Friday Facts #309 - Controversial opinions

[TheChucklesStart]

One thing that I think would improve the game, especially in the exploration arena, is to remove radars (well, actually change them a lot, I will talk about that later).

Then, in order to add vision to a region onto your map, use the lamps that are already in the game. I think in another FFF, there was a complaint that nightvision goggles reduced the need for lamps and so they weren't used late game.

Then, it would be neat to have trees, cliffs and buildings block your and your lamps field of view, but a starcraft style fog of war illumination system would also work pretty well.

Radars, then would loose their ability to provide local vision or add vision to the map, but they would keep their ability to reveal the map slowly. In order to promote exploration though, I would encourage their recipe to be changed to require blue circuits, since that is around when you start really needing to pull in all of the resources.

[sabriath]

I think that buildings should have a "timer" when you build or destroy them, and each building would have a different set of rules on how long it would take. Similar to how "mining" a chest takes some effort, except you don't hold down the key. I imagine that you would have a separate "build queue" for items that are currently set up to be built/destroyed (both the number of simultaneous queue completions and time could be researchable events), and they go in order whether you are near those buildings or not (deconstructed items are left on the floor if you are not near them).

This would solve a few issues:

1. items still being constructed inside assemblers would stall the queue for deconstruction until the item is completed, no new items will enter the construction phase and the whole building, plus items, will be recovered
2. laser/turret advancement on biters will be more difficult as those buildings would take time to setup, so an assault would be required by the player for advancing into territory
3. more "realism" to the idea it takes time to set up or demolish buildings, whether by a player or by a robot
4. server sync on queue completions would be much better handled so that there is less chance of artifacts

Bonus idea: building and deconstructing are ghost-only and take time as suggested above, BUT you are not able to "create" those buildings by hand at all or hold them in your inventory....rather, the items required to build those buildings are taken from your inventory as they come up on the build queue for construction (or deposited back to your inventory on deconstruction). With robots, the construction phase would require the robots to bring the materials and slowly build them up or tear them down. Basically, time would be determined by how fast the materials can be fed to the construction/deconstruction. Separation between you or the robots doing the work is simply determined based on how close you are to the work.

If not for the main game, maybe a scenario or mod?

[Ecu]

Love that you guys went through these ideas. Here's my thoughts on them...

Inserters should not chase items
This seems like a solid idea. It may reduce the visual experience a bit, but I think it is worth the cost.

Blueprint import/export should be a modded feature
Yup. Definitely agree with removing the import/export feature as a core feature and move it to a mod. Could even have this mod be managed by one of the developers, so that it remains available for those that really want to use such a feature. I know that I personally have succumed to temptation and used other people's designs out of convenience, rather than putting together my own. Definitely has affected the experience.

Combat/Biters
Yup. I pretty much agree with all of these.

Miners shouldn't output directly to belts
I had never thought about this, until you guys brought it up. Given that the role of inserters in Factorio is to move items from a container/belt into/onto another container/belt, it does make Miners inconsistent with the design.

I personally think it would be rather neat to have belts go directly into some machines, having the product output like Miners do currently. However, such a design would come really close to making inserters obsolete. I suppose that splitters could be removed and inserters used as the mechanism to move between containers and belts, as well as belts and belts. Combine this with inline production, it could create an interesting design.

Boilers shouldn't have a water output
I disagree with this one. The water output is what allows Boilers to be chained nicely. Having only water input would make early boiler setups quite a mess.

Pipes should work like electricity
Yeah, probably. Thematically speaking, I like the idea of liquids/gasses having flow. Visually, it is nice to see the flow in the windows of the pipes. However, I've only found liquid/gas flow to be annoying in gameplay.

As an additional suggestion regarding liquid/gas management, I would love to see the ability to lock liquid/gas type on fluid wagons. This would allow multiple liquids/gasses to be loaded/unloaded at a given location, and in turn make the fluid wagon far more appealing to use over barrels.

Adventure mode
Love it.

Items should have volume and mass
Put this first, since its idea affects robots as well. I definitely like the idea of structures taking time as well as being built in the world itself. This would slow down gameplay, but I don't think that is a bad thing.

