Friday Facts #305 - The Oil Changes

[_Attila_]

Nothing against V from most of us. He had a tough job and perhaps the rest of the devs could have chimed in to show their pov rather than just leave him to do it all alone.

Also, I wish the blueprint book changes were in the game already, to better manage all these changes and the ones that are still coming.

[Zarniel]

you indicate that the other proposals have flaws. But you recognize that the one brought into 0.17.60 also has some. in the way that I understand this update, it delays the understanding of the multi-issue problem for the new player (or the one who did not understand it) to become familiar with all the challenges that the game brings to him. But when is he of all those who had already mastered the concept? They are punished.

From my own experience my very first game I delayed the understanding of this problem by putting plenty of storage tanks and I removed them by hand to empty them (first game ...) At my second game I was trying to guess the cracking ratio. in the third I followed an excellent tutorial on combinatorial circuits and it was perfect. At each new game I tried new things, understood new things. and I loved that the game adds more complex things. In the beginning, only 4 research flask and the last one was just a hunt for monsters to harvest artifacts. And you have noticeably increased the difficulty by adding steps and more search flask. and I loved it !! Not to mention the addition of nuclear power. and I'm still waiting for the possibility of having to monitor the temperature of the reactor core.

Factorio is a great game and I still think so. But I beg you, add yourself an option at the launch of the game ( like bitter on off, ore quantity, etc) to propose the old method (and associated technology changes). a mod already exists but with the inconveniences that go with mod (succes disabled, possible compatibility problem with future versions, mod update?) I thank the mod author but I prefer to play vanilla with the choice of oil processing method.

As always thank you for your reading.

[V453000]

None of them really solved all the issues - complexity, tedium, pacing. Some of them were more interesting than others but always with some flaw. The biggest problem with the chosen solution is that it's likely the players will build straight pipes next to basic oil refining refineries, and get the "Can't mix fluids" error. We have some ideas how to fix this already, but nothing confirmed yet.

Ok can you please tell me what exactly you do not like in this solution:

• BOP produces HO and PG
• Sulfur is produced from HO and LO
• Rocket fuel is produced from LO only
• Plastic is produced from PG
• AOP gets gas liquification (PG -> LO)
• Flamethrower ammo requires HO
• Blue science gets Sulfur and Plastic (or still red chips)

I am pretty sure there is no problem with complexity, no tedium and no issues with pace.
Player gets well visually aware of output imbalance due to direct conversion of HO->Sulfur and PG->Plastic. Balance can still be achieved by either storing or producing solid fuel.
Balancing 2 liquids is much easier than 3, there is no mess with pipes as there are only 2 output liquids, which obviously does not break player's mind. If a player can't solve such simple task than obviously Factorio is not for him.

AOP will still be a requirement for rocket fuel and will help player reach perfect balance in either way (Sulfur, or Plastic, or Rocket Fuel).

I am pretty sure that you should not simplify it any further than that. However this recipe does teach the player at least something new as FFF-304 does not teach anything new or good, it does only stimulate false solutions such as placing refineries adjacent to each other or pipes adjacent to refineries.

Anyways no solution really addresses the core issue - GUI indication of output blocking. So you are fighting with windmills here V.

Sure, having two outputs presents the "multiple outputs can block" early on, while not reducing the amount of things you need to do/worry about almost at all. Basic oil processing can still get stuck and that way it feels unsustainable, and the player just wants to rush advanced oil processing just like before - to get the functional version.
Sulfur not being from PG is dangerous, because it can easily happen that the player does not have enough PG sink (for example when starting to mine uranium and producing a lot of sulfuric acid, when producing accumulators and solar panels, maybe in combination with explosives). That way it is possible to get into a situation with "getting stuck" problems even if you already have proper Advanced oil processing set up including proper circuit-controlled cracking. The only way how this could happen otherwise is with Lubricant - typically only when you mass switch to express belts ... assuming you have enough iron plate/iron gear wheel production to show the lubricant being a bottleneck.

