Friday Facts #266 - Cleanup of mechanics

[Cobaltur]

streamline mining . good.

don't stop at uranium. Please make no exceptions.

Do the narrowing in one oft the next refinement steps. e.g. Centrifuge

the refinement is specific to the uran process and the ore mining is generalized.
Idea behind: the ore is mixed with dirt in it's natural finding


Ok. you will have more mined ore and halfs the transportation. But in my opinion the whole uran process has so few machines involved in the refinement process. So if more uran refinement machines are needed maybe the costs should be halfed as well.

[Avezo]

The more I think about it, the more I think 3 different assambler types should be just gone. And then:
- Streamline all base crafting times to 1 across assemblers, chemical plants, refineries, etc. (that curls tooltips too!)
- Make additional module slots a research (baseline being zero)
- Remove energy cost of using modules in assemblers, so they act as a higher speed version of assembler(s)
- Increase power consumption of beacons to compensate
- Remove lab speed research, their speed would be increased solely through modules too

[CptnPenguin]

Totally in favour of the pickaxe removal! Maybe just remove it from the vanilla game in a way that mods can still utilize the feature if they want to? That should make everyone happy I think.

As far as making steel research automatically increase mining speed, that seems a little weird to me. It seems like a remnant from how it is right now and probably wouldn't make sense to new players. Just make it a separate mining speed research, available after steel processing. That would make more sense, I feel.

As far as the assembly machine upgrades go, I'm not so sure about the proposed change. I understand you're trying to reduce bloat and make the game more intuitive, but I think "each tier of assembly can craft more complex items with more ingredients" is a simple enough concept that wouldn't be too hard to grasp for new players.

[ske]

Continuing the train of thought here: Replace the different versions of chests, belts, inserters, machines with a single version of each plus research upgrades.

Going further: Bots could be replaced with a global chest. Lossy pipes could be replaced with global fluid storage. Lossy power lines with a lossless global electricity network.

Adding value and visualizing progress: Research upgrades could be replaced with unique buildings. I.e. the iron age castle. If you build your first generator, you get access to electric items.

[meganothing]

The problem with this idea is that it serves no game play purpose, it is just a limitation for limitation sakes.

Well, it's pretty clear that there's the crowd that regards design puzzles as impediments to play, and the crowd that regards them as the point of play.

A puzzle needs something non-obvious to be a puzzle. A drop in replacement of AM2 if AM1 is not good enough is NOT a puzzle, there is no brain-activity necessary for this.

The old way is not really a puzzle either but it provided some irregularity in building your initial factory possibly leading to the need for later redesigns. And that then might be a puzzle. But the proposed idea is practically solved by simple matching, an ape could do that. This problem has a similar difficulty level: The round object fits through the round hole, the rectancular object fits through the rectancular hole...

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@avezo, @ske: Are you two trying reverse psychology on Wube or just trolling?

[wartthog]

Factorio is a hybrid puzzle/power fantasy game ... This hybrid nature has split the player base

Most insightful post of the whole thread! Well said Rythe! Others hinted at it but you nailed it here. Everyone should read that post.

However, it makes me very unhappy to see people ... listing more features they want removed, such as fluid temperature...

I maybe shouldn't have upvoted without explanation. I'd like to offer fluid temperature as a substitute sacrifice for things mentioned in this FFF because it's not modeled accurately enough to add much "puzzle". You use turbines with heat exchangers and steam engines with boilers because that's the only thing that makes sense. There's no trade offs, no room for other interesting options. You do it because the temperature forces you to. Having nuclear steam vary in temperature is cool, but IMO not enough to justify the UPS hit.

Now if some kinds of pipes lost heat to the environment more than others, or if heat could be controlled by circuits, or if some reactions (recipes) were more efficient at certain temperatures, etc. that would add more to the game, but there's definitely not enough CPU room for that!!!

That's why I'd say it could be removed.


Another thought about axes: Modders may be able to add them in again, even right at the beginning by using an early-game "power" armour that can only fit axe equipment.

[quyxkh]

A drop in replacement of AM2 if AM1 is not good enough is NOT a puzzle

No, that isn't, but you're ignoring the puzzle part: uh-oh, I can't build inserters because the AM1 doesn't have enough ingredient buckets, and then there's routing more ingredients, three-ingredient supply lines are a little harder than two-ingredient lines. Yes, it's an easy puzzle, so what? It's also one of very first ones, it's supposed to be easy, something that drives you back to the tech tree you might not have paid much attention to, an introductory puzzle.

