Friday Facts #305 - The Oil Changes

[Antaios]

Even though it was not my idea, I was very significantly responsible for the changes and they would not have happened without my agreement, therefore you can fully blame me for them... and sacrifice me to the dark gods if that is what you desire.

Honestly, there isn’t that much to write further. The proposed solution from last FFF got implemented and the reasons are the same as stated many times. We already presented almost the same thing twice in two weeks, I don’t believe yet another discussion would yield much different results.

Many if not all the suggestions were considered and several of them I even implemented. I already tried to explain the downsides of each of them, and why the no-changes option as well. I’m far from civilization on a phone now so can’t link nor am I going to make a megalong post, but I think the answers are there, though probably lost in the sheer amount of posts. I’d be happy to answer later when I get to a computer if there are further questions.
In short, the changes make oil less annoying to set up in the basic form. I hate hearing that this is only for newcomers, I think it’s just generally better, not having to worry about as many things.
In case of no changes, the basic oil processing was annoying yet completely unsustainable, deadlocking all the time. This lead to just spamming tanks which is a really weak solution, and forced the player to rush advanced oil processing, thus rushing blue science. However with all the things in green the player is generally in a good spot.

Also, I honestly cannot spend another full weekend fully reading the forums and spending several hours writing replies.

BTW your opinions were absolutely not ignored.

I proposed this earlier, but perhaps a bit late. I never saw it iterated upon, but then you didn't discuss every iteration I suppose.
Nevertheless,
Was there consideration about removing cracking from advanced oil processing and putting it in it's own green science. Then re-balancing basic oil processing to produce less heavy and light oil.

If all of the reasons you've given thus far are correct, that would address most if not all of them and not cause any large issues. Along with keeping myriad of other benefits the old oil system, both in it's teaching and in it's not locking off of technology, that I've mentioned already plenty.

[Koub]

I'd rather see a low tier ground based con bot limited enough so that regular conbots would be a significant upgrade, but that would help kickstart the scaling needed to automate blue science, so that we don't go from mandatory BOP=> AOP to mandatory BOP=> Bots.

There is a mod by Klonan implementing ground-based Construction Drones. Their behaviour is a bit (pseudo)random and they tend to go crazy a lot - so they are not production ready just yet.
But if the mod would work just fine, ground-based bots would be my favorite even after faster flying bots become available just because the ground-based ones do fit way better with Factorio's art style.

Yeah I know this mod, and I've even seen a reboot of this mod by someone else without the enermagic beam to load/build : the bots had no reach, which I liked better. But as always, as much as I love the fact there are mods, I wish the vanilla experience not to need mods to be optimal.

[Oktokolo]

Yeah I know this mod, and I've even seen a reboot of this mod by someone else without the enermagic beam to load/build : the bots had no reach, which I liked better.

Yeah, the beam looks fishy. But i am pretty sure, it is a workaround to make build order less important as that bots are not very smart. Using an invisible beam only when not able to reach a location would probably be the best compromise.

But as always, as much as I love the fact there are mods, I wish the vanilla experience not to need mods to be optimal.

It is made by Klonan, so maybe he adds it to vanilla if he finds a way to fix the bots' behaviour.

[meganothing]

As much as I like the idea of early ground based bots, I shudder to think of the pathfinding calculations that would result.

I wrote a mod, which is on the mod portal, that does path finding for various tasks with sheep, err, compilatrons. The unit API is actually very fast when used properly. There are some issues where things get stuck, but, I was able to do pathfinding on 10,000 units without using a terrible amount of CPU usage (the algorithm was designed to be very cautious about this, of course) -- with an average around 0.4-0.6 in the time info display, with spikes up to around 1, so not even using as much CPU as, for example, YARM while it's tracking a lot of large fields.

Even in a free play game you could start with one or two processing units (or special robot brains you never will be able to build yourself) in your inventar. The only pre-blue-science recipe using them could be a compilatron-type robot, in this scenario it should definitely be a burner-fueled variant

This makes sure that it is a limited power, even if path finding would be a CPU hog or massive amounts of bots too early not desirable.

[T-A-R]

Yes that thought can not really go away. Especially since burner construction drones were mentioned in one of the WUBE's reactions here.

