Friday Facts #275 - 0.17 Science changes

[Strix]

Tech balance looks nice, my only remark is regarding rocket launch.

I feel there should be something inside the rocket, launching rocket for rocket itself does not make much sense, rockets usually carry something.

1. leave victory conditions as is and add red text somewhere around launch button that rocket is empty, or confirm dialog on empty launch.
2. Have something to put in the rocket.
   1. For example communication satellite for win - from already researched materials like advanced circuits and stuff, but without space science.
   2. OR science satellite for science packs AND win.

The only issue I see for b.1 is that it adds one extra item (that needs graphics, recipe etc) which has exactly 1 and only 1 time purpose which not everyone is even going to use.

[nosports]

So as i look at things, the rocket surface out of thin air then...

as i currently see it the rocket is just a beefed up version of the missle, so no problem if its attached to the military branch of research....

i would suggest to use the flamm-able as prerequisite for the rocket-silo and rename it to repulsion-tech so that the meaning is somewhat clearer
(also a changed picture would be more informative if it shows a missle-flame instead a burning barrel )

[nosports]

Grenade stays as it’s a very useful weapon against large groups of enemies, like biters or trees.

Yeah, those fearsome trees, our worst enemy... I prefer Flamethrowers, nothing is as satisfying as seeing a giant forest burn to ashes.

The only thing I would disagree with here are the productivity modules for production packs: All the other things are going to be used sooner or later, but it is very well possible to never use prod modules, so this feels like you are trying to force us to use them(especially Level 1, which I never saw used anywhere).

The thing is, using a thing in a science pack isn't really forcing you to do anything, just hinting that it might be a good idea. If you play without productivity modules then you are deliberately restricting yourself.

So i do at least without any beacons, because i see them als a very in-game-ceating-device
Moduls at least are somewhat other because they are needed in the prodcutions and they have thier drawbacks, but i used them only very choosen in my map

We need defenitely achievements for this hard gaming

[MrGrim]

I'll shed a tear as I throw away the low and high tech 120 sci/s blueprints I just made, but it's fine.

I have but one request. Please make at least one infinite research require all of the science packs. It would be nice to have something to stress large bases that do bother to make the military packs in high volume.

[psihius]

I have but one request. Please make at least one infinite research require all of the science packs. It would be nice to have something to stress large bases that do bother to make the military packs in high volume.

Second this. It was pretty annoying during Clusterio event not having military science being used during late game stage and switching to some military research hi-tech I believe was not used or something like that.

[Sir3n]

Military upgrade technologies...
"Stronger explosives - Grenades, Rockets, Land mines "

What do you think about adding Cliff explosives to the list?
Would that deviate from the goal of the Military Science Pack?

[Mernom]

Military upgrade technologies...
"Stronger explosives - Grenades, Rockets, Land mines "

What do you think about adding Cliff explosives to the list?
Would that deviate from the goal of the Military Science Pack?

Cliff explosives are not a weapon at all IIRC. They don't have any damage statistics to boost.

[GhostPirate]

Re: Win condition

I think we should be able to enter the rocket silo as a vehicle and launch ourselves to space. Isn't that the whole point of the game? You're an engineer stranded on a foreign planet - build a rocket to go home!

Upon launching yourself into orbit and getting the victory screen, you'd be given a choice: Leave orbit and fly your rocket home = Save and exit, or return to the planet = continue.

This way, staying on the planet feels like a conscious choice the player has made, and they enter the "endgame" of launching satellites to gather space science and further learn more about the planet they're on.

[AntiElitz]

First of all, good work! I really like these changes! And that means actually a lot, since i never liked the science before ever lol.

Ofc I still have some complaints anyways
1.) As thue already said I also was surprised the blue science crafting time wasn't adjusted to tier 2 science - i’d suggest like 16s? it should be the same for military and blue science anyways, and black science really misses some additional assemblers in its chain, so a slower crafting time seems fine for the final craft.
2.) Purple science is now very steel heavy, using 25 steel per 3. However i still like the recipe. Map gen may require every more iron boosted balance now - i don't know any solution to it tho, seems fine
3.) Purple science is MUCH easier than Yellow from a complexity view - Taking away the red engines which are the most complex part due to the addition spaghetti with the lube, now the difficult recipes of blue chip and bots are both is utility science. - I think this is fine tho, but it definitely fails to offer alternative routing imo.
4.) Removing Black science from the silo is an odd choice imo. it makes black science pretty much useless now and required in very few numbers only. Taking into account the science also got less costly, most people will barely ever need more than 1 assembler of each in its production chain. If you want to end the game, you should master the production of ALL the sciences IMO.
5.) I liked the Idea of the escape pod a lot and I found that a good solution to end the game. With it being abandoned, I cannot really understand the removal of the satellite from its prerequisites. If you are worried about people launching a rocket without a satellite, you can still show the cargo slot while building the rocket and warn the player with a massage when he tries to launch the rocket without any cargo first, if he really plans to do that and it won't win him the game. It reduced complexity where it is not needed IMO

[Sir3n]

Cliff explosives are not a weapon at all IIRC. They don't have any damage statistics to boost.

