Friday Facts #257 - NPE/Campaign update

[meganothing]

It seems that factorio tries to be everything at once but fails on most ends to reach top level in that category. Maybe with one exception: "Teaching automation."

It really is interesting to experiment with all the possibilities it gives you. At least once. And it gives a lot of possibilities. After having it played through a dozen times and having all the blueprints ready it starts to lose its appeal and kind of falls apart. Could that even be intentional?

The biters - like a lot of other things - feel like some gapfilling addition that turned out to be permanent. Introducing major changes at this point even seems out of the question. The mastery of this game is the game engine building. That turned out really really well. It does do a lot of stuff very well and is pretty optimized.

Maybe we have a different understanding of "fail". Don't dissect Factorio and judge its parts, judge the game.

Saying for example the "city builder" part is not top level because we don't have to manage the contentment of the inhabitants may be true if you want a city builder game, but would diminish the quality of Factorio the complete game. Saying the train simulation is not top because jobs or requests are misssing might be correct but again would be wrong for Factorio the complete game. The combat part on its own is definitely not sufficient as a standalone shooter or real-time-strategy game, but I for example don't want to play a shooter or RTS and the combat has exactly the importance it should have for a game about automation.

I don't mean to say Factorio is perfect, but creating the best combat game, train simulator and city builder and ... and combining them would not make a perfect game out of the combination. Or (since "perfect" is highly subjective) it would not be the game I put hundreds of hours in but appeal to a totally different player base. It might not even be a success because players looking for Factorio the combat game would hate the train and city parts and vice versa.

[bobucles]

If we add shallow water to Freeplay (which is not as simple as it sounds), then some people might be sad that there is the occasional Biter nest where you cannot use turret creep...

Just like landfill it yo. It'd be far more punishing to have terrain that can't be landfilled, at least.

[Ober3550]

Nuclear has been split up to Uranium processing similar to what I did in my mod https://mods.factorio.com/mod/OberNuclear.

My question is then, nothing was mentioned about uranium rounds. I personally feel like they can't normally compete with laser turrets since they sit behind a wall of so much research. I'd be curious to know the numbers for the technologies and whether or not uranium rounds can now just be researched from Uranium Processing similar to mine. Something that I also would like addressed is how much uranium fuel cells cost and a comparison with nuclear fuel.

Nuclear fuel
1 u235 = 1.21gj
Uranium fuel cell
1 u235 = 10 cells or 14 with prod
1 cell = 8gj
1 cycle with +300% neighbor bonus = 4x
1 u235 = 14 * 8 * 4 = 448gj

370x more power per u235 than nuclear fuel.

Obviously Nuclear fuel should be worse than uranium fuel cells since the infrastructure and all the rest to use the power is greater however I don't think it should be such a large difference. The current state of the game means that 1 little fuel cell machine can produce enough fuel for 140 nuclear reactors.... now that I think is a bit much. Nuclear consumption by uranium fuel cells alone is very very insignificant versus nuclear fuel or atomic bombs. And because of this I think that the recipe for the cells themselves should be halved or something... infact I don't think it would be too much of a nerf to make the recipe produce 1 item instead of 10. That would change the number of reactors down to 10 without prod and 14 with prod.

https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm ... QXfkTs+AE=

[stm]

Nice Idea to add shallow Water as an new crossable Tileset.
This also enables other Things:
Allow us to change normal terain into shallow water (if adjacent to water or shallow water) creating some landfill (would fit with the suggestion to add a two step process of landfilling).
Than also allow Pumps on shallow water.
This would enable it to reliably design your water based setups in a way which are not dependent on so many variables (e.g. I like to play on maps with lots of water, since I have to fill in so much of it to get a straight coasline for my OCD based construction Organization).
This kind of diggable moat would not block crossing (though I would suggest a speed penalty for everything) and thus not trivialize defence, which was the main argument against diggable moats.
If one is concerned with the possibility of infinite water throughput in comparison with pipes: It does only change the neceessity to start with a lake and lots of stone for landfill instead of a dry area. And landfill is the only reliable sink for stone anyway.

As with regards to the csience change: Sounds good. Now also remove the blue sience from coal-liquification, and it sounds fine for me.
Stm

[bobingabout]

Nuclear fuel
1 u235 = 1.21gj

ONE POINT TWENTY ONE JIGGA WATTS!
It's a back to the future reference.
I'm guessing when they were adding nuclear fuel, someone in the office just asked to the room... how much power should nuclear fuel give? and someone, probably as a joke said the classic line, so it stuck.

I can see both sides of the coin in the code. Some places like nuclear fuel just have values "Because", like classic references. Others seem to be very well thought through. I was adding liquid fuel values in my mod, and when I put in real life values, divided by 10 to make up for the fact that all fluids were multiplied by 10 recently... well, most of them actually made sense to the game. A fuel block from light oil has a 16% energy loss(plus whatever it costs to run the machine), which seems reasonable when converting from 1 type of fuel to another.

