Version 0.17.60

[Aflixion]

Usually, when you try to explain your reasoning for a change and the playerbase doesn't I don't accept that reasoning, it means to me the reasoning was flawed and you should reconsider whether you're making the right change.

A lot of us I Think I understood the reasoning behind the changes, we I just disagreed that the changes were necessary. We I disagreed about the need for a change in the first place, not the logic behind the tweaks being made.

Thanks for confirming for us me that we wasted our time, though. A moderator's response to players saying they felt like they wasted their time really shouldn't be "well have you considered that the devs might have wasted their time too?" That just tells us we I feel that I had no chance of ever swaying Wube's opinion on these changes. I no longer feel bad for uninstalling the game.

fixed. please refrain from implying/increasing your representation where it doesn't exist. It's infringing on my opinions in these matters.

I mean, it wasn't just me, so it's disingenuous to "fix" my response to say that only I felt this way. The fact that the 2nd FFF thread on the topic and this thread on the release containing the changes are still active kinda points to that.

[Aflixion]

A third parties view makes you assume the intentions of another party and you fully commit to that assumption? That seems like a bad way to form an opinion.

My point is that a moderator should be a neutral arbitrator to make sure the discussion stays polite and on-topic. Moderators should leave their personal opinions out of moderator posts.

[Deadlock989]

With how you guys handled these changes, yes that's an appropriate reaction. You fundamentally changed the design goals of the game by removing a puzzle, which made me (and several other people) strongly dislike the direction the game is going. We tried pointing this out to you with reasoned arguments, and you pushed through the changes anyway without even paying lip service to the idea that no change is needed or that a change in a different area of the game might better solve whatever problem you perceived. What other option did I have?

Well, to be fair, you didn't have to uninstall the game.

The game's long term playability is in the modding features. That's more the case than ever in 0.17, what with the "New Player Experience"'s uber-hand-holding philosophy bleeding out into freeplay as well. That was the decision taken, I think it was the wrong one and I'm never, ever going to play with Oil Lite or recommend that anyone else spends any time on it, but fortunately we have also been given the tools to do something about it if we don't like it. Problem solved.

It's still one of the best games ever made. It still would be if it weren't moddable, it would just have a massively reduced playtime halflife. If 0.17 feels more juvenile than 0.16 did, so what, it's no skin off my nose.

[Aflixion]

With how you guys handled these changes, yes that's an appropriate reaction. You fundamentally changed the design goals of the game by removing a puzzle, which made me (and several other people) strongly dislike the direction the game is going. We tried pointing this out to you with reasoned arguments, and you pushed through the changes anyway without even paying lip service to the idea that no change is needed or that a change in a different area of the game might better solve whatever problem you perceived. What other option did I have?

Well, to be fair, you didn't have to uninstall the game.

The game's long term playability is in the modding features. That's more the case than ever in 0.17, what with the "New Player Experience"'s uber-hand-holding philosophy bleeding out into freeplay as well. That was the decision taken, I think it was the wrong one and I'm never, ever going to play with Oil Lite or recommend that anyone else spends any time on it, but fortunately we have also been given the tools to do something about it if we don't like it.

It's still one of the best games ever made. It still would be if it weren't moddable, it would just have a massively reduced playtime halflife. If 0.17 feels more juvenile than 0.16 did, so what, it's no skin off my nose.

I'm all for modding the game to enhance it, but not to fix bad design decisions. That just means that I'm dependent on the mod author continuing to support the mod as more changes are made to the base game.

[Deadlock989]

I'm all for modding the game to enhance it, but not to fix bad design decisions. That just means that I'm dependent on the mod author continuing to support the mod as more changes are made to the base game.

If being dependent on other people is the problem, mod it yourself.

You're already dependent on the vanilla game, and look where that got you.

[jodokus31]

I could see myself eventually missing robots when starting a new map, and while i'm not suggesting that the current changes should be reverted, i do not think these changes should determine wether or not construction robots should be delayed. The old basic oil processing allowed for either getting robots or blue potions first, which implies to me that these things should be separate from each other, as was the case before the update. Right now, the con-bots delay is merely a side-effect of an otherwise alright change, and it would be preferable for that not be the case, in my opinion.

