Come up with new infinite research

[pichutarius]

tldr: Mining productivity is extremely good. Come up with other infinite research that is equally good, so player needs to make a decision.

There are 3 infinite researches: Military, Mining prod, Bot speed.

• Military doesn't really have infinite research. Reason: Biters evolution hard cap.

• Mining prod is so damn good, because it gives 2 benefit:
  a. Increase mining speed -> Reduce miner count -> Save ups
  b. Slow down depletion rate -> Build outpost less often -> Save player time
  And it is widely agreed ups and player time are 2 most valuable resources in super late game.

• Bot speed reduce bot count and save ups, but the diminish return is too harsh that it cannot compete against mining prod.

So really there is only one choice in super late game, mining prod. I was going to suggest a new research, but i think its more fun to open for all to come up with creative ideas.

I'll start first, my idea is Toolbelt 2-∞
Every level increase inventory slot by 2~5, cost increase linearly like mining prod.

I believe this would save player time. Late game, building bigger and bigger outpost often comes with annoying "inventory full" message. Yeah i know, trains, spidertrons etc, but i see those just as hard disc, and players inventory is ram, its just more flexible to work with players inventory, others has their own limitation, and cost player's time.

And yes i know there are mods, but that's not the point. The point is to see what creative ideas other can come up with.

[mudcrabempire]

Military research may not be theoretically infinitely usefull, but in practice, reaching that point (killing behemots with anything with one shot) will not happen anytime soon. On biter-heavy maps, upgrading damage can heavily reduce the effort you need to put into defending your territory as well as the effort of clearing more territory. Since space and new resources are just as important as getting the most out of your current space and resources I argue that "infinite" damage is very much worth thinking about.

Also, artillery range can be researched to infinity and this one is "really" infinitely usefull (tying in with the above, for easy clearing of large new areas).

As for actual new infinity research, I´d go for two quality of life / reduction of factory clutter improvements:

- Radar scanning/constant observation range (but allow limiting radar constant observation range, if observing too much has an impact on UPS).

- Large power pole wire range and substation wire range and coverage.

[Koub]

- Large power pole wire range and substation wire range and coverage.

This one is, I think, a not-so-good idea. It reduces the re-usability of one's blueprints (example a factory explicitly built with a high substation coverage would not be usable on a map with a smaller bonus). It would be the same thing for anything that needs two parts to be at most N tiles apart to work (underground belts, underground pipes for example).

[ptx0]

infinite stack inserter research for speed and size

[m44v]

Add infinite evolution, biters can gain health without a hard cap. Now all infinite military tech has a purpose.

[pichutarius]

- Radar scanning/constant observation range (but allow limiting radar constant observation range, if observing too much has an impact on UPS).

- Large power pole wire range and substation wire range and coverage.

The radar one is excellent idea. Also im goin to agree with u that artillery range is better than other military because it also uncover maps.

Power pole isnt a good idea, it cause bp problems.

Ptx0's stack inserter technically isn't infinite. After 200 (max item stack size) it stop being useful. But it might not easy to reach tho

[mergele]

Module power. Increase effect of modules by 1%
Fuel refining. Increase acceleration and max. speed bonus of all fuels by 5%.

[Impatient]

+ Inventory size, I agree on that. I cheat by using an inventory widening mod. because riding back and forth trains to get the stuff to build in a megabase with outposts is really annoying.

+ Also grid size of power armor. I usually have 8 to 10 roboports mk2 on it, which is enough, but I would also like to have 10 exos, not just 2, for fast running.

+ Grid size and inventory size of the trons. With the addition of the trons, building independent outposts does not require the characters presence anymore. But the trons grid and inventory is very limited compared to the players. Also, the trons always have to walk to the destination and back. 'Larger grid would help to make them faster.

+ some more WMDs. The vanilla nuke rocket is a really very cumbersome weapon. I use the MIRV mod. WMDs and the research there have horrific costs, but they get the job, to sterilize huge patches of land, done.

+ also I support better fuel for higher train speeds. good for far away outposts.