Though, all you really have that's a 1 to 1 translation is Petroleum gas (in which case you take propane or natural gas) and Crude Oil, then extrapolate the values of light oil and heavy oil from there.

Yes, most modders (most of the ones I talk to admit to this) just slap some values together and see if it works, and if it does, that's what they run with.
I usually start out by doing research, then can spend anywhere from an hour, to a few days writing out equations and pressing buttons on a calculator until I find the values that fit into the puzzle.
In bob's mods, the only fluid with an unrealistic fuel value is Hydrogen, and that's because the real numbers would give it something like 14MJ per unit. for comparison liquid fuel is 4.6MJ. I ended up going with 0.1MJ for Hydrogen.

You can either explain that as "Well, it's just not very compressed", or I could divide all recipe values by about 140. when you already have numbers like... 5 required for cobalt oxide from copper... even if you say a nice even 100, that becomes 0.05 units of hydrogen for the recipe.
the low fuel value however does give odd numbers like 5 petroleum gas giving 250 hydrogen though which raises a few questions if it's right.

[pleegwat]

I assume that's units of weight of hydrogen? Since hydrogen is a gas even at cryogenic temperatures, you'd have to compare it by volume instead. Which puts its energy content below propane even before you consider that propane liquefies under reasonable pressure.

[bobingabout]

I assume that's units of weight of hydrogen? Since hydrogen is a gas even at cryogenic temperatures, you'd have to compare it by volume instead. Which puts its energy content below propane even before you consider that propane liquefies under reasonable pressure.

which is pretty much why I feel okay with it being a rather low value.

[mrtyman]

I really don't like the dynamic in freeplay that you need as soon as you research rocket silo, you immediately have to build all the production lines for the rocket parts at the same time.

I disagree

In the early- and mid-game stages, you're creating new production lines one at a time, as you advance your tech level and production requirements. It's a steady progression. In doing so, you get used to the process, and, although you still have to do some creative problem solving, setting up one new assembly line is routine.

In the end-game, having to set up three assembly lines at once felt like a break from the "routine", one final hurdle towards creating your opus magnum. Three equally-important tasks, presented such that you had to tackle each one differently, but each in any order you choose. It really built up a crescendo towards the climax of finally launching that rocket, and made all your hard work that much rewarding.

Just my two cents

[Parusoid]

Id like to see the rocket silo as first milestone for the player to achive. It is great that you start to smooth the curve out. At the same time I think that the rocket silo should be buildable from the start.

It does not have to be in the form as it is now. Now it reqires 6 different science pack. Think of new silo as modular building.
Lets say you start with scaffolding for it, no science pack needed, only metal plates.

That would make the silo a center piece that you can focus on throughout whole gameplay and see it grow making you feel you are doing progress all the time.

Then youll need to use science pack to reasearch further modules and to build that module you would use the item related to that science pack (for example steel is discovered right now with red science pack) . Steel foundation with red science, mechanized gantry with green science, plumbling with blue science etc etc.

Once all modules are build you start providing it with all the rocket parts as usual

[Dawydov]

Id like to see the rocket silo as first milestone for the player to achive. It is great that you start to smooth the curve out. At the same time I think that the rocket silo should be buildable from the start.

It does not have to be in the form as it is now. Now it reqires 6 different science pack. Think of new silo as modular building.
Lets say you start with scaffolding for it, no science pack needed, only metal plates.

That would make the silo a center piece that you can focus on throughout whole gameplay and see it grow making you feel you are doing progress all the time.

Then youll need to use science pack to reasearch further modules and to build that module you would use the item related to that science pack (for example steel is discovered right now with red science pack) . Steel foundation with red science, mechanized gantry with green science, plumbling with blue science etc etc.

Once all modules are build you start providing it with all the rocket parts as usual

This! Agree 100%

[steinio]

Id like to see the rocket silo as first milestone for the player to achive. It is great that you start to smooth the curve out. At the same time I think that the rocket silo should be buildable from the start.

It does not have to be in the form as it is now. Now it reqires 6 different science pack. Think of new silo as modular building.
Lets say you start with scaffolding for it, no science pack needed, only metal plates.

That would make the silo a center piece that you can focus on throughout whole gameplay and see it grow making you feel you are doing progress all the time.

Then youll need to use science pack to reasearch further modules and to build that module you would use the item related to that science pack (for example steel is discovered right now with red science pack) . Steel foundation with red science, mechanized gantry with green science, plumbling with blue science etc etc.

Once all modules are build you start providing it with all the rocket parts as usual

This! Agree 100%

sounds good to me