There's no end to the "this is the most annoying puzzle in the game, take it out" argument. Everybody's going to find puzzles and challenges that aren't to their taste, and the budding little demagogues are going to caterwaul endlessly about them.

No, not every puzzle or challenge carries its weight, yes some should be replaced with better ones, but that should be the only way a puzzle gets taken out of the game: if it's replaced with a more interesting one.

@avezo, @ske: Are you two trying reverse psychology on Wube or just trolling?

Lol. I had that as reverse psych.

edit:

Factorio is a hybrid puzzle/power fantasy game ... This hybrid nature has split the player base

Most insightful post of the whole thread! Well said Rythe! Others hinted at it but you nailed it here. Everyone should read that post.

Hear! Hear! That's the clearest statement yet, thank you!

[ske]

@avezo, @ske: Are you two trying reverse psychology on Wube or just trolling?

Neither. I'm following the train of thought. Right now, the state of factorio gives me the impression that it is a great game engine with a large collection of features, stable code and well polished graphics. But it is not a good game. It doesn't have a good game story. The original story served its purpose during development well but now it's losing its magic. The game needs some secret sauce that it currently doesn't have. Even more so, during the cleanup process that is happening now it becomes more obvious. Right now I have hopes that the engine is moddable to an extent that the community can develop different game modes that fill the gaps and give the different kinds of players what they seek.

[J-H]

I favor keeping the pickaxe, then the steel pickaxe...and adding, at the blue-circuit level, the matter deconstructor.

I also do not like the idea of making Assembler 1 able to do everything. Right now Assembler 1 is just like yellow belts or yellow inserters "good enough" at low tech, but something you want to replace as soon as you can in most areas. (Yellow inserters can't take items off blue belts, so they have to be replaced in endgame...looking forward to a fast-swap option).

I also think robots are a bit too hard to get to right now.

[meganothing]

A drop in replacement of AM2 if AM1 is not good enough is NOT a puzzle

No, that isn't, but you're ignoring the puzzle part: uh-oh, I can't build inserters because the AM1 doesn't have enough ingredient buckets, and then there's routing more ingredients, three-ingredient supply lines are a little harder than two-ingredient lines. Yes, it's an easy puzzle, so what? It's also one of very first ones, it's supposed to be easy, something that drives you back to the tech tree you might not have paid much attention to, an introductory puzzle.

There's no end to the "this is the most annoying puzzle in the game, take it out" argument. Everybody's going to find puzzles and challenges that aren't to their taste, and the budding little demagogues are going to caterwaul endlessly about them.

No, not every puzzle or challenge carries its weight, yes some should be replaced with better ones, but that should be the only way a puzzle gets taken out of the game: if it's replaced with a more interesting one.

Exactly. You obviously didn't see to what post I was replying because in that post someone proposed to replace the inital bucket-limitation with a limitation that is too regular to be even on par with the bucket-limitation.

To make it clear: I would like the bucket-ingredient limitation to stay in the game, I just don't like to replace it with another limitation that is even more trivial.

[ske]

A puzzle needs something non-obvious to be a puzzle. A drop in replacement of AM2 if AM1 is not good enough is NOT a puzzle, there is no brain-activity necessary for this.

If they had different sizes (e.g. 2x3, 3x3, 3x4) it would be a nice puzzle.

[eradicator]

However, it makes me very unhappy to see people ... listing more features they want removed, such as fluid temperature...

I maybe shouldn't have upvoted without explanation. I'd like to offer fluid temperature as a substitute sacrifice for things mentioned in this FFF because it's not modeled accurately enough to add much "puzzle". You use turbines with heat exchangers and steam engines with boilers because that's the only thing that makes sense. There's no trade offs, no room for other interesting options. You do it because the temperature forces you to. Having nuclear steam vary in temperature is cool, but IMO not enough to justify the UPS hit.

Now if some kinds of pipes lost heat to the environment more than others, or if heat could be controlled by circuits, or if some reactions (recipes) were more efficient at certain temperatures, etc. that would add more to the game, but there's definitely not enough CPU room for that!!!

