Friday Facts #357 - Nuke

[sadkov]

Dear devs,
YOU MADE RAIL BLUEPRINTS TILE AND YOU DARE TO CALL THE UPDATE "NUKE"?!

TILING RAIL BPs FEATURE IS A MIRACLE I COULDN'T EVEN WISH FOR! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!

I love you <3

[Unknow0059]

Wow. How do you add two great features back-to-back? The snapping is one of the best things ever.

[Ext3h]

A couple of things about the nuke animation:

• It looks like not only spread speed, but also decay was slowed down for particles moving vertically. Resulting in crescents which are over-emphasized.
• If you already have a core damage zone, then you should maintain the mushroom cloud for a couple more seconds (and keep damage ticking in that area), to prolong the visuals as much as it's due. Making the mushroom cloud linger makes all the difference between a "small" and a "huge" explosion.
• "Overbright" is a nice gimmick for a one-time use, but it's something you absolutely want to avoid if use of nuclear weapons is intended on a regular base. At least reduce the duration by a lot, reduce it to a short flash.

[TripleOmega]

The nuke update is a great effort, and I appreciate the cliff destruction, but honestly I've been using modded nuke and sound graphics for a long time now and never looked back. You guys should check out what's available - they look awesome, and frankly, they're a lot better.
A bad video I made of one:
https://youtu.be/6z5rFNisRQ4

I also like to break open the Krastorio files and make the antimatter bomb bigger - it also looks and feels incredible with a radius of X10 or so.

I get that graphics are a requirement for some people... But a lot of us are running your game on monster rigs because we're old and have money and don't find anything else entertaining anymore.

Totally second this. The Krastorio nuke is not perfect(it's missing the glow/fire in the cloud), but it's way better than the new vanilla nuke.

[RocketManChronicles]

Question .. In the bottom video at the top of the screen there is a is a nuclear reactor.

I can see it getting damaged by the atomic bomb .. shouldn't that have caused it to go into meltdown and explode too ?

It was damaged, but not killed

Thanks for the clarification, for some reason I had it in my mind that the reactors would blow up on moderate damage.

That is NOT how nuclear reactors explode or meltdown. Only in movies do they create a mushroom cloud, real life is very different. The "explosion" in real life is just the mass amount of radiation released into the atmosphere, of which, this game does not have (radiation). So, even if the reactor was completely damaged in the video, I would not expect to see another explosion other than the reactor crumbling. If you use the Realistic Reactors mod, you will get a release of radiation, and a whole lot of it, but still no mushroom cloud. Although, that mod does have the added feature if you so desire to be fake, like the movies.

[ickputzdirwech]

That is NOT how nuclear reactors explode or meltdown. Only in movies do they create a mushroom cloud, real life is very different. The "explosion" in real life is just the mass amount of radiation released into the atmosphere, of which, this game does not have (radiation). So, even if the reactor was completely damaged in the video, I would not expect to see another explosion other than the reactor crumbling. If you use the Realistic Reactors mod, you will get a release of radiation, and a whole lot of it, but still no mushroom cloud. Although, that mod does have the added feature if you so desire to be fake, like the movies.

I agree that nuclear reactors don't create a mushroom cloud. The explosions in Tschernobyl and Fukushima were mostly caused by hydrogen gas however. It was created due to overheating. The radioactive material was then exposed and distributed by the explosions.

[sgr0]

Hi I love what you're doing with blueprint libraries and the nuke. Just a small question... what happens to water at ground zero? Do ponds dry up totally?

[PumpkinVision]

Thank you for all the continued improvements!

I have experienced the inconvenience you talk about regarding applying the upgrade planner to an existing blueprint. If you don't have an upgrade planner in hand, you open the blueprint and click the green button expecting it to do something, then realize you need an upgrade planner in hand... so you close the blueprint... etc. etc.

I had thought about asking for a change, but I realize you have a LOT going on and so didn't post anything.

But then you introduce an upgrade improvement anyways!

Thank you for the upgrade improvement and all the other improvements!

[Dark_star]

Need to add true down side of nuclear energy, radioactive (why one of many reasons solar/accumulators is better)
Also a comment about technological development,
in the real world nuclear was before solar development and we still have not cracked "accumulators" energy density problem.
hopefully fusion is tomorrow.

[BicycleEater]

I have been playing around with Factorio's nukes for a while, and I really do recommend the MushroomCloud mod, although I suspect it doesn't follow the same VRAM limits, so might be able to do more with big explosions (although maybe the game could have an option to turn on high VRAM mode to allow the full sized explosion... I really don't know).

Also, I still find the base nuke's explosion underwhelming, it is a nuke after all, and actually made a mod to change this (True-Nukes), although this mod probably goes a little too far for standard games, I was wondering if some more effects could be implemented in the game.

