Friday Facts #262 - Hello my name is: Compilatron

[Twisted_Code]

absolutely brilliant! In my opinion, the game has been in need of a companion NPC for some time now, so nice thinking making it a robot so the idea you crash landed alone (ignoring, of course, multiplayer) still works. I was beginning to feel sorry for the lonely protagonist, what with the awkward internal monologue and the fact the only other sentient creatures on the planet seem to want to murder his face and dissolve him into a puddle of acid. Now he can at least PRETEND he has a friend, if only as part of a developing delusion
From a functional viewpoint, this is absolutely brilliant in a different way, as it should significantly cleanup and simplify the tutorial/NPE, among other things. I look forward to seeing how this works out, but it sounds promising!

[powa]

I think this is nifty, and a really great solution to a bunch of tutorial mode problems.

My main worry is that it will take away from the lonely castaway feeling of the game. And it's only a worry, a point of concern. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it, just that you should consider this change by applying a few different lenses to how you view the game and possibly adjusting accordingly.

As I said, it really helps out with making the tutorial missions be a lot more cohesive and sensible. And I can also see how Compilatron might work as an early game robot who is both useful, and so painful to use that construction robots are still a big win. Having something else tediously place all the buildings one-by-one, something that is constrained to move on land, is almost as bad as having to do it yourself.

At the end of the campaign, Compilatron should e.g. be destroyed, run out of batteries, stop receving instructions and deactivate, etc.

Then the player can be further motivated to build a rocket and find the source of Compilatron or the civilzation he came from for the normal game. His last gasp could even be a hint of how or that you could reach civilization once again.

[MicFac]

I will also post this seperately in the suggestion subforum as it has turned into a rather big suggestion-heavy post. I hope this is okay.

I think the idea of the Compilation is great and it got me thinking about a potential lore in the normal freeplay mode. I think the game having more of a story could help make it even more interesting (not to say that it isn't already) and add a lot of immersion. I'm not saying that you should get lead through the game by a story as discovering things yourself can be super fun. Rather I would suggest a very loose lore that could be tied into the usual game in many different ways, like ancient ruins or accidental discoveries when researching for example. This could even make Compilatron useful in freeplay, he could analyze these discoveries and propose parts of the lore (special sounds and music that play when discovering lore could be awesome too). Besides, if lore pieces are too frequent, they could be annoying and distract from the main game so they should be a rather rare occurance.

Of course a lore like this would also have downsides. After a few playthroughs you would know all important story pieces which could scare people away from replaying the game as part of it would be repetitive (and I think replaying the game feeling natural is a very important part of Factorio). A potential solution to this could be that more questions get asked than answers given. This way, discoveries would act less as the player getting told a story but more as a reminder to think about what could have happened on this alien world. This would add mystery and a lot of atmosphere in general.

All in all, what I am suggesting here are huge changes to the game and I think adding something like this could be a big risk but it could also make the Factorio experience even better.

P.S. I generally like how Compilatron looks but it's shape reminds me too much of a minecraft sheep .

[Aardwolf]

I also find the sidekick too cute. It shouldn't have personality. Maybe some kind of logbook on scruffy tank tracks or spider legs would do?

[Unknow0059]

Unless he cares what we think, i'm not sure the pixel display that is his face should be blurry.

It stands out because the rest of the image is of such high quality.

[Oktokolo]

Unless he cares what we think, i'm not sure the pixel display that is his face should be blurry.

They should change it to look more like HAL. And he schould definitively say things like "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I can't do that." But i'm sure someone will do a mod for that...

[ownlyme]

omg pls add rts features whoooot *going crazy*

[H8UL]

Unless he cares what we think, i'm not sure the pixel display that is his face should be blurry.

It stands out because the rest of the image is of such high quality.

You realise that the reason the rest of the image is high quality is the same reason the plastic bits of a Commadore 64 aren't pixelated in real life? Because the display is a display in-game and the rest of it is not a display on-game? I mean...

[Tesse11ation]

Unit AI really need some tweaking.


My map have a lot of water. Actually there's too much water for enemy AI.
And there's bitters in islands that request paths all time but they can't execute them. So when there are a lot of them, they start make my ups go really low.
I hope, than you could fix this in 0.17.