Robots should take up space and time
Regarding the robot side of things, a suggestion would be to have assembly machines package/unpackage resources utilizing crates. This would allow for the compression of resources for belts and trains, as well as provide a unique resource for robots to utilize. The idea would be that the logistics chests could only receive crates/barrels.

To handle the construction of structures, construction robots would have their own construction chest. This chest would store regular resources. However, logistics robots would be unable to access the chest, despite it being part of the logistics network. This would give construction robots the means to provide resources to the in world construction projects.

Personal roboports would also allow both logistics and construction robots. However, logistics robots could still only manipulate packages/barrels. Items requested by the logistics system would be send as packages and automatically unpackaged when received by the player.

I think a design like this would give robots their own niche. Given that the packaging/unpackaging of items could have a time cost, it would serve to keep belts appealing within factories, leaving robots/crates to bulk manipulation such as storage and/or trains.

Power-user hotkeys
I see nothing wrong with offering a series of hotkeys that are just unbound by default. This means that people will be unlikely to hit the keys by accident and allows them to be set if such a feature is desired. I would probably just make a tutorial note to bring awareness that said keybindings exist, so that new players aren't completely left in the dark.

Mining furnaces and assembling machines should return the ingredients for the in-progress recipe
If the issue is that productivity modules could cause an exploit. Just give back the base resources. Sure, this might mean a potential small loss, but it is far better than a complete loss.


Thanks again for this FFF. I really enjoyed seeing a behind the scenes look at the ideas of the team.

Edit: Decided to really put some effort in coming up with a suggested redesign of robots and construction, which you can find over here.

[5thHorseman]

Regarding miners needing inserters...

I personally would like it if certain other things (other than miners) output automatically as well. Furnaces seem an obvious choice, as they're functionally similar to miners in that they're always going to output one thing at a time based on what their input is.

[gustaphe]

The last one, yes! For the love of God. That is so very obviously a bug.

On the inserters chasing, normal inserters could keep chasing, and fast inserters not. That way, the game is organic and visually pleasing for beginners and whoever chooses to RP, but people who want to build megabases can just use the fast and ups-friendly way. You would hardly notice the difference with the fast ones anyway.

[Reika]

Some of these are nice ideas, in particular the "Robots should take up space and time" and "Mining furnaces and assembling machines should return the ingredients for the in-progress recipe".

I also quite like the idea of smarter and (situationally) more aggressive biters.

The "Items should have volume and mass" idea is also potentially viable; it sounds like you are describing something similar to Space Engineers, where each component has a mass and volume, and it may well be the case that the number of components to finish a block - particularly something large or expensive, like a Jump Drive, Refinery, or Large Ion Thruster - do not fit entirely in your inventory, necessitating multiple trips (bad lazy solution) or automated delivery.

However, I want to express severe disagreement with a few ideas as well:
"Pipes should work like electricity" is a step in the wrong direction, away from a "physical system" to a pure abstraction.

"Miners shouldn't output directly to belts" just makes every existing mining build invalid, and adds no real gameplay.

"Weapons shouldn't lock on" makes combat too focused on how well the player can aim their mouse, as if Factorio was some sort of shooter game. As someone with motor control issues that further exacerbate that, I would be very upset indeed to find out I can no longer fight off even a single biter because someone could not keep the FPS elements to the games that should have it.

[brunzenstein]

Factorio for iOS

Sounds crazy but isn’t - the iOS / Mac market is as huge as profitable and lacks in the game offer much to desire. Actually its a black hole on the game side.
Don’t tell me it’s impossible to port a keyboard driven game like Factorio to the touch screen (the iPad/iPhone can be driven by pencil as well as BT keyboards) heavy iPad /iPhone market.

„Ulysses“ e.g., the most refined writing and text editing program on the international market was initially developed only for keyboard driven Macs. Just to find out that with clever adaptation both „Ulysses“ worlds can exist not side by side but seamlessly integrated (by iCloud) into itself.

