Friday Facts #339 - Beacon HR + Redesign process

[conn11]

Any chance the light in the middle of the beacon could adjust its color depending on what module is used inside it? Blue for speed, green for efficiency and puple/red for production?

Oh that would be SWEET!

Although productivity modules can’t be placed into beacons and transmitting efficiency is mostly a no brained. The combination of red building with yellow light seems better, then using a blue light.
But there are two animations indicating operation the light and the Tesla sparks. Or would definitely be nice if for example a power building is emitting energy and if modules are placed the light starts to glow. I would prefer it this way, to utilize the prominent light to quickly indicate a fully operational building even from afar.
Like in the current design the small radar dish is only spinning while powered, but communicating even more information.

[dee-]

Oh, yeah, snarky remark - it looks like a fire hydrant from Sauron

Pix

IM GONNA SEND MA EFFECTS!

[zyklame]

I'm not sure about these design.
Since it does not actively produce anything it should stay in the background, especially since you have hundreds of them.
But these design pops up and draw all attention to itself which make the scene far to busy looking at it, and takes the focus from the factory's.

[kirazy]

I agree with most of the comments so far, I think it's too busy and attention grabbing.

I think something more subtle, maybe a pulsing/power animation, transmission towers more like these.

My personal thinking/dream is less a series of beacons and more like a recessed/bulky conduits a la the matrix.

[Deadlock989]

Oh, yeah, snarky remark - it looks like a fire hydrant from Sauron

I'm amazed that the devs and artists continue to bother with FFFs when they get this shitstorm of negativity from armchair developers every time.

[padreigh]

If beacons have different sprites that I can not control, they won't go into my factory - period. NO other building comes in uncontrollable variances. The sprites you show do not show any modules placed into it - when my game always shows them - did you at least try adding the module overlays and evaluate what it looks with them on?


Sorry - not a fan of that change.

[leadraven]

[WarStalkeR]

In my opinion, this version of Beacon (pure tower without support metal beams) is way more neat and epic:

Then the next you've shown us (that looks like a fire hydrant supported by metal beams in air). This version's effects are also a way more subtle. If you don't intent to finalize it, please upload it as it and I will use it in my mod to enjoy it on my own. Thanks!

[PaszaVonPomiot]

Couldn't care less for beacons because I don't use them.

[irbork]

To the first, and I don't mean to derail discussion here, but: Have you considered the possible evils of "burner" beacons with beacon-specific modules as a "fuel" type so they get burned up and beacons require input, complicating beacon layouts?

Burning your hard earned modules in a burner beacon! You are truly evil.

[irbork]

Sorry, but I think it looks really really bad.

Reasons:
- too busy: the Beacon is a "passive" late-game building. It doesn't produce anything, it does not telegrph any status, it does not have to be popping out to you
- too colorful: again, it just pops out too much for a building you place and forget, also too childish. The colored Beacons break up the visual flow
- does not align well: the circle-design does not visually lend itself to be placed in rows like the usual Beacon-setup is, quares align better and create a more closed look
- nonsensical: I know it's Science Fantasy but why the electic arcs? What are they for? Electric arcs are utterly bad for everything electric or even moderately complex
- does not fit the design of all the other buildings - it looks to off, too alien
- the different rotation angles really trigger OCD and make it look even more messy, you can't see with a glance if everything is aligned as all buildings have an offset that lets you guess if you hit the grid correctly
- and more

I can see some valid points in there, however I am such sucker for eye candy that I will eat all new designs with glee as long as they are straight in lines.

[ejg]

I don't like the beacon design itself; it is too 'complicated' and detailed. Beacons should be simple structures with a little animation like the rest of the buildings.

Now it looks organic and alien; while all other buildings look engineering and tidy (except for nuclear; but you know, radioactive and all...)

Also: variation kills the factory visual. Why on earth would the engineer build functional buildings in a random position just for aesthetics..

The beacons should look nice when repeated without any variation...

[MEOWMI]

It's a daring redesign. I have some ambivalent feelings, I suppose it can work. Some of the ideas ideas behind it are nice. Definitely has a bit of a steampunk feel to me, unlike most other designs. I'm curious to see how it plays though many of the worries in this thread seem a bit justified.

