Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

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Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by boskid »

As the original content for the train stop limit was decided to be too dense, technical and with not enough images, the original text for those interested is here:
technical wall of text about train stop limit

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by glee8e »

I haven't come up with a practical use of this, but I can't help but ask this one thing: can we set the train limit on station via circuit network? Or, can we set the limit without physically walk to that station?

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by mmmPI »

:o

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by Jürgen Erhard »

glee8e wrote:
Fri Oct 09, 2020 6:50 am
I haven't come up with a practical use of this, but I can't help but ask this one thing: can we set the train limit on station via circuit network? Or, can we set the limit without physically walk to that station?
Setting the limit via circuit network is explicitly mentioned.

As to walking there: I copy/paste what I want to modify to whereever I am, wait for bots to construct, change it, then copy/paste back. This assumes having radar coverage of what I want to change, of course (but I have radar coverage of everything anyway, I weird that way).

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by ManaUser »

Nice. Just yesterday I was thinking about how I miss getting updates on what you guys are up to. I understand if every week was too much, but I'm glad to hear we'll be getting occasionally updates again.

As for the content, the train limit sounds great. I don't often reach a scale where this is a big problem, but I've come close enough to see there was a feature gap. This should be a significant improvement.

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by Nosferatu »

Thanks for the FF!
Thanks for the railstop limit!!!

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by glee8e »

Jürgen Erhard wrote:
Fri Oct 09, 2020 6:54 am
Setting the limit via circuit network is explicitly mentioned.

As to walking there: I copy/paste what I want to modify to whereever I am, wait for bots to construct, change it, then copy/paste back. This assumes having radar coverage of what I want to change, of course (but I have radar coverage of everything anyway, I weird that way).
Somehow missed that paragraph. Perhaps I'm overhyped with the return of FFF XP

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by Kalixt »

Noice!

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by gtament »

Please fix spidertron doesn't build without player issue.

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by conn11 »

Glad to get some updates (and some more in the weeks to follow) on development.
Limiting the train number per station should be interesting. I’m excited to play around with that.
Together with some more map icons, logistics for spidertron and the upgrade for tip and tricks as well as the tutorials will make the supposedly small 1.1 quite the enhancement.

It seems logical not to bloat the information pages, but probably having links to the wiki on all the entities is something to be investigated.

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by LiquidInsight »

It really made my night to see my RSS feed light up with a new FFF! So happy to read all of the upcoming changes. I always love reading about how the devs are fighting for UPS or continually perfecting new features. Speaking of, the new train-stop limits seem like they'll be a lifesaver for those not using LTN. You guys rock!

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by Theamora »

imo as cool as the "tips and tricks" thing is, I genuinelly and personally think this ruins the game in a few aspects of simply not letting the player learn these kinds of things their selves. After 1000+ hours of factorio, still being able to figure out more efficent ways to do the same thing is something that makes you still want to comeback because a lot of the first few hundred hours is simply learning about these kinds of techniques and how to use them effectively.

I know you could probably argue that it saves a lot of time for newer players, but just having the ability to skip a lot of the learning process seems like you're removing a lot of the fun learning process the game has and knowing that someone else, with way less hours than you, can just know way more than you seems less encouraging than just learning this stuff yourself.

Idk, I think there's a fine line on keeping the best of both worlds rather than just ramming in this kind of information. The game is already stupidly easy as it is with how easy it is to give yourself limitless space, even with the enemies. The actual difficult part of the game is making something as efficent as possible or as tight as possible rather than just getting something to work.

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by KatherineOfSky »

The changes looks AMAZING! Really excited to see the Train Stop Limit implemented in game.

The Tips looks great, though I feel VERY STRONGLY that you do not hide tips from the user. If anything, add a little dot or animated icon next to the pertinent ones, or ones most recently related to progress in the game. However, I ask you most sincerely not to hide information from the player.

Let me give you an example of a "smart program" that I used. This was a graphics program that I used many years ago to make images for my web page. I wanted to do something very simple: add a drop shadow to an object. I had my image ready, and I was searching that damn menu for HOURS trying to find the Drop Shadow selection. (I knew I had seen it before, but where the heck did it go???) Finally, on another day, I *selected the object* and THEN looked... it was right there, right where it should have been....

