Friday Facts #351 - Beacon re-redesign & Simplified fluid mixing

[bobingabout]

a button to flush all of a given fluid from the pipes.

Somebody has been playing Satisfactory.

[LostInTheForums]

Noooo, Beacon HAS TO have rotating TOP PIECE.

If not antennas, add rotating electric beams or somesuch.

[psa]

As always, thanks for the informative post about how the development process runs. The flush button is going to be very handy and the new beacon is, mostly, really nice.

It would be nice if the second module wasn't so hidden and visually distant from the first one. I find the visual disparity between the module at the front and the module at the back annoying. Could you please make it so that the two module slots have equal real estate and visual attraction?

[TheKingOfFailure]

Though I am really impressed by the effort put into the beacon redesign, I'm still not in love with this one either. In my mind the beacon should mostly be a tower and I find it really odd that it is the only building besides the rocket silo that goes into the ground. I feel like a thin tesla coil tower would work well. Big cables wrapping down from a toroid bulb 3 or four legs, then plunging into the ground like the new redesign does. And you could strap the modules vertically to the tower. With that tiny tower it seems very odd to dig out such a massive hole. I dont see why the beacon cant still "take up" the 3x3 area without COMPLETELY visually filling it. With a wide enough plus shaped leg design it could still "take up" a 3x3 without the need for excavating all of those tiles.

[DustFireSky]

Looks a bit flat. In the last FFF you exchanged the flat mining drills for a higher variant (great change - looks fantastic) and now you do the exact opposite with the beacons?

What's the reason? And why is it impossible to update the old beacon design with just HR graphics? I love the old one. Update the graphic to higher resolutions and it's fine. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Not always.

Your old beacon redesign was too futuristic and the new one is flat as hell. If u look at the changed user graphic with the tile change, it seems the assemblers are sitting on an island and the "lava" is around and you can walk over the beacons/lava. Floor is lava game. Really, it looks exactly like that.

[RobertTerwilliger]

Both news are just perfect.

[ColonelSandersLite]

Guys... That design looks like a butthole. I'm not using that as an impolite euphemism for "this looks bad". I'm being very literal.

And this one looks like a butthole with something inserted.

[sp55aa]

visible module icon in beacon is awesome for players, but bad for mod makers

[ytsejam]

quote

I like the new beacons, but I'm not a big fan of the multiples holes in the ground . It would be interesting to connect them to form a straight line.
In most layouts, the beacons are aligned and stick together, so it would be really interesting to show how to use these beacons and make players want to align them!
In addition, these connections allow you to create a grid that visually organizes the base from a distance.
I made a photoshop to see what it could look like, I hope it will convince you!

before

after

The connection is just a "tile" that fit between two beacons


before


after

Borders are sharper and the beacons darker to make the lines even more visible. I hope you like it!

I'm not sure why I couldn't see it before, but these images just really highlighted for me just how much the beacons look like piles of trash when zoomed out (a literal garbage dump). Wow do I dislike the new beacons now. Maybe it'll look better at full res on my monitor, but I'm unconvinced.

I've said that the first time I saw it. Trash/destroyed entity, but most people seem to like it. I do like the module placement, but that's about it.

Oh well, maybe it will grow on me

[irbork]

Please, if we need mod to see alt mode beacon feedback, give us back ability to earn steam achievements with such non-intrusive mods.

[DanGio]

Please, if we need mod to see alt mode beacon feedback, give us back ability to earn steam achievements with such non-intrusive mods.

I hope you reconsider alt mode for beacons!

There will be an option

[Oktokolo]

I love the new lightning rod design and would like having module slots in other turrets too. But that can wait or even axed in favor of other nice-to-haves.

But there can be only one 1.0.0 and its release will render all names immortal till the end of time. So if you aren't happy with any name of any item, tech or entity in the game, rename it now - while you still can. Because after the emerge of 1.0.0, it will be too late.

[fuinril]

I have to say I'm disapointed with the fluid mixing. From the day it became forbidden I hoped for a temporary measure as it was indeed often a hindrance to the player putting one pipe on the wrong tile and having to spend a lot of time to fix the mistake.

However I liked to be able to use one pipe / tank to transfert whatever fluid I wanted. I did not play vanilla game for a very long time and do not remember if it makes sense in it, but it definitively do with big mods. Having a centralized, electronicaly controled, loading deck for tank wagons is an elegant design for mega factories and is not that hard to make function properly (well... with the Angel's clarifiers and flare stacks at least).

The flush button is a good, very needed, idea ! But please, allow fluid mixing again !

[conn11]

The flush button is a good, very needed, idea ! But please, allow fluid mixing again !

What would be the benefit for Vanilla, exactly?

The relevant edge cases where mixing prevention is limiting are, with the flush feature, taken care off.

[fuinril]

What would be the benefit for Vanilla, exactly?

