Friday Facts #282 - 0.17 in sight

[spinba11]

What decision was made about smelting speed?

[Acacel]

Great news to see 0.17 coming

...
Great. This probably means the 0.16 generator is in as a game option too, right? If not, count me in as one who would like that to happen. It is an interesting variation, especially for train network building without using landfill.

the landmass itself was quite interesting, with the new and better ore placement I also would like it to see that there is an optin to start a world with the old gen

[BlueTemplar]

I played for hundreds of hours and never thought about the great idea of allocating inventory space.... or realised that it was possible/to try it
I feel so stupid now

Don't. The lack of it in chests makes it seem like a trains-only thing.

PS can we have item slot filtering in chests?

Vehicle-only thing - cars and tanks have it too.

[5thHorseman]

I played for hundreds of hours and never thought about the great idea of allocating inventory space.... or realised that it was possible/to try it
I feel so stupid now

Don't. The lack of it in chests makes it seem like a trains-only thing.

PS can we have item slot filtering in chests?

Vehicle-only thing - cars and tanks have it too.

Huh. I never even thought to try it on a car or tank. I've wanted it in chests since I learned it was in trains though.

I wonder if there's some tiny UPS hit that isn't a big deal on vehicles because there are so few of them, but would be on chests.

Or maybe they just don't love us. Yeah. That's probably it.

(insert meme of the sad bear)

[Filias]

Sorry if it was in some previous Friday Facts. But will have new version better map generator? I have map with iron and copper sets on "very low", but presence of iron on map is much bigger.

[ledow]

Huh. I never even thought to try it on a car or train. I've wanted it in chests since I learned it was in trains though.

I always mark the cargo wagons of trains with filtered spaces. That way, it helps stop contamination of the lines, and if it should accidentally stop at some other station it won't fill up with junk.

Though you can do similar with filter inserters, it's much easier and cheaper to just do it to the wagon in the first place. Then you can change your stops as you see fit (I often change stops with expired resources to be generic collection points for anything nearby... that way I don't have to re-run track, just rename the stop and a "junk" train comes along and takes anything that might be in there).

I can't tell you the number of times I've sent a train to the wrong stop, failed to change all the trains' stops, or manually driven a train (to refuel it, for example) and it's started to load up with something completely wrong - and before you know it, it's zooming back to base to unload or it's full of junk and can't do its job. It can be a mess to sort out from there if you don't filter your wagons.

Also handy when you want to have a train that both collects uranium in the first wagon and delivers sulfuric in the second, for example. You can then have a refuel-only train that does nothing with its first wagon (filtered so it never puts anything in it) but just delivers sulfuric to all the places it's needed, without having to have secondary stops.

[bobucles]

can't tell you the number of times I've sent a train to the wrong stop, failed to change all the trains' stops, or manually driven a train (to refuel it, for example) and it's started to load up with something completely wrong - and before you know it, it's zooming back to base to unload or it's full of junk and can't do its job. It can be a mess to sort out from there if you don't filter your wagons.

With custom train taxi coming up, that sounds like a situation which will happen ALL THE TIME. Grab a random train, set a random destination, and suddenly copper ore is flowing through your steel base.
Will trains lock their inventory while they're performing taxi logic?

[meganothing]

I always mark the cargo wagons of trains with filtered spaces. That way, it helps stop contamination of the lines, and if it should accidentally stop at some other station it won't fill up with junk.

Is there a way to do that in one stroke? I did not find a way other than doing it cell by cell and obviously that is too much work.

With custom train taxi coming up, that sounds like a situation which will happen ALL THE TIME. Grab a random train, set a random destination, and suddenly copper ore is flowing through your steel base.
Will trains lock their inventory while they're performing taxi logic?

Even if not, just don't ever use train stops as taxi destination and you're good. Directly before the first inserter of a station should be totally safe

[Neandertal]

Everything sounds great to me.

Would it possible to have options to link bites to "biomes" or one of the humidity/terrain type settings. I think it would be sweet to play in games where the biters are only in the dessert of only on the grasslands.

[bobucles]

Even if not, just don't ever use train stops as taxi destination and you're good. Directly before the first inserter of a station should be totally safe

Player diligence works in single player but is not multiplayer safe. Trains already have locking behavior on automatic. If they want to move but are halted, the inventory stays locked. Taxi is a form of automatic mode so it shouldn't be too hard to have matching behavior.

[5thHorseman]

Huh. I never even thought to try it on a car or train. I've wanted it in chests since I learned it was in trains though.