So - please point your focus more (or better only) to extending your market share after 1.0 (in unknown territories) and not bury yourself by working on side stories only (and most probably not even) interesting for the hardest of the hardcore Factorio fan boys - like me

[DarkyPupu]

Factorio for iOS

Sounds crazy but isn’t - the iOS / Mac market is as huge as profitable and lacks in the game offer much to desire. Actually its a black hole on the game side.
Don’t tell me it’s impossible to port a keyboard driven game like Factorio to the touch screen (the iPad/iPhone can be driven by pencil as well as BT keyboards) heavy iPad /iPhone market.

„Ulysses“ e.g., the most refined writing and text editing program on the international market was initially developed only for keyboard driven Macs. Just to find out that with clever adaptation both „Ulysses“ worlds can exist not side by side but seamlessly integrated (by iCloud) into itself.

So - please point your focus more (or better only) to extending your market share after 1.0 (in unknown territories) and not bury yourself by working on side stories only (and most probably not even) interesting for the hardest of the hardcore Factorio fan boys - like me

- From a hardware point of view, I don't think a tablet or a phone has required power to allow smooth play (whatever if it's mac or something else), considering already high end computers suffers later on in the game. Not to mention it'd be a total battery killer if used a mobile way.

- About the touchscreen, this was already debated on the Switch port and more or less concluded that proper touch screen interface would, at least, force a total revamp of all GUI for quite a niche of players.

- About OS (on computers), i think it's nice they support Linux, Mac and Windows altogether. MacOS is already supported, i don't know how fine it works, though.

I think it'd bring more pain than gain to support mobile and / or touchscreen, for a total niche. That's only my personal views ofc.

[Koub]

Factorio for iOS

Sounds crazy but isn’t - the iOS / Mac market is as huge as profitable and lacks in the game offer much to desire. Actually its a black hole on the game side.
Don’t tell me it’s impossible to port a keyboard driven game like Factorio to the touch screen (the iPad/iPhone can be driven by pencil as well as BT keyboards) heavy iPad /iPhone market.

It begins with twice the work to maintain both interfaces - because keyboard+mouse is not touch screen, both worlds have things the other can't do.
Then next step is to "dumb down" interface to the common denominator (or what's the closest), to minimize double work.
That's what I have seen most in gaming experience : games reworked or designed so that "they can be released on both consoles and PC", with interfaces explicitely adapted to console use.
And the feel is so frustrating when you're on PC with keyboard and mouse, and 90% of the possibilities mouse+keyboard could offer are just ... not there, because that would not make sense from a gamepad console player's point of view.
I'm not saying its the case for all the games, but that's the case for way too many games.
I don't want that with touchscreens.

[brunzenstein]

- About OS (on computers), i think it's nice they support Linux, Mac and Windows altogether. MacOS is already supported, i don't know how fine it works, though.

I think it'd bring more pain than gain to support mobile and / or touchscreen, for a total niche. That's only my personal views ofc.

Factorio works on the Mac just perfect - and your - "for a total niche" you mean is is a pretty large one, the wealthiest company in the world of, that is Apple.
And hardware requirements: That will be no match to the capability of any recent iPhone - that is by far more powerful than any average PC laptop you name.

[brunzenstein]

It begins with twice the work to maintain both interfaces - because keyboard+mouse is not touch screen, both worlds have things the other can't do.
I don't want that with touchscreens.

Fair enough.
Any iOS can handle BT mouse and BT keyboard quite well.
Thats not an argument.

[DarkyPupu]

- About OS (on computers), i think it's nice they support Linux, Mac and Windows altogether. MacOS is already supported, i don't know how fine it works, though.

I think it'd bring more pain than gain to support mobile and / or touchscreen, for a total niche. That's only my personal views ofc.

Factorio works on the Mac just perfect - and your - "quote" the "for a total niche" you mean is is a pretty large one, the wealthiest company in the world of, that is Apple.
And hardware requirements: That will be no match to the capability of any recent iPhone - that is by far more powerful than any average PC laptop you name.

Point taken, although i don't agree. This controversial point was not on the list

[brunzenstein]

Point taken, although i don't agree. This controversial point was not on the list

Not on your list - but on mine

[Xcone]

Interesting topics. Opinions incoming:

Inserters should not chase items
I don't mind either way. I'm sure you'll find a way to make it visually pleasing. I've been annoyed by the occasional inefficient pickups, but I've enjoyed fixing the issue in those very same scenario's. I read another reply to keep the low-tier inserts as they are, and change the fast inserters to be the reliable ones. Seems like a great compromise.

