Friday Facts #309 - Controversial opinions

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-309

[posila]

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy ... where do I start.

I like inserters chasing items, it adds this unpredictability element to the game which makes the game less synthetic. It means there is always room to dig deeper and to try to figure out how things actually work and how to take advantage of that. In addition to that ... trying to make tick perfect is slippery slope; it would be hard to achieve, and hard to maintain.

I agree on blueprints ... I feel the Blueprint Library is our version of Diablo 3's Auction House. It sounded good on the paper, but it turned out that people are depending on BPL much more than we expected. It is kind of sad seeing people to cherish their blueprint libary more than actual save games. On the other, what is it to me to tell people how they should play a game, and it is super easy not to use the feature.

Combat ... the game is not about combat. It doesn't mean it should suck, but we shouldn't put much emphasis on it. Biters exist to put at least some time pressure on player, and limit expansion at least a little bit.

I think miners outputing directly to belts is nice, and I think it would be nice if the machanic was utilized by some other entities too (high tier smelters maybe?). Currently it feels like is so many games where a mechanic is introduced and then never used again.

I agree that old boilers worked nicer.

[Deadlock989]

wheybags sounds like my bearded mirror universe evil twin. All of those ideas make me want to rock back and forth in the corner of a cold shower.

"Miners shouldn't output directly to belts". No. The total opposite. All machines should output directly to belts. Inserters are massively passé and were always boring to manage. They should be removed from the game.

[Mylon]

Contrary to Twinsen's love of tight and precise mechanics, I love things more loose and variable. The beauty of game and design is working around imperfections and to some extent building redundancy or overbuilding to smooth over these troubles. The people that build those complex tables for inserters love doing so and simplifying the tables robs them of their fun. Biters are a great example of this, as they don't arrive in the most predictable intervals or at predictable locations.

Re Blueprints: My favorite feature of the blueprint library is curating a selection of personally crafted blueprints. The idea of having a collection of blueprints that I can recognize as mine and then make small little tweaks on them across playthroughs adds a level of progression beyond individual playthroughs. So I agree with you that blueprints should be a personal thing. Turning import/export into a modded feature could be gotten around via multiplayer: One player pastes the BP and another copies it. This would limit who has access to "unmodded" bluerprints and would lead to some unpleasant experience if the blueprint is incompletely copied. I think it's best to leave it in the game, but add a simple warning (with, of course, a "do not show this again" checkbox) that it may negatively impact enjoyment of the game.

Re Biters should be more aggressive, and probe your defenses: What if biter corpses created a soft-path block? Kind of like walls, biters would attempt to path around them. This would spread biter attacks out and make them attempt to attack different areas and would accomplish this with a very simple and lore-friendly mechanic.

Re Pipes should work like electricity: What if we went the other way? What if eletricity was more complicated and a single chain of small electric poles could not transmit the power of a large nuclear plant? Require transformers to connect medium poles to big electric poles, and put a load limit on how much electricity medium poles could trasmit. Then backport this mechanic to pipes: Make large pipes (2 wide, though visually maybe more 1.5 wide?) and they require pumps to pressurize them and valves to tap them.

[TreefrogGreaken]

Nice to hear about some of these, I think Adventure mode in particular would be great.

If we think about the start of the game, you crash land from a spaceship, you could start with only a basic level of knowledge, some of this could then unlock as you get through some basic recipes, but some of the more advanced tech could be found in other crashlanded data modules for example, picking them up would unlock the techtree (not necessarily in order!)

Combine this with AlienBiomes Mod and you'd have a pretty good start at an adventure mode.

Maybe a good idea for a mod if its possible!

Oh and biters, agree with all of that

[Loewchen]

You need to retire the we can not change it now, people are already used to it argument, if you genuinely believe a change makes the game better, not changing it is wrong.