[Engimage]

Sure, having two outputs presents the "multiple outputs can block" early on, while not reducing the amount of things you need to do/worry about almost at all. Basic oil processing can still get stuck and that way it feels unsustainable, and the player just wants to rush advanced oil processing just like before - to get the functional version.
Sulfur not being from PG is dangerous, because it can easily happen that the player does not have enough PG sink (for example when starting to mine uranium and producing a lot of sulfuric acid, when producing accumulators and solar panels, maybe in combination with explosives). That way it is possible to get into a situation with "getting stuck" problems even if you already have proper Advanced oil processing set up including proper circuit-controlled cracking. The only way how this could happen otherwise is with Lubricant - typically only when you mass switch to express belts ... assuming you have enough iron plate/iron gear wheel production to show the lubricant being a bottleneck.

Sure there is a bit of imbalance from the start. And yes AOP is the final solution to it. And yes a player is motivated to research AOP soon enough.
However
With balanced blue science a player has more than enough time and opportunities to research it. One liquid tank or one chest of Sulfur/plastic will get you almost all of the blue science researched.
So the solution has its issues but it is something that player has to solve!
The goal of this fix is not just dumbing it down but making is so that it would not be a stopper issue for the player!

Please do remember what exactly is the issue that is being solved here. And please remember the title of the posts that actually triggered the change!

[conn11]

I do think with the FFF 305 modifications new BOP will work. Will there be the need for more balancing? Propably. An experimental version might sound quite right.
Furthermore, regardless of how you like ore dislike newBOP, it's quite unfair not only to the devs, but to all who contributed, to call this disscussion "in vain". Many good points were made, but lastly they have to be implemented and tested, wich I'm pretty sure of, just happend the past two weeks over at wube. Not to mention, following V's posts the GUI will be improved in further releases.

[V453000]

Sure, having two outputs presents the "multiple outputs can block" early on, while not reducing the amount of things you need to do/worry about almost at all. Basic oil processing can still get stuck and that way it feels unsustainable, and the player just wants to rush advanced oil processing just like before - to get the functional version.
Sulfur not being from PG is dangerous, because it can easily happen that the player does not have enough PG sink (for example when starting to mine uranium and producing a lot of sulfuric acid, when producing accumulators and solar panels, maybe in combination with explosives). That way it is possible to get into a situation with "getting stuck" problems even if you already have proper Advanced oil processing set up including proper circuit-controlled cracking. The only way how this could happen otherwise is with Lubricant - typically only when you mass switch to express belts ... assuming you have enough iron plate/iron gear wheel production to show the lubricant being a bottleneck.

Sure there is a bit of imbalance from the start. And yes AOP is the final solution to it. And yes a player is motivated to research AOP soon enough.
However
With balanced blue science a playes has more than enough time and opportunities to research it. One liquid tank or one chest of Sulfur/plastic will get you almost all of the blue science researched.
So the solution has its issues but it is something that player has to solve!
The goal of this fix is not just dumbing it down but making is so that it would not be a stopper issue for the player!

Balanced chemical science pack helps for sure, but it assumes the player is trying to use oil to get into chemical science first, which is not a super reliable assumption. It's likely the player will first try to use explosives/accumulators/other things available under red+green+military+oil

Also, it's not just about making BOP easier/simpler. It's mainly about making it self-sufficient. You don't need to rush for AOP because the refinery is just getting stuck which is super annoying. It actually works, and to unlock more things, or to be more efficient, you get AOP. That relieves a lot of stress and frustration, and from rushing for chemical science pack.

[FuryoftheStars]

Sure, having two outputs presents the "multiple outputs can block" early on, while not reducing the amount of things you need to do/worry about almost at all. Basic oil processing can still get stuck and that way it feels unsustainable, and the player just wants to rush advanced oil processing just like before - to get the functional version.

2 outputs is still much easier to manage than 3, so it helps and is a step rather than a jump.

Sulfur not being from PG is dangerous, because it can easily happen that the player does not have enough PG sink (for example when starting to mine uranium and producing a lot of sulfuric acid, when producing accumulators and solar panels, maybe in combination with explosives). That way it is possible to get into a situation with "getting stuck" problems even if you already have proper Advanced oil processing set up including proper circuit-controlled cracking. The only way how this could happen otherwise is with Lubricant - typically only when you mass switch to express belts ... assuming you have enough iron plate/iron gear wheel production to show the lubricant being a bottleneck.