+ research productivity <- this one is actually a nice one imo. The costs should be horrific as well. But then the player has to make a choice whether to spend science on researching something that can be used in the game world or to spend some science on RP, to make the exponential increase of research costs less steep. When would you research the horribly costly research productivity - before or after you researched all cheaper technologies? ( a mod exists: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Laborator ... 000954b351 )

/ I am indifferent about the stack inserter research. when you feed it with an express belt it still would not be able to move more than 45 items/s. but up to that number? why not? ... if the game engine can animate picking up 45 items/s. ... better to integrate research for loaders with belt speeds into the game. I use a loader mod. It could be an endgame research.

- I don't like the power pole suggestion

[astroshak]

Just be glad they do not separate out the Mining Productivity tech into its six (vanilla) components : Coal, Stone, Iron, Copper, Uranium, Crude Oil.

That would be one nasty choice, would it not?

[Khagan]

Just be glad they do not separate out the Mining Productivity tech into its six (vanilla) components : Coal, Stone, Iron, Copper, Uranium, Crude Oil.

That would be one nasty choice, would it not?

The choice would be easy: lots of iron and copper and minimal amounts of the rest. But it would be rather tedious. Recall that the military upgrades have been changed in the opposite direction, grouping together techs that used to be separate (e.g. upgrades specifically for the shotgun).

[NotRexButCaesar]

I like the ideas for inventory and grid size on both the spidertron and player. I also really like the idea of an infinite train research, like infinite braking force or acceleration/fuel. I dislike the suggestions for power poles and inserters because they would make old parts of the factory and blueprints go obsolete over time.

[pichutarius]

Module power. Increase effect of modules by 1%
Fuel refining. Increase acceleration and max. speed bonus of all fuels by 5%.

Module, power pole, stack inserter: not a good idea imo, blueprints gets obsolete like others said.
Fuel refining decent, not as good but thats ok. i might go prod:fuel = 5:1 research, depends on actual numbers.

...

too much similar research (inventory size / grid size) isnt good, unless combined into one expensive research. actually i dont think trons needs the bonus, just build more trons to artificially increase inventory size / grid size. as for speed, it be more fun to make trons be able to ride trains.

i agree research productivity is nice, i like it makes player struggle to make decision, and feels similar to most incremental game mechanics. i wan this in vanilla NAO!

Just be glad they do not separate out the Mining Productivity tech into its six (vanilla) components : Coal, Stone, Iron, Copper, Uranium, Crude Oil.

That might be annoying, but it solves one unrelated problem, resources imbalance. We can artificially increase resources richness to match our demand, so dev/mod dev can be more relax about tweaking the numbers.

[foamy]

I'd like

a. Either replacing 'Follower robot count' with something that makes those follower robots more useful, or removing follow robots from the game entirely. The Spidertron does everything they do, better, and they're a massive UI pain to do en-masse. Swap the infinite research to strengthening their health/duration/damage all together (stackable with the other techs that do so for specific damage types) so that you don't need to pop and track hundreds of them to get worthwhile stuff.

b. Techs that increase the defense side of things. DPS can be increased without limit, but there's no corresponding thing for, eg., construction robot toughness, wall HP, armour resistances, or shield strengths.

[blazespinnaker]

WMD / Defense: I spend zero time on defense. I have no walls / turrets / lasers. Artillery + logistics on islands is OP. I have a few landmines here and there for stragglers.

Really, unless they add amphibians, biters become a non issue at a certain point. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=50674

I think also once artillery range gets up to a certain point, all biters are easily eliminated within the map.

Not sure why wube wanted to remove biters from the endgame, if that was their intention.

Inventory: The shift-craft hack is enough for me. Sometimes I'll usea a bunch of spiders which target a leader if I want to carry a bunch of stuff. But really, there is so much going on, and a buffer chest deals with everything over time.

My biggest ask: roboport range and bots charging range (ideally the same tech).

+1 on the electrical / radar range.