Agree, that bots delay has the most impact for actual gameplay.
Bots depend on frames -> electric engine -> lubricant -> heavy oil. This dependency is given, and I think, it's good as it is. So you have to research this whole chain. Since heavy oil is now only obtainable from Advanced Oil, you have to start the chain there. Which means the whole chain needs blue science now.

A solution could be, that heavy oil would be obtainable earlier and the chain is put back to green science. (F.e. an alternate Basic oil, which outputs heavy and petro with very low yield and easy to ignore by new players.)
Other solutions could be to invent lower tier robots in the early green phase, or a limited amount like 10 or 20.

Or, of course, use some of the alternative oil solutions, which have heavy oil early

[Jap2.0]

A third parties view makes you assume the intentions of another party and you fully commit to that assumption? That seems like a bad way to form an opinion.

My point is that a moderator should be a neutral arbitrator to make sure the discussion stays polite and on-topic. Moderators should leave their personal opinions out of moderator posts.

What do you mean by "moderator posts"? Every post a moderator makes? Sure, they have the responsibility to keep the discussion polite and on-topic, but as long as it doesn't impact how they moderate (if moderation remains good and neutral), the have the right to an opinion too.

[peternlewis]

Storage tanks.

I'd just put down a bunch or so leading out from the outputs I wasn't using and when they got full I removed & replaced the tanks.
Sure, I "lost" a lot of wasted oil, but it worked for me as it put off the puzzle in solving it. (And this was long before combinators too.)

I did the same. Or rather, my solution was just to add more storage tanks. I always figured deleting and recreating the tanks was sort of cheating.

So I just put down more of them. And more. Lots.

Realistically, if you can just delete a storage tank and put a new empty one down, and if that is a “legitimate” way of playing the game, then it should be possible to just turn on a flag on a storage tank (or add a device to a storage tank or whatever) that “trashes” any overflow. I don't really think it is a good idea tho.

Largely, it is just a matter of figuring out how you can use that excess resource. And this, I think is where we need an improvement - a way to determine what I can make with this stuff. Even recently I had an overflow of light oil and had forgotten you can just turn it in a petrol. So I went to the wiki for light oil, but the wiki for light oil only tells you how to make it, not what can be made from it. The Minecraft wiki (for example) does a better job of this, listing both how to make, and what to make from every item. Perhaps that is something that can be considered for the wiki? Or better yet, some sort of in-game thing that can tell you what this stuff can be used to make.

I played Factorio a bunch last year, and only recently came back to try the new changes (many of which are fantastic BTW!). My memory is rubbish, but even so, playing now is very very different to playing the first time. Dealing with the oil and all that is so very much easier second time around, even forgetting most stuff, than the first time. I think all of us should remember that our experience is very very different to a new player’s experience. And while clearly a very experienced player should still be able to enjoy Factorio, players may need help in ways we have long forgottent about when playing the first time.

[Antaios]

Storage tanks.

I'd just put down a bunch or so leading out from the outputs I wasn't using and when they got full I removed & replaced the tanks.
Sure, I "lost" a lot of wasted oil, but it worked for me as it put off the puzzle in solving it. (And this was long before combinators too.)

...

So I just put down more of them. And more. Lots.
...

This is why the solution is not the right one, it was created ontop of assumptions of too many blatantly disprovable things. new players are simply [not at a loss for the fact that multiple outputs lock.

If the player did not set up tanks in the first place, then I might assume they thought that the refinery might be capable of only producing petroleum (even though the recipe explicitly states otherwise), but that would immediately be obvious when the refinery stops running rather quickly. Any player who sets up a tank for a resource they're not intending to use has at least the idea that this output from the refinery needs to be removed, and as such the refinery stopping when the tank fills up would be an expected outcome, not a surprise. If someone does not presume they can simply hook up a pipe to the petroleum output of a refinery and ignore the other two products then they have already presumed that the refinery will not operate if you don't take out all three products.