Blueprint import/export should be a modded feature
I've gotten blueprints for modular-rails-pieces in order to quickly build rails. I tried to make my own prints first, to some success, but then lost them (dont remember how) and didn't feel like making them again.
Belt- balancers-books are a must have. Thast's just plain mathematics and magic, and not everyone is into that. But everyone needs balancers.
The occasional n-th time I've build a science production plant, I would get a blueprint to avoid the building same thing, .. yet again. It's a great way to turn repetitive tasks in to small chores.

I get the sentiment. I don't disagree with that, but I'd probably just get the mod, and make use of it sparingly.

Weapons shouldn't lock on
I don't think I'd survive. I like having to fend for myself once in a while. But removing weapon-lock would make it harder, it'd need compensation/balancing to not instantly die when overwhelmed in those cases.

Biters should be more aggressive, and probe your defenses
Yes please!

Clearing bases should not leave you safe
I thought this was already covered by biters expanding into new bases, being a checkbox in the world settings. With that enabled, clearing the area and leaving it unattended will give the promise of new biter bases in cleared areas. I don't see the reason to remove the pollution cloud. If it's global, would every biter-base attack you?

Miners shouldn't output directly to belts
But, ... I like them outputting directly on belts I think it's an logical distinction to make between raw minerals/materials which you can just 'dump' on belts and 'constructed' materials which need care and therefor inserters.

Boilers shouldn't have a water output
I like the chaining. But I've seen player I've introduced to Factorio struggle with this. Maybe make this building as well as refinery and chemical plants all in 2 versions. One that can be chained, and one that cannot. That'd solve the piping mess around those. Make the chainable version a research option later in the tree?

Pipes should work like electricity
Fluids are hard-ish, but that makes it half of the fun. It's a different dynamic and makes you work out a very real-world logistical problem. Please keep it!
I've seen others argue that instead electricity should be more constrictive, which I would also totally prefer. Indeed, similar to oxygen not included. But maybe with just restricting/limiting the power on a cable, instead of damaging the cables with overflows.

Adventure mode
Yes please! Not sure about the line-of-sight thing. Factorio is too big for that. I play from the map-view half of the time. But mountains, caves and POI's seem great

Robots should take up space and time
No opinion. I don't like robo-clouds anyway, so I bots mostly for building auto-junk and resupply anyway. Also the 'mall' usually ends of being supplied by bots, but that's only low volume stuff. High volumes I like belts. Even knowing bots are better.

Items should have volume and mass
One of the BIGGEST grievance I have, I building something, and then learning I did not bring enough inserters/factories/powerpoles, needing to walk aaaaallll the way back, .. get stuff, ... and walking again the way. I dread this will increase ten-fold which this mechanic.

Power-user hotkeys
No problemo. I'll just bind them myself (the ones I use, anyway)

Mining furnaces and assembling machines should return the ingredients for the in-progress recipe
Never even noticed this, so I can't be bothered.

[unobtanium]

Inserters should not chase items
I kind of like the fact that you have this requirement of having to upgrade inserters once you get higher belt speeds. It shows how much your factory has increased in technology which requires you to "go with the times".
Not sure how the current system works, but would it already help UPS wise if you just change the way the fast and stack inserters work? Since they have no problem in picking up items from fast belts. Then players could manually switch out their earlygame inserters for lategame inserters in their megabase if they want that extra performance improvement.

Blueprint import/export should be a modded feature
I agree with the reasoning.
What about disableing importing/exporting on default, then have an option in the settings you first have to tick, only then they are available to the player. This way it is A) hidden from new players and B) is required manual "confirmation" of the player in order to use the import/export and highlight that it is an "extra feature" and should be used with care.

Weapons shouldn't lock on
I like the fact that weapons are rather simple. But I think aiming manually at the direction of the biters will be too difficult (and kind of goes against the concept of everything being "precise [damage] throughput"
However, you could increase the player interaction if you let the player aim in a direction and everything being in a +/-30 degrees cone in front of the player character is being automatically aimed at by the game. Then the player would still have to ruffly aim into the direction he wants to attack, but we still have the homing bullets we currently have. The best of both worlds!