Ehwhat? Who ever said that the existance of temperatures causes any sort of UPS "hit"? If you have no solid proof please don't spread rumors just because you don't like a system. Btw, the engine has many features that the base game only uses rudimentarily (popular examples: temperature, recipe probabilities,...) or not at all (loaders, eei,...), but which are used by many mods to add interesting content. This kind of moddability is one of the major strong points of factorio. If you removed every feature that isn't "useful enough in base game" then 90% of mods would be instantly dead. If anything moddability of the temperature system should be improved. Adding heat loss pipes or circuit-connectability like you mentioned would be great tools to have for the modding community.

[meganothing]

@avezo, @ske: Are you two trying reverse psychology on Wube or just trolling?

Neither. I'm following the train of thought. Right now, the state of factorio gives me the impression that it is a great game engine with a large collection of features, stable code and well polished graphics. But it is not a good game. It doesn't have a good game story. The original story served its purpose during development well but now it's losing its magic. The game needs some secret sauce that it currently doesn't have. Even more so, during the cleanup process that is happening now it becomes more obvious. Right now I have hopes that the engine is moddable to an extent that the community can develop different game modes that fill the gaps and give the different kinds of players what they seek.

Before you continue that train of thought, ask yourself if the game losing its magic isn't the normal process of playing a game for hundreds of hours and knowing every corner of it. Vanilla Factorio did most things right because it hooked x thousands of players for hundreds of hours, look around how few games can make that claim. That nearly all players become bored eventually is unavoidable and modding the only recourse. Changing the vanilla game to provide new kicks for veteran players might be possible but always has the danger of making it unsuitable as the entry point for new players.

Your suggestions seem to streamline things to make it easy for veteran players to get to their mega factories but which keep a new player busy (for example upgrading belts, inserters and assemblers to level out supply lines is what gets new players into the game)

One thing I don't understand at all: Your suggestion to replace lossy power lines with a lossless global electricity network. I understand you want to get rid of all the poles. But since when are power lines lossy?

A puzzle needs something non-obvious to be a puzzle. A drop in replacement of AM2 if AM1 is not good enough is NOT a puzzle, there is no brain-activity necessary for this.

If they had different sizes (e.g. 2x3, 3x3, 3x4) it would be a nice puzzle.

Yes, that would actually make a fine puzzle. But that is a puzzle that is independent of what recipe can be built with what AM. This puzzle only occurs when you try to replace a lower AM with a better AM because of the speed difference.

[quyxkh]

a chunk of the rational for getting rid of mining axes was literally "Our UI is so flawed that some people are trying to mine by picking up the mining axe from the inventory slot and clicking on the ground with it attached, so let's get rid of mining axes."

That makes no sense, but it is what you get when you start rationalizing the easiest/quickest solution to think up when running into these end-project issues.

Yah, seems to me the right solution to that misunderstanding is just make mining with the pickaxe in hand _also_ work.

[wartthog]

Ehwhat? Who ever said that the existance of temperatures causes any sort of UPS "hit"? If you have no solid proof please don't spread rumors just because you don't like a system.

Let not the rumours spread. I did no testing so I have no solid proof. Temperatures are blended as fluid flows into a container. I thought these extra calculations might be contributing to the UPS problem associated with nuclear setups, that's all.

[bobucles]

Yah, seems to me the right solution to that misunderstanding is just make mining with the pickaxe in hand _also_ work.

I don't agree. If the player is trying to do something the wrong way, it probably means the game didn't clearly present how to do it the correct way. In this situation the pickaxe was misused because the player didn't understand how to equip items. That is pretty unusual but let's take a look at how a player might come to that conclusion.
- They open the inventory screen.
- There's nothing to equip, right?
- Mystery solved.
But wait! If you look very carefully, there are items in your inventory which are NOT on the inventory screen. See?

inventory

factorio inventory.jpg (501.68 KiB) Viewed 5744 times

Most of us have played long enough that this slight disconnect has long ceased to be an issue. But a new player may look at the inventory screen and think "this is everything I have and need to worry about." So they see a pickaxe, can't find a place to put it, and conclude that it simply gets used as a magic wand.

[Rythe]

A puzzle needs something non-obvious to be a puzzle. A drop in replacement of AM2 if AM1 is not good enough is NOT a puzzle, there is no brain-activity necessary for this.

If they had different sizes (e.g. 2x3, 3x3, 3x4) it would be a nice puzzle.

You two don't understand what the puzzle style in Factorio is. There's not a hard limit to space. Assembling Machines are success buckets, so changing their shape/size doesn't really mean a whole lot besides maybe forcing the player to design in the largest size they'll end up using.

