Friday Facts #275 - 0.17 Science changes

[SuperSandro2000]

I guess it's time for another anurism.

Not only are you renaming the science packs, breaking every mod that adds technology, but you're also using the name "Logistic science pack" which will cause a lot of confusion with the pink Logistic science pack added in Bob's mods for end-game (Production level and up) logistic research.

The genius of Wube is that Logistics Science has nothing to do with logistics and Chemical Science has nothing to do with chemistry. Trying to figure out what the words mean is an exciting new layer of puzzle solving.

Hi Tech is renamed Utility Science so that newbies will think it comes first. And then they get to wait hours for Yellow Science for logistics chests and personal roboports because Wube hates the idea of anyone starting yet another boring mine with a few clicks when they can do it with a thousand.

This is, after all, a game about using magical beacons and thundering herds of trains to defeat engineering and automation and logic and modders.

I agree with you both. Utility science pack is as good as yellow science pack.
I would suggest just renaming them to their colors. It would force people to lock up for what they are used and almost all techs use the lower tier science bottles, too.
"Why do I need the logistic science pack for military?"
"Why do I need the chemics science pack for blue belts?"
"Why does the power armor use logistic science?"
It makes no sense and dare to change techs to only require one science pack. Just rename them to their colors and no order would be forced except that you can't build the stuff they are made out off. Then you look it up and realize that you first need something else.

[MatHack]

I do like most of the announced changes, but here are some comments I have.

Pipes in Logistics science packs
I'd say no. The first builds/items you craft already require a lot more iron than copper, that will make it even more skewed towards iron.

Military science packs
Being able to play a peaceful game without biters and the need for Military science packs sounds great in theory, but... Won't you still need Military science packs for the Modular/Power Armor technologies. IMO those armors + equipment are rather necessary for the mid/late/end game, even when playing without biters. I highly doubt you will remove the Military science packs from those technologies, and IMO you shouldn't.
I also agree with some of the others that the rocket silo without Military science packs feels wrong. So all-in-all I'd say: restore the Military science packs as a requirement for the Rocket Silo technology.

Chemical science packs
As others commented the 24s crafttime feels really weird compared to the other science craft times.

Rocket silo
Launching a rocket without payload as a victory condition seems counterintuitive and not usability friendly. I'd suggest having a payload as a requirement before being able to launch the rocket. Having the Rocket Silo always work the same way (put something in the rocket) is easier to understand. It also prevents players from accidentally launching an empty rocket after they've won the game.

Military upgrade technologies
I find it hard to react to these without first seeing how they are gonna work in-game. The ideas sound good in theory, but now I would want to see how they work out in practice first.

[Vonriel]

Y'all left it 'Hi tech' in your spreadsheet of base material costs, despite using the new names for the others.

Also, I now have a new hobby: Laughing at people calling beacons "magic" even as they somehow hand-craft electric circuits that they then use to hand-craft fully functional six-axis robots. Let's not even get into the nonsense that is assembling machines, which are a 3x3 that can have various resources pumped in to any of 8 potential different locations and still not only work perfectly fine but requires nothing more than a sternly worded "Now you're going to produce this belt for the next 10000 years and I want no complaints from you!" in order to magically have it function perfectly for the rest of time.

You sure do pick some strange hills to die on.

[Zaflis]

The satellite is unlocked with the Space science pack technology and its only purpose is obtaining these science packs.

How does that work? Something like you get say 500 space science packs for launching without satellite, but 1000 with satellite? Because you need them to research the satellite tech to be able to put one in...

It might also be good to have the rocket's "cargo hold" slot visible from the beginning while it's still being built.

[Aardwolf]

I love it! New science reqs means new gameplay

Why have recipes produce 2x and 3x science packs? Why not make 1x pack but the research cost 2x or 3x cheaper? Seems more straightforward than recipes producing multiples

Edit: I mean, same resource cost but produce 1x. So double or triple cost per pack, but science research cost half or third amount of science packs, so end result same but no awkward 2x and 3x recipe outputs.

It just seems an unnecessary extra multiplier factor to use in your head when computing research cost from resources that can be avoided. I have nothing against other multi output recipes like bullets.

