Version 0.17.60

[RocketManChronicles]

I'll just mention that the only real use for light oil was making efficient solid fuel previously. How much of it did you really spend for flamethrower?

That is indeed true, but now that solid fuel isn't even used in Chemical Science, it makes both light oil and solid fuel near useless until you build a rocket (which a lot of new players don't even do for many playthroughs), or if you really want to use it to run your steam power.

One of my favorite changes with 0.17 was that a science actually took solid fuel which made it feel useful, and now that change has been completely undone.

Agreed. The puzzle going into 0.17 was unique, in that you had Petroleum Gas being used in Plastics and Light Oil being used in Solid Fuel, both for the Chemical Science. It made a wonderful setup and sense of accomplishment once it was running. The Heavy Oil had to be stored, sure, but if like me, you were going for Construction Bots, this was made into Lubricant for that. Again, it was a nice puzzle. I feel this is now too simplified.

[DanGio]

I'll just mention that the only real use for light oil was making efficient solid fuel previously. How much of it did you really spend for flamethrower?

That is indeed true, but now that solid fuel isn't even used in Chemical Science, it makes both light oil and solid fuel near useless until you build a rocket (which a lot of new players don't even do for many playthroughs), or if you really want to use it to run your steam power.

One of my favorite changes with 0.17 was that a science actually took solid fuel which made it feel useful, and now that change has been completely undone.

The SF in Chemical Science wasn't added to make it feel useful, but to delay the moment when you're fully backed up on LO or HO. Since there isn't anymore of these in Basic Processing, removing SF from this recipe is an obvious +

0.17 Science FFF :
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.

[Serenity]

One of my favorite changes with 0.17 was that a science actually took solid fuel which made it feel useful, and now that change has been completely undone.

It was also potentially a way to balance consumption of the different oil products. Not hard to read a backed up tank and then use a different solid fuel plant as your source. Though to be really effective science should probably have used more of it. In light of that it's even more weird to just get rid of the balancing problem.

They could also have switched from SF to sulfur and introduced different sulfur recipes

[Antaios]

The SF in Chemical Science wasn't added to make it feel useful, but to delay the moment when you're fully backed up on LO or HO. Since there isn't anymore of these in Basic Processing, removing SF from this recipe is an obvious +

0.17 Science FFF :
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.

Perhaps that was the intent, but it was not the result people remember nor praise.

[Astrella]

Professional game designers know a tad more about game design that appeals to the mass market. That said, many of us were hoping we'd found one that wouldn't go down that road for once.

Hyperbole much? In the long run this change changes nothing to what you need to do to finish the game. All it does is being an attempt at redistributing the difficulty hurdles a bit. Not to mention it's an experimental release, so it's likely to still be iterated upon. There's been plenty of changes in the past that have been changed again after. Let them try out some stuff, let people mess around with it a bit and let them get feedback from the playerbase at large, not the small subsection they get through here.

[Aflixion]

Professional game designers know a tad more about game design that appeals to the mass market. That said, many of us were hoping we'd found one that wouldn't go down that road for once.

Hyperbole much? In the long run this change changes nothing to what you need to do to finish the game. All it does is being an attempt at redistributing the difficulty hurdles a bit. Not to mention it's an experimental release, so it's likely to still be iterated upon. There's been plenty of changes in the past that have been changed again after. Let them try out some stuff, let people mess around with it a bit and let them get feedback from the playerbase at large, not the small subsection they get through here.

Except the target audience for this change isn't even playing on the experimental branch, they're playing on the stable branch. The people whose feedback is needed for this won't get this until it's been declared stable and extremely unlikely to change again.

[DanGio]

Perhaps that was the intent, but it was not the result people remember nor praise.

Yeah, I don't feel that way : to me, SF feels way more useful when I send it to furnaces or power, as this saves coal and gives me more plastic bars.

But anyway, in a 17.59 case, we've got 2 reasons to keep SF in Chemical Science :
- it delays LO & HO from backing up
- it feels useful

Which of these is a valid reason to balance a video game ?