Some kind of train loading tech as well I think would be good. Bigger cargo. Trains could be made more useful in default world. Right now, I find belting stuff around locally more practical and straightforward, and just train in science packs. Robots are doing that at the moment, but I find that very non optimal.

viewtopic.php?f=204&t=93305https://foru ... 04&t=93305

[Hannu]

I suggest speed of construcion. The best way is to reduce energy consumption of construction bots or increase output of portable fusion reactors. That would give huge boost to personal and spidertron's building capacity but not disturb balance of bot bases because logistic bots could be as they are. It would also be possible target of infinite research, but I do not build bot bases so that I could say would it be good idea.

But limited building capacity is not balance thing at very late game. It is just annoying consumer of player's playing time. I solve it usually by increasing the power of fusion reactor by factor of 10 but I do not see why it would be a bad idea in vanilla game.

[Hannu]

Not sure why wube wanted to remove biters from the endgame, if that was their intention.

In my opinion this is very good change for all building games. At beginning game is more surviving and builds are fast and simple. Then focus moves slowly from defense to active conquering of area with increasingly effective weapons and at end game interesting thing is to engineer near optimal constructions to build huge amounts of resources. Combat is a production challenge (could be more significant in my opinion). At that phase the enemy is performance of computer or boringness of copying same production structures until FPS drops to too annoying level.

[blazespinnaker]

In my opinion this is very good change for all building games.

Factorio, IMHO, is best when it's about complex, emergent problems that require creative and innovative solutions that have diversity in the components and how they collaborate. When elegant /symmetrical approaches work particularly well it becomes a beautiful form of play.

(btw, this is one reason why logistic system robots aren't that great and frankly should have been limited more. They become a hammer and everything becomes a nail, and a certain bot monoculture overtakes factorio)

Biters I think can be a very unique and broad source of such emergent problems. If anything, I think wube should invest more in making biters more intelligent. A "big brain biter" that can send out mindless biters to probe for weaknesses and target infrastructure strategically would be very cool, requiring more thoughtful approaches to defense.

If folks want to avoid such complexity, turning off biters is always an option, but lassoing complexity with inventive factories is the soul of factorio fun, at least for me.

There is the moral question, of course, of creating a game about killing a species native to a planet you are desecrating with pollution. I had some ideas on lore that could be used. It's a little off topic for this thread and forum, you can read more here - viewtopic.php?p=527863#p527863 Basically the idea is moral maturity takes place, a little stolen from star trek, insurrection, where data and eventually the rest of the crew goes rogue to protect a planet from the federation.

Anyways, great thread. Infinite research seems like low hanging fruit to add more fun to the endgame. Certainly for me if they added roboport / bot / radar / electrical range it'd be very inspiring to create a faster science producing base. Playing largely in map mode at scale really is so much more fun than not (most especially with the latest 1.1 improvements), but the range limits make enabling that rather tedious.

[ptx0]

/ I am indifferent about the stack inserter research. when you feed it with an express belt it still would not be able to move more than 45 items/s. but up to that number? why not? ... if the game engine can animate picking up 45 items/s. ... better to integrate research for loaders with belt speeds into the game. I use a loader mod. It could be an endgame research.

because inserters grab more from an inventory (train, chest, car) or underground hood than a normal belt.

loaders are unoptimised, they have a hard speed cap of 120 items/sec. you need loader->loader to get from inventory to inventory, and an inserter works fine on its own (train to chest).

[Impatient]

In case you are interested in that kind of challenge in you current games, I recommend the rampant mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Rampant

[SuicideJunkie]

Health.
Player HP in particular, but robot, turret, vehicle, wall HP would be nice as well.
Your suit of armor has all those fancy damage resistance and mitigation stats, but shields seem to dominate everything.
(alternatively reduce the remaining armor leakage by ~5% per level for an infinite path with diminishing returns)

Vehicle power.
We have braking force research on trains. Why not more vroom?
After ludicrous research, a train can simply burn an entire stack of rocket fuel in the first tick after leaving the station and then brake the entire way to the next stop at near light speed.