Friday Facts #335 - Scenario changes, Damage effect filtering

[coppercoil]

It appears its purpose was not to look good for general use but to stand out in the launch area of one specific scenario. I think they succeeded in that goal.

Okay. Mod-makers, be warned though

[Klonan]

Colored concrete would be great, though I'd say it's oversaturated. Everytime people want to color something, they give near 100% saturation. Damn it... Pure colors look synthetic.
Also lightness of concrete is very different, I'm not sure whether it is good or not. This is kinda not consistent.

Yea this isn't a 'proper' color concrete feature, this is just a cheap solution for the team production.
If we were to add color concrete (or other tiles) as a base game/freeplay item, we would spend much more time on it, with finely tuned tints and spritesheets.

Right now though, we are finishing things, not opening new topics, so this is why the color concrete shown is only used in the team production, and not added as a 'real' item in the game.

[EnerJi]

Yea this isn't a 'proper' color concrete feature, this is just a cheap solution for the team production.
If we were to add color concrete (or other tiles) as a base game/freeplay item, we would spend much more time on it, with finely tuned tints and spritesheets.

Right now though, we are finishing things, not opening new topics, so this is why the color concrete shown is only used in the team production, and not added as a 'real' item in the game.

I totally understand and respect this approach. I think the colored concrete looks neat, though, so I hope you consider adding it to the (I'm sure already very-long) list of possible future updates after the game goes 1.0. Whether it's included in a future paid DLC or what-not, I think it would be cool to have.

[exi2163]

...
We already do logic like that for construction robots and get complaints about them all the time when people build crazy amounts of things at once. There's no solution so we just leave it as is.

I remember that 'nuisance'. The RoboMining mod was a good way to lock your complete bot building power up because standing orders - even if they didnt belong to the current robo network - clogged up the bot processing and nothing got built anymore. I guess it worked the list oldest to newest and gave up after a few thousand orders. Deleting a few tenthousand construction orders at once was also a good way to crash the game server through lag of death.
Took quite some time to figure out it was neither the core game nor the mod that really caused the issues but more the ignorante usage of the decon planner in that scenario (deconning very large mining patches)

Regardless, a background threat that continues to work the construction orders from time to time completely would have been nice.

[Pompeij]

...But at that point, half the server stopped playing anyways because everything is so laggy and few can even handle the simulation.

A better solution would be the ability to increase the health of biters (during the scenario, outside of its entity definition), so you have fewer entities. This way you could support a lot more players and even have stuff like boss waves (I'm sure the community will get creative about it).

I agree with those points.

And want to add something about the damage filter. additionaly you may add an occurrence and multiplier filter, a big explosion can have more blood but only once every 2 secounds. And rappid gun fire only have a bit of blood, but everyx 100 ms.
Or something like that ..

keep going
Pompeij

[AwesomeLowlander]

I have a complaint. How is the new scenario not named 'Space Race'?

[kitt159]

For now we have set the fire sticker to do 10x the damage, but only every 10 ticks

maybe it would be better to set it up so that the change only happens when FPS drops

[Jap2.0]

For now we have set the fire sticker to do 10x the damage, but only every 10 ticks

maybe it would be better to set it up so that the change only happens when FPS drops

The problem with that is that it has to be deterministic (i.e. behave the exact same way on any system) for multiplayer to work. Since different computers will start to struggle at different points, it's impossible to do it how you suggest. You could go with some other statistic such as "when this many particles exist" or something but that's a lot of effort for questionable gain and you might as well just keep the performance benefit all the time.

[Henry Loenwind]

Ok, back to making harder enemies again.

Two ways come to mind when I think about making biters more effective without adding some evolved AI. The one would be to have infiltration biters, ones that take into account turret ranges when pathfinding. The other one would be to have biters that target essential infrastructure like power lines. Combine them and a single hole in a wall somewhere can lead to your base being out of power and defenceless easily, especially if the power-line-targeting looks at lines between generators and consumers specifically. (But that's be a more complex task.)

One may even go so far as to record each dead body and use it as a penalty for path finding. Great realism, but even more data keep track of.

