Friday Facts #266 - Cleanup of mechanics

[Mike5000]

Assembling machine ingredient limit removal

I like it, that the later Assembling machines can do really more than the earlier ones. The game forces me to create them and thus directs me and guides me. The goal to just speed up things might not always be enough:
I can automatically produce items of type X: Yeah!
I can create items of type X faster: ok.

Exactly.

Higher tier assembly machines that can make new things add more to the game than mere speedups.

[torham]

Yet more quality of life. The game is going to be polished so much, its gonna have a hole in it

Lazy bastard is going to be a breeze now. I would consider lowering the craft count to reflect these changes.

Have you considered wiping the achievement stats on 1.0 launch?

Why should they?
Don't be such a game that wipes everything on launch. Kills a bunch of long term player.

Oh that was just a wishful thinking on my part. I liked doing the challenges for Factorio, currently I am only missing "there is no spoon". I would welcome an option to reset achievements, so that I could do them again

[eradicator]

Tooltips!

I sure hope you're considering normalizing crafting time tooltips too.

@Player Mining Speed:
Please add modding hooks to allow a per-player mining speed bonus. I prefer very high speed to pick up buildings faster, but not everyone on the same team will want that. (It's easier to make clicking mistakes) Will mining times for buildings also be normalized? Some things take longer than others to be picked up and it doesn't always feel intuitive. Also losing the tool slot entirely does make me a bit sad.

@Mining Hardness:
Thanks for adding a "mining time" modifier for ores. It's quite important to be able to have multi-purpose (slow) drills and specialized (fast) drills.

@Ingredient Limit
+10, good riddance. It was too messy with the whole "fluids aren't counted, nanananana!" feature, and mods regularly got it wrong. The gating can still be kept by adjusting some of the crafting categories.

And be careful not to polish away too much ;).
______

I'm just going to go sit in the corner and cry now...

As far as my past thought experiements go you should be able to model around it with resource-categories...

[Carnivale]

The direction your heading with the Assembling machine ingredient limit removal is outright wrong. You're just simplifying it for the sake of simplifying things. Having assembling machines that can craft more complicated products adds a very clear progression path to the game and you're going to remove it?

"...But the reality is, that there is not really a clear connection between the number of ingredients and the complexity of the recipe" Please give this question a second thought. The first tier assembling machine is cheaper and not gated behind so complicated technology as the later two assembling machines, therefore it is clearly far less complicated than the other ones and it shouldn't be able to craft as complicated recipes as the later ones.

[DaveMcW]

Oh that was just a wishful thinking on my part. I liked doing the challenges for Factorio, currently I am only missing "there is no spoon". I would welcome an option to reset achievements, so that I could do them again

Options -> Other -> Delete achievements.

[meeper]

I'll have to admit that I'm in favor of most of these changes, however, I'll have to agree with Carnlvale.

I disagree with the simplification of the Assembly Machines. It's logical, it works, when I started out on my first factory (it was 0.15) it was simple enough to understand. Each one became available right when it was needed. If I were to try and guess how long it took me to make the jump for why it was needed I'd say it was about 10 seconds for the lightbulb (having the Made In at the bottom of the tooltip helps).

Simply put, you need a better machine to do better things. This is typical in any normal scenario including real life. Removing this part from the game I find almost painful to hear about. I could argue that the difference between AM1 and AM2 is the same between Stone/Steel furnaces and Electric furnaces (not in mechanic but in logical understanding) - you need a better machine to do better things (ie, no coal required).

If AM1 can now do everything there's really no method to force the upgrade to better machines and AM1 is really really cheap. Sure, you can make the AM2 and AM3 more appealing but I expect that with this change you're going to find a different kind of lazy bastard. The one who's built everything with AM1 and doesn't bother upgrading anything because they don't have to or don't know they should. They've found out that this one machine does everything they need so they don't bother learning about the others. Going back to my previous furnace scenario, it'd be like removing the requirement of Coal from the stone/steel furnaces (remember, mechanics aside).

Sure, as an experienced player it can be tedious to have to get to AM2 as another poster suggested (I don't think so but to each their own) but as a new player it's progress and part of the discovery process of the game. To remove it would be degrading an essential part of the game. If someone's looking for simpler recipes for the younger audience, I seem to remember hearing about a mod that simplifies everything. A change like this should be left to that mod.

In some respects, it contradicts the addition of the Upgrade Planner that was mentioned in a previous FFF.