Just a suggestion, still awesome plan as-is, looking forward to 0.17!!

[pleegwat]

I love it! New science reqs means new gameplay

Why have recipes produce 2x and 3x science packs? Why not make 1x pack but the research cost 2x or 3x cheaper? Seems more straightforward than recipes producing multiples

Because it would lead to things like production packs costing (among other things) a third of an electric smelter.

[Aardwolf]

I love it! New science reqs means new gameplay

Why have recipes produce 2x and 3x science packs? Why not make 1x pack but the research cost 2x or 3x cheaper? Seems more straightforward than recipes producing multiples

Because it would lead to things like production packs costing (among other things) a third of an electric smelter.

It wouldn't, please see my clarifying edit above

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

If you play without productivity modules then you are deliberately restricting yourself.

If we play without modules and beacons it's because we want to play an engineering sim rather than a magic game.

Beacons especially should be relegated to mods and the sim rebalanced without them.

I agree 100% on the beacons making no sense. I never use them. I do use modules, because you can have machines with 'upgraded' tech in them.

Rocket silo
Launching a rocket without payload as a victory condition seems counterintuitive and not usability friendly. I'd suggest having a payload as a requirement before being able to launch the rocket. Having the Rocket Silo always work the same way (put something in the rocket) is easier to understand. It also prevents players from accidentally launching an empty rocket after they've won the game.

That indeed seems to be most logical. Maybe you can launch a rocket with different types of items where each item gives different results. E.g., an iron plate gives 1 science pack, while a satellite gives 1000 science packs.

[featherwinglove]

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).

What the heck are rails doing in the production science pack at all? It seems very much out of character as rails are a logistic-related item. I'd say if it gets a third ingredient at all, it should be three AM2s, one for each pack.

[Ferlonas]

The satellite is unlocked with the Space science pack technology and its only purpose is obtaining these science packs.

How does that work? Something like you get say 500 space science packs for launching without satellite, but 1000 with satellite? Because you need them to research the satellite tech to be able to put one in...

It might also be good to have the rocket's "cargo hold" slot visible from the beginning while it's still being built.

It's unlocked with the space science pack technology (in the tree), which requires everything up to yellow. It does not require space science. Look for the technology tree in the FFF, it shows the rocket and its follow-up, the space science pack.

Y'all left it 'Hi tech' in your spreadsheet of base material costs, despite using the new names for the others.

Also, I now have a new hobby: Laughing at people calling beacons "magic" even as they somehow hand-craft electric circuits that they then use to hand-craft fully functional six-axis robots. Let's not even get into the nonsense that is assembling machines, which are a 3x3 that can have various resources pumped in to any of 8 potential different locations and still not only work perfectly fine but requires nothing more than a sternly worded "Now you're going to produce this belt for the next 10000 years and I want no complaints from you!" in order to magically have it function perfectly for the rest of time.

You sure do pick some strange hills to die on.

Laughing at other people is rarely a good hobby, and announcing thus does not make people take you more serious. Putting that aside though, it's simple:
Apart from the ridiculously fast hand-crafting speed (or the slow assembling machines), it is in theory possible to hand-craft a fully functional robot. It takes time and effort, but it is entirely possible.
On the other hand, everything you produce will take up a certain amount of raw materials. Beacons are "magic" because they somehow give you stuff without you having to pay for those materials. With iron plates and so on, that makes sense (perhaps you only need 90% of a plate, so the rest is waste, but in this case will be used for later stuff), but with circuits for example? How do you use 90% of a fully assembled circuit board? Even better, how do you assemble 9 times the remaining 10% to add up to another 90%? (numbers pulled out of some biter's remains)
I'm not saying I want beacons removed, I like that effect, but saying you can't craft something by hand just because it's complex is far from reality. It's just totally inefficient.

Regards
Ferlonas

[jodokus31]

Overall it sounds good.

a bit questionable for me is: Personal roboport requires yellow science.
Of course, you can use a stationary roboport instead, but the personal roboport helps with differents task like mobile construction, more control, etc.
I think blue science requirement was better, maybe even late green science

On the other hand, it wasn't just very usefull until fusion reactor, which is also yellow science... But at least, its a bit faster and helps with planning

[Shanman]

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).