[psihius]

By the end of the blog post, I had a distinct feeling that you have enough grievances/stuff built up to start developing Factorio 2

I mean I liked almost everything, and some of the things that require rebuilding almost from scratch are a good excuse to do Factorio 2

Also, you could make a lot of things threaded - robot calculations, fluids, train management, chunking the map processing - all those things.
I also liked the robot discussion - I REALLY liked the concept of space usage, queuing up for pick up and drop off.
I also wholeheartedly support the Total Annihilation style building for big things
I want a locomotive/train production depot, I want a tank/car factory.

Where do I throw money at?

[SuperSandro2000]

I want this post place now.

I would love to see the inserter change cause right now I just plot down inserters and hope they are enough. Also the UPS increase!!

Blueprint import and export is quite handy and add I only play heavily modded I normally can't grab any blueprints for myself from other people anyway. This is a non issue for me.

If weapons wouldn't lock I probably would have stopped playing the game a long time ago. I am quite bad in precise aiming over a long period of time and factorio is not about combat mechanics. I want to build stuff and kill enemies fast and in big quantities.

I would love to see some options from rampant in vanilla. I always wall my base of entirely but my wall is over the entire map and I pay little attention to pollution or where they attack. Maybe add an map option for smart biters.

Based already come back and biters expand. I like the idea of local pollution. Much more realistic. None issue for me.

Don't change miners!

Or boilers. Rather add some nice tutorials explaining all basic concepts in a fun and rewarding way.

I would rather have pipes replaced by belts.

I would like to see mountains if we can dig into them and they have large and raw resource bodies. This could also be incorporated into the exploring aspect. Maybe you can build done cosmetic stuff with it or advanced weapons with gems you found. Or you find new types of biters.
Or abondan ruins that give you small boni and can only be found in the world. Could also be made into a mod.

Giving bots more advanced ai would cripple UPS but I really like the idea that they take time to build buildings and time to deconstruct them. Would be a great addition to balance.

Incorporate rocket silo construction into the base game.

I have a mod that toggles manual driving in trains and it is awesome. While we are at rebinding keys: please make the controls panel searchable. Please.

Ignore the boni of production modules when returning items. Fixed.

Btw way better FFF compared the last week's one. This was interesting to read and gave good reasoning for decisions that where not made. I liked it quite a lot.

[LuuMor]

I'm usually just lurking, but I really think "Inserters should not chase items" should be done.

If the worry is about how inserters look, just change the look to work with a constant throughput.
This way you don't have to worry about it looking graphically bad. I don't really see a reason why inserters need to stay these wonky hands that aren't consistent, but everything else in the game is consistent.

Nice organic feel? What does that even mean? Inserters being shaky hands?
Just having a new model with a new animation to match the new constant throughput code will make it look nice and you will see them handle the items.
This will still create that swingy movement of items being moved from a to b.

Hopefully you will give it a second chance. Letting go of something old is hard, but I think the game would benefit from having consistent ratios all the way from belts to assembly machines.

[fendy3002]

For adventure mode, in vanilla there already underground belts and pipes, so technically those 2 are in different dimensions relative to the surface one.
Additionally, caves can be implemented like factorissimo (which should be similar with diablo 2 cave system).
For line of sight, dota 2 did it well with their fog of war obstructed by trees or high grounds / cliffs implementation. It'll taxing at performance though so it's still controversial.

As for pipes (and / or power), I'm interested in power circuit system implemented in oxygen not included. Basically one circuit can only have maximum of x kW of consumption, otherwise it'll damage the wires, with power transformers used to separate circuits.

And I agree that construction bots needs some tweaks. Compared to right click mining, instant deconstruct is overpowered at clearing forests to mine raw wood.

[JakubW]

Why don't you create a survey and allow people to vote for each idea. Answers should be (Yes, I want it | I don't mind | No, don't do that). This would be great thing I think

[seePyou]

I believe the materials SHOULD be wasted when you mine an assembler mid production cycle, but only to the degree the progress has already been, rounded up.
If a recipe calls for 20 green chips and the assembler is at 27% at the time of disassembly, then the materials the process has already consumed or started to consume is 27% of 20 = 20 * 27 / 100 = 5.4, so round that up to 6 and return 14 to the player.

