Friday Facts #283 - Prepare to Launch

[posila]

Everything looks great except for the belts affecting biters change. I agree it was buggy/belts were OP previously, but now belts do nothing, they're useless. You need to find a middle ground where the belts slow the biters significantly, but not as much as previously. Judging by the GIF the belts are now useless. You yourself acknowledged this is emergent gameplay and you've effectively removed it.

Belts move biters at the same rate as they move player character (as they should). There was a bug in biters' movement smoothing logic that made it almost impossible for them to walk against direction of belt movement.

There is also mechanic that belts can transport items around your factory, you should check it out, it is pretty neat alternative use of belts

[CDarklock]

I decide what stuff to unlock and when I unlock it.

No, you don't. You don't get sulfur before chem plants

We're done here. Buh-bye.

[bobucles]

There is also mechanic that belts can transport items around your factory, you should check it out, it is pretty neat alternative use of belts

That sounds dumb. There's a much better mechanic that belts can transport vehicles around your factory. But that's not important. The important thing is that the vehicles on the belt end up moving, but due to what can only be described as a bug they won't deal crash damage into the things they hit. This IMO is a grave oversight as it ruins the more pressing emergent gameplay of belting 50 ton tanks around belt mazes as a biter defense.

[spinba11]

On the subject of the tech tree, has anyone else noticed you can unlock the rockit silo without unlocking concrete despite the fact the silo needs concrete to build, as concrete research is very cheap I don’t think it’s worth changing

[Dry Hairy Tree]

"That sounds dumb.. ..as it ruins the more pressing emergent gameplay of belting 50 ton tanks around belt mazes as a biter defense."

If I had a dollar for every time I heard that.

I agree with the sentiments re: belts affecting entities like player, biters, vehicles.

You can't make a drift car track if your car doesn't drift.

[HYPPS]

What if, you could make tactical nuclear artillery bombs that you send up to space on the rocket attached to a military satellite that you could remotely target down anywhere on the map at any time. Sort of like the rocket/nuclear rocket fuel addition. I imagine it would be used to quickly clear out biters from a potential ore mining outpost. Or maybe have it work similar to artillery but it only automatically fires down on worms and nests only on radar scanned areas. This would be the ultimate lazy automation destruction weapon instead of carting around an artillery train. Too much?

[sunnyskies]

A shout of thanks to the lovely, creative people who made this game

So, this whole science tier discussion is absolutely fascinating — every time I start thinking that one of ya’ll has a point, another fellow shares his experiences and promptly sways me the other way.

It’s got me thinking about things. Military science is my favorite part of the tech tree. I like that there’s this whole other branch of cool things that are just optional and branched away from everything else. Maybe I just like the idea of branching tech trees more than linear tiers. Maybe I just like blowing things up.

But here’s my first experience with learning the blue science curve.

As it goes, the defining point where I realized that I really enjoyed Factorio was in fact, red circuits with the intention of making blue science.

While figuring out how in the world oil refining worked (I crossed my pipes three times; apparently fluid contamination is very bad), I merrily researched anything that sounded cool, and by the time I got it working, I suddenly had all of these amazing new things to try out.

Yeah, I meant to make red circuits. I did. But… why would I make red circuits when I could make flamethrowers? And trains! Also, my coal was running low. So like a good new player, I made a train route to a new coal field. It’s worth nothing that the new area wasn’t actually far enough away to justify a train route. I just wanted to make a train.

I ran myself over while fiddling with the schedule. Apparently standing on tracks with autodriving trains is lethally stupid.

But while looking at the death screen, for the first time, I didn’t want to just accept that this hostile world had gotten the best of me, that it was time to try again and make a new world. I was figuring things out! I wanted to understand trains and burn trees with my new flamethrower, and there were even cliff explosives on the tech tree, and my base was running fast into a mountain, and…

It was a messy path to red circuits and blue science. I’d really just intended to progress. But all the distractions I found on the way were so endearingly fun.

A post script on solid fuel: I was wary of figuring out solid fuel. It sounded weird. Especially that it was supposedly solid but sounded like it worked like gas. And the gas I put in my real world car is definitely liquid, amd if it’s not liquid, then the car doesn’t start. So, I didn’t even attempt to make solid fuel until spotting a tip somewhere that it could be substituted for coal in any process that burns things from furnaces to boilers. Driving faster wasn’t too much of an incentive. I was running into trees left, right and center as it was driving with coal; going faster certainly wasn’t going to help me drive better.

So carry on. Safely conclude that I’m of the opinion that artificially encouraging people to try making solid fuel sooner is brilliant. Take whatever else from my story what you will.

[kipper_t]

HYPE Genuinely can't wait for 0.17 experimental Looking forward to actually having to come up with efficient layouts now that I've got a better handle on the game. Super excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[xng]

Will 0.17 be compatible with linux (Ubuntu LTS)?

[Dune]

I thought I read in the FF that release was today, February 25th, but now I can't find it. Here I sit anxiously awaiting. Is release today?

Edit: I found it, it was in FF 282 - "If the playtesting goes well, we will let you know next Friday, and if it is the case, we will aim to release the week starting 25th February."

So, when can we play it?

[Klonan]

Will 0.17 be compatible with linux?

Yep

[brunzenstein]

Will 0.17 be compatible with linux?