I would love to see the mod considered vanilla. The construction drones seemed to be a side project, as seen on the mod page there is still room for improvement.
When I use them to speed up bootstrapping have to turn off the mods at the point that trapped drones are all over the factory. (perhaps give them a timer like combat drones?)

Having them vanilla would be a good reason to justify time for further improvement of the mod. Yes they are changing gameplay, and add another layer of complexity, and more things to distract "new players". But when used in early early game (red science only) the could be also a helping factor in scaling up (and moving entire setups around with Ctrl-x Ctrl-v), so you will be stronger before you hit the "blue wall".

Since the game is about automation, I don't see why a construction robot would be one of the first things to unlock, and using them one of the first things to learn.
Moving back bots may be determined as good for balance, moving some early bots more forward would be a sweet cookie.

How exactly to implement them (beam, speed, cost, timer, docks etc.) should be a dedicated topic instead of is one, but currently unfortunately it feels useless to discuss it, as there seem to be reasons not to improve em for vanilla use(?).

[BlueTemplar]

Why Automation science? That would be way too early, and too much for new players : they definitely feel more like they belong in Logistic science ! (Engine unit as a component seems obvious...)

[T-A-R]

Because then it would be another tech In the green science era. but i intend to agree on you. Engines in de recipe does makes sense, but it also shrinks the usefull timeframe of them because flying bots are close then (once you setup your first oil processing).

On the other hand they may not be obsolete directly at unlocking flying bots,since those are still to slow to be usefull, especially at plopping wall and rail projects.
That should be the target, helping with your first larger scale builds.

It would also give a good incentive to start working out engines and green chips decently, before you start with oil processing.

[Monara]

Reading this thread and the one from the week before is making me depressed...
80+ pages of suggestions on how to handle this in a better way but it all seems so pointless, the changes just get pushed through anyway. Sadly this pattern keeps getting more and more common. Features are just straight up being deleted to try to appeal to new players that aren't even interested in this type of game. It happened with things like the assembly machine ingredient limit, even with something silly like the entire obstacle avoidance of the rail planner to not confuse new players with *one* extra hotkey (thankfully at least this one is now reversed) and now this. Changes that deeply impact the core of what the game is about in a negative way, poorly thought through and hacked together, to hopefully appeal to a "different" type of player. The existing player base already bought the game anyway...
You really need to start considering what kind of effect this has on the current player base and the damage it does to the reputation of the game/developer. Watching any popular Factorio streamer or youtuber the last few weeks must have left an extremely bad impression for potential buyers researching the game.
This strategy of dumbing down to pull in new players is going to be harmful in the long term as more and more existing players are feeling ignored and dissatisfied. And those new players you convinced to try the game because it's dumbed down will lose interest much faster than the ones that were actually interested in the genre. I've seen this in so many games, eventually it leads to an endless cycle of continuously making things easier and adding more and more extreme instant gratification mechanics to attract players that then lose interest in a few days because there is no depth to the gameplay anymore.

[Adamo]

Even in a free play game you could start with one or two processing units (or special robot brains you never will be able to build yourself) in your inventar. The only pre-blue-science recipe using them could be a compilatron-type robot, in this scenario it should definitely be a burner-fueled variant

This makes sure that it is a limited power, even if path finding would be a CPU hog or massive amounts of bots too early not desirable.

I just setup my compilatrons to power themselves by eating trees.

[Zaka]

Now that the mania over the 17.60 oil change has passed and the thread posts have slowed down a bit, I would like to look at oil fractions as a whole.

The devs believe that the “oil wall” exists and I am not here to argue that point. Rather, I would like to look deeper in to Oil refining and what it provides.

But first, Factorio… When you break it down, Factorio is a building game where the final product is science. Pre-infinite research we measured our mega-bases in RPM. Post-infinite research we measure them in SPM. So ultimately, the major consumer of all products is science. I do understand that there is base defense (if you play with biters turned on) and other miscellaneous consumers, but again science is the driver.

Now why make the above statements? Why state the obvious? Because I have read the threads and I have seen them veer off into strange and unusual directions. In this comment, I only want to deal with oil refining and oil use in science. Since the primary purpose of oil is to produce science, if that works well all the other parts will fall into place.