This. Also, two words: Swimming biters. Or, at least, the biter equivalent of some mob that can traverse water long enough to find more land and settle on it. Coastal defenses would be a great way to balance this out; just get a mini-artillery that sinks their boats before they reach dry land. IT'S BRILLIANT!

[Allexz]

Hi!

I see one issue with only allowing it with the campaign and that is emotional attachment.

When i saw the picture i was almost instantly in love with the design and if i was a new player and i got to have him as company i can almost assure you i'd never play freeplay just because i lost my only friend in the entire universe.

The only way id accept him gone after the tutorial was probably if he had a really sad accident in the end of the tutorial so that you'd have to accept the loss before going at it alone.


Then again he could also be a endgame gamechanger, i cannot help but have fallen in love with bob's mods since it makes the game so much larger and more interesting. Perhaps when vanilla is complete you finally get the space research needed to create AI - creating him unlocks the next difficulty (taking it to the next level and incorporating bobs mods or something alike into the actual game) ^^

[dog80]

ALso please add an "Alert" Map icon so you can show others something specific with attention sign "!!! in a Triangle Red/yellow ok? tytyty :3.3

[abregado]

Recommend taking those map settings, making them into a scenario and then having a scenario specific behavior for biter which sees them landfill slowly towards the player (and later you can use shallow water).
This would be mod agnostic as the scripts can be in the scenario.

After 0.17 is out, there will be even more options to make this better.

I'm surprised this does not exist yet...

[orzelek]

Recommend taking those map settings, making them into a scenario and then having a scenario specific behavior for biter which sees them landfill slowly towards the player (and later you can use shallow water).
This would be mod agnostic as the scripts can be in the scenario.

After 0.17 is out, there will be even more options to make this better.

I'm surprised this does not exist yet...

One of the currently missing functionalities on modding side is any access to biter expansion plans/events. I wanted to change how new bases are created when biters migrate in RSO and there is no good way to do that (unless one would rescan whole map constantly looking for new bases).
Same with biter expansion - there is no trigger that would allow mods to know that biters will migrate and where to allow us for playing around with some kind of biters that would landfill in certain direction. And pathfinder is a bit confused by narrow land bridges so it would add some potential problems too.

[WeirdConstructor]

The Compilatron is a clever solution in my opinion. Even though I am like 150h into the game now, I look forward playing the new tutorial. I only wish, there weren't already so many mods by now. Because almost every idea I get for making a mod is already implemented somewhere and somehow. On the other hand, I am not tempted to do programming instead of playing Factorio.

[radu]

To be honest I find the robot a bit cheesy and not matching the atmosphere of the game. I find the fact that you are alone, lost in an unknown world much more appealing. The help statement can come from the character itself (i.e. "I need to build a lab and provide science packs..."). I wouldn't mind a companion robot that acts like a mobile chest that you can build later on.

[pleegwat]

Recommend taking those map settings, making them into a scenario and then having a scenario specific behavior for biter which sees them landfill slowly towards the player (and later you can use shallow water).
This would be mod agnostic as the scripts can be in the scenario.

After 0.17 is out, there will be even more options to make this better.

I'm surprised this does not exist yet...

One biter turns a tile of deep water to shallow water or a tile of shallow water to walk-able terrain, but this kills the biter?

[Horatio]

Many write that it is important to be alone. But the game lacks the usual things. Animals, birds, weather effects, some events. This robot is definitely a great idea. I'll throw here one thought. What if in each game give the starting broken ship and it contains capsules with embryos. Those. we brought the colonists and create conditions for them too. In addition, to develop the city, and the factory will in fact serve the life of the city. Then there is a clear meaning and we have something to fight for.

[WeirdConstructor]

Then there is a clear meaning and we have something to fight for.

Like a completely polluted starting city for the childs? And where is the original goal of starting a rocket to get back? I don't say that your plot is a great starting point. But Factorio is purposefully setup in a different way.

[Robotuser]

Looks like Cozmo, love it.

[facade11663]

it will be interesting to see how complainatron will effect the progression of the game may be helpful to have a "when you left off" things to do list or it could be super obnoxious constantly repeating "3/6 furnaces are inactive" (I'm looking at you fortress craft evolved )