Friday Facts #339 - Beacon HR + Redesign process

[Ringkeeper]

don't like it, sorry. At least not as beacon. A beacon is a transmitter and not something that looks like an electrical converter or weapon.
Looks also way to futuristic compared to the other DIY looking buildings (which i like).


And waaay to eye-catching. For mega factories beacon are a must have, as many as possible, so you would see just sparks flying everywhere. Beacons should be the least noticeable buildings. After all, they just send out buffs .

Rather remove them complete and integrate an upgrade function to buildings so at the end you get the same amount out. Would save on entities and you could build more organic and not rows over rows over rows.....

[deef0000dragon1]

I honestly disagree with the reason for droping the cables. Having multiple beacons next to each other DOES provide more of a boost. It would help to signify that beacon stacking is a thing.

I like the multiple directions bit, but I dislike the lack of a bottomless pit bit.

[lacika2000]

So my two cents, apologies upfront for the strong expressions...

Like:

• New design (the base), looks promising.
• The front light (yellow per default), especially if it reflect the loaded modules (orange, green or blue).

Dislike:

• The red base color is too prominent, this will overrule anything around it. Beacons have a supporting role, they are not the core structures of the factory...
• Spike... argh... SPIKE?? why do we need anything encroaching the space above?
• Sparks: we have this already at the accumulators, and people tend to flee the scene because of the noise they make, especially when in large numbers. PLEASE. DON'T.

I would love to have a Tesla coil based defense structure, a la Red Alert 2, though. Food for thought?

[IronCartographer]

The building desing variation serves well and demands less resources in buildings like the Laboratory, the Rocket Silo and the Nuclear Reactor since the player builds a smaller a mmount of those

The resource demand in question (Video RAM) is based on the size of the art for entities, and the number of animations frames, no matter how many of them are built.

I honestly disagree with the reason for droping the cables. Having multiple beacons next to each other DOES provide more of a boost. It would help to signify that beacon stacking is a thing.

Compare it to how nuclear power works with its neighbor bonuses. Beacons don't affect each other and multiply their effect; it is additive, and doesn't require beacons to be interacting, so visual interactions between beacons would be misleading.

This is one of the reasons why I can't fully justify a switch from a tower of emitters to a coil with a ring of emitters for an ideal beacon design: The emitters would be closer together, implying close range interaction with buildings, yes, but also possibly inter-beacon effects as they point much more closely at their neighbors.

[someone1337]

All I see is a lightning-turret.

And usually such turrets are used to go for flying units in other games.

And that means, we need flying biters now.

[Binkenstein]

Unfortunately I'm in the "I'm not really sure I like it" camp. So far all the redesigns/new textures are awesome, so it feels slightly weird to say something other than that.

[Ranakastrasz]

All I can really say is that I never felt beacons fit in the game, due to how heavily they constrained design.

If they were non-stacking(two beacons in an area don't function), larger aoe, like 32x32, then I think they would be way better. And the high-tech apperance would make sense and I think add to them, since they wouldn't be the center of attention, and outnumber everything else, like roboports are now. Scattered everywhere, but too many in one place is less useful.

As is the most efficient designs end up being circles of beacons or sandwitches, one or two assemblers wide, and limiting creative design. Not using beacons costs you massive speed or productivity, which isn't an option either, not when making a megabase.

I wonder if non-stacking beacons is moddable....

[voddan]

Love the new design!
I think the old beacon looked too similar to a radar, so it was hard to understand what it did from a brief look at a factory. The new beacon is much more purpose-build, which is great.

Do you think it could be possible to make lightnings between the beacon and the buildings it affects?
A row of such beacons would look like a human field from "Matrix"!
Additionally, lightings to neighboring buildings would clearly indicate beacon's purpose as a transmitter of energy.

[Reika]

I cannot say I like the beacon design at all. Not because it looks bad, but because it looks so ill-fitting to both the rest of the game and the things it is built near, i.e. the very same context you said was a problem at the beginning of the FFF.

Others have said it looks alien or super high fantasy-tech, and I have to agree. It looks like something I might see in Stellaris, Defence Grid, or some science fiction movie set 30000 years in the future.