And having as much as you did on PG is what was causing the stuck issues in the first place. Incidentally, there was already a solution: solid fuel. But trying to do that much solid fuel from both HO & LO previously to keep up with the PG demands was too much. With sulfur on HO, you only really need to convert LO into SF to relieve the blockage (less PG needs to be converted due to it being used in plastics which has a much higher demand). You also could have allowed sulfur production from all 3 (same as SF), just with the better ratio on HO.

And doing an HO+PG setup would have made the above even easier.

[Engimage]

Balanced chemical science pack helps for sure, but it assumes the player is trying to use oil to get into chemical science first, which is not a super reliable assumption. It's likely the player will first try to use explosives/accumulators/other things available under red+green+military+oil

Even so the only thing that a player can use the PG for is Plastic (or Solid fuel in this case). Yes there will be an issue with output blocking but it SHOULD be there at some point anyways. And I do find this solution as the least harsh way. BOP still has only 1 input, and a player gets only 2 outputs with all required lessons learned - about output blocking and about weaving pipes with different liquids. The later is a signature of oil refining and IMO should be kept but in a more tender way.

[tsen]

Sulfur not being from PG is dangerous, because it can easily happen that the player does not have enough PG sink

I appreciate that, as an artist, the physical perspective is about as far outside your wheelhouse as it is possible to be while staying in the same light cone, but it's important to remember that Factorio used to, and I say used to advisedly (perhaps due to the influence of a former staffer now moved on?), put a great deal of attention into making things, if not precisely realistic (magic gear wheels, to say the least), at least approaching a close parallel to physical consistency within its two-metals-oil-and-water framework — and this is what players like about it. The oil refining system, then, was always the crowning epitome of this principle, hewing a lower compromise with the hobgoblin of "balance" than most other games, so that a player with familiarity with real-world systems could at least recognise (if through a mirror darkly) the processes being depicted... and the sheer idiocy of harvesting sulphur out of the petroleum gas, which is very much not where it crowds naturally, was the most pustulent suppurating boil marring the face of this achievement. I've always personally assumed that it simply came out of a failure to understand the petrochemical industry's often baffling and contradictory English-language jargon by primary speakers of other European languages. Loosely speaking, it doesn't matter whether the player has enough of a petroleum gas sink; sulphur should be where sulphur should be and there's no arguing around it, because if you didn't want it to behave like sulphur, you should have called it something like "batterium" and called it a day.
And the solution to an excess of petroleum gas is the same as the solution to an excess of any other petroleum product and the same solution we have always used in real life: [convert it to solid fuel, which I interpret as simply a sop to the fact that the game's fluid mechanics are much less well-formed than item handling, and] light it on fire.

[Theikkru]

Hmm, well, the change has been committed for now. I still believe there are parts of this worth shaking a stick at, so to speak, but devs seem set on trying this for at least a while, so I will take the opportunity to gather some longer-term data on how it feels to a not-so-new player such as myself.

[Antaios]

Also, it's not just about making BOP easier/simpler. It's mainly about making it self-sufficient. You don't need to rush for AOP because the refinery is just getting stuck which is super annoying. It actually works, and to unlock more things, or to be more efficient, you get AOP. That relieves a lot of stress and frustration, and from rushing for chemical science pack.

If this is the main concern, then cracking should simply be unlocked earlier by red/green, similar to lubricant. It's much less disruptive of a change and keeps many of the positives of the previous progression. The blue science research would be simply a much more favourable output ratio and volume - this is not unprecedented, even if it might make basic oil processing redundant in people's eyes, as other researches do similar things. Stone furnaces, Electric miners etc.

[huancz]

Well, it finally dropped. I think the waiting in past few days was maybe worse than the change itself, and most of the posts were just reiterating arguments already made.