I always mark the cargo wagons of trains with filtered spaces. That way, it helps stop contamination of the lines, and if it should accidentally stop at some other station it won't fill up with junk.

I actually do this too. I totally had the worst braino* up there and totally ruined my own sentence. I meant to say "Huh. I never even thought to try it on a car or tank. I've wanted it in chests since I learned it was in trains though."

*Braino: A typo, but made by your brain and not your fingers.

[ledow]

I always mark the cargo wagons of trains with filtered spaces. That way, it helps stop contamination of the lines, and if it should accidentally stop at some other station it won't fill up with junk.

Is there a way to do that in one stroke? I did not find a way other than doing it cell by cell and obviously that is too much work.

I tend to pick up a handful of whatever I want to filter and then (is it right-)click all the boxes in the wagon. Still not fast, but a damn sight quicker than choosing from filter lists.

And then, obviously, copy/paste from wagons with the same filters for all subsequent wagons.

[OBXandos]

yeah I assumed thats what the original graphics were trying to do - show that they are connected in a grid.

Now I am wondering why we don't have Tesla Coils for defense. I feel like that could be a unique turret type. Arcing AoE and more of them combined could chain together for more damage. They could be overwhelmed lots of small biters but would work great against larger biters or medium sized groups. Not to mention the inordinate amount of stress it would put on the electric grid. Sounds like some decent trade offs for decent benefits.

Can't wait for 0.17!

[Mashtorio]

Are blueprints and blueprint books automatically synced as individual files/directories from and to the disk?
Then I could init a Git repository there and version control all my blueprints...

They are not (just blueprint.dat). What you say makes sense, but I'm not sure what to do with that A super-user option to keep blueprints in directory structure instead of a file? Well, i believe, that just making backups of the file is enough for the typical geek.

That would be great !
I'm sure that people with lots of blueprints would love you if you implemented that.

And with an image showing the blueprint ! (Using the mods that it was created with.)

(I have no idea about the potential performance issues of course...)

I am interested in this as well.

I have had situations occur where I made a change to a blueprint that turned out to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad change, but by that point I'd made enough changes to other blueprints that simply rolling back was a logistical nightmare. To that end, my current process is to meticulously organize and track my blueprints by making changes to the blueprint and then exporting the blueprint string and adding/updating files containing those strings in my GitHub repo.

Modifying how blueprints (and blueprint books) are stored would would simplify this process for me (and others, it seems) greatly.

[Rammix]

Loving the development ways of Factorio.

off topic

Is it just my imagination or Factorio is acquiring more and more similarities to the first StarCraft?
Would love to play StarCraft on Factorio map, though.
Or a symbiosis of both games taking landscape+automation from Factorio and unit controls + fight mechanics from StarCraft.

[BlueTemplar]

Loving the development ways of Factorio.

off topic

Is it just my imagination or Factorio is acquiring more and more similarities to the first StarCraft?
Would love to play StarCraft on Factorio map, though.
Or a symbiosis of both games taking landscape+automation from Factorio and unit controls + fight mechanics from StarCraft.

off-er topic

https://www.teamliquid.net/forum/games/ ... r-of-bwapi
EDIT : https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/01/ ... mpetition/

(EDITED)

[Inverness]

Are blueprints and blueprint books automatically synced as individual files/directories from and to the disk?
Then I could init a Git repository there and version control all my blueprints...

They are not (just blueprint.dat). What you say makes sense, but I'm not sure what to do with that A super-user option to keep blueprints in directory structure instead of a file? Well, i believe, that just making backups of the file is enough for the typical geek.

Does it need to be a super-user option?

It makes sense to me to keep blueprints as individual JSON files so they can be both easily backed up and shared between users.

[Trainwreck]

So what's the story with sand-4? My 0.16.51 installation has a couple of files in data/base/graphics/terrain named sand-4.png and hr-sand-4.png. These aren't referenced anywhere in the base game lua prototypes. From the above image it looks like they won't be in 0.17 either.

[Zaflis]

What is going to happen to existing 0.16 maps during the upgrade? Will these keep using the old noise function after upgrade, and generate new chunks which match the old ones, or will there be sudden transitions like we've seen in the past?

There will be sudden transitions like in the past.

So TOGoS messaged me the old maps will keep using 0.16 generator (with some tweaks), so there won't be so sudden transitions as in previous map generator updates.

You know, this would be big news if true. If people knew about it, we might keep playing our 0.16 saves right now. Can there be details on "some tweaks"?

[ABDUZEEDO]

An option to put the most spaced resources in the railworld mode.