The relevant edge cases where mixing prevention is limiting are, with the flush feature, taken care off.

I hope you do realize your statement makes no sense in a game like Factorio. That's not because you can't imagine a limitation it does not exists.... and there's a LOT of things you can do in this game that are of no obvious benefit for vanilla game (or for any "game goal" purpose for what it is worth - can you imagine a relevant, useful, way of using binary operators ?).

I'll just say the mods do not "change" the game, they "just" add more materials, recipes and buildings.... they expand it and force you to make a more plentifull, smart, use of the game mechanisms....
And I'm pretty sure I can imagine some tricky factory design where pipes containing different fluids cross themselves in vanilla game. That will not be the easiest design, nor the more efficient but it can definitively work... and the core of the game is to have fun with the sandbox (launching rockets lost its flavour some 1500 hours ago for me).

Last but not least I'm not asking for a new feature but for the possibility to disable a feature they added.... and with the flush button there's no really need for it anymore.

[eViLegion]

What would be the benefit for Vanilla, exactly?

The benefit would be to allow for more interesting designs where the same pipe can be used to carry multiple different fluids at different times.

Perhaps you want to hook your flamethrower turrets up to light oil by default, but you don't want to risk running out as can often happen with unbalanced oil processing, so you fix up a fallback system which kicks in when the local tank runs dry, which flushes the flamethrower system and starts feeding it raw crude instead.

With mods it would be of considerable use to be able to have pipes carry multiple fluids, for those omni-assembler creations which can build anything in one compact space, and it would be nice to have the option to turn fluid mixing back on for these purpose.

[conn11]

What would be the benefit for Vanilla, exactly?

The relevant edge cases where mixing prevention is limiting are, with the flush feature, taken care off.

I hope you do realize your statement makes no sense in a game like Factorio. That's not because you can't imagine a limitation it does not exists.... and there's a LOT of things you can do in this game that are of no obvious benefit for vanilla game (or for any "game goal" purpose for what it is worth - can you imagine a relevant, useful, way of using binary operators ?).

I'll just say the mods do not "change" the game, they "just" add more materials, recipes and buildings.... they expand it and force you to make a more plentifull, smart, use of the game mechanisms....
And I'm pretty sure I can imagine some tricky factory design where pipes containing different fluids cross themselves in vanilla game. That will not be the easiest design, nor the more efficient but it can definitively work... and the core of the game is to have fun with the sandbox (launching rockets lost its flavour some 1500 hours ago for me).

Last but not least I'm not asking for a new feature but for the possibility to disable a feature they added.... and with the flush button there's no really need for it anymore.

Wich dosen‘t answer the question. Why reintroducing a potentially troublesome feature into base game a few weeks before launch, when fluid mixing is already modded in.

[ptx0]

Flushing a given liquid from the pipe seems maybe a little too easy, given the remainder of the factorio experience. I would expect something like a filter pump, which can, over time, drain the undesirable liquid from the pipe (and either destroy it, or send it into another pipe system.

Of course, it does not make sense to introduce a whole new item (or modify existing pumps) for the few edge cases that should not arise during normal gameplay. However, this could potentially be an alternative global solution to the fluid-mixing problem -- allow it and let the player work with it if they want to (say, with a settings option in control of whether Factorio should try to prevent fluid mixing when building).

these suggestions are hilarious.

it's too easy, eh? laughs in Omnimatter

[conn11]

What would be the benefit for Vanilla, exactly?

The benefit would be to allow for more interesting designs where the same pipe can be used to carry multiple different fluids at different times.

Perhaps you want to hook your flamethrower turrets up to light oil by default, but you don't want to risk running out as can often happen with unbalanced oil processing, so you fix up a fallback system which kicks in when the local tank runs dry, which flushes the flamethrower system and starts feeding it raw crude instead.

With mods it would be of considerable use to be able to have pipes carry multiple fluids, for those omni-assembler creations which can build anything in one compact space, and it would be nice to have the option to turn fluid mixing back on for these purpose.

Such designs weren‘t possible when fluid mixing was a thing. It just bricked your pipe network.
The backup input should be something achieveable with a little more sophisticated contraption.
Though funktional fluid mixing would have some use for flamethrower turrets, in most other entities it would collide with the fluid boxses.
A little bit out of scope for 1.0 IMO.
As for a post launch rework of fluid dynamics ...

[fuinril]

Wich dosen‘t answer the question. Why reintroducing a potentially troublesome feature into base game a few weeks before launch, when fluid mixing is already modded in.

The feature is not troublesome gamewise, on the contrary. It can be for player, but once again I do not ask for this to be reintroduce as a whole but as an option.... or even as a moddable property of fluidBox entity.
Because either I missed something in the API or it is hardcoded....

And the mod you quoted does not begin to solve the issue : it does not allow player to use the same pipes to flow different fluids, it creates new entities composed of different fluids and let you mix and unmix them