[chris13524]

I actually really like the last two ones.

For power-user hotkeys, I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally hit a hotkey in Thunderbird and got my messages moved to some other folder, marked as junk, or "ignored thread". Just because there was some useless hotkey to do such an obscure task. I definitely think that unless the behavior is standard (that is, intuitive to new audiences such as copy/paste) or very necessary (e to open inventory, space to shoot, etc.), there should simply be no hotkey for it. Let them create their own hotkeys as they go which ingrains them more in their mind. See this: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... ssign-them

And the last one: I think that if an assembler is destroyed mid-craft, it should definitely return the items. Not for furnaces, but definitely for assemblers. The only reason I see not to do this is because a "past version of the game had a bug relating to productivity modules". Well I say re-implement the feature and fix the bug! Don't remove a feature because you don't feel like fixing the bug. lol

[ggrnd0]

> There would also be no way to visualize the flow

No, u really can do it.
Visualization is pretty suitable when wave start flow after pipe connected.
In other times you can just visualize random waves in preview based on calculated pipe utilization.

And you can limit throughput too.
There only needed to calculate potential pressure between source-target based on pipe length and fluid density.
With Discrete Math & "minimum s-t cut in a flow network" problem you can calculate actual maximal possible fluid consumption...

No, math is not too hard. and in setups with 10k (source+target) will be solved very quick...

And some trolling :-ъ

You do not make Electric Network physics - too hard for UPS & players?
Hm.

You break Fluid physics - also too hard for UPS & players?
Hm...

What will be next cut?
Simplify inserters physics?
HM! already proposed!!!

Next will be belts? they very similar to fluids...
Trains?

Will you cut everything?
Lets make Factorio Clicker right now!
XD
Seriously, can you make it?
And I seriously wait for Factorio RPG/Roguelike Adventure.


About inserters.
Inserters must understand where from they will take item.
They must wait and guaranteed take it.
Inserted can track item before actually take some ticks.
But time spent must be minimal just because if inserter chose item -> item must be guaranteed picked up..

Slow inserter physics not too bad. But must not be situated in unmodded Factorio.
With modded belt speed inserter might actually lose items....

[gorothdablade]

Re Biters should be more aggressive, and probe your defenses: What if biter corpses created a soft-path block? Kind of like walls, biters would attempt to path around them. This would spread biter attacks out and make them attempt to attack different areas and would accomplish this with a very simple and lore-friendly mechanic.

I am a big fan of the dials that world creation gives you, so I would add an "Alien Combat Intelligence" (or what ever name you want to give it) dial, a multiplier of sorts to how much a single biter body impacts subsequent pathing. And For basic game mode the multiplier would be small, barely noticeable just enough to pressure the player to expand his defense. but in death world games, you would almost never have the same section of defense hit 2x in a row.

[juliejayne]

Re: Biters

Before you do anything else with them there has to be some lore to them, to explain their illogical behaviour. Then perhaps some logical changes could be made.

Let me explain.... this planet Nauvis has been home to the Biters for a long time. Yet when we get here they are NOT omnipresent. They are scattere in small groups (clans) and are peacefully coexisting with each other. But our arrival induces them all to start breeding and evolving faster and growing into larger groups. Surely that would have already happened, if they are as aggressive as they are.

So lets have some backstory to them... perhaps they already had wars and this is the result of some global peace treaty that we upset. If poluttion is good for them, making them bigger and stronger, then why would they destroy it.... these are all things that make no sense at the moment, because they are there purely to provide a spur to the player to develop faster.

Yes you can turm them off. But I like to keep them, as a spur, but I would like to understand them better.

[ggrnd0]

> Biters should be more aggressive, and probe your defenses

Oh, no...
That is really hard to make enough walls at early game (20-30 minutes). Base grows faster than you can produce walls...
But biters can run more faster and eat everything...
In 0.17 they already very aggressive.
or you can make more easy recipe for walls...

[ggrnd0]

So, 1.0 release go on?

I propose online event on release!

