Friday Facts #284 - 0.17 experimental

[Jap2.0]

Huh. And it can save without even pausing the simulation for a noticeable number of ticks?
(Though now that I think of it, it does have to do something like that each time a new player joins in MP...)

Sometimes it does pause to save in MP - but yes, if you find the right option, it'll do it all in the background. It is essentially using double or so CPU for a little while though, so if you have a big save you might notice a bit of a UPS slowdown anyway.

[BlueTemplar]

[*] Is it normal to start at 75% UI scaling in my 1366x768 laptop screen? Everything was tiny!

See :
viewtopic.php?p=402400#p402400
(So, on 1366x768, you'll start scaled at 75% so that there's no weird overlap happening...)

[Lonami]

[*] Is it normal to start at 75% UI scaling in my 1366x768 laptop screen? Everything was tiny!

See :
viewtopic.php?p=402400#p402400
(So, on 1366x768, you'll start scaled at 75% so that there's no weird overlap happening...)

Ah, thank you for that! I guess it's fair enough, so glad I had my glasses on

[malventano]

Dynamic difficulty is a big topic in the office, but even its staunchest opponent, kovarex, admits he had fun with the final wave. He also holds the high score for kills during the Introduction; Over 9000 .

Challenge accepted

2019-03-02-17-39-05.png (77.63 KiB) Viewed 5851 times

[CDarklock]

I went the other direction, but took about as long.

[Light]

Dynamic difficulty is a big topic in the office, but even its staunchest opponent, kovarex, admits he had fun with the final wave. He also holds the high score for kills during the Introduction; Over 9000 .

Challenge accepted

2019-03-02-17-39-05.png

You were attacked by two transport belts? Impressive.

[5thHorseman]

You were attacked by two transport belts? Impressive.

They belted him. Out of the blue (they were yellow).

[Dry Hairy Tree]

I lost zero walls in the new scenario as I didn't bother building any. I got a belt of ammo/coal surrounding the base, hitched up a bunch of turrets to that and waited it out. Job done. I did like that in the end some of the turrets were running out despite 16 burner drills dedicated to iron/bullet production.

I used zero walls, zero electric mining drills, 1 boiler.

Tons of pollution, coal powered automation was rad.

MORE!

[Light]

The mindset of 0.16:

COME AT ME BRO!

The new 0.17 mindset:

Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.

[dee-]

My impressions here.
Personally it felt not very difficult.
Did they rebalance and made it easier again with 0.17.4?

[CDarklock]

And that 0.17 mindset isn't even that difficult. It's just new, and people aren't used to it. I've only built a couple of large bases, so it's not that big a deal to me - I'm not bucking the habit of years spent building huge. But I imagine a lot of people are just chewing the walls over it.

[5thHorseman]

Granted I play with all biter settings halved or doubled depending on what makes it easier* but so far, I've found them to be pushovers. I have taken out bases with multiple (small) worms and a dozen spawners just driving around in a car shooting with armor piercing ammo.

*Or as I like to call it, less annoying.

[CDarklock]

I have taken out bases with multiple (small) worms and a dozen spawners just driving around in a car shooting with armor piercing ammo.

Oh, sure, JUST a car and AP ammo. Not like that's hundreds of science packs down the tech tree or anything.

[Dune]

Are to expect inserters to output onto both sides of a belt when oriented this way?

[5thHorseman]

I have taken out bases with multiple (small) worms and a dozen spawners just driving around in a car shooting with armor piercing ammo.

Oh, sure, JUST a car and AP ammo. Not like that's hundreds of science packs down the tech tree or anything.

Yeah if people are complaining that you can't take out spitters with a pistol and yellow ammo well I can't speak on that. I wouldn't have even tried that on 0.16. Or any version at all. I don't play Factorio like that and never will.

[5thHorseman]

Are to expect inserters to output onto both sides of a belt when oriented this way?

No. inserters output to ... well it seems random tbh but they tell me there are reasons and logic to it.

[Selvek]

• Is it normal to start at 75% UI scaling in my 1366x768 laptop screen? Everything was tiny!

Honestly, my first impression on loading 0.17 was "wow, this looks terrible compared to 0.16". I'm glad I eventually found the UI scaling so it didn't hurt my eyes so much! Maybe defaulting to 75% isn't a good idea...?

• When you get the hotbar... Suddenly I have so many items! Perhaps a way to filter those I have discovered? Or those that I currently have in my inventory? Like "[ ] Show all", disabled by default.

Seconded.

• I filled the hotbar with useless stuff and I can't remove them

It's "middle mouse click" but I don't think it teaches you that in the tutorial (in fact it doesn't teach any of the hotbar functionality at all).

[CDarklock]

Yeah if people are complaining that you can't take out spitters with a pistol and yellow ammo well I can't speak on that.

I think the complaint is more "they show up before I have a chance to get more than that."

Which is really a complaint of "my pollution is entirely out of control before I can effectively defend myself."

It's not like anyone, to my knowledge, is out bug hunting at that level. They're just minding their own business, building the blueprints they usually do, only now the biters are close enough that their pollution has aggravated the crap out of a half dozen bases in twenty minutes.

And all they really have to do is back up, take a deep breath, and keep the operation small a little longer. I'm currently working under a little system that has not upset anyone, just yet:

- Gather resources with one burner drill and one furnace per resource patch.
- Retreat to a water source and wall off a small area large enough for a steam engine, four labs, and a little red science production line.
- Crank out a bunch of red science. Lights. Walls. Turrets. Heavy armour. Get equipped.
- Wall off resource patches and put small drilling operations on them, defended by turrets. (I am here.)
- Transport resources to a convenient location for your green science production line.

And I think that should take me far enough down the tree that biters stop being an issue - if I treat them proactively and go eliminate their bases before pollution forces the confrontation. The car and the AP ammo are just a hop, skip, and jump down the tree in green science.

EDIT: It strikes me that my first three steps are basically the stages of the campaign.

[BlueTemplar]

I have taken out bases with multiple (small) worms and a dozen spawners just driving around in a car shooting with armor piercing ammo.

Oh, sure, JUST a car and AP ammo. Not like that's hundreds of science packs down the tech tree or anything.

Yeah if people are complaining that you can't take out spitters with a pistol and yellow ammo well I can't speak on that. I wouldn't have even tried that on 0.16. Or any version at all. I don't play Factorio like that and never will.

Actually, spitters are still easy to take out with a pistol and yellow ammo.

Now, worms are another story... (unless you want to have a higher fish* than biter kill count ).
viewtopic.php?p=404389#p404389

*(Now that I think of it, you should totally learn to use fish at some point in the tutorial !)

It worked with 4 turrets :


But yeah, the issue (like in 0.16) is if you have Red biters show up before you even get Military 1 / Turrets. But then how much would you have to idle on standard settings for that ?
(EDIT : Or yeah, if you just pollute the crap out of Nauvis... so that the biter waves are so large that a pistol isn't enough - but wouldn't you have had similar issues in 0.16 ?)

One thing is that Military 2 is now about twice as hard to get as before, due to the Green Science research.
Which is probably good, grenades make nest-cleaning a LOT easier :

(Armor-piercing ammo is more of a bonus, really, and probably wasteful, at least on marathon...)

But the car is exponentially farther than that...

(BTW, why is car (slightly) harder to get than train?
Train seems more advanced, and IIRC is actually better at combat too...)

[Koub]

(BTW, why is car (slightly) harder to get than train?
Train seems more advanced, and IIRC is actually better at combat too...)

I know realism is not always mandatory, but in this case, it's accurate-ish : despite the first car being created before the first train, it took a lot of time for the car to actually be produced.