Friday Facts #305 - The Oil Changes

[Theikkru]

Quick reminder about newcomers :
[...]
While learning curve is an important & interesting issue to think about, we certainly have way more things to say about how these changes impact us.

I addressed that in my proposal too:

[...]
This would incur a total cost of 1 additional recipe (solid fuel from light oil) re-introduced to the basic oil tech zone, and 1 additional recipe introduced to the chemical science production chain (solid fuel from oil products). Here, I'll also include some optional additional changes that may complement the above and mitigate the costs, should they prove prohibitive: (Note: these are not all mutually compatible)
[...]

[DanGio]

If I read it correctly, your proposition involves a balanced usage of LO & PG in early oil, LO being SF & Sulfur, PG being Plastic. To avoid one blocking other, there's also a balancing proposition in the science pack recipe. But again, this expects the player to make chemical science 1st. If he does a ton of batteries or a ton of reds, he's blocked. (to say it shortly, I know it's more subtile than that)

Only on the mass reds. Mass batteries is sulfur based and cannot block because it can balance via solid fuel. And I also covered that case later on; all that would do is push the player through chemical science far enough to access cracking. I don't see a problem in nudging the player to go get cracking if they're insistent on diving off on a tangent to mass produce stack inserters or something.

This is a complicated mind exercise and I hope I'm not skipping something, but say, that the player wants to get solar & accu first. His LO consumption will be high because of sulfur, his PG consumption will be none, and when his solar & accu setup is complete, his SF consumption will be quite small, and only if he managed to merge SF into coal for furnaces.

Honestly, I'm not saying it's a terrible issue if that happens. I'm just defending in approximative english that devs managed to do what they aimed to do, eliminate any oil output blocked possibility in the first stage.

[Theikkru]

This is a complicated mind exercise and I hope I'm not skipping something, but say, that the player wants to get solar & accu first. His LO consumption will be high because of sulfur, his PG consumption will be none, and when his solar & accu setup is complete, his SF consumption will be quite small, and only if he managed to merge SF into coal for furnaces.

Honestly, I'm not saying it's a terrible issue if that happens. I'm just defending in approximative english that devs managed to do what they aimed to do, eliminate any oil deadlock possibility in the first stage.

Solid fuel is still producible from petroleum gas, so it and sulfur cannot cause a lock-up.

[DanGio]

This is a complicated mind exercise and I hope I'm not skipping something, but say, that the player wants to get solar & accu first. His LO consumption will be high because of sulfur, his PG consumption will be none, and when his solar & accu setup is complete, his SF consumption will be quite small, and only if he managed to merge SF into coal for furnaces.

Honestly, I'm not saying it's a terrible issue if that happens. I'm just defending in approximative english that devs managed to do what they aimed to do, eliminate any oil deadlock possibility in the first stage.

Solid fuel is still producible from petroleum gas, so it and sulfur cannot cause a lock-up.

But if solar & accu are here, his SF consumption is ? Trains & furnaces, given the player uses trains which is really not mandatory. Also, inserting SF into furnaces isn't something everyone do.

I'm totally aware of possibilities to avoid oil blocked output. But having the problem & needing to find a solution VS having no problem at all to solve aren't the same.

[Theikkru]

But if solar & accu are here, his SF consumption is ? Trains & furnaces, given the player uses trains which is really not mandatory. Also, inserting SF into furnaces isn't something everyone do.

I'm totally aware of possibilities to avoid oil blocked output. But having the problem & needing to find a solution VS having no problem at all to solve aren't the same.

Sulfur becomes a new sink for solid fuel, and is required by chem science (more than plastic, so it relieves the blockage), which leads the player to advanced oil research. Advanced oil research accesses cracking, so the player can set up cracking without dealing with advanced oil processing itself and then go back to doing whatever he/she was doing before.
To make sure we're not trying to solve different problems, the goal here isn't to remove the oil balancing problem entirely, it's only to remove the case where players lock up their factory without a solution.

[DanGio]

Sulfur becomes a new sink for solid fuel

That's what I was missing. I understand now why only mass reds could block.

[mcdjfp]

Fine. I was being polite. I am well aware that the delay is their plan, but when I read that post the thought that came into my head was that they don't really care at all about really fixing the problem, so long as their average playtime number goes up.

If you read the past years' FFF, and as you're an active forum member, I'm pretty sure you do, you can't think devs are trying to make a subpar game that just brings money. Now, the streamlining phase has been controversial amongst several players, but IMO, streamlining is just the natural road to 1.0, to the perfect, polished Factorio.