[Oktokolo]

Two ways come to mind when I think about making biters more effective without adding some evolved AI. The one would be to have infiltration biters, ones that take into account turret ranges when pathfinding. The other one would be to have biters that target essential infrastructure like power lines. Combine them and a single hole in a wall somewhere can lead to your base being out of power and defenceless easily, especially if the power-line-targeting looks at lines between generators and consumers specifically. (But that's be a more complex task.)

One may even go so far as to record each dead body and use it as a penalty for path finding. Great realism, but even more data keep track of.

If the goal is to have biters wich wipe out entire bases if there is just one security hole anywhere - Rampant exists. I doubt, that it will become vanilla...

[Hiladdar]

I re-read the FF#335, and have a follow up question from the General cleanup section, " ... switching the loaders to stack inserters ...".

Could someone a developer please elaborate scope of change, and what the change will be to loaders.

Hiladdar

[coderpatsy]

I re-read the FF#335, and have a follow up question from the General cleanup section, " ... switching the loaders to stack inserters ...".

Could someone a developer please elaborate scope of change, and what the change will be to loaders.

Hiladdar

As said on reddit, they are only changing out the loaders for stack inserters in the team production scenario. Nothing about either prototype is changing.

[Hiladdar]

I re-read the FF#335, and have a follow up question from the General cleanup section, " ... switching the loaders to stack inserters ...".

Could someone a developer please elaborate scope of change, and what the change will be to loaders.

Hiladdar

As said on reddit, they are only changing out the loaders for stack inserters in the team production scenario. Nothing about either prototype is changing.

Thanks

Hiladdar

[Asterix]

yep, it's called batching, and they refuse to do it.

We already do it: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-317 and wayyyy moree.

I don't know if you already considered this but... As far as i understand, you are moving all biters that get aggroed, from point A to point B, independently.

This of course requires lots of very expensive pathing, and the computer grinds to a halt. However, biters already come in reasonably-sized groups, so... Have you considered moving them as a formation? Like a school of fish, with a single pilot biter that computes the full, expensive path all the way to the target, and then all the others simply swarm to a sort-of random point behind it, thus only computing a very short path to the general vicinity of the pilot?

Maybe you already do it and I'm not aware of it, but if not this seems like it might lessen the pressure on the CPU when moving large groups of biters.

[Mango]

yep, it's called batching, and they refuse to do it.

We already do it: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-317 and wayyyy moree.

I don't know if you already considered this but... As far as i understand, you are moving all biters that get aggroed, from point A to point B, independently.

This of course requires lots of very expensive pathing, and the computer grinds to a halt. However, biters already come in reasonably-sized groups, so... Have you considered moving them as a formation? Like a school of fish, with a single pilot biter that computes the full, expensive path all the way to the target, and then all the others simply swarm to a sort-of random point behind it, thus only computing a very short path to the general vicinity of the pilot?

Maybe you already do it and I'm not aware of it, but if not this seems like it might lessen the pressure on the CPU when moving large groups of biters.

They already do it.

[BattleFluffy]

I like the idea of these little mini scenarios like Rocket Rush. :>
I have a suggestion for two other scenarios.

In the first scenario, the player can only place Burner Inserters. No other types of inserters are placeable (they still have to be craftable due to the recipe for logistic science pack).
This means the player must ensure every single inserter in their factory receives fuel somehow.

In the second scenario, the player can only place Burner Inserters, and cannot place any type of transport belt.
Instead items must be moved around using chests, direct insertion, trains, cars, or whatever other workaround method the player devises.

Some additional achievements could be added for launching a rocket within these mini scenarios, since doing so is more challenging than in regular free play.

EDIT: To illustrate why this would be an interesting mini-scenario/achievement, these restrictions lead to designs like these:

Images

In this mode the factory necessarily becomes a steampunk paradise =)

[lxl]

It would be nice if the "more variable path finding" can also be included into main game.

[mrvn]

Can one combine Rocket Rush with Team playing? Each team buys their own equipment and then it's a race to the moon.