Factorio Team must play online coop speedrun in marathon death world from start to 1 RPM =)
w/out mods or any lua commands...
What about take 111 achievement too?

Lets show us how to play Factorio! XD

[DerGraue]

Why don't you create a survey and allow people to vote for each idea. Answers should be (Yes, I want it | I don't mind | No, don't do that). This would be great thing I think

Exactly my first idea after reading this FFF.

[IronCartographer]

Inserters should not chase items

Disagree. The organic behavior, inserters fighting over items, and even burners requiring special care add greatly to the flavor of the game.

Blueprint import/export should be a modded feature

Slightly disagree. Could compromise and make importing blueprints disable achievements (would require marking library blueprints as imported, too) but this wouldn't really be a good solution, as it has so many issues.

Weapons shouldn't lock on

This would be cool if it were the default behavior of C firing, but you could still use predictive aiming of some weapons by default when pressing Spacebar. It would be neat to have dumb-fire vs. homing rockets, and lots of new behavior based on the distinction between auto-tracking and dumb projectiles. Also keep in mind how much the lock-on mechanic currently avoids friendly fire! Edit: Forgot that KS Combat already addresses the friendly fire issue. It doesn't allow compromise (predictive aiming of unlocked projectiles) between lock-on and dumb-fire, though.

Biters should be more aggressive, and probe your defenses

Rampant mod can be a lot of fun for this reason, though I like to modify its settings slightly making use of the biter-immunity toggles for a few things. Big power poles and rail/signals allow for separated bases and train<->biter interaction. For even more creativity, you can reduce that just to rail being immune: Biters chew on flashy signals (so every rail connection between safe zones can only have one block, resulting in switching outposts and train yards behind walls rather than in no-man's-land), and power poles (so you have to distribute power by rail as well!).

Clearing bases should not leave you safe

This would be tricky to balance. It also defeats the "defend your pollution cloud" objective/accomplishment for people who recognize the value in a buffer zone reducing attack rate and preventing repeated destruction of nests and thus the evolution factor spikes.

Miners shouldn't output directly to belts

Disagree.

Boilers shouldn't have a water output

Disagree, though I do miss the elegant simplicity of the old boilers in some ways: You could see your utilization based on how many of the boilers were lit up. The quirky ratio added flavor, too.

Pipes should work like electricity

Mixed. It would remove a lot of flavor, but fluid mechanics are witchcraft. Hopefully that will be less true with the planned updates.

Adventure mode

If anyone wants an adventure, I recommend either Space Exploration or Warptorio2 (not at the same time..!). The former is like a late-game Seablock in Space (Spaceblock!), while the latter radically changes the gameplay by giving a fresh world on a regular basis. I recommend using Alien Biomes with Warptorio2 as well, and maybe Salvage Quickstart, Minable Intermediates (set Easy Mode, but reduce the frequency of higher-tier deposits), some biter modifications like Zomtorio, along with any Warptorio2 Planets that seem interesting.

Robots should take up space and time

Disagree for exactly the performance reasons mentioned. The optimizations of bots and the power of seeing so many in flight (defying expectations of friends seeing screenshots and thinking the framerate must have been terrible ) are just awesome. If it didn't have such a performance impact, I could support making bots "slow down" in order to avoid each other or something, but obviously that doesn't scale well.

Items should have volume and mass

Stack size is a proxy for this, to some extent. Mass and volume pose serious challenges to inventory UI design and accessibility. The added realism would no doubt be appreciated by some, but fully realizing it would have ridiculous effects (imagine inserters with accelerations affected by the mass of what they are lifting...).

Power-user hotkeys

Agreed! People seldom look at the hotkey menu, so while it is noisy and cluttered already (wish I had a solution in mind for this, but it's hard to map concepts cleanly into that UI...) adding more optional hotkeys would be a win for the vanilla experience (connecting to servers without mods, and losing the hotkeys added by QoL mods).

Mining furnaces and assembling machines should return the ingredients for the in-progress recipe

Agreed. Thank you for enabling a mod to address this, at least.