What the heck are rails doing in the production science pack at all? It seems very much out of character as rails are a logistic-related item. I'd say if it gets a third ingredient at all, it should be three AM2s, one for each pack.

The goal isn't necessarily to tie the pack name to the things that make up the pack. (Do low density structures provide some kind of "utility"? How are red circuits connected to "chemistry"?) It's more related to game objectives of that time. The post gave some good explanations for why they wanted certain ingredients in the science packs and not others - I think taking issue with those explanations is fine, but the thematic element is secondary to the goal of "we want players to be considering these objects/using these ideas by this point in the game".

[m44v]

Infinite research is mostly military upgrades, so except for production upgrades they lose their appeal very quickly once bitters reach their evolution cap. V453000's Gridlock map really highlights this as he really didn't take any of the space science upgrades and his outposts are just defended by lazily build line of laser turrets (you have to load his game for see that, since there are no screenshots of the defensive lines, obviously because it wasn't interesting to look at). And that's it, that's just what is needed for keep bitters at bay.
Adding an infinite evolution difficulty level (that continuously increases bitter's stats) would help to give utility to infinite research.

Also I want to echo the concern that some people made that since uranium isn't used in science then there aren't enough sinks for it, although maybe is just that uranium is too abundant with the current map generator.

In any case, I think the changes shown in this FFF are an improvement over the current state.

[pleegwat]

If uranium needs a sink, then I think it's primarily the depleted version that does.

[Shanman]

If uranium needs a sink, then I think it's primarily the depleted version that does.

Agreed, either the depleted version or just the ore itself taking on more uses. (Similarly to iron ore in concrete.) I'm sure if the game was under development for much longer, these things would find uses, but it doesn't look particularly likely for 0.17.

[Avezo]

If you need an idea for a research that requires ALL science packs, make it a 'map reveal' module. You research it, you gain access to a single item that will reveal a part of the map on demand. It will satisfy people needing stressed science pack consumption.

[roothorick]

But I do not like the Idea of having all 6 ingredients slots free in assembling machine.

In the FFF that brought it up, pretty much the entire community spoke out against it and Wube seemed to simply ignore the outcry. It's definitely a strange outlier for a team that's at least been transparent and interacted with the community on everything.

I also want to see this reconsidered. It seems arbitrary at times but makes for a straightforward and intuitive approximation for recipes of different complexities requiring more complicated machines. Between AM1 and AM2 players have the choice of trading lower initial construction costs for more complicated ratios and taking up more space, which is a legitimate tradeoff that early in the game. AM3s become worth it at the stage they come in due to module slots, but only if you know to use modules, which aren't really introduced correctly IMO. Putting PM1s in production science will probably fix this, though.

I could see an argument for eliminating the AM2 and making the AM1 do up to three ingredients. Currently you can do all science with AM2 alone (and the 0.17 recipes would not change this even with the ingredient limits in place), which makes the AM3 only attractive if you're going to pair them with modules. AM1 doing three ingredients lets it do up to blue science at the very least (including gray science), but you'll need AM3 for purple and yellow (and the research requirements would be lowered accordingly). The speed jump is much more attractive as well. This encourages building automation for speed modules and the assembler itself.

There's something to be said for not changing too much at once though.

[Filias]

I am usually playing rail world with low resources and yellow requirement for personal roboport is really absurd. You need large amount of resources for steady flow of blue circuits. And building rail network without personal roboport is really boring and tedious work. Game would be 40% less fun. You really hates flying robots. Aren't you?

Using more stone for research is good, but for basic tech (military) it is not. Especially if you have only small amount of stone generated near you.

I am also fan of using nuclear for some research. With cheap and effective solar panels and batteries I am using nuclear only for radioactive bullets.

[Grynet]

If you need an idea for a research that requires ALL science packs, make it a 'map reveal' module. You research it, you gain access to a single item that will reveal a part of the map on demand. It will satisfy people needing stressed science pack consumption.

Imaging satellites, they could reduce the need for walking around plopping down radars to explore new areas for resources.

[ZombieMooose]

Looking at the screenshot can we have a way of turning off health displays of enemies? I'd love a clean screenshot ability.

Everything sounds great.