I won't update for now in the middle of my game, but will eventually when I'll be starting a new map. It's still a disappointment. The devs are adamant that blocking oil is THE problem they need to solve, despite many arguments against it. Maybe they have some information we don't, and they won't even hint at. Or they are just bad at getting their point across. If you take that into account, I'm not too surprised which solution they chose. I just hope that they have some specific metric in mind to measure if it helped at all. I think it won't, but I am sure I'm just biased. And still pretty green in the game.

Even if it ruined the game completely (which it doesn't, I'll just have to learn to belt different stuff around), at ~250h I got my money's worth and I don't intend to stop having fun just yet.

[Yandersen]

There is a good and informative discussion here even without us interfering. We can consider feedback without directly responding to it. If interfering just means that I get shit thrown at me, of course I won't interfere, noone likes shit on their face.

Easily avoidable. Try to listen to your customers and value their feedback. If the Factorio will be distributed for free, you can do what you want. But this is a commercial product, we are the customers, we pay money to you, so you can't ignore what customers wanted (WERE AGAINST, in this particular case). No matter what you say now in your defense, the fact shows clearly that none of your customers changed a damned thing by spending their free time here (and I bet a lot of it, considering the sizes and content of the posts). Paradox team does the same. Modern way of game developement? Should customers get use to be ignored nowadays?

Seriously, both we AND the devs were totally agree about the issue with oil. Seen the flaws. Together tried to find solutions that will solve the issues. SO MANY of those were proposed, some refused, some supported. We were all thinking generally, considering the effect not only on ourselves, but other players, with different exp levels. We all went that path, we can look back and remember ours, recall what seemed hard, wrong, unrealistic. Come up with better solutions. And in the end? It all doesn't matter.

[DanGio]

There is a good and informative discussion here even without us interfering. We can consider feedback without directly responding to it. If interfering just means that I get shit thrown at me, of course I won't interfere, noone likes shit on their face.

Easily avoidable. Try to listen to your customers and value their feedback. If the Factorio will be distributed for free, you can do what you want. But this is a commercial product, we are the customers, we pay money to you, so you can't ignore what customers wanted (WERE AGAINST, in this particular case). No matter what you say now in your defense, the fact shows clearly that none of your customers changed a damned thing by spending their free time here (and I bet a lot of it, considering the sizes and content of the posts). Paradox team does the same. Modern way of game developement? Should customers get use to be ignored nowadays?

But, I'm a customer too and I love the changes... So which customer should they listen ?

[tsen]

There is a good and informative discussion here even without us interfering. We can consider feedback without directly responding to it. If interfering just means that I get shit thrown at me, of course I won't interfere, noone likes shit on their face.

Easily avoidable. Try to listen to your customers and value their feedback. If the Factorio will be distributed for free, you can do what you want. But this is a commercial product, we are the customers, we pay money to you, so you can't ignore what customers wanted (WERE AGAINST, in this particular case). No matter what you say now in your defense, the fact shows clearly that none of your customers changed a damned thing by spending their free time here (and I bet a lot of it, considering the sizes and content of the posts). Paradox team does the same. Modern way of game developement? Should customers get use to be ignored nowadays?

I can't help but note an important possibility here:
You (and everyone here) already paid. You aren't demanding a refund over this. What on earth should Wube care what you think? If, say, hypothetically, they feel that they've hit market saturation among people competent enough to handle the current level of complexity and can get more new customers by going bland, we're now useless to them, aren't we? Worse than useless, even: freeloaders getting their updates and hard work without giving them more. This might be a hint to their, if not conscious, at least implicit views.

[Yandersen]

There is a good and informative discussion here even without us interfering. We can consider feedback without directly responding to it. If interfering just means that I get shit thrown at me, of course I won't interfere, noone likes shit on their face.

Easily avoidable. Try to listen to your customers and value their feedback. If the Factorio will be distributed for free, you can do what you want. But this is a commercial product, we are the customers, we pay money to you, so you can't ignore what customers wanted (WERE AGAINST, in this particular case). No matter what you say now in your defense, the fact shows clearly that none of your customers changed a damned thing by spending their free time here (and I bet a lot of it, considering the sizes and content of the posts). Paradox team does the same. Modern way of game developement? Should customers get use to be ignored nowadays?