Biters should be more aggressive, and probe your defenses
I would like smarter biters. Maybe their AI could evolve with their evolution level? Then the the earlygame would be less punished, but the lategame
- when the player has the resources to defend everything - more. In general it will always be a difficult balance act between being annoying/distracting from the factory building and engaging. Maybe having a better AI would make biter attacks and defending interesting enough. But with how simple the weaponry currently is, I dont think thats possible. The weaponry would have to be more arcadey to be fun long term. Like a Tower Defense Game with some over the top weapons.

Clearing bases should not leave you safe
I kind of disagree. This gives the player an option: Does he invest time to clear the area and maintain the area in the future, or does he just make sure everything is defended correctly? In general, you still need to defend and wall off everything, even if you clear the area, in case they expand back in. And we already have biter expansion settings, no?

Miners shouldn't output directly to belts
Maybe for Electric Miners, but how do you do burner miners? You would have to let burner inserters pick up coal from the burner's fuel slot or upgrade to yellow inserters very early. While it would add more consistency throught the game, I feel like this also gives the miners a special attribute and... feeling(?) compared to the rest of the game, which I accually like. Not everything is the exact same (production building -> inserter -> belt).

Boilers shouldn't have a water output
Could be solved with two variations of boilers. You could introduces e.g. the 1x1 boiler again but without the water output and directly output the steam opposite to the water input. This way you cant stack them anymore, but you help the new player usability. Later on, you could research the current boilers, which do have a water output. New players would know by then how it works and then have the knowledge to deal with the extra water output. So you get the best of both worlds!

Pipes should work like electricity
I mean, you could always have it as an special option on the game creation screen which would swap out the algorithm. I am sure some people dont care and would always go for the more UPS friendly algorithm, so having the option would leave it to the user to decide. Just warn the player that this will have a large gameplay impact, so that people dont accidentally tick it and are later surprised. You could also have players change the currently used algorithm later via chat commands.

Adventure mode
I always felt like there should be something out there to explore. Maybe even some special boss biter King or Queen monsters protecting items?! Ever since the alien artifacts were removed, the world felt kind of... empty. I wouldnt complain about some rare items, maybe even rare Tier 4 Modules far away. Or recipes or technologies (*cough* spidertron *cough*) that could only be crafted/researched once you find specific alien items across the land. Imo, that could also make the lategame more interesting. I think this would make for a good DLC mod for after Factorio's launch if planned out and designed correctly.

Robots should take up space and time
Maybe. It would definitly help balance lategame combat and production. But slowing down building with personal robots would be even more annoying. My batteries are already getting drained constantly and I have to wait, so waiting for bots to build the freaking entities, I dont know about that. Like many of these changes, people used to their convenience will definitly be upset, so make them now will probably not smoothly with the community

Power-user hotkeys
Definitly! I love me more hotkeys. I always found that Factorio's hotkeys were one of the best QoL features I have seen in a game like this.
You could unset key bindings by default and suggest a key binding for it in case the player wants to try it out. Or just use his own button combintion instead.

Mining furnaces and assembling machines should return the ingredients for the in-progress recipe
Hm. Not sure about the inner workings of the code, but the exploit does not sound hard to deal with. Just dont apply the productivity bonus when you destroy an entity and get the items back is not an option? Again, not sure how the code worked, but this sounds like an easy problem to fix on first glance.

[Claudius1729]

Blueprint

I understand why you'd want to remove some features. But that'd just lead to people copying the blueprints by re-doing it in game, piece per piece. It'd be painful. Personally I think some people want to focus on getting bases working, not computing with spreadsheets the best ratio, and so on.

Blueprint delete

This was apparently controversial with one of the devs, but blueprints books shouldn't be deleted with a single button, they should be trashed in a bin. Only there should you be able to delete them.
See this:
https://www.leemunroe.com/best-practice ... g-records/

[TheoMarque]

Inserters should not chase items

True. Nothing to add, because inserter behavior of picking items is quirky. Using long distance inserters make a whole setups problematic so I dismissed their existence.