So here I sit, hoping that this particular mechanic isn't actually implemented. But I can only hope...

Edit: English is hard.

[Omnifarious]

This means that a yellow belt will only feed half as many furnaces. May I humbly request that furnaces take half the power, and that the power requirements for electric furnaces stays the same?

I think having a system in which upgrading to electric furnaces is the obvious thing to do is less interesting that one in which there's a more complex tradeoff involved.

I otherwise agree that the efficiency mechanic is confusing. And so is the complex equation governing mining speed, so I'm pleased to see that cleaned up as well. Though I still think stone should take less time to mine than iron.

[Danjen]

Guess I'll be the one that looks a little negatively at this update.
I feel like with this week's changes, the game takes a huge step backwards.

Instead of starting with a pick or making it researchable/upgradeable, it gets removed altogether.
Why?

This is a failure of the developers, and not of the players. You're polishing the content so it's "new player friendly", which is fine. So... why not expose them to acquiring the picks and stuff in a logical way? If someone immediately jumps into freeplay they'll get lost and overwhelmed and they should. You need to guide new players to do the tutorial campaign to understand how the game plays, get them into the right mindset, and then they'll start figuring things out. You have to show them "This is what Factorio is!", not cut features to make sure they don't get lost.

Combat in the game has a certain progression. You start with a shotgun or grenades and are able to take down a few nests. Then you find out you're too slow, so you need mobility and you build a car. This lets you clear a ton of nests away, great! Then Medium Worms show up and it becomes too risky to push back, so you research a tank, and can run stuff over for a long time, it even has flamethrowers and artillery, plus you can toss grenades, wow! Eventually it can't keep pace so you build more military stuff to keep up, artillery, and eventually Modular Armor that gives you so much more than a tank can.

So what I take from this: Doing something manually is strong at first, wanes in the middle, then shines later. So why not have manual mining tools later on, like a nuclear-powered hand drill? Sure, it would mine faster, but the downside is that it takes up your time away from building - a drawback! Or other non-combat vehicles, like a harvester that collects trees on impact or a directed 3x3 mining vehicle that again is a little faster, or comes with a mobile furnace. Sure, the game is about automation, but these let you experiment with alternate strategies instead of spamming the same streamer-optimized blueprint every game.

(And as a side note, it's also unfortunate to see damage types be removed, when again all you need to do is add more biter types to flesh out some of the combat mechanics. Make some biters that are different colors and resistant to different damage types at every tier, then use the random seed to see how prevalent they are or something. That way, defense isn't just "spam 50 laser turrets I win")

Factorio has a large, thriving community and watching it grow is a good thing. Seeing content and mechanics aggressively cut feels really bad. Why should new players have such an adverse affect on the mechanical depth and gameplay? It should be the other way around: they play this game, and adapt to it.

[caviidae]

Negative vote on removal of assembler ingredient limit.

I took a couple hours to fully get this game. In my early play through, creating blue assemblers was a memorable progression moment that finally hooked my play to a progression treadmill. The thought was "wow! research enables me to automate making even grey factories!" followed immediately by "... oh I can automate the better one blue ones too!". For me; electricity & smelting, blue factory automation, railways, and constructions robots were wow-cool moments.

If grey factories are just as capable as blue, but slower, the sense of progress I enjoyed may be reduced. Perhaps I was just a really slow noob with bad tooltips who struggled to automate smelting and then science thus necessitating a reward. The payout of blue-factories was memorable as it gave both a meaningful reward and pushed me in the right direction. Eventually launching a rocket!

Shrug, never felt compelled to share like this and I'm no game designer. However, your wonderful game gave me a strong enough memory to feel compelled. When I recommend the game I do so partially because of the ohhh cool progress moments like I had with blue-factories. People may have more fun with less but more focused/curated progression in factories (I'm sure its not all the same). At least for me the rewarding trek was in 6-feet of snow and uphill both ways!

[y.petremann]

Regarding Assembling Machine, I think that ingredient limit should be kept as an optional thing for mods.

[PunkSkeleton]

Please remove durability instead of ingredient limit on assembly machines. Durability is just annoyance, ingredient limit adds some depth to the game and affects the early game strategy for things like PvP or speed runs.

[jodokus31]

"...But the reality is, that there is not really a clear connection between the number of ingredients and the complexity of the recipe" Please give this question a second thought. The first tier assembling machine is cheaper and not gated behind so complicated technology as the later two assembling machines, therefore it is clearly far less complicated than the other ones and it shouldn't be able to craft as complicated recipes as the later ones.