In order to be surprised, the player needs to either assume that the refinery has infinite storage, in which case tanks would be somewhat pointless so there is logical reasoning to prevent this assumption, or they would need to assume that the refinery can void fluids, except voiding exists nowhere in the game unless a player or enemy explicitly does it so there is logical reasoning to prevent this assumption as well.

The 'solutions' to 'fix' oil aren't ripping out it's heart and complexity, that just makes it boring, wreaks havoc on other balances in the game, limits player options, forces any experienced player to rush advanced oil even more, etc.
The only issue present is that it isn't perceived as feasible to continue plopping tanks down for a long time, so the obvious solution is to bring cracking forward - a much less disruptive solution than eliminating the oil fractions entirely from a portion of the game, which also keeps important learning moments that remind the player about how oil works if they didn't put it forefront in their mind when they placed it - because a tank will back up (with old oil processing), forcing the player to actually think, and learn.

For not giving the player the tools to 'deal' with oil fractions, which keeps pressure to advance high and makes some people nervous about sustainability:
Make cracking a red/green science. A small cracking only science in red/green isn't going to make red/green any longer than it already is, since that's not where the time sink lies.

For giving the player more sustainability before cracking:
Balance the basic oil processing ratio, reducing light and heavy oil output, reducing the pressure to get something sustainable going, evening out the difference between blue science solid fuel usage and light/heavy production and giving the player more time, perhaps unlimited time, before their tanks back up. Though, their tanks should back up, it's an incredibly good teaching moment.

For if you really wanted to smooth the progression and shorten the red/green era:
The only true way to do this is to give some more carrot in the red/green era to keep the player going. Split green and some blue science into a new science pack. There is simply no way to reconcile the increase in logistics required for blue science into some reasonable complexity/production jump, the resolution is too low, it requires another step.
This would be the perfect opportunity to make the 'chemical' science pack actually require mostly chemicals from oil processing, giving the player a nice carrot shortly after setting it up. Given the other activities of the red/green era, the other pack would fit well as an exploration/expansion themed pack. This is a big balance change, but you seem ok with those right now, it makes sense internally in the game, and it is truly the only way to smooth the 'reward curve' if that's what you want to do.

[BlueTemplar]

[...]
Largely, it is just a matter of figuring out how you can use that excess resource. And this, I think is where we need an improvement - a way to determine what I can make with this stuff. Even recently I had an overflow of light oil and had forgotten you can just turn it in a petrol. So I went to the wiki for light oil, but the wiki for light oil only tells you how to make it, not what can be made from it. The Minecraft wiki (for example) does a better job of this, listing both how to make, and what to make from every item. Perhaps that is something that can be considered for the wiki? Or better yet, some sort of in-game thing that can tell you what this stuff can be used to make.
[...]

Look closer, it does : bottom right, under "Consumed by".

There are mods that do that in-game :
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/what-is-i ... y-used-for

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/FNEI

Also, you can always search the tech tree...
But yeah, I've been suggesting for an in-game encyclopedia for a while... (even if it's just an offline copy of the wiki...)

[meganothing]

Look closer, it does : bottom right, under "Consumed by".

I think the "Consumed by" is fitting but also the problem. I always need a few moments to make the connection that this is the equivalent of "Used to produce" or "Ingredient of".

By the way, since we are still on the oil topic:
What is the reason for still having a HO->solid fuel recipe? If that recipe were removed, no player would ever be able to ignore the "oil puzzle" on their way to the rocket.

[peternlewis]

Look closer, it does : bottom right, under "Consumed by".

Ahh. OK, well, I guess my suggestion would then be to make it more prominent - perhaps in sequential sections on the page proper.

Good to see it is there. In game would be even better - not sure what the UI for that should be.

[voxfer]

Hey, I've just registered to express my disdain about the oil rework. Personally, I have never struggled with oil setups (maybe because I play on a smaller scale -- around 400 advanced circuits per minute), and I always welcomed that extra solid fuel for my boilers and furnaces. Overall, this change feels like dumbing down 101 to me.