Some of the strongest thoughts I have are that the old antenna design seemed better, as if it was a more controlled broadcast, as opposed to a single high power output, which doesn't work as well visually despite being more accurate to the gameplay mechanics of the beacon.

The pipes seem like they're routing electronics or power, similar to the old design I suppose, even though the old one had a more proper housing for all the instrumentation.

Being dug down into the ground... I guess it's not an issue even though it comes off as kind of weird. You say making it a tower design is difficult, but the old one worked quite well in that regard.

I guess we'll be seeing that yellow light glowing, or maybe even more light because of all the arcs? It's definitely grabbing attention!

In a way I like the first redesign more, but it is indeed perhaps excessively high on detail.

[Unknow0059]

I [don't] love it!
Admins, don't do it again...

I don't agree it is "integrated in the world of Factorio". It looks very foreign.
May be it's because I don't like beacon itself, as a game mechanic.

I agree. I don't like it either. It looks too sci-fi, almost alien. It doesn't look like something you can build in the early late/early mid game.

[wirm]

Is it possible to make the electricity jump to other beacons when they are near each other to show they are all helping with the buff.

[liron_aramas]

The model is beautiful but does not fit the general appearance. You better edit the old model. And redesign assembly machines and manipulators please)

[Darkehart]

This... Doesn't look like it belongs with the rest of the machines. It's cool! I like it! But it doesn't belong and that bothers me.

I already hate using beacons because of how they push you into making boxes of them freakin' everywhere, trying to imagine what that looks like with this design makes my brain hurt. It's like the engineer reaches this stage of technology and suddenly turns into an edgelord. >.>

The most egregious part is the big central spike. I think it would look a lot better without that. My favourite would be the second design shown, even though it reminds me of an electric fire hydrant, but again without the huge emo spike.

[Loewchen]

I think the beacon looking more alien is fine, there is nothing functional comparable in reality as there is for most buildings like rocket silo or refinery. Generally I would have liked a more drastic change by making it a 2x2 entity and decreasing its range, fitting 2x2 buildings in between 3x3 buildings would have given more interesting options when trying to find optimal setups.

[McDuff]

I think the thing about "effect transmission" is that this design is fine for "magically transmits effects through the air" and that kind of conflicts with the existing aesthetic, which is perhaps because (as has been said) effect transmission is kind of a weird mechanic for factorio anyway.

To think about ways it fits more with what's going on, perhaps it might be better to consider it as a kind of add on to the *power* system.

The two effects you can use - speed and efficiency - make sense as power modifications. Productivity doesn't make sense as a power system modification but that's fine because you can't use it in beacons.

With this in mind, without altering the mechanics I think it might be an idea to consider the design as a modification of the substation or power pole? That would fit better with the aesthetics of the game and also work better conceptually.

However if I may hypothetically suggest possible ways in which thinking about this might lead to modifications of the mechanics:

• Potentially radical yet kinda simple (although I'm sure not exactly trivial to code) - merge beacons with substations completely. Just allow the adding of modules to the substation entity and let the effect transmission propagate to the substation's power transmission radius.
• Split the beacon into 2 entities - an Overdrive and a Power cleaner. Make these entities take speed/efficiency modules exclusively. Make them non-overlapping, but make them give module effects a boost (perhaps multiplactive rather than additive?) .
• Or make them influence the power pole that is powering them (if possible?) Give them no transmission radius but make it so any overdrive/cleaner in a power pole radius transmits its effects to other entities in that power pole/substations's radius.
• It would be interesting if you could make the beacon entities work across a whole electricity subnet, but it's difficult in the base game to split electricity nets. You'd have to put something in place so that you couldn't just overdrive your whole factory with one beacon - perhaps a limit on the number of entities that one beacon could power.
• Another possibility is making beacon transmission need an individual cable hooked up to the entities it's affecting. Obvs this might need more graphics work than the devs want to do though.

These are obviously just ideas but beacons as power entities to me still makes more sense than effect transmission, and means that the visual design language wouldn't call for a red alien spike.

[posila]

I feel obliged to say that we are only working on updating beacon art into high resolution (and taking that opportunity to perhaps redesign the art), but do not plan to make any game design changes at the moment.