At 0.15 definitely not. 0.16 still hadn't really crossed my mind. But since then the feeling has slowly been growing. True some of the changes have been reverted/mitigated in one way or another, but the feeling has still been growing. The carelessness (or lack of thought if you want to describe it that way) of some of the changes hasn't really helped. The initial set of suggested recipe changes forced by the basic oil processing change are a good example of that. The rail planner (now fixed) having its most useful feature disabled to repurpose its hot key was the tipping point for me. Even fixed, the doubt set in. It isn't their fault entirely, but I have been burned too many times.

[DanGio]

Fine. I was being polite. I am well aware that the delay is their plan, but when I read that post the thought that came into my head was that they don't really care at all about really fixing the problem, so long as their average playtime number goes up.

If you read the past years' FFF, and as you're an active forum member, I'm pretty sure you do, you can't think devs are trying to make a subpar game that just brings money. Now, the streamlining phase has been controversial amongst several players, but IMO, streamlining is just the natural road to 1.0, to the perfect, polished Factorio.

At 0.15 definitely not. 0.16 still hadn't really crossed my mind. But since then the feeling has slowly been growing. True some of the changes have been reverted/mitigated in one way or another, but the feeling has still been growing. The carelessness (or lack of thought if you want to describe it that way) of some of the changes hasn't really helped. The initial set of suggested recipe changes forced by the basic oil processing change are a good example of that. The rail planner (now fixed) having its most useful feature disabled to repurpose its hot key was the tipping point for me. Even fixed, the doubt set in. It isn't their fault entirely, but I have been burned too many times.

IMO, the rail planner sequence is an additional proof of their dedication. They implemented an nice feature, removed it for good reasons, and then reimplemented it as several players said they missed it. The lazy, easy-money path would have been "let it just be in an unfinished state, people are used to it like it is anyway".

[Hiladdar]

oh what a wonderful way to put that it changes your experience. I've read all comments to that effect. I'll acknowledge that figuring out multiple outputs on one building is rewarding, but it mystifies me that you guys need to preserve that particular experience so well that you'll argue for weeks about it. Can we not move past this? Why is it not ok to "move" it to Advanced oil processing?

Because it doesn't accomplish the goal. it messes with the freedom of technologies and progression the player has through the expansion phase (where they start exploring) that is green science, and it doesn't 'smooth out' the difficulty curve. Sure, it makes things easier, specifically regarding oil for experienced players, that's somewhat smoother for us in a way. But it also removed some smoothing technology, now moved behind blue science, so it's more a wash.

This is what the curves for 'stuff the player has to deal with' regarding oil. If you're concerned about new players, you'll be concerned about this, throwing new stuff at them. (omitting coal liquefaction)

(the chart omitted the '0' in 0.17.60, the red line)
OilDifficultyPercent.JPG

Neither of those is particularly smooth, but I think we can agree the second is way harsher.
Not to mention for reasons I explained in my very lengthy post, the complexities associated with basic oil processing are over exaggerated, so that blue curve should actually be lowered in the basic oil processing stage.

I agree with you, all this change did was push the problem from later into the game, removing flexibility for more experienced players.

only the problem is delayed.

Thats what we wanted

Based on the feed back and length of this thread, like me, I do not believe that this is what most of the players wanted.

when I read that post the thought that came into my head was that they don't really care at all about really fixing the problem

...

There's a bunch of problems that rears its head at about the same time:
Oil processing
Mining outposts
Biters
Trains
Advanced Circuits
Chemical Science

There's a lot of things to deal with, so by making BOP trivial, that's one less thing to worry about and you can focus on something else. Later, when you get AOP, the same old complexity/deadlock problems come up, but now you've got fewer immediate concerns and better tools to handle it. The point of the delay is to turn a difficulty wall into two ramps.

xfir01, in listing all six items, you hit a bulls eye. This is the real issue, not the amount of stuff, but the player having to bounce around the different tasks in order to get past the chemical science hurdle.

I understand that the oil change in .60 is an attempt to simply the game, and it does so, but the cost is such a simplification that it removes flexibility. At the same time, it breaks all pre-60 maps requiring either mods or a time to fix. I would of preferred this to be released after a stable version would of been released, or between 0.16.51 and 0.17.00.

Long term, I think there will have to be adjustments how the oil recipes based on need, possibly even addressing the generation of the oil fields. The recipes, converting everything into petroleum, using 3 productivity-3 modules per refinery or chemical plant using fracking (excluding speed modules for simplicity):

Pre-60

BoP: 100 Crude = 30 Hv, 30 Lt, 40 Petrol fracked to 29.25 + 30 Lt and 40 Petrol fracked to 51.35 + 40 Petrol which ends up as 91.35 Petrol.
AoP: 100 Crude = 10 Hv, 45 Lt, 30 Petrol fracked to 9.75 + 45 Lt and 30 Petrol fracked to 47.45 + 40 Petrol which ends up as 87.45 Petrol.