Now I have a strong impression that this change is here to stay. So, here's what I think.

AOP now feels like a straight no-brain upgrade to BOP. No brain is always bad. Before, player could go for BOP for larger lubricant/fuel production. Now it's just AOP. I've read the argument about megabases and such -- seems a lot like a fringe case to me. I'm an average player, and I play with average bases.

Second -- it's unrealistic. (Perceived) realism was what initially sold me to Factorio. And no, realism must go before gameplay. A game must tell a believable story.

Further on realism. Now there's only PG produced from 100 CO. With AOP though you get the same amount of PG plus LO plus HO? Where does the rest go? It isn't hard to notice that BOP is a MASSIVE energy loss compared to AOP. Another reason for me to never go back to it. Here I suggest at least changing the recipe to require 50 CO or something.

I also ran the numbers on coal liquefaction, and it gives off nearly TWICE the energy of coal? I have included all production costs, before anyone asks. I welcome an attempt to reward the player for walking an extra mile, but twice the energy? That's just plain unrealistic.

Thanks for reading and hopefully acknowledging my rant.

[5thHorseman]

AOP now feels like a straight no-brain upgrade to BOP. No brain is always bad.

I personally feel the opposite. AOP always used to feel like a no-brainer before and now it does not. It's required now to get the things that need oil, sure, but it's not literally the first thing I put in the research queue the moment I unlock blue science. Now it's like the 3rd or 4th, but I COULD go without it for quite a while without feeling a super strong need for it.

There were runs where I hand-crafted blue vials to get AOP so I wouldn't have to build anything more than the absolute bare minimum before I had cracking. Now I just leave a big empty area where cracking will eventually occur.

[voxfer]

I COULD go without it for quite a while without feeling a super strong need for it.

This doesn't disprove my point. 0.17.60 AOP IS superior to BOP in every conceivable way apart from space. Before the patch, the advantage wasn't so apparent.

[Bilka]

I COULD go without it for quite a while without feeling a super strong need for it.

This doesn't disprove my point. 0.17.60 AOP IS superior to BOP in every conceivable way apart from space. Before the patch, the advantage wasn't so apparent.

You should have seen the posts by megabasers saying that BOP is so much better for UPS now and it makes oil trivial at their scale.

[voxfer]

megabasers

I have already said that I consider those a fringe case. I may be wrong though, is this an intended way to play Factorio?

it makes oil trivial

Is this a good thing? Clearly superior in one case, clearly inferior in other as opposed to being a situational improvement?

[5thHorseman]

megabasers

is this an intended way to play Factorio?

I don't believe there is (or should) be an "intended" way to play Factorio, except in that people intend to play it their own way and it's good that the game allows for so many styles.

Also related to "no brainer" upgrades being bad, there are countless examples of that in the game. Assembler 2's are so superior to Assembler 1's (compared to the downside) that most people don't bother wasting an inventory slot on 1's once they have 2's in production. It's easier to just put a 2 down where a 1 would work perfectly fine. Most people (myself actually not included in this one) feel the same about yellow and red belts. wooden power poles are not only inferior to steel ones, you cannot automate them fully due to needing to actually go out and chop down trees. Similarly, bulletproof ammo replaces standard ammo almost instantly, as does the machine gun for the pistol.

And sure, each of these examples has a downside. More things and power are required in their production. But they're such a no brainer that that doesn't even matter.

[voxfer]

we have a lot of dumb things so it's fine to have another one

Sorry, not buying it. Also assemblers and guns are (usually?) made by hand, so their complexity was never an issue.

By the way, have they kept the old BOP, but instead ramped up AOP difficulty for more reward, me (and probably other dissenters) wouldn't bat an eye.

I could go on, but I think I have made my point, and hopefully was heard by people in charge.

[5thHorseman]

we have a lot of dumb things so it's fine to have another one

I don't understand what you said.

Please don't interpret what I mean and quote it. It's rude.