EDIT : added the quote for readability

[Deadlock989]

This is one example of why the devs ignore some critique about the change. The oil system was not dumbed down, it just has a more smooth difficulty curve now.

You can dredge up as many euphemisms as you like. "Smoother difficulty curve" = easier earlier. They made it easier because some people couldn't be bothered to figure it out.

This change adds nothing to vanilla Factorio.

[Xterminator]

Professional game designers know a tad more about game design that appeals to the mass market. That said, many of us were hoping we'd found one that wouldn't go down that road for once.

Hyperbole much? In the long run this change changes nothing to what you need to do to finish the game. All it does is being an attempt at redistributing the difficulty hurdles a bit. Not to mention it's an experimental release, so it's likely to still be iterated upon. There's been plenty of changes in the past that have been changed again after. Let them try out some stuff, let people mess around with it a bit and let them get feedback from the playerbase at large, not the small subsection they get through here.

Except the target audience for this change isn't even playing on the experimental branch, they're playing on the stable branch. The people whose feedback is needed for this won't get this until it's been declared stable and extremely unlikely to change again.

I can't emphasize this point enough. Its like a drug company releasing a new kind of migraine medicine to a control group for testing, except only a small percentage of people in that group actually have problems with migraines. And then releasing it to the public as a final version version and saying that it works great and is just what people with migraines need, even though only a few people out of the group that tested it actually needed the medicine in the first place.

[Astrella]

You can dredge up as many euphemisms as you like. "Smoother difficulty curve" = easier earlier. They made it easier because some people couldn't be bothered to figure it out.

This change adds nothing to vanilla Factorio.

Making any struggle someone might have with a concept to just be about them not bothering enough seems disingenuous.

[irbork]

At least it makes my megabase builds easier since Advanced Processing is nearly useless now so I just need a tiny build for it and then can spam production of Basic Processing for all my petro needs and less fluid boxes. Having the basic tech be superior to higher tech for late game big bases names little to since, but I guess it's what you guys wanted.

Um, advanced oil processing is strictly superiour to basic oil processing. Even if you just compare the petroleum gas, it is better, even more after cracking the heavy and light oil.

Advanced oil processing may produce more petroleum gas, but it costs more UPS to do so due to all the added fluids and fluid boxes. At megabase scale, it will be more UPS-efficient to have a massive basic oil processing setup which only uses crude oil and petroleum gas than to have an advanced oil setup with cracking that has to deal with piping for crude, water, heavy, light, and petroleum gas.

But you need over twice as many fluid boxes to get more crude, not to mention about rail network load, so BOP may be not as UPS efficient compared to AOP as you may think.

[Antaios]

But you need over twice as many fluid boxes to get more crude, not to mention about rail network load, so BOP may be not as UPS efficient compared to AOP as you may think.

It was tested.

[V453000]

At least it makes my megabase builds easier since Advanced Processing is nearly useless now so I just need a tiny build for it and then can spam production of Basic Processing for all my petro needs and less fluid boxes. Having the basic tech be superior to higher tech for late game big bases names little to since, but I guess it's what you guys wanted.

Um, advanced oil processing is strictly superiour to basic oil processing. Even if you just compare the petroleum gas, it is better, even more after cracking the heavy and light oil.

Advanced oil processing may produce more petroleum gas, but it costs more UPS to do so due to all the added fluids and fluid boxes. At megabase scale, it will be more UPS-efficient to have a massive basic oil processing setup which only uses crude oil and petroleum gas than to have an advanced oil setup with cracking that has to deal with piping for crude, water, heavy, light, and petroleum gas.

But you need over twice as many fluid boxes to get more crude, not to mention about rail network load, so BOP may be not as UPS efficient compared to AOP as you may think.

I think it's going to be quite efficient, but I'm no UPS mega expert. Just judging from the fact that crude oil is relatively free with massive mining productiivity bonuses that megabases always have.