@Ingredient Limit
+10, good riddance. It was too messy with the whole "fluids aren't counted, nanananana!" feature, and mods regularly got it wrong. The gating can still be kept by adjusting some of the crafting categories.

With these ideas, lazy bastard and crafting progressing could be preserved interesting (-> crafting categories)
f.e.
assembly machine 1 can actually craft:
- burner drills
- assembly machine 1 (but no assembly 2 or 3)

assembly machine 2 can craft everything except:
- oil refinery
- other complicated stuff like nuclear, etc.
- maybe even rocket components... (this would cause, that you have get automation3 to finish the game in reasonable time)

assembly machine 3 can craft everything.

And maybe also streamline handcraftability. Why can i craft a rocket silo in inventory, but no regular engine?

[wlfbck]

Reduce the number of damage types to something like: generic, impact, heat, and acid.

Gotta disagree here. I wouldn't know where to put laser or electric under there. Why not just merge generic and impact into physical and add energy/energetic for laser and electric?

(heat being fire and explosion is obvious, although i wouldn't have named it heat, but that doesn't matter. Same goes for poison and acid)

[Lubricus]

I agree with most of the stuff. I have an mod idea where ingredient limit's on assembler is important part so i would be sad if it will be gone for mods to.
On the steel furnace /electric furnace balance issue i thing it's enough that the electric furnace is bigger and cost more to craft as an negative to the steel furnace.

[Zalminen]

I'd also prefer to keep the ingredient limit, although the mechanic could probably be explained a little better.

The other changes I fully support. Especially getting rid of the mining tools.
As it is the only time it matters after the very beginning is when your tool breaks and you have to interrupt what you were doing to craft a new stack.

[eradicator]

Reduce the number of damage types to something like: generic, impact, heat, and acid.

Gotta disagree here. I wouldn't know where to put laser or electric under there. Why not just merge generic and impact into physical and add energy/energetic for laser and electric?

(heat being fire and explosion is obvious, although i wouldn't have named it heat, but that doesn't matter. Same goes for poison and acid)

Found a nice article. Basically they're using easier to understand terms for mechanical (=potential+kinetic), thermal and chemical. Laser is clearly heat, i remember melting down enemy tanks in Earth 2150 ^^. If they're removing moddability for that there definetly needs to be direct (un-resistable) damage, but i'll just hope it stays moddable.

energy2.png (39.87 KiB) Viewed 8398 times

[havarc]

So far agreeing with this FFF, except with the easing of Assemblers. Have you ever been to an assembly factory? Much actually worked in one? Or several even?
I actually did, and believe me when I say that the current system makes way more sense. I've literally seen assembling machines that take only 4 inputs yet cost millions (RFID cards) and then you woudn't even comprehend the cost of production lines (that I've seen) that take even more.
Please don't dumb down gameplay for newcomers, for you will abandon anyone who already bought the game for themselves (and their friends so they could get the spoon achievement), because that would certainly make you look greedy before actual launch!
So here's an idea:
Instead of just going faster, the higher Assembly machines may be able to produce products without intermediaries, like instead of feeding copper wire into an assembler 1, the assembler 2 can work directly from copper plates.

Seriously Wube, you've come so far! Don't creep out your player base! Get creative!

[Henry Loenwind]

My recommendation for the pickaxe would be:

• Keep the items.
• Set all vanilla resources to be minable by hand
• Set breaking speed by hand to ~80% of old iron pickaxe and iron pickaxe to 120%
• Put tooltip onto pickaxe "Increases the speed you can mine resources and destroy buildings by 50%"
• Replace tutorial about pickaxes with a "hint" tooltip for the equipment slot that pops up after ~30 minutes of playing if that slot is empty: "You can increase the speed you mine resources and destroy buildings by equipping a pickaxe into this slot"

This solves the "new player" issue by not having them need and understand pickaxes while still keeping the mechanics of speed-boosting items (for everyone) and tool requirements (for mods) available.

[orbadon]

Since this FFF has quite an impact on many bigger mods, I'm curious if a) you have some developers playing with mods (bobs, angels, etc) and b) have any critical voices against those changes in the team?

[torham]

Oh that was just a wishful thinking on my part. I liked doing the challenges for Factorio, currently I am only missing "there is no spoon". I would welcome an option to reset achievements, so that I could do them again

Options -> Other -> Delete achievements.

*Mind = blown*