Friday Facts #309 - Controversial opinions

[bartekltg]

Adding limit how many bots can access chests does not solve the problem. You can create more chests instead. Here is another better solution for bots.

Yes... As intended.
If one wants huge transfers using bots, the 'airport' is needed. Bunch of chests and inserters.
If somebody worked for 200 items/s, lets him have it.

We want to balance infinite boots transfer, not nerf into the unusable level.

Allow ROBOPORTS to be placed only with NO OVERLAP (or minimal overlap) of their range. You would not be able to place roboports very close to each other because of "interference".

Would work too. Still, the limit on the chests seems nicer to me.

[Sir3n]

Bit late to the party but here's my opinion.

• Inserters should not chase items
  I don't mind either way personally. However, if there's big performance gains to be made, I lean more on the side of making inserters not chase items as long as the picking up motion still looks natural, which it seems can be done from the wording used in the post.

• Blueprint import/export should be a modded feature
  I don't use import/export that much because I prefer designing my own blueprints from the ground up. So I'm a little biased here.
  That said, I still think that it is probably better that it is a modded feature since people tend to be lazy when given the option to do so, even when taking the time to design it by oneself can result in much more satisfaction over the long term.

• Weapons shouldn't lock on
  I don't really mind either way for this. That said, no lock on might make it harder to use the machine gun if we are running a lot of exoskeletons.

• Biters should be more aggressive, and probe your defenses
  I like this idea actually.
  Right now, biters are mostly an annoyance. Just plop down some turrets in the general area that produces the most pollution on the side closest to biter bases. You don't really plan a defense. You just kind of react to attacks. This is a bit contrary to what the rest of the game is about, which is planning ahead for how things should move and get processed.
  Making biters more aggressive and smart actually turns the biters into something you actually need to plan around, instead of something you just react to when you are reminded of their presence when they chew on things.

• Clearing bases should not leave you safe
  For this one, I'd say it depends on what exactly you have in mind.
  For example, one thing I hated about minecraft was how zombies could spawn in the middle of completely sealed off areas just because I misplaced a torch which let the light level drop down just a bit too low. That was super annoying.
  While I don't mind biters attacking into previously cleared areas, I don't want them just spawning in the middle of walled off areas either. That would be very annoying.

• Miners shouldn't output directly to belts
  I don't really mind having to use inserters but I don't want to have to do weird things to get the ore under belts mined either. Having to mine part of an ore patch, then come back and shift everything over to mine the leftovers under the belt would be super annoying.
  If miners don't auto output to belt, then they probably need a size reduction or a mining area increase. Unless the miner gets turned into some weird non square building.

• Boilers shouldn't have a water output
  I do agree that water output can be confusing to new players. That said, I do quite like the simplicity and look of the current layout but if the boilers setup without water output looks elegant and simple enough, I don't really mind either way.

• Pipes should work like electricity
  This one I agree a lot with. At least, if the pipe system remains what it is. I have always disliked the pipe system. The reason being that the pipe system in factorio is at that point where it's complex enough that you can't just autopilot through it, but not complex enough to give an interesting challenge. So it becomes kind of this kind of repetitive work that's just feels like I'm having to repeatedly solve a problem i know the solution to but can't implement because of the game.
  If the piping system was as complex as say the train system and we actually had the tools needed to design really interesting systems to move liquids around, i'd be all for it.
  If I make a quick parallel to irl piping, before we ever need to resort to pumps, we have the option of using larger pipes, no-return valves and we can angle the pipe relative to the horizontal to make liquids flow where they need to go, we can put tanks at higher altitudes to get liquid to move out and not in. There's a lot we can do with just altitude irl. In Factorio, the main thing is that altitude, which is a key component in getting liquids to move how we want them to is completely fixed. We have no control over that. So to me, building pipes in Factorio feels like I'm just building a pipe with 0 degrees to the horizontal. A very dumb thing to do, especially for a long pipe.
  That about sums it up really. Factorio piping feels super dumb to me. Given the option to simplify the piping completely or keep the current system, I'd rather have it simplified completely. That way I can kind of autopilot through it. Now, if we got better piping tools to manage the flow of liquids, I wouldn't mind complexity in piping.

