Friday Facts #226 - New mod portal & other news

[chris13524]

What ever happened to the community spotlight section?

[ske]

This is the most anti-climatctic FFF in a long time. Last I've heard is the bots were neutered in the master branch (0.17) already and now it's back to pokerface waiting out the storm before deploying the changes.

[neoc]

"Let's never talk about it again"

[pleegwat]

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.

8 long handed inserters? But those are slower.

[StoneLegion]

How do you sort the mod portal by versions of factorio For example show only mods for version 0.15.* or 0.16.*?

[Tinyboss]

Are the splitter improvements still coming?

[Xterminator]

Albeit short and not full of excitement or controversy, I very much like this Friday Facts. The convention sounds awesome and it will be really cool if you guys can attend more in the future! Spread the drug, err game around!

I did notice the mod portal being much faster and responsive when it was updated. Also a few slight GUI changes as well which are nice. Great job to HanziQ!

I think that waiting and taking your time for the bot or belt changes is a very wise idea. Any major nerfs (or buffs for that matter) seemed to be happening way too quick. This type of things needs a lot of thinking to get right or decide if it's actually needed or not.

Can't wait until we get the fancy new Splitter features and belt compression back.

[3trip]

With so much time being taken I think we can say a simple straight hard nerf or buff is out of the question. Or at least a thoughtless one is out of the question.


Still i’d Like to purpose D: an all the above solution.

A little belt buff, a little bot nerf and reduce the number of effect transmitters in high tier factory setups so you can have some room for belts.

[Lubricus]

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 thousang bot taking item at the same time) as opposed to a Robotic arm (8 robot maximum per chest, and it's not really pratical to have more than 2) is more at the center of the problem.

You can only fit 4 inserters around an requester chest or provider chest so there is no need to be able to move more than 110.8 items/s with bots from a chest because there is no way to supply or use more than that. That is also the cause bot unloading from train can't be better than belts because you can achieve the max speed limited by inserters with belts (it's tricky but possible).
Ops forgot the long-handed inserters so there is possible with 124.2 items/s but with that setup it would be hard to do something useful as inserting the items in assemblers with this setup.

[Geraden]

I've been holding off a new play through until the compression matter is resolved and the new Splitters are added.

Last I read on Splitters from FFF #225 is that they will be coming with the next version of 16.x. It's been more than a week now since a minor version release, I would have thought they are a big enough item to warrant a fairly quick release. Is the new Splitter delayed now?

As for compression, I haven't read anything about that since FFF #222, where we were told a solution involving side loading and inserters compressing belts was being tested and we would be informed. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any direct follow up update on that? At least not counting the much larger discussion on buffing belts or nerfing bots, which in my mind is a different issue.

I'm stuck wanting to play but very reluctant to because these are core game issues that would significantly impact how I would likely design things.

[anarcobra]

we have come to the conclusion that we need more time

*faith 100% restored*
I'm sure that if you give it the time and attention it needs you will find a satisfactory solution.

[OBXandos]

Great to hear about the bots/belts. It is definitely a subject that needs some thought and research. I would also say that when you do finally get around to working on bots that you present some of the ideas to the community BEFORE making the changes. I am sure we will give plenty of feedback for you to consider

Good luck at the game show! I am curious as to why this particular one was picked as your first show. is there a large player base in the Asian market? Have you thought about some shows in the U.S.? I would love to visit the booth if you make it to the Texas area.

I've been holding off a new play through until the compression matter is resolved and the new Splitters are added.

Same. I have an .15 map that has been going for over 100 hours. I would like to do the same on a .16 map too.

[Lubricus]

Thanks for the mod portal.
I am a little bit skeptical about inserters auto compress belts. I they do that compression wouldn't be a thing and we would just talk about full belt.
I am also a little bit skeptical about the new splitters to. I never intentionally put several types of items on one lane (should i do that with the new mechanism? ). It's rare with any need for priority -the concept of back pressure usually just fix that by itself. And if you need a full belt from the main buss for goods sake just take the whole belt instead of splitting and re-balance the buss.

[Tekky]

At first, I was disappointed to hear that several developers were on a trip to the other side of the world, because I realized that this meant that I would have to wait longer for the eagily awaited updates to belt compression (mentioned in FFF #222 and this dev post) and to the belt sorter splitter (mentioned in FFF #225). As far as I know, both updates are supposed to be released shortly.

Of course, this first reaction of mine is very short-sighted. For the long-term success of Factorio, visiting gaming conventions can be very important.

However, I still will be pulling out my hair in frustration during the wait for these updates.

[Caine]

Are the splitter improvements still coming?

I don't see why not. The underlying problem still exists, anything that makes belts better is a good change.

I always saw the splitter improvements as a fix for the loss of old-style splitter sorting.
Technically it was already possible with circuit networks, but those are too difficult for the majority of the players.

[Kayanor]

Are there any conventions this year you would like to see us at?

There is a convention in Cologne, Germany, the Gamescom. Don't know any exact numbers and I don't have any impressions since getting there is too expensive for me, but from what I heard it's a huge gaming related convention, but I don't know if they still have capacitiy left for exhibitors this year, or next year.

Their English website, beware of auto-playing audio: http://www.gamescom-cologne.com/gamescom/index-9.php

[ManaUser]

Actually I did notice because the mod portal suddenly started working in my main browser, which is a badly outdated copy of Firefox. I'm sure compatibility with old browsers isn't high on your priorities, but none-the-less it's nice. Probably speaks well for the site in terms of general robustness and portability too.

[dgw]

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 noticed, haha. I noticed that expanding images broke (#56787), and that my custom search in Chrome stopped working. (Searches use the endpoint /query/%s now instead of /?q=%s.)

And of course I also noticed that it was faster. That's MUCH appreciated!

[FasterJump]

I hope the belt compression fix is coming soon. Keep up the good work!

[Avezo]

I'm pretty sure Twinsen spilled out about mod portal already in 'interview' stream with Xtreminator and co. He also spilled out that this FFF was supposed to be third part of belts vs. bots. Yet it's not.

Someone is lying or at least manipulating.