Post-60

BoP: 100 Crude = 45 Petrol
AoP: 25 Hv, 45 Lt, 55 Petrol fracked to 24.38 + 45 Lt and 55 Petrol fracked to 60.12 + 55 Petrol which ends up as 115.12 Petrol

Coal Liquafication remains the same in both pre and post 0.17.60 with 25 heavy oil needed to jump start the coal liquafication process:

CL: 90 - 25 Hv, 20 Lt, 10 Petrol, fracked to 63.375 + 20 Lt and 10 Petrol fracked to 72.28 Lt and 10 Petrol which ends up as 82.28 Petrol.

For fracking of Hv ==> Lt, I used the formula of 40 Hv in, 30 Lt out, multiplied by 1.3 (3 Productivity-3 modules)
For fracking of Lt ==> Petrol, I used the formula of 30 Lt in, 10 Petrol out, multiplied by 1.3 (3 Productivity-3 modules)

There is a massive jump in how much oil based products can be produced with advanced processing in post-60 between BoP and AoP. Also in post-60 CL is much less efficient compared to AoP, so unless the player is playing on a map with limited oil on the map I do not think it will be used as much or needs massive amounts of lube, in the megabase game when they are setting up a separate outposts to assemble electric engines.

Based on this, I think there will be downstream adjustments to the oil refining recipes or consumption of oil based products such as sulfur or plastic. I don't think those changes will be as map breaking at .60 was, in that mostly they will in an adjustment of how much is produced or how much is needed to assemble something.

Hiladdar

[Adamo]

oh what a wonderful way to put that it changes your experience. I've read all comments to that effect. I'll acknowledge that figuring out multiple outputs on one building is rewarding, but it mystifies me that you guys need to preserve that particular experience so well that you'll argue for weeks about it. Can we not move past this? Why is it not ok to "move" it to Advanced oil processing?

Because literally everything in society is dumbed down or painted over with non-critical rhetoric, but in this one case, we thought that maybe some deep, critical thought might make a difference. We see how that worked out, and don't worry, we learned our lessons. This is why we can't have nice things.

[crambaza]

Quick reminder about newcomers :

“Is this change to reduce complexity, refactor the tech tree, or rebalance the oil production recipes.”
It’s pretty much the first two, in the sense that it should improve the flow or the game (though the technology changes), while making the basic oil processing step less complex. A lot of negatively responding people say it is only for new players, but we really believe the flow of the game is really important for repeated playing, if not even more important.

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.

While learning curve is an important & interesting issue to think about, we certainly have way more things to say about how these changes impact us.

Regarding NOT newcomers:

Can we vote?
A - Easy Oil and Delayed construction bots
B - Less Easy Oil and Regularly available construction bots

I'm B all the way. Is there really a repeat player who is an A?

I mean, I guess so, but I haven't met them yet.

That's where my whole anti-Oil change sentiment arises from.

Simplify the crap out of it, I don't really care, just give me bots so I can build the rest of my factory please.

[mcdjfp]

Fine. I was being polite. I am well aware that the delay is their plan, but when I read that post the thought that came into my head was that they don't really care at all about really fixing the problem, so long as their average playtime number goes up.

If you read the past years' FFF, and as you're an active forum member, I'm pretty sure you do, you can't think devs are trying to make a subpar game that just brings money. Now, the streamlining phase has been controversial amongst several players, but IMO, streamlining is just the natural road to 1.0, to the perfect, polished Factorio.

At 0.15 definitely not. 0.16 still hadn't really crossed my mind. But since then the feeling has slowly been growing. True some of the changes have been reverted/mitigated in one way or another, but the feeling has still been growing. The carelessness (or lack of thought if you want to describe it that way) of some of the changes hasn't really helped. The initial set of suggested recipe changes forced by the basic oil processing change are a good example of that. The rail planner (now fixed) having its most useful feature disabled to repurpose its hot key was the tipping point for me. Even fixed, the doubt set in. It isn't their fault entirely, but I have been burned too many times.

IMO, the rail planner sequence is an additional proof of their dedication. They implemented an nice feature, removed it for good reasons, and then reimplemented it as several players said they missed it. The lazy, easy-money path would have been "let it just be in an unfinished state, people are used to it like it is anyway".

I can't be bothered to set up a new way to access it is not a good reason to remove it. The changelog entry makes no sense either

Changes

• Simplified rail building. Holding shift while rail building always activates the combination of ghost-rail-building + remove-obstacles, releasing shift returns back to normal manual mode. It doesn't matter anymore, whether the rail building started with shift or not. This removed the possibility to do ghost-rail-building without the remove-obstacles, but since it seems to be almost useless, we consider it to be worth the simplification.