But, I'm a customer too and I love the changes... So which customer should they listen ?

If you were here for two weeks straight reading all propositions, I am sure that you would find many others that you will be happy with too. There WERE better optionS proposed, I promise you.

[xnmo]

What I'd like to know is why all the 2-output proposals fell through. As of last notice there were 2 options that didn't seem to conflict with any of the devs' ideas/principles, petroleum+light and petroleum+heavy, and we know that the petroleum+heavy one was being tested (which I found interesting, since that one involved far more changes from the FFF than petroleum+light).

None of them really solved all the issues - complexity, tedium, pacing. Some of them were more interesting than others but always with some flaw. The biggest problem with the chosen solution is that it's likely the players will build straight pipes next to basic oil refining refineries, and get the "Can't mix fluids" error. We have some ideas how to fix this already, but nothing confirmed yet.

So not being able to use oil as a viable fuel source before advanced processing is not a flaw? Sticking construction bots further back into the tech tree is not a flaw?

You can absolutely use it as a viable fuel source, you just don't have the ultimate efficiency available later, but it's completely viable. Same way you don't have productivity modules lvl3 yet either.
Construction robots further back is questionnable. It makes much more sense design-wise, but on the other end I can see why it was appealing. We'll see if the change is too drastic in this regard over time.

Before the recipe gave 30H/30L/40P. L is worth 2x for SF so it is equivalent to 130P total. Now it gives 45P. A third of the fuel value if you used to get. A half of the fuel you got if you, like most people, didn't burn away your petrol since it has critically important uses.

So you get half the fuel efficiency and ZERO spare petroleum gas. You call that viable? Come on, man.

[Jap2.0]

There is a good and informative discussion here even without us interfering. We can consider feedback without directly responding to it. If interfering just means that I get shit thrown at me, of course I won't interfere, noone likes shit on their face.

You think that less communication would prevent the issue?

[DanGio]

There is a good and informative discussion here even without us interfering. We can consider feedback without directly responding to it. If interfering just means that I get shit thrown at me, of course I won't interfere, noone likes shit on their face.

Easily avoidable. Try to listen to your customers and value their feedback. If the Factorio will be distributed for free, you can do what you want. But this is a commercial product, we are the customers, we pay money to you, so you can't ignore what customers wanted (WERE AGAINST, in this particular case). No matter what you say now in your defense, the fact shows clearly that none of your customers changed a damned thing by spending their free time here (and I bet a lot of it, considering the sizes and content of the posts). Paradox team does the same. Modern way of game developement? Should customers get use to be ignored nowadays?

But, I'm a customer too and I love the changes... So which customer should they listen ?

If you were here for two weeks straight reading all propositions, I am sure that you would find many others that you will be happy with too. There WERE better optionS proposed, I promise you.

I were here, even if I didn't post as much as you. I can guarantee I've read every post until yesterday, when I got sick of reading the same 5 solutions posted over and over again as if they were brand new.

Edit : those weren't bad ideas, I'm only speaking about the redundancy of posts.

Edit 2 : this last post showss that I'm tired and should retire from the forums for some time
I think my posts have been acceptable, but if you've feel offended by 1 of them, believe that wasn't intended !

[BlueTemplar]

Well, it finally dropped. I think the waiting in past few days was maybe worse than the change itself, and most of the posts were just reiterating arguments already made.

I won't update for now in the middle of my game, but will eventually when I'll be starting a new map. It's still a disappointment. The devs are adamant that blocking oil is THE problem they need to solve, despite many arguments against it. Maybe they have some information we don't, and they won't even hint at. Or they are just bad at getting their point across. If you take that into account, I'm not too surprised which solution they chose. I just hope that they have some specific metric in mind to measure if it helped at all. I think it won't, but I am sure I'm just biased. And still pretty green in the game.

Even if it ruined the game completely (which it doesn't, I'll just have to learn to belt different stuff around), at ~250h I got my money's worth and I don't intend to stop having fun just yet.

Remember that the devs regularly test the game with completely new players.
Sometimes with results that can be fairly surprising to more experienced players :
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