• Adventure mode
  Done properly, adventure mode can be a very good addition. That said, the key is how it's balanced. Too much adventuring required and it removes from Factorio what makes it fun to me, the base building. Too little and it's kind of an annoyance, like how biters and pipes are.
  I want to bring in Stardew Valley here. If you are like me, you like to know what the optimal start is, at least, something that's pretty close to optimal that also isn't completely repetitive that gives the best scaling. While stardew valley is supposed to be about farming, it's really not, at least not in the first year or 2. The thing i've found that works best to scale your farm is actually not farming, but mining. You basically just plant as many crops as you can water with a single fill of your watering can, which is 40 plants at the start and then you just spend all your time mining. Try to get as many sprinklers as fast as possible and then increase the number of crops you have as you get more sprinklers. Stardew Valley is really not about farming. It's about mining. How efficiently you can mine materials for sprinklers is the key. Once you have enough cash coming in, you basically can do whatever you want.
  This is what I don't want Factorio to become. Too much adventuring required and the base building just fades away into the background. So yeah, I recommend being very very careful with how adventuring is balanced otherwise Factorio is just going to be another Stardew Valley.

• Robots should take up space and time
  I think it's probably a good idea to just scrap the whole bot system and redesign it from scratch and give it weaknesses that make it so that it's not always better than belts in every end game situation. Power and material costs become negligible at end game. I think space becomes somewhat irrelevant too because you can just clear biters super easily and get more space. Time is also not a good restricting factor because you just plop down more blueprints and you just solve the problem.
  I think, if bots need to be balanced, its their throughput. For example, making bots require 1 second to interact with a chest and limiting the maximum number of bots that can do so simultaneously to 1 might be one way to go. Then belts need to be given more power so that they can fill in the void left behind by bots.
  Idk, just an example.
  Right now bots just are better in every end game situation which means it is a good idea to nerf them but the last thing I want is bots nerfed with nothing able to give us the throughput we need for megabases. That would be sad.

• Items should have volume and mass
  This one is probably a no for me. I fear if this is implemented, it will be worse than pipes and biters. Complex enough to require attention, not complex enough to be fun. If this is done well, it can add a very interesting layer of complexity to logistics, but if it's not done properly, it's just going to end up annoying a lot of people.

• Power-user hotkeys
  This is easily a yes. Having shortcuts for almost everything and leaving it up to us to decide what key to bind them to is something I like very much.

• Mining furnaces and assembling machines should return the ingredients for the in-progress recipe
  That's how I think they should behave in the first place. Factorio is about designing and building things. Sometimes we don't get it right the first time. Punishing the player for trying to improve their design is something I think should be avoided. It goes against the goal of the game. So yeah, I like materials being returned when buildings are deconstructed or mined.

[mrvn]

• Mining furnaces and assembling machines should return the ingredients for the in-progress recipe
  That's how I think they should behave in the first place. Factorio is about designing and building things. Sometimes we don't get it right the first time. Punishing the player for trying to improve their design is something I think should be avoided. It goes against the goal of the game. So yeah, I like materials being returned when buildings are deconstructed or mined.

It would be nice if marking a building for deconstruction would finish the current cycle and only then deconstruct the building. There would then be no question about returning ingredients as the result is returned.

[PaqpuK]

I know this was posted almost a month ago, but I took a break from factorio and wanted to check out what the team is up to now. So here's what I think:

>Inserters should not chase items
Yes, totally agree, do it.

>Blueprint import/export should be a modded feature
I think it should be up to the player whether they want to just copy someone else's BP or create their own. But if you feel like it's necessary - do it. Upgrading BP library UI would be great tho.

>Weapons shouldn't lock on
Yes, locking on weapons feels like you're playing an auto-clicker or something. There's no real tension to any fight you have.

>Biters should be more aggressive, and probe your defenses
YES! A thousand times yes! There's a reason why mods that enhance enemies are so popular. Dealing with biters is too easy. They should be more organized and look for openings in your defense. The should send scout parties, so you would know when to expect a bigger attack or something. And yes, they should attack railways and poles, because otherwise it's just too easy.

Related to that, I'm surprised you don't discuss turrets and how overpowered they are in early game. I think you should greatly diversify defensive structure, turrets are just too strong and boring.

>Miners shouldn't output directly to belts
Don't really feel anything on that one. To a degree, I feel like other things should be able to output directly, like trains should be able to unload their storage without inserters. But if you want consistency - yes, miners shouldn't output directly to belts. A middle-ground would be to introduce loaders/unloaders (there are a lot of mods with that) as a way to input/output resources faster, but they would take more space and require more resources to build.

>Boilers shouldn't have a water output
I really don't see the problem.

>Pipes should work like electricity
No! Please, no! I play factorio to make my brain hurt, don't take that away from me!

>Adventure mode
I feel you TOGoS. My wife also refuses to play factorio with me. But I think this should be that last thing on the priority list.

>Robots should take up space and time
Yes, robots are OP. They break all the balancing with base construction that you do before them. Honestly, I would be glad to just see robots deleted from the game entirely. Making them harder to produce, or make them consume more energy (much more energy) is going to make it a little better at least.

>Items should have volume and mass
Even though that makes a lot of sense, I fail to see how you can safely implement this in the game.