[IIIByoIII]

The design is awesome, but please make it a weapon instead.
Like many others said, it's not part of the factory with that shape and look. The variation should be dropped also, many of us like symmetric designs over random.
Don't scrap the design, please consider making it a weapon (maybe in a future DLC!?), but I'd like to see something more streamlined and subtle for the beacons, they just boost production so ... assemblers, furnaces, miners ... are important, beacons are not so much, don't steal the spotlight from the important ones.
I'd love to see something similar to the old beacon, maybe even shorter or slimmer, and a kind of satellite dish on top.
Just save this new design for something else

[ownlyme]

that design makes no sense

[Deadlock989]

that design makes no sense

Weekly ray of sunshine from Mr. Why I Will Never Play 0.17.

[valneq]

I find it very difficult to judge whether I like the new beacon. I will depend a lot on how the assembling machines will look. Those will get a redesign as well, right? That was promised quite some time ago.

[Optera]

I would love to have a Tesla coil based defense structure, a la Red Alert 2, though. Food for thought?

Thanks, now i cant unsee that thing as tesla coil.

[fur_and_whiskers]

I agree with many others here, great art work which shows a lot of effort has been put into it. But ill fitting, misleading as to its purpose and draws too much attention to itself for something that supports other buildings and going to dominate the factory, etc, etc.

With any building that has variation, please make it so it have a default position that can be rotated and copy/paste by the player when placing. That way we have control over the variety.

Frankly I'd much prefer beacons were replaced with upgrades to buildings instead. e.g. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Built-in-Beacons by V453000. Meaning in late game you don't have to completely redesign your factory to make room for boring repetitive magical device spam.

[T-A-R]

Wrong game, too futuristic like Factorio has never been (perhaps modded). It may fit the unseen assembler, but not the rest of the factory that we know.
The round shape make it excel placed alone or at corners, but not in row. I prefer the spinning radar thingy on top of the old beacon, fitting the style of antenna's on the roboports (and radar).

The mystery of the tech should be kept inside. Not sure if it should be higher then a long range scanning radar.

Since these beacons are always placed in rows or grids (rewarding order after hours of spagetti) I wonder why you didn't go with a square design?

For example a electrical cabinet with a module-socket, a spinning emitter (like all other Factorio emitters) and connectors on all 4 sides "linking" the buildings. Make use of the repetiveness (forming blocks like a truss beam). Perhaps shrink the lamp. Add some Nauvis tech, as done on the outer base ring of the new designs. And finish this all with a layer of rust.

Truss joint

prolyte-truss-h40v-c017-corner-3-way-t-joint.jpg (36.78 KiB) Viewed 7294 times

[boksiora]

i dont like the spike and the color

and the rotating thingy is gone

[ionian]

I've come to agree with other players that the new design looks somewhat too alien compared to much of the other direction - though I have to say it's execution is lovely.

I would also agree that the old design was a bit too blocky and didn't look wonderful in repetition.

As a suggestion, what about something extremely sparse? A small node or core in the center that can care color based on module type, and intensity or saturation based on module level that is simply laying in the grass. Around the small core we could have snaking cords and wires that look more like extension cords than a building.

This way beacons can take a step back from being the primary visual element of beaconed designs which are typically very dense, and we can bring forward more color and variety from the underlying terrain tiles.

I also imagine these sparse beacons primary animation only being activated when the effected entities are producing. And icing on the cake perhaps the lighting and animated among them could be linked together in a kind of rippling pulse, sort of how I remember the human batteries scene in The Matrix with large arcing over arrays of plugged in people?

[Jugglered]

I would love to have a Tesla coil based defense structure, a la Red Alert 2, though. Food for thought?

Thanks, now i cant unsee that thing as tesla coil.

I agree on the RA2 tesla coil base defense structure. maybe use the design as an intermediate between gun turret and laser turret. doesn't do as much damage as laser, maybe different range, but an earlier access to a defense structure that doesn't need ammo.

[Koub]

If I could choose between all the designs that were posted, I'd choose this one :

spoiler

The electric effects look awesome, despite the fact I wouldn't have expected them on a beacon.

But (and there are two butts) :
1) I'm disturbed by the long vertical pole on the top. I'd have expected many satellite dish-like antennas oriented in all directions (or a single one rotating, kind of similar to the current design)
2) Please, no random variations. Please please please please please.