[14.23] balance feedback

[chuz]

im still playing 14.23, i have a 170hours game in vanilla no mod with defaut settings. It's my first and only game of factorio. I have read all the patch note until the 0.17 version, so i should know if things changed in a good thing or a bad thing.


my main base looks a bit spaghetti but it does its job. I don't think megabase that produce ridiculous amount of things are viable in vanilla, ressources are exhausted rather fast, and lot of time are spent in expanding the base to gather new patchs of ressources.
Lot of solar panels and accumulators are also somewhere in the base.



my base use 1.2GW of electricity in average, so I I think I know what the endgame of 14.23 look like. I use solar panels. it's overpowered, solar panel remove the energy management of this videogame. This issue have some consequence : it makes useless all the other sort of energy. i know nuclear was implemented in version 15. but i don't know why I should switch to nuclear. my solar panel works good and require no ressource. nuclear looks like a downgrade.





look at what i have consumed :

I have researched everything. and coal is very useless in endgame. oil is also too abundant (very obvious in lategame), and share the same purpose than coal (to give energy to train)


18M iron 11M copper and 1.2M coal consumed only. and that's only because I used coal energy in the early game.
Copper looks balanced until lategame where copper is definively nearly useless (i heard it changed in some future version, so let's say copper is fine again). I will not give my opinion in coal too, because i don't know the research tree for 0.15+ version.

I don't understand why they buffed the oil abundancy in 0.15. I think they did it wrong, at least for the lategame. infinite ressource is always extremly strong, and borderline overpowered lategame I know lot of people play with mods, in creative, with infinite iron or whatever you want, but in vanilla oil in 0.14 feel wrong (too much oil lategame; oil still give 10% when depleted), and i think they aggravated the problem. Oil ressource when depleted give too much in 0.15+. 20% ? shouldn't it be 5% ? maybe give a longer time to 100% for the early game to compensate.



I didnt use a lot of stone, but i know it take tons of stone to remove all this water, so I think stone is ok



My entire base is protected by 2 or 3 lines of laser turrets . If no energy, my base is RIP. around 100lasers is firing in average.


Im currently expanding the base for new ressources (especially iron). There's lot of monsters around the base. I think monster evolution is maximum. When you play the game in vanilla, growing the base is hard, getting some new patch of ressource is precious, but the base will consume more and more energy, that's why solar panel are so good.



tldr : lategame feedback, even if i take into account version 0.17, oil give too much when depleted, solar panels are too op.

[Koub]

I think you can't guess what it would be to play 0.17 with only your 0.14 experience of the game.
There were so many changes and balance tweaks since these old times that any guestimation is very likely to be irrelevant.

And to be honest, even if many have played 0.14.xx (including myself), I'm not sure I remember that version well enough to tell you in which direction the changes have an effect on the balance. I think 0.14 is probably around 3 years old, maybe slightly less ? That's a LOT.

[Amarula]

As a relative newcomer, I have only played 0.16 and 0.17. Thank you for this time capsule of what 0.14 looks like, fascinating to see how much is the same while at the same time, so much has changed!

[Ranger_Aurelien]

My admission, I only started at 0.16 and played that for a weekend before joining 0.17 ...

.17+ has tech queuing and "unlimited" research (that needs space science) to counter the unlimited evolution of the locals.


Coal is useful all game. Early for train and boilers, mid for plastic, late for plastic and convert to oils. -- as well as for some sciences!
Mid-game I run my vehicles on rocket fuel, and late on nuclear fuel capsules. (Similarly, steam boilers can be run on rocket/nuclear fuel...)

I'm sure I read there is already wind in game, so my personal opinion would be to add some sort of variable cloud cover with clouds slowly floating over, diminishing solar (or simplest evil, have the extant "Pollution" simply diminishing solar under it -- I'm sure if you just asked in the mod forum someone would be inspired.)

EDIT: That would force solar farms to be even further from the production of the base, and with biters what they are, the real estate cost would be even higher. It would add more strategy to risk expanding the base (and cloud) which would diminish solar...

https://wiki.factorio.com/Prototype/TrivialSmoke

https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution


I find I keep ramping up refineries more and more and I use gas for several full blue belts of plastics, and lots of acid for batteries (robot bodies for science and, well, robots) and blue processors (modules and space science). Heavy oil is needed for lubricant for sciences, robots, and belts. Light is used to make fuel cubes for rocket fuel (For space science). You can put efficiency modules on pumpjacks and electric mining drills if you wish to modify outputs.

Stone is needed for several sciences in 0.17.40+ (20x rail and walls come to mind).

EDIT: You will need iron, copper, U238 to make end-game ammo for gun turrets (more range and DPS than lasers, I seem to recall).
Part of 0.17 end-game will likely need artillery, which will need metals, plus plastic and acid from the refinery for shells... They auto-fire up to half range at enemy buildings.
https://wiki.factorio.com/Artillery_shell

From your own admission at the end, solar power is offset by the "cost" of the real estate from the monsters... I'm told the default 0.17 critter settings are quite ferocious compared to 0.16 (but I don't have a basis for comparison).


Check the MOD portal -- there are mods for most things you described, such as lowering the sun, decreasing solar panel output...

https://mods.factorio.com/


YMMV

[Frightning]

The problem of needing to spend copious amounts of time setting up mines in Giga-factory ultra-late game was largely solved by the addition of mining productivity research that's infinitely repeatable (in 0.15, btw). Now, if you invest enough in it, your miners start giving a non-trivial multiplier in resource yield (which not only increases resource generation per miner per time, but also increases the effective amount of resources you can mine from a given patch by that same multiplier). Which implies that you need fewer mines that last just as long as before to produce a given amount of resources, and thus don't have to spend as much time replacing depleted mines.