Pre-17.60 Science:

Automation (Red) – No Oil products
Logistics (Green)– No Oil Products
Military (Grey) – No Oil Products
Chemical (Bule) – Solid Fuel (HO/LO/PG) and Plastic (PG)
Production (Purple) – Plastic (PG)
Utility (Yellow) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Lubricant (HO)
Space (White) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Solid Fuel (HO/LO/PG)

Ok, so where does this come from?

Code: Select all

Oil Fraction	Lubricant	SolidFuel	Plastic		Sulfer
Heavy Oil	10 to 10	20 to 1		0		0
Light Oil	0		10 to 1		0		0
Pet Gas		0		20 to 1		20 to 2		30 to 2

So what does this tell us?
It appears that we only need 2 refined oil products. Light Oil is completely useless.
Yes, I know it’s more efficient for Solid Fuel, but is it completely unnecessary.

Post-17.60 Science

Automation (Red) – No Oil products
Logistics (Green)– No Oil Products
Military (Grey) – No Oil Products
Chemical (Bule) – Sulfur (PG) and Plastic (PG)
Production (Purple) – Plastic (PG)
Utility (Yellow) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Lubricant (HO)
Space (White) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Solid Fuel (HO/LO/PG), Light Oil (LO)

So where does it come from now?

Code: Select all

Oil Fraction	Lubricant	SolidFuel	Plastic		Sulfer		Rocket Fuel
Heavy Oil	10 to 10	20 to 1		0		0		0
Light Oil	0		10 to 1		0		0		10 to 1
Pet Gas		0		20 to 1		20 to 2		30 to 2		0

So what does this tell us?
Light Oil finally has a use in white science.

Did this create relatively balanced use for the oil products???

Suggestions:

Each Oil Fraction should have it's own unique product.

Adamo pointed out that Heavy Oil has higher sulfur content and I have adjusted the chart below accordingly.

Solid Fuel / Sulfur should be adjusted so only 2 of the oil fractions (a Primary and a Secondary) can make the product.

I also saw recommendations in the thread that Basic Refining should have multiple recipes, one for each fraction.
This allows new users to “Add refining as needed” and introduces new fluids one at a time.
It will also allow for bots to be built pre-Chemical Science.

I would also like to suggest that we should have another product in the science packs made from oil.
I don’t have a suggestion for what this product would be, but based on the above suggestions, the result should look something like this:

Basic Refining with 3 recipes:

Code: Select all

Oil Fraction	Unique		SolidFuel	Sulfer		NewProduct
Heavy Oil	Lubicant	0		10 to 1		20 to 1
Light Oil	RocketFuel	10 to 1		20 to 1		0
Pet Gas		Plastic		20 to 1		0		10 to 1

Resulting in New Science (based on 17.60):
Automation (Red) – No Oil products
Logistics (Green)– No Oil Products
Military (Grey) – No Oil Products
Chemical (Bule) – Sulfur (HO/LO) and Plastic (PG)
Production (Purple) – Plastic (PG)
Utility (Yellow) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (HO/LO), Lubricant (HO)
Space (White) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (HO/LO), Solid Fuel (LO/PG), Rocket Fuel (LO)

Thanks for your time.
-Zaka

[Katamechanic]

...

Great analysis and suggestion. +1

Because then it would be another tech In the green science era. but i intend to agree on you. Engines in de recipe does makes sense, but it also shrinks the usefull timeframe of them because flying bots are close then (once you setup your first oil processing).

On the other hand they may not be obsolete directly at unlocking flying bots,since those are still to slow to be usefull, especially at plopping wall and rail projects.
That should be the target, helping with your first larger scale builds.

Back to the bot crusade, don't think it's a problem for there to be a small window of usefulness for ground bots. Like BT said, bots make much more sense in logistic science, and I believe that they should just be a stepping stone to flying con bots. They serve as a minor "cookie" for the player to make the game not as tedious, make base building slightly easier, but still leave the larger reward of con bots untouched.

