Friday Facts #283 - Prepare to Launch

[lordaeron1]

States as on track to be released next week, What day is it?

[Nova]

You probably won't get anything certain from the devs as they don't even know for themself. Highest chance are tuesday or wednesday. It won't be friday, that's for sure.

[Avezo]

Even if just a bit of stuggle was moved ahead from first steps of refinery stage of the game, all the rest still piles up due to red circuits alone - NOT due to easily expandable fluid tanks filling up.

I honestly don't understand your complaint. I already have to set up oil processing to make blue science. The 0.17 changes just mean I am using more of my oil, and less of my iron. What, exactly, is the issue here?

Step up from green science to blue science was huge as mentioned in science changes FFF. It's even greater now because of even more oil processing needed.

[BlueTemplar]

So, during playtesting no issues were observed with much harder progressing into blue science?

I haven't tried the mod that changes the recipes for 0.16, but is 1 solid fuel and 0.5 advanced circuits really that "much harder" than 1 electric mining drill?

It is - it requires even more setting up of 'refinery' part of the factory, whereas old mining drills required just setting up more mining outposts. And you have to set up almost entire 'refinery' part from scratch at once for just blue science, whereas previously you'd be setting mining outposts gradually.

You can just make solid fuel from light oil. There is no other product that you could make from light oil, and cracking is unlocked later. Typically light oil is the one that usually deadlocks soonest without cracking as it is somewhat likely you will consume heavy for lubricant... So you are not making any extra refinery than you would need for the petroleum gas, you are just using light oil and delaying the deadlock.

Could you share to public playthrough of those 3 games mentioned in FFF? I can't see it being as smooth as you say. Even if just a bit of stuggle was moved ahead from first steps of refinery stage of the game, all the rest still piles up due to red circuits alone - NOT due to easily expandable fluid tanks filling up.

I've mentioned such issues before in the first 0.17 changes FFF, but apparently mining pick whiners were more important to get a reply than me (instead of plain ban for obvious offtopic), so I'm happy you've replied here at least.

I'm not sure what you mean by

And you have to set up almost entire 'refinery' part from scratch at once for just blue science, whereas previously you'd be setting mining outposts gradually.

?

The main issue for new players is the recipe complexity, not the throughput !

Electric mining drill replaced with Solid fuel, giving you a lot more buffer room to produce something before your refinery deadlocks when one of the three oils has no use. The player is also much more familiar with item storage compared to the newly learned fluids at this stage so it is much easier to handle the possible deadlock. In general it also means that you don't need to rush towards Advanced oil processing to unlock cracking as early, especially if you send some of your Solid fuel to burn in boilers.

The devs seem to consider that it will be easier on new players,
and the Green-Blue gap would be especially reduced if :

I have been considering to add 1x Pipe to the [Green Science] recipe to make getting to oil easier - if you have pipes automated, it’s so much simpler as you need a crazy number of them to build the refinery and even craft the items that the refinery consists of. Using it in a science pack recipe is not guaranteeing that the player will automate pipes and store them in a chest for later use, but it’s a step closer, or you can just pick up pipes from a belt if they back up and you need them. The ore price would be a little bit higher (+14%), and it would add a little more complexity in this science pack. Which might be a good thing if it makes Chemical science easier.

[V453000]

Even if just a bit of stuggle was moved ahead from first steps of refinery stage of the game, all the rest still piles up due to red circuits alone - NOT due to easily expandable fluid tanks filling up.

I honestly don't understand your complaint. I already have to set up oil processing to make blue science. The 0.17 changes just mean I am using more of my oil, and less of my iron. What, exactly, is the issue here?

Step up from green science to blue science was huge as mentioned in science changes FFF. It's even greater now because of even more oil processing needed.

There are many ways how to define the step between green and blue. Complexity and resource requirements for example.

Resource requirements are massively lower as the mining drill was very expensive and solid fuel costs only some oil.

Complexity is about the same as oil processing in general is the biggest problem.

As other people are trying to point out, the number of refineries you need to build is about the same, you just need to add a few chemical plants for solid fuel. How is that a problem or how is it a bigger step up than it used to? Learning to build a chemical plant has to happen with plastic anyway, and plastic is more complicated than solid fuel because it needs an input and the output has high throughput.

[Mathematician]

There are many ways how to define the step between green and blue. Complexity and resource requirements for example.

Or space.
Tight spot campaign; blue science mission:
Space required to setup electric mining drill is about 15% of the map while solid fuel requires just a chem. plant(s) going out of light oil storage tank (or better - replacing tank) and in worst case also belt separate from plactic.
Much less power consumption by the way.

[CDarklock]

Step up from green science to blue science was huge as mentioned in science changes FFF. It's even greater now because of even more oil processing needed.

Oh, okay.

So you would rather build an assembler to consume your limited iron with mining drills, instead of a chemical plant to supplement your limited coal with solid fuel.

That is an objectively bad decision.

The reasoning is left as an exercise for the reader.

[Serenity]

It's also a sink for oil products before you set up oil cracking. You can use combinators to make solid fuel from heavy oil or light oil depending on what is full. Not absolutely having to rush cracking right away is great

[lordaeron1]

You probably won't get anything certain from the devs as they don't even know for themself. Highest chance are tuesday or wednesday. It won't be friday, that's for sure.

I see, thanks.

[gaelyte]

Speaking of chests, why is their content destroyed when a chest s destroyed by a bitter ? I hardly see how they manage to destroy tousand stones with a few hits.

[Avezo]

Step up from green science to blue science was huge as mentioned in science changes FFF. It's even greater now because of even more oil processing needed.

So you would rather build an assembler to consume your limited iron with mining drills, instead of a chemical plant to supplement your limited coal with solid fuel.