[Aflixion]

At least it makes my megabase builds easier since Advanced Processing is nearly useless now so I just need a tiny build for it and then can spam production of Basic Processing for all my petro needs and less fluid boxes. Having the basic tech be superior to higher tech for late game big bases names little to since, but I guess it's what you guys wanted.

Um, advanced oil processing is strictly superiour to basic oil processing. Even if you just compare the petroleum gas, it is better, even more after cracking the heavy and light oil.

Advanced oil processing may produce more petroleum gas, but it costs more UPS to do so due to all the added fluids and fluid boxes. At megabase scale, it will be more UPS-efficient to have a massive basic oil processing setup which only uses crude oil and petroleum gas than to have an advanced oil setup with cracking that has to deal with piping for crude, water, heavy, light, and petroleum gas.

But you need over twice as many fluid boxes to get more crude, not to mention about rail network load, so BOP may be not as UPS efficient compared to AOP as you may think.

With mining productivity, you don't need as many pumpjacks as you think to feed that refinery. You wouldn't need any of the chemical plants for cracking, which eliminates not only the pipes to get the fluids to them, but the fluid boxes built into each chemical plant as well. Your BOP refinery would literally be a row of refineries with beacons around them and pipes to get crude in and PG out.

[Bilka]

But you need over twice as many fluid boxes to get more crude, not to mention about rail network load, so BOP may be not as UPS efficient compared to AOP as you may think.

It was tested.

That was pretty fast, do you have the test data somewhere to look at?

[irbork]

And that's why I said before that it seems like you're making these changes to make a change. These changes didn't address the root cause of the issue with blue science, as has been pointed out to you several times in both of the other threads, and by making these changes you've done something you promised never to do before: removing the puzzle from the game.

Do you mean the puzzle of mass solid fuel production?

[irbork]

But you need over twice as many fluid boxes to get more crude, not to mention about rail network load, so BOP may be not as UPS efficient compared to AOP as you may think.

It was tested.

Where can I find the results?

[rhynex]

But you need over twice as many fluid boxes to get more crude, not to mention about rail network load, so BOP may be not as UPS efficient compared to AOP as you may think.

It was tested.

That was pretty fast, do you have the test data somewhere to look at?

I know this one only from the other thread.

viewtopic.php?p=445973#p445973

I am not the author of the calculations.

[Antaios]

But you need over twice as many fluid boxes to get more crude, not to mention about rail network load, so BOP may be not as UPS efficient compared to AOP as you may think.

It was tested.

That was pretty fast, do you have the test data somewhere to look at?

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=73684&start=360#p445973
I don't recall if there were others off the top of my head

-edit- heh, too slow

[irbork]

I'll just mention that the only real use for light oil was making efficient solid fuel previously. How much of it did you really spend for flamethrower?

That is indeed true, but now that solid fuel isn't even used in Chemical Science, it makes both light oil and solid fuel near useless until you build a rocket (which a lot of new players don't even do for many playthroughs), or if you really want to use it to run your steam power.

One of my favorite changes with 0.17 was that a science actually took solid fuel which made it feel useful, and now that change has been completely undone.

Agreed. The puzzle going into 0.17 was unique, in that you had Petroleum Gas being used in Plastics and Light Oil being used in Solid Fuel, both for the Chemical Science. It made a wonderful setup and sense of accomplishment once it was running. The Heavy Oil had to be stored, sure, but if like me, you were going for Construction Bots, this was made into Lubricant for that. Again, it was a nice puzzle. I feel this is now too simplified.

There is another nice puzzle to solve now. It may be not so obvious at the first glance.
You will find out that there is just not enough heavy and light oil available now, without the old basic oil processing. It will require setting up coal liquefaction which was not useful previously, unless you had not much oil close by with a lot of spare coal. Finding the proper ration of basic oil processing, advanced oil processing and coal liquefaction will be very nice puzzle for advanced players who are starved for challenges.