[lacika2000]

Adamo pointed out that Heavy Oil has higher sulfur content and I have adjusted the chart below accordingly.

Ah, my posts and the “mountain of sulfur” got forgotten so quickly...

[T-A-R]

Back to the bot crusade, don't think it's a problem for there to be a small window of usefulness for ground bots. Like BT said, bots make much more sense in logistic science, and I believe that they should just be a stepping stone to flying con bots. They serve as a minor "cookie" for the player to make the game not as tedious, make base building slightly easier, but still leave the larger reward of con bots untouched.

Yea Katamechanic, you summarised my second thought in better words. Unfortunately it seems entirely useless to continue on this topic.
But as it is one of the last places we can speak "freely" about the oil change, I'd rather keep the topic alive.

[Hiladdar]

Regarding your post, Zeka, I think you bring up a very good point, and I concur with your analysis.

The 0.17.60 changes to oil and the changes to chemical science packs have a high probability of necessitating another base-breaking patch, i.e. one that requires dramatic changes to ratios or production lines, in order to better balance raw resource to final product needed.

Hiladdar

[Theikkru]

Since it's become the focus of discussion again, I'd like to toss in my thoughts on oil product balance (and plug my proposal). As I see it, trying to balance usage of oil products through recipes can only go so far, because while sciences can be balanced with respect to each other, there will always be other things that use oil products, throwing things off-kilter; no matter how carefully you tune the recipes, some people are going to decide they need a screenful of accumulators, and use up all their sulfur, while others will go on a module building spree, draining plastic. Therefore, it's more important to have a good mechanic to compensate for imbalanced use than it is to try and balance the recipes themselves. The devs have made it clear that they want advanced processing to be mandatory, so moving cracking earlier or making individual refining recipes for individual oil products isn't going to fly, but conveniently enough, solid fuel already has recipes for all 3 oil products, so balancing around that could do the trick.

[Light]

Even in a free play game you could start with one or two processing units (or special robot brains you never will be able to build yourself) in your inventar. The only pre-blue-science recipe using them could be a compilatron-type robot, in this scenario it should definitely be a burner-fueled variant

This makes sure that it is a limited power, even if path finding would be a CPU hog or massive amounts of bots too early not desirable.

I just setup my compilatrons to power themselves by eating trees.

Technology vs nature. I like it.

[Adamo]

Plus I got to name the function for that activity "graze()", and we all know trees are the true enemy. They also poop out boxes of wood.

[meganothing]

I just setup my compilatrons to power themselves by eating trees.

Great idea.

Reminds me a little of the first RTS, Dune, where automatic harvesters would have no problems wandering into enemy territory in their quest for resources. I see similar happen here (and I like it).

[Theikkru]

Plus I got to name the function for that activity "graze()", and we all know trees are the true enemy. They also poop out boxes of wood.

Shouldn't it be "browse"? #wordpolice

[esotericist]

as a snowflake in the flood, and someone who is not a terribly active player (and even less active on the forums, i don't even have 10 posts yet), I might not be noticed.

but since i am someone who finds the game extremely difficult, it's possible my commentary is of value:

i struggle with spatial reasoning. belts and inserters and positioning everything so that everything can go where it needs and everything actually works... this is very, very, very hard for me, and it's the main reason I never play very far.

logistics robots help a lot. even when they're obviously the "wrong" solution from a throughput standpoint (particularly given the immensely derpy prioritization schema they are saddled with), they sometimes make it possible for me to solve a problem that I otherwise could not.

getting to logistics bots involved dealing with oil. oil was all of the problems i had with belts and inserters, but even worse. so simplifying early oil? this is a legitimately huge accessibility win for me.

on the other hand: moving robots even further back, so i have even more things i have to struggle with on that large scale before i can have the technology that lets me get things done with less stress and pain? not so much a win.

to be clear, i am not arguing for anything in specific here. just noting a perspective in which this change makes things both vastly better and vastly worse at the same time.

Tangentially, learning about klonan's construction drones was kinda nice. i wish we could do something similar for logistics, akin to how surviving mars lets you set up transfer orders between points. edit: yes, i know about trains, but trains are a heavyweight solution and not well suited to "I have lots of things that might want to cross this space"