Yep

And on the same day - today ?
a Mac version will be downloadable?

[Nefrums]

I thought I read in the FF that release was today, February 25th, but now I can't find it. Here I sit anxiously awaiting. Is release today?

Edit: I found it, it was in FF 282 - "If the playtesting goes well, we will let you know next Friday, and if it is the case, we will aim to release the week starting 25th February."

So, when can we play it?

When they have fixed all serious bugs they found during last week's play testing.

[xng]

Will 0.17 be compatible with linux?

Yep

Nice =)

[plokgi]

I thought I read in the FF that release was today, February 25th, but now I can't find it. Here I sit anxiously awaiting. Is release today?

Edit: I found it, it was in FF 282 - "If the playtesting goes well, we will let you know next Friday, and if it is the case, we will aim to release the week starting 25th February."

So, when can we play it?

Possibly at some point during the week "starting" 25th Febuary? This is the 25th, so some this week if nothing goes wrong

[BlueTemplar]

What if, you could make tactical nuclear artillery bombs that you send up to space on the rocket attached to a military satellite that you could remotely target down anywhere on the map at any time. Sort of like the rocket/nuclear rocket fuel addition. I imagine it would be used to quickly clear out biters from a potential ore mining outpost. Or maybe have it work similar to artillery but it only automatically fires down on worms and nests only on radar scanned areas. This would be the ultimate lazy automation destruction weapon instead of carting around an artillery train. Too much?

Like this ?
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/MIRV

(Note who the mod author is...)

[rldml]

There is also mechanic that belts can transport items around your factory, you should check it out, it is pretty neat alternative use of belts

That cannot be, sure you don't mention a mod or something like that?

Using belts to transport stuff. pft. What comes next, using some demonic automatic stuff to mine iron ore not with your bare hands?!?

Greetings, Ronny

[CDarklock]

So, this whole science tier discussion is absolutely fascinating — every time I start thinking that one of ya’ll has a point, another fellow shares his experiences and promptly sways me the other way.

It's not a cut-and-dry question. The tech tree is big. Is it too big? Should it be smaller? Should some of the tech have different requirements? Do we need more complexity?

Like, think about this: do we need technology research that doesn't use the lower science packs? Maybe something that uses blue and purple science, but NOT red and green? That's a possibility. Is it a good one? Does it have value?

I don't know. I don't have a compelling argument either way. It's just an idle thought I occasionally have. And my usual response to it is to think about FFF entries and go "well, it's not like they are ignoring the tech tree, they are looking at it and thinking about it and trying to do the best job they can." So I don't invest too much time in it, because it's not a problem and doesn't need a solution.

The same is true about upcoming features; you may anticipate a problem in the future, but you certainly don't have it, and maybe it won't happen. If you have a problem right now and the new features will make it worse, well... that's... kind of not a new problem. So the new features aren't actually responsible for that.

There is a question of whether the blue science "wall" is in the right place. I don't think there's anything wrong with where it is. It's just... is there a better place for it? Is enough stuff behind it? Is too much stuff behind it?

The science pack discussion on the relevant FFF has one overriding sense: decisions have been made and this is what they are. I don't think it matters what we think for 0.17, which is almost certainly less than 72 hours away, and I'm not sure it matters for 0.18 either. I kind of lean in the direction that nothing is going to change, so our focus needs to be less on figuring out how things should be and more on accepting how things are. (As in, how things are in 0.17, once it arrives.) Less "how should this change?" and more "why is this okay?"

It’s got me thinking about things. Military science is my favorite part of the tech tree. I like that there’s this whole other branch of cool things that are just optional and branched away from everything else. Maybe I just like the idea of branching tech trees more than linear tiers. Maybe I just like blowing things up.

I like all that stuff, too. I love that I can tunnel down to combat robots, as I already mentioned. But I also like that this tunnel implies other tunnels. I like the idea that some day I might talk to someone who says "hey, I do something really brilliant and weird with my research" and it might not be anything I want to do but it will be impressive and cool.

As it goes, the defining point where I realized that I really enjoyed Factorio was in fact, red circuits with the intention of making blue science.

I feel like I should know where mine was. I have stories. But all my stories are "I did something stupid and had to fix it." I don't have a story where I went "I love this game." All the points where I say that are boring; they're silly little comfortable moments like when I walk around my entire perimetre and nothing needs to be repaired and all the turrets have ammo. I have these little moments of excitement, like when I finally find a damn oil field, but I never go "I love this game" when that happens. That's what I think after the field is running and the oil is flowing and I've got my defences around it and now I'm not doing anything. The little downtime moments. It's those places of peace where I have happy joyful thoughts about the game.

So carry on. Safely conclude that I’m of the opinion that artificially encouraging people to try making solid fuel sooner is brilliant. Take whatever else from my story what you will.

I love these stories. Thanks for telling yours.

[Ser_Optimus]

"The Rocket Silo without the rocket uses sixteen 8192x8192px textures which makes our 1080Ti run out of VRAM to render.."

Just the everyday insanity at its best....

The new chests and silo are awesome, love the logistic chests. Thanks for the great work and the updates every week!

[Ojelle]

Oh, that infinity chest is way more pretty then the steel one, please switch ;D
It would be a shame to nearly never see it!