The puzzle is 'How do I get my factory to produce this?' It's part logistics chain (getting enough resources to where said resources need to go in a timely fashion) and part organizational puzzle (how do I fit this production line into my factory in a way I like?). Players can add any constraint they like (certain levels of output, design efficiencies) to increase puzzle complexity organically. This organic nature of the puzzle complexity is a lot of Factorio's appeal, where bots are almost like turning the puzzle complexity off.

The ingredient count for a recipe is roughly puzzle complexity (chaining via intermediate products). You have to expand your factory so that it can get x number of things into the new success bucket(s) under your personal set of constraints. That's the puzzle.

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The other thing this Cleanup of Mechanics phase is doing is highlighting all the underutilized aspects of Factorio. Wube is taking an axe to things they never got around to fleshing out and that lost potential is part of the outcry, along with losing aspects that modders did get around to fleshing out for them. It really is a shame that there's only two mining facilities that you start with and the whole resource collection side remains simple in the vanilla game. This simple works for vanilla, more or less, but these underutilized and perhaps incomplete features are turning into a bit of a sore spot when trying to make a cohesive experience.

Factorio started with a stronger sense of player conquering the environment via pocket factories. That's also where the early mining with pickaxes is important. It helps shape the feeling of conquering the environment, but as development progressed over the years, the player vs planet feel got diluted and downplayed because, while the pocket factory side kept getting refined and expanded, the environment never developed apace so the game became about launching a rocket because that was the quasi-ultimate factory output and not because the environment gave you a reason for it.

[owenevans00]

Another nope for the assembler changes... seems to me that you have 2 axes regarding these units - one is a vague "complexity" axis based on ingredient count, and one is a "constructable by player" axis that's gated by fluid requirements. So instead of letting any machine build anything, let's be explicit about the parameters. That way you can have things marked as "not constructable" without having to special-case the rocket components, and you can set complexity to arbitrary levels, which would let you mod in additional tiers of trickiness.
Then we can have a separate discussion about how/if to map complexity to research requirements, and exactly what the complexity of a basic inserter should be....

[Avezo]

@avezo, @ske: Are you two trying reverse psychology on Wube or just trolling?

How did my post look like anything as such? If anything, what I proposed is more complicated, yet still more streamlined.

Honestly, having 3 different assembler "tiers" while all other "assemblers" like chemical plants, furnaces, refineries etc. come with just a single "tier", all of them having different base crafting times ontop of that is just annoying and add very little to the game.

There is still "progress" when you unlock new type of "assembler" when you unlock chem plant, centrifuge or so. But when it comes to ordinary assemblers, unlocking another "tier" of the same thing (just a bit faster) is barely a "progress" or any meningful value for the game experience in my opinion.

[Rythe]

Because I have a feeling, and it'd be helpful to understand the problem Factorio is having here...

Assembling Machine tiers are puzzle tiers. Gray tier vs Blue vs Green. The ingredient limits tied to color tied to tech level told both the player and Wube what level of puzzle complexity they were dealing with. Smelters are Tier 0 where Assembling Machine 1 is Gray Tier 1.

The problem is that the player starts with Blue Tier puzzles and tech, that the player needs to jump into Blue Tier stuff immediately. Which is another way of saying that Wube didn't manage to balance and flesh out the Gray Tier 1 experience for new players. That awkward first 30-1hr that veteran players rush past is a result of this. Which is another way of saying that the ingredient limits were also a way to tell/force Wube to keep initial puzzles simple and it didn't quite work.

Again, the mining axe and upgrades are part of the Tier 0 and Gray Tier 1 experience, which is a lot about giving you an initial feeling of roughness and hardship when trying to carve your home base out of the environment. There probably isn't quite enough to the Gray Tier 1 experience (biters are effectively programmed to stay away until Tier 2 or 3) and the player is forced to skip into the Blue Tier 2 experience as fast as possible to just build out the basics like mining facilities and electric inserters. Coal powered inserters and burner drill are in a weird space of being 0 Tier and Gray Tier, with needing a Blue Tier AM to even automate construction of burner drills. That you need electricity (Blue Tier) to do basic research for Gray Tier stuff is also a problem.

Early player experience is a mess for forcing the players into Blue Tier immediately which is why 0 Tier and Gray Tier related feel pointless to most. The complaint about the pistol being worthless is this very thing.

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And yep, I was right. Chem plants are Tier 2.5, Blue+.