I found it worked really well if, from the edge of the fireball, it did some decreasing level of damage across a wider area, this may also allow a smaller fireball, with similar effects. This would help it to be more player-friendly, as they would tend to resist low damage better than other entities, while meaning that a near-miss doesn't do no damage at all. It would also add more of a penalty for detonating it in a factory, as it would destroy weak buildings like power poles, and, when used in combat, would draw in enemies from the larger low-damage area, meaning that setting one off gets you swarmed, as it really should!!

I know that this kind of low damage across a wide area is performance intensive, but it would make them more realistic.
I also found fires look really good around the nuke, and a small number really sell the whole superweapon effect, particularly if nearby forests are set on fire (about 1% of trees seems to do the trick).

Really looking forward to the new blueprints though... although it will mean redesigning all my railway blueprints, which may take some time!

[JimBarracus]

the rocket feature and all the explosion gifs on the fff are amazing!

[AndrewIRL]

When the worms die please do not have them fall in random directions. They should be pushed away from the nuke by the shockwave.

Note how this conventional weapon, the Daisy Cutter BLU-82, has knocked the trees down such that they end up pointing back to the blast origin.

DaisyCutter_BLU-82.jpg (112 KiB) Viewed 7788 times

[Twisted_Code]

The second problem is that blueprints are often designed to work in a grid, but there is no way to enforce it. Either you have to build slowly and cautiously, or you misclick often. And with the new feature of building in map, the problem was just elevated. This is what the second checkbox is for, it forces the blueprint to be built in a grid aligned to the map center. To ensure, that the user can configure individual blueprints in a way that they would match perfectly, the relative position of the blueprint to the grid can be configured by moving the red flag.

Sweet! Ever since I started using Kitch's rail prints, I had been wondering if there would ever be an easy way to place tileable BPs, and lo and behold, not long after I started wondering, my prayer was answered!

Also, the new nuke visuals look AWESOME, especially the persistent crater ground tiles to remind you of all your technology victories against the giant cockroaches

[sadkov]

I found it worked really well if, from the edge of the fireball, it did some decreasing level of damage across a wider area, this may also allow a smaller fireball, with similar effects. This would help it to be more player-friendly, as they would tend to resist low damage better than other entities, while meaning that a near-miss doesn't do no damage at all. It would also add more of a penalty for detonating it in a factory, as it would destroy weak buildings like power poles, and, when used in combat, would draw in enemies from the larger low-damage area, meaning that setting one off gets you swarmed, as it really should!!

I know that this kind of low damage across a wide area is performance intensive, but it would make them more realistic.
I also found fires look really good around the nuke, and a small number really sell the whole superweapon effect, particularly if nearby forests are set on fire (about 1% of trees seems to do the trick).

Great idea, really! Moreover, since Factorio has damage types, we can go further and apply physical (shock wave), heat and "radiation" (poison should constitute well instead) damages with different falloff!

Another thought regarding angrying biters, it would be great to make the scorched terrain emit pollution for a good while, potentially with an exponential decay, so nearby biters would eventually group up and revenge, unless they were preventively cleared at some point before or soon after the nuke.

[Hannu]

Also, the new nuke visuals look AWESOME, especially the persistent crater ground tiles to remind you of all your technology victories against the giant cockroaches

I hope it is possible to put clean concrete over the crater. Otherwise nukes are pretty useless as clearing tools for factory base. At least I want to pave all factories with concrete.

[BicycleEater]

Great idea, really! Moreover, since Factorio has damage types, we can go further and apply physical (shock wave), heat and "radiation" (poison should constitute well instead) damages with different falloff!

Thanks!
To add a lasting radiation around the crater, you can effectively just re-colour the poison capsules, make them invisible, and drop them all over with a longer expiry, which worked nicely for creating a big black cloud of death, and adding an instant heat effect wasn't hard, since it didn't need to have a delay.
I found that lots of fires slowed the game down a lot, as they took constant updating, but that was for much bigger nukes than this one, at this kind of scale, it wouldn't be too bad.
There were some other tweaks that are worth implementing as well:

• A bit of randomness on the damages results in less well defined destruction lines, making it look more natural.
• Scaling down the damage to trees, to about 1/4 or lower, resulted in big damaged looking forests, with odd trees missing, and lots damaged, which looked cool.
• Reducing the damage done to belts and rails, on the basis they are low to the ground. This results in the blast primarily destroying power poles and signals, which seemed realistic

As far as performance considerations go, I managed to make it work well enough using lua scripting alone, which can't be the fastest way to do this kind of thing, so it must be possible to implement something in the base game without it being too slow, although with the game approaching 1.0, I can imagine that they want stability above all else.

[mrvn]

I like the new expanding smoke ring for the nuke. But maybe you could do even better?

I remember that trees and water are now animated using some distortion effects instead of having actual textures for the animation. Could something similar be done for nukes? Instead of simply a smoke ring obscuring everything below the blast wave could distort the landscape making it seem like entities are pushed outwards before they explode. It would also be more realistic as change in temperature and density of the air causes refraction.