0.17 - is it stable enough for the casual player?

[Quax]

Knowing that in 0.17 a lot of basic things (science, oil, ...) will chage significantly, I feel the time invested in my 0.16 game kind of wasted. THe further I develop my base, the more thing I will need to change after changing the release. Only thinking of having to change my whole science setup is kind of nightmare. So I'm thinking back and forth whether I should change to 0.17 already, or keep playing 0.16 beyond the release of stable 0.17.

So what I wan t to know: how much "experimental" is 0.17 still? In other words, if I change to 0.17, will I have frequent crashes, bugs, ... that really hinder the gameplay?

[Serenity]

Bug and crash wise Factorio has long been very good. And they fixed most of them:
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-303

Changes to recipes are another matter

[Ghoulish]

Yes, jump in. Wube will be the first to say you may get an odd crash, rare in my own experience, and you will get balance changes (which I myself don't mind, once you're set up it's fun to have to rethink on a big scale). Those these are usually discussed in full before hand in the FFF thread or similar. The experimental vs stable are very different from the stage in development angle. Even when they themselves make a mistake, it's always patched out quickly, same for any big issues encountered, it's dealt with fast. Experimental is on the whole a smooth ride

[BlueTemplar]

IMHO your time in 0.16 is only wasted if you expect to only ever play one game.
I personally doubt that I will upgrade my 0.16 games to 0.17, as so much has changed, and they present their own specific and interesting gameplay challenges !

I'm also going to bet that we'll see the first 0.17 stable this August (starting right now!),
but then, this also means that I doubt that there will be any major changes to 0.17 between now and the first stable ! (Especially after the changes in 0.17.60 !)

P.S.: Crashes & Bug -wise, it's very stable.

[Koub]

At some point, you will have to redo stuff in your factory because of changes.
If you want to do that once at most, wait until development is totally over
If not, depending on your tolerance for unexpected changes, you can wait for the last stable, the last stable from previous major release, the last unstable, ...
All in all, 0.17 is pretty stable, but so it was just before the 0.17.60 oil and blue science changes.

[Quax]

Great, thanks .. already installing the 0.17

[evopwr]

I generally find all experimental branches, even from first release n.01, to be extremely reliable.
Of course there are sometimes exceptions, but overall its one of the most stable and well tested games i've ever come across.
Probably due to the high level of automated testing they have used. at a guess.

[nog]

"Is experimental stable ?"

Well, this question is an interesting cognitive challenge.

[mergele]

To put it this way: I don't remember the last time the game crashed on me or the last time I wasn't playing on experimental. I've heard there was a version that broke all trains somewhat recently? Must have been during one of my breaks fom Factorio though.

[T-A-R]

To put it this way: I don't remember the last time the game crashed on me or the last time I wasn't playing on experimental. I've heard there was a version that broke all trains somewhat recently? Must have been during one of my breaks fom Factorio though.

Had to look it up, but the the trainocalyps was version 0.16.40, may 2018, it was not the game that crashed;): https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-242

[mergele]

Ah huh, for some reaon I felt it was somewhere this spring. Interestingly I seem to tend to put factorio on hold during spring quite regularily.

[slippycheeze]

"Is experimental stable ?"

Well, this question is an interesting cognitive challenge.

I'll help: stable has multiple meanings, and not all of them conflict with experimental. In fact, none of them must conflict with experimental, since something can be experimental, and never change again, but that definition isn't relevant here.

Hope that helps.

[Oktokolo]

In general, Factorio experimental is pretty stable.
But there was at least one minor update that made a lot of trains ignore a lot of signals for a lot of players.
So it is best to wait 24 hours before applying each update. If the release topic is not full of bug reports after a day, it is pretty safe to update to that specific version.

[Pi-C]

So it is best to wait 24 hours before applying each update. If the release topic is not full of bug reports after a day, it is pretty safe to update to that specific version.