I was thinking more along the lines of boosting up its radius. With a few clicks you can clear off a whole screen of cliffs.

It's more of a request for convenience and I know it does clash with the overall direction the military pack is going in.

At the very least, some way to up the radius for cliff explosives would be nice because I tend to use cliff explosives myself rather than command robots to do it.

[Merssedes]

I'm little confused by the following: according to picture we will not need military SP for rocket, but we will need it for satellites. Why?..

[Artman40]

The thing is, it would be nice if you could somehow use pretty much every item to enhance the amount of science you can get out of the pack, perhaps in some special enhancement building or advanced science lab.

My idea is that every item (maybe except the most raw resources) would have some sort of value and science associated with it. For an example, red underground belt or filter inserter would increase the amount of science that logistic science packs make or pumpjacks could be used to increased the science production science packs make. The purpose of enhancing the science pack would be that it would require less law resources per science pack. To produce the science pack, you'd still need the proposed base ingredients, though.

Making sure that the amount of different items reaching the place to enhance the science makes your factory much more complex but in the end it would save tons of resources. This would be something that doesn't affect new players (as extra ingredients are not required) but is great for experienced players as it increases the skill ceiling and makes them mass-produce items they normally wouldn't produce.

[Ferlonas]

I like the changes overall, but I'm not a fan of the amount of rails needed for production science (just as I'm not with the copper cables right now for high-tech science). This is mainly for logistic reasons: With the other science packs, I can put in a few blue belts, perhaps some of them shared between resources, that are used roughly in roughly the same amount.

However, if one ingredient has a count of 30, I need almost a full blue belt of that ingredient alone, while the rest of the ingredients combined only need 15% of a yellow belt's throughput. It feels wrong, and in my opinion it doesn't look nice either. Sure, there is a number of ways that I can work around this in a megafactory (e.g. feed in 20 blue belts of rails, and one half belt each of furnaces and productivity modules, then split that up between 20 production lines), but I don't think that is a real challenge logistic-wise, and won't look nice either.

So the obvious solution would be to supply all of it with bots. And here we are at the bot vs belt discussion again, in which the bots win this time, simply because: they have no throughput limitation per se. I don't care if it's 8 bots delivering rails and 2 bots delivering furnaces and modules. I can build a nice-looking factory block and produce everything close by in the correct ratios.

Regards
Ferlonas

You can just use direct insertion and be fine with it, don't need bots.

I assume I am wrong, but with this comment of yours, I can't help but feel as if you're making fun of me.
Me: "I have one ingredient using a blue belt and the others using 20% of a yellow belt combined" (ratio of 15:1 for the lazy)
You: "Here, use direct insertion. Then you only need one and a half blue belts to deliver the ingredients for your ingredient" (ratio of 22.5:1)

I could create the iron sticks for direct insertion as well though, which would reduce the ratio "drastically" to 35.357142857:2 (17.68:1).

So unless my calculations are seriously wrong, then even with your suggestion of direct insertion, the only thing I'm doing is _increasing_ the amount of resources I need.

I'd like to remind you that rails do not benefit from productivity, so I don't see how that solves the issue (that being that there's a ridiculous difference in materials needed). If you really want to make this recipe more expensive or something, why do you hesitate to introduce a new component intermediate material (like you did with engines) to require the appropriate amount? Would that be so absurd?

Additionally science packs take a long time to craft so you don't need 30/s for a long time.

That's not the point.

Creating 4 production science per second requires 1.3/s electric furnace, 1.3/s productivity modules, and a full blue belt, 40/s, of rails.

This exactly! And 4/s is not as much as some people may want you to believe.

Regards
Ferlonas

[SuperSandro2000]

Additionally science packs take a long time to craft so you don't need 30/s for a long time.

That's not the point.

Creating 4 production science per second requires 1.3/s electric furnace, 1.3/s productivity modules, and a full blue belt, 40/s, of rails.

Variety is generally interesting I believe. For example the Chemical science pack also has x3 x2 x1 so yes it won't be 1-1-1 belts for input, if you're consuming the whole belt. 4 science per second is 240 per minute, that's still quite a lot.

to be honest that not very much. After a bit of thinking I need to agree with him and would change it to maybe 12 rails or so.

[melind]

I thought I might have caught a change to how you are handing bullet damage upgrades, but right now there is a gap in ammunition between piercing and uranium ammunition.

Piercing ammunition does 8 physical which means it becomes effectively obsolete once big biters with 8 physical resistance show up (the amount of ammo you will chew through to take down a big biter is crazy). In a normal game this isn't too big of a deal since you can switch to lasers, but in the more difficult game settings this may not really be available.

