated new mod portal. Our intention was that nobody will notice, and it seems like we mostly achieved that. There were some small issues that we resolved following the deployment, but overall we would say it was a success.

I am probably not what you would call a "normal user" of the Mod Portal. In the old mod portal, I noticed that you could make requests to certain API endpoints using JSON to get general mod information about a user's mods ( https://mods.factorio.com/api/mods?owne ... 100&page=1 ). Along with an API request for the list of discussion topics for a mod, https://mods.factorio.com/api/messages? ... der=oldest and a request for getting all replies to a discussion thread, https://mods.factorio.com/api/messages? ... 203&page=1 . I used all three of these. All these three APIs are now gone and I have no idea if there is any replacement.

I had a script running once every day to give me information about the number of downloads for my mods, so that I could track this over time. I had one script running every hour that gave me a notification if there was a new discussion topic in any of my mods, or if there was a reply to an existing topic. I found this extremely handy as a mod developer. Will there be any new such API for us who like to automate things, or will I have to do webscraping? (I'd rather avoid webscraping as I guess that would put more load on your servers compared to an API request).

I am very grateful about the speed improvement though, good job on that one.