>Power-user hotkeys
Yes.

>Mining furnaces and assembling machines should return the ingredients for the in-progress recipe
Don't care.

[ChiefBigFeather]

Just wanted to throw in my two cents as a fairly new player.

There are some annoying hurdles in the game. Maybe it is just me, but I took frustratingly long to figure out that locomotives can be placed the wrong way around. Boilers were fairly intuitive to use and I didn't have many problems with the fluid system.

I really like the blueprints as they are. There where episodes when I spent loads of time optimizing my own starting mall design, both visually and functionally. Other times I just wanted a blueprint to solve the problem because I was bored doing it myself. I really think this is a strength of the game, not a weakness.

I love the transition to building with robots, it feels like progress and is thematically fitting. But I dislike robots replacing belts late in the game.

One think I would love to see is more biter content. Having to defend all your railways is probably just really annoying, but I dislike how biters just become a non problem once you reach a certain point in the game.

[CaptainFord]

Inserters should not chase items

I've had a lot of fun working out what the most efficient arrangement of modded inserters is, and exactly what I need to do in order to get full throughput. I definitely like the way it feels better, but on the other hand, when my UPS starts to drop, I do wonder why so much time is spent on simulating inserters.

Stack inserters ameliorated the problems with inserters a great deal, though.

Adventure mode

I would love more exploration elements. It's the one thing I felt Factorio was missing. Biters are so incredibly lethal, and so common, and vehicles get stuck so easily that it just isn't satisfying.

I've wanted mountains you could bore tunnels through for a long time. It's the one thing I felt the world needed, was barriers that actually gave the world some real shape.

Robots should take up space and time

LOL. Wouldn't they be able to fly at different altitudes? Shouldn't our receivers logically then be built vertically, with dozens of stations for drones to use so they don't get in each other's way? I think the fact you're stuck on using "receiver chests" is the problem. What you should have is docking station towers for loading and unloading drones, you only did chests because it was quick and easy. Drones logically shouldn't get in each other's way. That's just what happens with you've got a kilometer of vertical airspace to work with.

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

What? I remember when that got patched and I remember the relief about not accidentally screwing myself by playing the game the way it was intended. That is a bug. It's the stupidest, worst intended feature ever. I'm in the middle of deep thought about how I'm going to rearrange a factory, I deconstruct buildings to make room, then I realize I lost something important when I deconstructed that last building, and I'm thrown out of my focus. That is the WORST FEELING, and I've had it TOO OFTEN when I've got only just enough to accomplish something. FIX THIS. PLEASE. I shouldn't have to worry about my factory screwing me like this.

[SuicideJunkie]

I'm surprised it took until page 7 for the idea that inserters should lead their targets instead of chasing them.
Teleport-grabbing items off the belt is not the answer for exact timing math and eking out UPS: loaders are.

As to alt-view, the only time I don't have it turned on is when I'm alt-tabbing to another window and it toggles off on me, and when I occasionally stand back to marvel at the sheer spectacle of the spaghetti I've made without wanting to understand any of it.

[gorbag]

So quick response to a few of these ideas:

Pipes should work like electricity IMO, I'd rather see electricity work more like pipes - there's a current and amperage, and you have to match things up. Regular power poles can't carry infinite amps, and you can have plenty of power available, but run into distribution problems, just like the actual electrical grid. Plus substations might be needed to redistribute energy. And power surges/brownouts have consequences, like damage to connected equipment.

Adventure mode I'd enjoy this

Items should have volume and mass completely agree. Just how much metal is in an iron plate and what does it weigh? Why is a player able to carry around essentially unlimited volumes and masses but doesn't consume energy doing so? Even if we presuppose some very fancy built-in exo suit the player starts out with, there should be some kind of battery (or tether) to make it work, and charging it up using coal is probably going to take a while.

Part of the solution here might be to have carts or forklifts or something similar the player can drive around, particular to place and/or move items that take up more than 1 square, and those might start out being coal powered. Thinking about this, it might lead to better factory layouts too because how can you carry a launch silo down a one block wide corridor? So if the player can't stick these things in their backpack but has to use a tool to do so, I'd personally enjoy the puzzle part of the game more.

On a similar note, a wooden crate can hold how many nuclear power plants? We don't have to get completely realistic but this is really just silly.

This would also then relate to Robots should take up space and time in that perhaps a single robot can't be used to lift a large and/or heavy item. You'd need to gang them up, and they'd have to fly in formation (space), slowing down depending on the mass of the item (inertia). If objects can be shot down in flight, that would also address the creeping laser turret issue, since they'd move slowly without very high level robots (from some of the mods).