I think either uranium ammunition should be made easier to get (easy unlock after uranium mining). Or probably introduce a new mid-late game ammo for turrets with 12-16 base damage. Or change research to allow piercing ammo to take down big biters with less bullets.

[gyorokpeter]

If you are going to call the first two science packs "Automation" and "Logistics", consider how this affects the new player experience together with the Automation and Logistics research. Automation 1/2 only requires Automation science packs, which makes sense, but then there is Logistics 1 which doesn't require Logistics science packs, while Logistics 2 does. This could cause some confusion for players who see the tech tree and science packs for the first time.

[someone1337]

This will be AWESOME!
Finally a useful usecase for stone.
Finally some bigger changes, forcing me to rework more than just a few of my blueprints.

gogogo, push some unstable build!
I cant wait! :3

Just one thing: maybe make koverex enrichment research way more expensive/late-late-game? (nukes research cheaper, kovarex research more expensive)
You dont need kovarex anyway for power generation ... you only need it, once you go for nukes. So why not make it a "super late game" tech, like the nukes?
I usually run up to 2 GW (2*8 reactor smart-nuclear plants; max: 2*1.1 GW), before having tooo many dark-green uranium chests so I finally start researching kovarex...

[Blacky007]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-275

can you make a table that compare Steel 0.16 and 0.17 use?
I think that I need to double the amount of steel

btw. I'am running a 5000 sience/min base.

[Avezo]

Whoa, so much to comment:

- I really like how you made stone more important now.

- 'Batteries feel quite low tier - if you want early laser turrets, robots or accumulators, it’s usually the first oil product you make.' Is completely not true in my experience, you get plastic set-up first to get red circuits to get advanced oil processing. In fact, I think batteries have one of the most convoluted production chain in the game - oil to petrol gas to sulfur (+water) to acid (+water) to batteries - all that at the very start is fast and easy? I don't think so.

- Recipe change to blue/chemical science pack makes it actually even more not-smooth to produce, the biggest obstacle to set it up in early game was that it needed oil processing set up to get plastic to get red circuits, now with solid fuel it needs even more oil processing, which makes it even a greater step up than it was before, it's not smoother at all.

- Those new names make little sense if you still have to use i.e. 'chemical' science pack for a technology that have next to nothing 'chemical' in it (at least compared to oil processing, chemical plants, sulfur processing etc), like beacons, bot capacity, logistic network. If you are giving a name to something, it should do what it means, not be just a filler tech in later technologies.

- I personally don't like having 'buildings' in recipes (like electric furnaces or walls), if I need them, I usually just put separate assemblers outside the science pack parts of the factory and rarely ever use those that are meant for science packs only. That way of encouraging automating their production does not work on me. Instead, I would like having more intermediate products in science recipes - I think it would actually help with factory expansion more - it would force players to have proper delivery system, which makes further expansion smoother and encourages automating production of ALL recipes, not just those needed for science packs, thanks to having all the ingredients already delivered nearby.

- I also REALLY think you should consider using fluids as ingredients in science packs, reasoning as above - encouraging player to have proper delivery system, plus I just think it would be more interesting. I.e. Instead of using solid fuel in blue/chemical recipe, make it just use petrol gas? Easier to set up than red circuits, so maybe replace red circuits with just greens, or pipes? Yeah, pipes would make sense, it's 'chemical' science pack after all.

- Less related to science packs, but I remember how few patches ago you wanted players to have construction bots earlier in the game. Now seeing your approach to batteries, I can understand why it didn't work. Batteries and thus robot frames are not something to get easily in early game. Since robot frames are now part of science packs, I doubt they will be ever removed (so construction bots could be crafted directly from engines and green circuits). Or maybe consider making construction robots part of the recipe? Anyway, if robot frames are here to stay, it would make sense that combat robots also had them in their recipes.

- Huge costs of yellow/utility science packs was coming mainly from copper wires, no? Given how annoying they are it would be a good time to rebalance them and since you wanted to make blue/chemical science packs easier to get, maybe remove them from red circuit recipe to make setting red circuits up easier?

-------

Hope I'm not sounding negative, I'm really happy you are making changes! Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!!

[xale]

As I see it there's a couple of big differences between the previous requirement of copper cable and the new requirement of rails.

1. Copper cable had 1 plate -> 2 products while rail have 3 plate/raw -> 2 products. Additionally rails are not an intermediate product and can thus not be boosted by productivity bonus.

2. I don't like having to use stone (a raw resource) as input to science (in such great quantities) as it never get any productivity bonus and doesn't keep the feeling of always using a more advanced resource for the next level of pack.

PS. I never really liked the use of coal in recipes either and this would but stone in the same situation. Neither of them require any treatment before it is used which makes them a bit boring to work with. And large factories needs to centralize collection to balance up the usage.

PPS. I liked the other changes though and it feels a bit thought through then before