But the program didn't grey out the selection, it removed it from the menu completely, giving you no idea that it was there in the first place. After so much wasted time, I decided never to use that graphics program again and switched to a different suite of sproducts.

I prefer to see an option, even if I can't use it, and I think most Factorians would too. We are ravenous for information, and I can definitely see a new player watching a YT video and hearing about construction bots and wanting to check the tips section for that... even if they have just started their first game.

And while people wouldn't quit playing the game over it, I doubt they would ever open the Tips menu again, thinking that 5 topics is all they get for the whole game. (That's what I would do: there's no reason I would think that anything else is forthcoming. It would just look like a pitiful 5-point Tips sheet)

Anyway, hiding information is NEVER good, IMO. (Just ask me how I feel about the new YT Studio interface, which is maddeningly frustrating in its hiding of essential information, requiring mouseovers, clicks, and extra menus, when it used to be persistently displayed).

Please give people the information they are thirsting for, right out of the gate!


As a side note, it was lovely to read about what the team is doing! I've sorely missed the FFFs, and I know so many others in the community have as well! I hope you are all doing well!
Tutorials, wild playthroughs, and more! https://www.youtube.com/@KatherineOfSky

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by skelgaard »

About train limits, it should skip the stop if limit is changed while in route, if there are other stops where it can fit if there is limit in them.

that way you can do a depot where you can have more trains waiting, if no ore is ready/needed

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by Lubricus »

Train stop limit is huge! It will change megabasing a lot! It sounds great. I personally think it should be hard/complex to scale up big. So I would have gone with the approach to somehow enable the possible to send a train to a specific train-station set by the circuits. As now there is no feasible way to do that in vanilla to se what is needed look at the LTN in vanilla project. https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... 0_finally/

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by TheEnemy42 »

Weee, new FFF and great changes too!

As a translator I urge you to find a way where we get the newly translated strings into the new release. 1.0 still has the spidertron and new crashed spaceship wreck texts in English in all localisations. Especially I expect the new tips and tricks to be new strings heavy and if all of the new help texts are not translated for new players it'll be a dent in quality IMHO.
Currently primary Danish translator of Factorio. Feel free to contact me in regards to the translations.

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by Klonan »

TheEnemy42 wrote:
Fri Oct 09, 2020 8:32 am
Weee, new FFF and great changes too!

As a translator I urge you to find a way where we get the newly translated strings into the new release. 1.0 still has the spidertron and new crashed spaceship wreck texts in English in all localisations. Especially I expect the new tips and tricks to be new strings heavy and if all of the new help texts are not translated for new players it'll be a dent in quality IMHO.
Sure, the translations will be included as we start doing the deploys again, which automatically push and pull from crowdin.
There is no way to update the translations in 1.0 though.

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by IronCartographer »

KatherineOfSky wrote:
Fri Oct 09, 2020 8:18 am
But the program didn't grey out the selection, it removed it from the menu completely, giving you no idea that it was there in the first place.
...
I prefer to see an option, even if I can't use it, and I think most Factorians would too.
Good point, I like the idea. In fact, the tech tree design referenced by the FFF is itself an example of highlighting the relevant techs but not making the later ones invisible!

I recently had a similar thought about the personal logistic requests UI. It would be great if it allowed you to use the same layout as the crafting menu (everything displayed) and then highlighted the active requests (currently the setup panel highlights in red the ones that already exist so you don't try to create a duplicate). Then there could be a toggle for hiding inactive requests, but the UI would be unified and quicker to customize (rather than opening a separate panel for selecting and configuring each item).
logistic requests UI.png
logistic requests UI.png (275.56 KiB) Viewed 31146 times
Relevant discussion about potential logistic requests improvement from a much older FFF thread: viewtopic.php?p=420541#p420541
Last edited by IronCartographer on Fri Oct 09, 2020 8:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Post by imTheSupremeOne »

Idea for a tip:

This is a problem that I had, and saw it in a few streamers that were new to the game — new players don't even consider that it's possible to put productivity modules into labs, or even science packs recipe; even if they are already using them for blue circuits.
Last edited by imTheSupremeOne on Fri Oct 09, 2020 8:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

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