[daemonworks]

I really like the idea of some of the stuff mentioned in adventure mode - most specifically doing more with differing surfaces. Though rather than exploration (which i'm not averse to), imagine multiple z-levels that provide different materials, and perhaps have different specific challenges, so the factory would need to grow in depth as well as bredth.

You see something like that in fortresscraft where you need to move things between different depth-based biomes, as certain sorts of processing/storage/whatever need to happen in particular depths/regions, that each have their own specific issues

[dziki_punk]

Oversimplifying will destroy the whole nerdish core of the game.

For me if you will change the fluid mechanics for one designed like electric network, Factorio will loose a lot of its charm, same with deleting inserters or chasing items( it ads nice element of chaos). Factorio always was a game that was about engineering and designing, making somthing more efficient or more compact it was FUN because it was COMPLICATED . I remember my first free play was a lot like trying to figure out all the ratios, throughput and rest of stuff by trial and error. It took me like 50hrs to send a rocket but if game wasn’t kicking my ass I will loose interest in in after playing 20, so please don’t make it “click win to win” game.



About biters yes they are too easy if I choose basic settings they are lamo, they are rather annoying than dangerous, playing with them are far more challenging and taking away fun from “adventure” or “exploration” type experience, I guess than back in the days most of us had a huge parts of map explored by tank rides simply because scenery was beautiful and it was nice to see the different biomes and how they intersect with each other, but whole experience could be ruined by some annoying biters and I meant no harm to them but they are still attacking my poor tank blocked between the cliffs.
Also spawners could generate some sort of mid/late game resource being nescesery for example for some OP weapons or for “alien peace” science

So yes, yes, yes it is a great idea to add remnants of some type it could be even taken from other players base designs to add realism to the game and make it more thrilling.

Triple No for taking away blueprints strings, our little technical spying is necessary
you rarely take whole blueprint from others and paste it directly to game, it is rather that you take someone idea like raw stone and polish it to the moment that you think it fits your game in creative then you have perfect blueprint that you can share of course mentioning the original author.
Suming up free flow of ideas is one of the things that make Factorio unique.
For me it is a key feature

[NotRexButCaesar]

Time to discuss post 1.0?

my opinions

I guess I didn't comment here when the FFF originally came out? Maybe I was still using reddit then.

Inserters should not chase items

I can see the costs and benefits of both sides. I have both been interested and puzzled by inserters, as well as confused and frustrated. I would be happy with whatever the devs decided.

Blueprint import export should be a modded feature

I would be mostly indifferent if the import/export feature was removed; I do not use it often. I do find it useful sometimes to share designs, but see how it might make the game less fun for others.
I would be very disappointed, however, if the blueprint library itself were removed. I find it very fun to design and test things editor, only to use them in my actual save. I have a blueprint for most ingredients, and revisit/improve them often.

Combat Biters

Weapons shouldn't lock on
This sounds much more fun. I would be very happy with this change, considering what I can see now.

Biters should be more aggressive, and probe your defenses
There is already Rampant, so I don't know if this is really necessary. I do build the same wall across my entire factory, so it might not affect me much other than through possible UPS downgrades.

Clearing bases should not leave you safe
I probably disagree with this. Maybe make the default pollution and enemy settings different. I do think that the pollution cloud method can be interesting.

Miners shouldnt output directly to belts

I don't that inconsistency is a good reason to get rid of this. There is a problem that this makes more fun and interesting; getting as much ore out of a patch as possible.

Boilers shouldnt have a water output

I can see your point, but I find these boilers more interesting than the old ones. They also make more sense, at least to me; I don't see a reason why you would put water and "steam" in the same pipe.

Pipes should work like electricity

This is something I would like. I'm sure that there is a way to still require pumps and get rid of the strange functionality of pipes we have currently.

Adventure mode

I'm not sure this would fit with the rest of the game. It would likely encourage a "handcraft everything" approach; which is not generally as fun as the near lazy bastard method.

Robots should take up space and time

I would be strongly against this change. It would essentially make bots useless other than for supplying the player. A better solution might be to make bot charging slower, bots use more energy, or roboports have less charging slots.

Items should have volume and mass

I was never really pro-realism here. I don't think it messes up the game to be able to carry so much. This change would likely hamper efforts to build at scale: my favorite way to play.

Power-user hotkeys

Pretty please? I have no idea how this could be considered controversial. This would not harm the game in any way whatsoever; it would also be very interesting. I already have my keyboard set up specifically for factorio (many, if not most, of my control settings are not default, and I use multiple mods that add more hotkeys). keyboard layout

config.ini

(31.81 KiB) Downloaded 179 times

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

Again: I see no reason why this is controversial. The fact that a person can glean an extra few percent manually, with very accurate timings, makes no difference to 5+ nines of players. Maybe some speedrunner might use it somewhere, but that doesn't change the gameplay for nearly all people.