As was rapidly pointed out, you don't have cliff explosives when you start laying rails. And even worse, cliff explosives require oil which is not available in the starting area. This statement left me speechless when I read it. It felt like they didn't even understand their own game. I know they do, but...

By the time I have the bots to do the obstacle removal, I am using blueprints for most of my rails as it allows everything to go down at once (power, signals, rail, red/green wire). My main uses for the rail planner is obstacle avoidance. Being told one of my favorite convivence features is "almost useless" and therefore was removed in the name of convenience, bugged me. My thought at the time was that they were panicking or more likely in a rush, never a good thing when making decisions.

Again, to me it is a trend, especially in tone and thoughtlessness which is really starting to cause concern. Without this trend, I never would have ended up reading that post in this way.

[5thHorseman]

[Moderated by Koub] Please be respectful

If you are a strategy game player, there are no challenges (or you don't perceive them), and for those of us who usually play, we don't want the first 20 hours of the game, they are very boring, so I don't start.

[Removed by Koub because referring to a now-moderated post

I prefer strategy games, and rarely (and generally poorly) play those that require reflexes more than planning. And I like this oil change.

I do agree that it delays construction bots even more when what they desperately need is to be available earlier. But the actual change to oil itself is a flat out positive one.

[Preserteo]

[Removed by Koub because referring to a now-moderated post

[Moderated by Koub] no insults please.

I have enough gray hair and I am far above nonsense like that.

Maybe it's me who is misunderstanding you.

[Astrella]

[Removed by Koub because referring to a now-moderated post

[Moderated by Koub] no insults please.

I have enough gray hair and I am far above nonsense like that.

Maybe it's me who is misunderstanding you.

[Removed by Koub because referring to a now-moderated post

[Zaka]

Regarding NOT newcomers:

Can we vote?
A - Easy Oil and Delayed construction bots
B - Less Easy Oil and Regularly available construction bots

I'm B all the way. Is there really a repeat player who is an A?

I mean, I guess so, but I haven't met them yet.

That's where my whole anti-Oil change sentiment arises from.

Simplify the crap out of it, I don't really care, just give me bots so I can build the rest of my factory please.

You can have them, and this is how:

Suggestions:

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

Various posters have 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)

Conclusion:

Multiple Basic Refining single output recipes allow for selecting the oil product you need without the problem of backing up the fluid outputs.
Multiple Basic Refining single output recipes allow for producing con bots Pre-Chemical Science.

Single output Basic Refining recipes can and should remain inefficient. Using 300 crude to get 50HO, 50LO and 50 PG is bad (but quick) vs Advanced Oil where 300 Crude + 300 Water equals 150HO, 150LO and 150PG (numbers are examples).

Changing Solid Fuel and Sulfur recipes spreads out the use of the various oil fractions so they are more evenly distributed in science packs.

Unique products from each oil fraction place a unique draw on each fraction, leading to a more even usage.

Moving Sulfur to HO/LO and Solid Fuel to LO/PG helps to balance usage and requires that those fractions be set-up, have a use, and are not just cracked down to PG.

Any additional products are not required, but it looks like it would fit well with the above chart (just an idea, 'cause symmetry is cool).

-Zaka

[Jap2.0]

[Removed by Koub because referring to a now-moderated post

[Moderated by Koub] no insults please.

I have enough gray hair and I am far above nonsense like that.

Maybe it's me who is misunderstanding you.

[Removed by Koub because referring to a now-moderated post

[Removed by Koub because referring to a now-moderated post

[FuryoftheStars]

IMO, the rail planner sequence is an additional proof of their dedication. They implemented an nice feature, removed it for good reasons, and then reimplemented it as several players said they missed it. The lazy, easy-money path would have been "let it just be in an unfinished state, people are used to it like it is anyway".

It was removed because they felt it was useless. This is not a “good reason”.

[Koub]

[Koub] I had to do some ugly moderation to excise a somewhat toxic fight. Sorry for that.

[Koub]

IMO, the rail planner sequence is an additional proof of their dedication. They implemented an nice feature, removed it for good reasons, and then reimplemented it as several players said they missed it. The lazy, easy-money path would have been "let it just be in an unfinished state, people are used to it like it is anyway".

It was removed because they felt it was useless. This is not a “good reason”.

Actually something being useless is a very valid reason fot it to be removed. Less code maintenance is always a good thing.
The issue with that was that it was not as useless as the devs thought, and the advantages restoring it outweighted the potential drawbacks (from the devs' point of view).