Amount of resources is not limited and therefore supplying mining drill assembler was never that big of a problem. Complexity of whole oil-plastic-red circuits-blue science is.

Don't get me wrong - I think solid fuel in the recipe is a nice idea, but it should've replaced red circuits, not add ontop of them.

[CDarklock]

Amount of resources is not limited

You've never mined an entire iron patch?

I mean, maybe this is just an experience issue. I only have 200 hours in-game, but I've sure as hell stripped multiple iron patches down to the bare dirt and had to go hunting for more. And that process is no less difficult or dangerous than tracking down an oil field.

it should've replaced red circuits, not add ontop of them.

It replaced electric mining drills. Because you need to learn about oil now. You already know how mining drills work, it is time to step up and get on the next level. If you don't want to get on the next level, you should probably stop doing research.

[bobucles]

I think solid fuel in the recipe is a nice idea, but it should've replaced red circuits, not add ontop of them.

Solid fuel is a nice 1st recipe because it doesn't care about the flavor of oil. Any refinery output can be turned into solid fuel so there's no complicated balancing to worry about. As for red circuits I don't think it's a bad idea to push them back a bit more. After all the green science game is unbelievably HUGE. If you don't believe me then just pop open the tech tree:

f tech.jpg (655.7 KiB) Viewed 7015 times

Nearly half (if not more) of the game's content is wrapped up in green science! Fluids, trains, combinators, fancy belts, personal modules, factory modules, vehicles. I'm not even including the beefy green+military branch which is sort of tier 2.5. So much of the game is green science it's actually crazy. It may even be overwhelming. If you did absolutely everything possible within green tier before pushing forward, you would only need blue chips and rocket parts to finish the game. I totally wouldn't be against smoothing out the tier progression for it.

So what can we do? I suggest keeping the barrier for blue science very very low. Just simple products and solid fuel. Solid fuel is as simple as oil gets. In exchange, push everything that's more fancy than solid fuel into blue tier. Combinators can totally be pushed into an easy blue tier. Same with the majority of chemical processing and flight. Early game modular armor would be great if it didn't NEED batteries to function. Fix NV goggles to not require batteries and it'd be fine at green tier. Otherwise the full tech requirements of modules belong in blue tier.

Of course that'd push other tech back a bit as well. Power armor mk1 is totally fine for the entire main game. If the armor was 6x8 it'd be perfect. Mk2 is a level of overkill that gives players more power than they really need. It can be pushed to end game or even post game.

[CDarklock]

Nearly half (if not more) of the game's content is wrapped up in green science!

Maybe this is a whole different kind of problem, though: because you can do so much without blue science, you get overly comfortable with a factory that doesn't process oil. Perhaps what we actually need is for a bunch of red/green technology to start needing blue, so you have to go do the oil thing sooner, because you actually feel the pinch of not having it.

One of the core design principles I see in the FFF posts is the idea of pushing players beyond their comfort zone, so they move forward and make progress. I know I can sit in my base derping around with stuff way longer than I should, and then when I finally sigh and go out looking for oil, I've got more evolved biters that are harder to fight. It's clearly better to go secure the oil fields earlier, but if you're able to research for sixty hours with nothing more than green science because you have only one lab grinding miserably toward the goal... you might not bother.

[5thHorseman]

States as on track to be released next week, What day is it?

It's Sunday.

No clue what day they'll release though.

[BlueTemplar]

Don't get me wrong - I think solid fuel in the recipe is a nice idea, but it should've replaced red circuits, not add ontop of them.

There would be not much of a point in blue science then...

Nearly half (if not more) of the game's content is wrapped up in green science! Fluids, trains, combinators, fancy belts, personal modules, factory modules, vehicles. I'm not even including the beefy green+military branch which is sort of tier 2.5. So much of the game is green science it's actually crazy. It may even be overwhelming. If you did absolutely everything possible within green tier before pushing forward, you would only need blue chips and rocket parts to finish the game.

That's because "tier 2.5" is actually green with oil :
(I added the military techs.)

f tech 2.jpg (374.88 KiB) Viewed 6860 times

Maybe this is a whole different kind of problem, though: because you can do so much without blue science, you get overly comfortable with a factory that doesn't process oil. Perhaps what we actually need is for a bunch of red/green technology to start needing blue, so you have to go do the oil thing sooner, because you actually feel the pinch of not having it.

One of the core design principles I see in the FFF posts is the idea of pushing players beyond their comfort zone, so they move forward and make progress. I know I can sit in my base derping around with stuff way longer than I should, and then when I finally sigh and go out looking for oil, I've got more evolved biters that are harder to fight. It's clearly better to go secure the oil fields earlier, but if you're able to research for sixty hours with nothing more than green science because you have only one lab grinding miserably toward the goal... you might not bother.

As you can see, if you have a factory without oil, you miss on about half of green science.

This huge technological jump in green science from no oil to oil seems to evade most people though - perhaps there should be indeed an additional tier of science between green and blue ?
(requiring solid fuel, but not advanced circuits, like Avezo suggested)

Combinators can totally be pushed into an easy blue tier.

Please don't ! They should be available for most people, and early if they desire so, not locked behind oil !

[BlueTemplar]

Speaking of chests, why is their content destroyed when a chest s destroyed by a bitter ? I hardly see how they manage to destroy tousand stones with a few hits.

Because spilling thousands of items on the floor is messy, but especially, bad for performance !

[Simanova]

Is there a counter for official release time?

[Hanse00]

Is there a counter for official release time?

Nope.

The most exact time to count down to would be “probably next week”, so I guess you could say in a couple of hours, depending on time zone?

Anything beyond that would be pure speculation.

[Scherazade]

Prepare to Launch

I am prepared!