Unless really everybody will wait for at least 24 hours before updating from now on …

[Quax]

Well, playing 0.17 now, and I'm pretty satisfied. I'm not playing every day (although I wish I could ), but I cannot tell a difference to 0.16 (in terms of stability, not content of course).

This is a pretty fine game after all

[Oktokolo]

So it is best to wait 24 hours before applying each update. If the release topic is not full of bug reports after a day, it is pretty safe to update to that specific version.

Unless really everybody will wait for at least 24 hours before updating from now on …

Will not happen. I am part of a minority wich is not absurdly hyped about each and every update.

[Kater-Pult]

Skyrim was released in 2011. Each new experimental Version of Factorio is more stable than a tripple AAA Title wich got 22 million Copies sold and has now more than 7 Years of developement on its Belt.

Let that sink in.

I play Factorio since 0.12, always the lastest Version and as far as i can remember i got 3 Bugs that crashed my game (and were fixed the next days). Its solid, just try.

[Pi-C]

So it is best to wait 24 hours before applying each update. If the release topic is not full of bug reports after a day, it is pretty safe to update to that specific version.

Unless really everybody will wait for at least 24 hours before updating from now on …

Will not happen. I am part of a minority wich is not absurdly hyped about each and every update.

There have been updates that I liked because they brought improvements, but there have also been updates that broke stuff (not just like the current oil changes where it was about concepts of the game, but changes that really broke things to an extent that the game was virtually unusable on my system). But I see installing updates as soon as they are released as a contribution to the development process: If nobody is using the latest version, nobody will find any bugs it might contain.

Let's face it: We are users/players of Factorio, and Factorio is just a game for us (it's different for the developers because it's the product they need to sell to make a living). For us, Factorio is not existential -- if an update breaks something, we can write a bug report, install the last version that worked, and hope that the next update will fix the issue. It may be a nuisance, and it may cost some time, but it's nothing that would hurt us in the long run. See, I'm using the unstable branch of Debian: I've waited for about 5 years until I dared upgrading grub2 because there were a couple of serious bugs (you can get a list of known bugs before actually updating packages) that looked so threatening, I feared to get locked out of my system for good (what with encrypted partitions etc.). I might have found a solution, but it would have taken lots of time and be risky nevertheless. I know my limits, so I won't touch stuff like that until the gurus say it's OK. But packages where I know the worst that can happen is I've to downgrade to the previous version? Give me those anytime! If the developers/maintainers give me something I depend on for my work (or even something I just enjoy, like Factorio) the least I can do in return is helping them out with some feedback (which I can't do if I only stick to the stable version).

So, yes, there are only few versions of Factorio 0.17 I haven't installed as soon as they were released (missed some because I was away at the time, or because several versions were released within the space of mere hours), yet I feel that doesn't make me "absurdly hyped about each and every update".

[BlueTemplar]

Skyrim was released in 2011. Each new experimental Version of Factorio is more stable than a tripple AAA Title wich got 22 million Copies sold and has now more than 7 Years of developement on its Belt.

Well duh, Bethesda is infamous for how shitty and unstable their code is, and how they use modders to do their work for them... pick another example instead, that is not near the bottom of the ladder ?

[Oktokolo]

Will not happen. I am part of a minority wich is not absurdly hyped about each and every update.

But I see installing updates as soon as they are released as a contribution to the development process: If nobody is using the latest version, nobody will find any bugs it might contain.
[...]
So, yes, there are only few versions of Factorio 0.17 I haven't installed as soon as they were released (missed some because I was away at the time, or because several versions were released within the space of mere hours), yet I feel that doesn't make me "absurdly hyped about each and every update".

No, it makes you part of another minority wich actually plays experimental and updates to help the devs find the bugs. That minority i would expect to be even smaller than my minority - the players who want new stuff fast but still hold themself back a day to avoid the rare extra-massive bugs.

P.S.:
Thank you for working as a tester for my favorite large-scale base building game. There is the way bigger group of players who are indeed hyped for every update and don't wait because they want to play each update as soon as it happens. But they don't actively search for bugs so might miss some low-impact ones, wich testers like you might catch.