Blueprint import/export should be a modded feature

What? Is it a problem?

Weapons shouldn't lock on

Biters should be more aggressive, and probe your defenses

More aggressive? No. Factorio is not tower defense game. But probing by few biters, wandering by map - good idea. Probing shouldn't cause large attacks, but this way - game get info for safe places for biter nests.

Clearing bases should not leave you safe

Definitely NO. For constant factory growing you must explore and excavate new resources. Central factory must be safe. Producing posts also should be guarded by towers from outside, but not inside. Little idea? Terrain covered by non-soil materials blocking spawning forever.

Miners shouldn't output directly to belts

I understand inconstancy to other mechanics but... changing this can broke any previous games. For example, in Minecraft, devs do not change some stupid problems, like no-gravity for trees or unburnable chests - because it could break older saves and creations. Factorio, like Minecraft is about long-term creation game.
If you'll try to do this, there will be two possible solutions - miners should have storage and larger excavation area or... redesign miners by just adding inserter into their sprite?

Boilers shouldn't have a water output

Like above, broken change. I've had a problem with this in my first game designs. A problem is in the sprite, not in idea - Change sprite fluid flow to be more consistent visually. Like in chemical plant sprite you've posted few months ago .

Pipes should work like electricity

Yes and no. Yes because sometimes pressure works stupid, but maybe adding valves would be better than changing whole pipes mechanics? One way passive valve, pressure valve etc.

Robots should take up space and time

YES. Robots are overpowered and destroy demand for creating setups with belts. All belts creativity, balancers are gone. Below are explained some ideas.

Items should have volume and mass

Yes and no. First, normal stack size. Why some machines are stackable up to 10 and some to 100? Why sulfurs are stackable up to 50 but plastics up to 200? Mass problem must be used in machine transport systems, but not in inventory.
Belts? - no change
Cars, tanks, cargo and fluid wagon? They shoud require much more power to transport items. Now putting some rocket fuel into train I can travel very long distances and very fast with whole factory setup in cargo wagons.
Bots - like above - impacting their distance and speed. When you use bots to picking stone to furnaces - something went wrong. Bots should be designed to transport advanced materials, not plates or ores.
Player backpack - a problem. Where is the difference between transporting crafted locomotive or materials for locomotive crafting? Maybe size of backpack changing dynamically when we put too much mass into it?

Power-user hotkeys

I've tried to use keypad (half keyboard) to play Factorio, but game doesn't recognize additional keys other than typical QWERTY keyboard (and multibutton mouse, for that matter). So, hotkeys are overcomplicated now.
Additional edit:
After changing toolbelt behavior I stop using it and getting items directly from inventory. Why? Inventory opening in center of the screen, but tool belt is in the bottom of screen. I play in 4K resolution so... moving cursor from center to bottom of the screen very often making me tired.

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

No. But little idea - maybe add "on" and "off" state for machines? If product is crafting in machine, and we switch machine off, this products is last and no more products will be crafted.

[steinio]

Oh man pipes as a electric network would be so easy to made.

Production = Sum(producers)
Consumption = Sum(consumer)

If consumption > production -> reduceSpeed(consumers)

Throughput is limited to the smallest pipe in the whole network.
As vanilla has only one type of pipe, it can be coded in hard and the moddable pipe volume can be removed.

This means if a pipe (10000u) can handle 8 offshore pumps (á 1200u) and 12 are connected, only 8 * 1200u can be consumed.

No rocket since.

[ekamien]

Power-user hotkeys posila

I believe on this one - all actions should have at least assignable hotkeys as the game does.

It should be possible to do everything from the keyboard that you can from a mouse, and the reason is -Accessibility.

If someone in a wheelchair who cannot move their hands wants to play factorio with their head switch, this must be considered.

[meganothing]

Any iOS can handle BT mouse and BT keyboard quite well.
Thats not an argument.

And how many iOS users have a mouse and keyboard or would use one with their phone?

Sure, Factorio fanatics would buy them (and use them) extra for this game, but you practically shrunk that big potential market to insignificance