New infinite research

[pichutarius]

"One suggestion per thread!" sorry ssilk

tldr
Mining productivity is extremely good. Come up with other infinite research that is equally good.

what?
There is only one choice in super late game, mining prod.
It is so damn good, because it gives 2 benefit: Save ups and Save player time.
And it is widely agreed these 2 are most valuable resources in super late game.
New infinite research hopefully save ups or player time, so it can compete with mining prod research.

why?
So player needs to make a decision in super late game.

list of suggestion from viewtopic.php?f=5&t=93333 (and why)
1. toolbelt: increase 2~5 inventory slot per research (save player time)

• mod: Senpais Inventory tech

2. radar scanning range (blueprint qol, save player time obsolete. now bp can be built in fog)

• mod: Big Brother

3. research productivity (increase math complexity, more decision to make)

• mod: Laboratory Productivity

4. increase construction bots battery size (save player time)

i only list out researches that "make sense" for infinite levels of researches. (imagine after 50 levels of research, will it become absurd?)
Others suggestion not in the list can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=93333

[blazespinnaker]

One thing I've been thinking about lately is refactoring to minimize radar as much as possible. The more chunks that are visible, the more UPS consumption.

I've looked into this a bit, and I think a lot of this can be done fairly trivially with a mod. It'd be good to get wube to at least commit to not doing it and then maybe the community could vote on what they'd want to see. Get enough people and it could become standard game play mod.

[pichutarius]

I've looked into this a bit, and I think a lot of this can be done fairly trivially with a mod. It'd be good to get wube to at least commit to not doing it and then maybe the community could vote on what they'd want to see. Get enough people and it could become standard game play mod.

If anyone know mods pls do post it here, i will include link to mod for each suggestions.

Also new suggestions are welcome

[ickputzdirwech]

I just did a quick search on the mod portal. I might have overlooked some other (better) mods, I didn’t test all of them and not all of them have 1.1 versions.

Senpais Inventory tech

Big Brother

Laboratory Productivity

Robot Battery Research

Also some notes: Robot battery research should mainly save UPS, not player time imo. It would be a good addition. As said above radars with increasing range could quickly lead to a huge map that no computer can handle, not a huge fan of it. Increased inventory size would be nice to have but should be really expensive and if you reach that stage you should probably try and build more automatically. With trains, robots and spidertrons. I don’t really get what research productivity is for. Why don’t you just decrease the research cost? What’s the difference.

[pichutarius]

...

thanks for the mod link.

the battery size is only for construction bots. I prefer not to touch the balance between logistic bots, belts and trains. so the mod link is not exactly what i meant.
it save player time when building bigger outpost. Maybe faster recharge rate will do but i think thats properties of roboport, and cannot differentiate between logistic and construction.

As for radars, a simple solution is to make the range adjustable. we can temporary set it high to build huge bp. side note: energy cost can be changed accordingly.

Research productivity actually decrease cost, but is much simple in term of coding. A tweak in lab productivity is easier than changing every tech cost. Also some see elegance in mining prod and research prod, one from the beginning and one from the end ; )

[T-A-R]

relevant locked tread: viewtopic.php?f=5&p=535808#p535808

The infinite character often eventually breaks the immersion. Vanilla is too delicate on requirements for most infinite techs, without large counter balance measures. To play "infinite mode", balance has to be handled very carefully without rabbit-holing you down into totally broken mechanics.
Other techs are simply not there, because they don't fit the principles of Factorio. Devs have to prevent players from luring them into grinding the game to win. Two examples:

1. Big Brother radar tech- nice mod, but to optimally benefit it, each research round you have to redeploy a entire new radar grid. (or the game punishes you with extra power cost of overlapping radars). If something is properly built, you should be able to leave it running and don't look back for it. You could optionally, to optimize, but not mandatory to prevent punishment).

2. Inventory tech - nice mod, but as research goal, it goes against the goal of automated logistics. If you wanna play for long after the first rocket, you shouldn't work for the factory by running around stuff. The factory should work for you, running around stuff.

The current unlimited worker bot flying speed is one important late game tech which stays relevant up to the end.

Expanded worker bot tech - the wizards will find the optimal "UPS" ratio, and from there we play the same game as we do now, but with a more overwhelming tech tree (like mining productivity per ore type).

Solar efficiency - did came up in my mind, but soon scrapped, its the efficiency of your system deploying them that matters. Without that, any reasonable solar field will turn in a chore.

Swap bullet damage for projectile shooting speed. - I never forget the laughs of (modded infinite) fast tank shots and enormous piles of empty shells next to active turrets. But i don't expect debate because "combat".

Modded Factorio however is an entire different story as you are yourself responsible for a "altered" experience. Often you benefit by tweaking the game to your preferences, since you don't have to care for the rest of all players that vanilla has to take account for.

[pichutarius]

relevant locked tread: viewtopic.php?f=5&p=535808#p535808
...

1. big brother radar actually not needed now, because bp can be built in fog.

2. "you shouldn't work for the factory by running around stuff. The factory should work for you, running around stuff" is not the main point, remember it just need to be equal to mining prod in term of usefulness, so player struggle over decision. How they use their bigger pocket: building outpost or experimenting new setup or become a human train, if they find it fun then its their choice.

[Ghoulish]

Robot Battery Research.

Yes please x 1000.

I've never understood why the players personal equipment seems so limited. What's inherently wrong in giving players higher capacity batteries / fusion reactors / personal robo's? So we could rock up to an outpost, smelting array or whatever and get stuff done without having to go make a cup of tea while the bots recharge (again).

[MEOWMI]

I think these could all be viable and it's a concept I've been thinking about too.

Research productivity and inventory size can be tricky to implement well, but the rest are pretty straightforward.

I also thought about things like structure (wall?) HP, belt speed, but I never tried these since they seem hard to mod: afaik there's no good API functions you can use to modify them, without creating troubles like infinite entity types or mods that you can't uninstall for any given savefile (or require an uninstaller, which things like this never should). I do hope I'm wrong though and there's a neat solution for them!

[UberFuber]

I also thought about things like structure (wall?) HP, belt speed, but I never tried these since they seem hard to mod: afaik there's no good API functions you can use to modify them, without creating troubles like infinite entity types or mods that you can't uninstall for any given savefile (or require an uninstaller, which things like this never should).

For HP, maybe think of it another way, reduce damage dealt to wall.
Now, I have not modded anything before, but it looks like you can you on_entity_damaged event to reduce damage dealt to wall based on some infinite research level.

[foamy]

Robot Battery Research.

Yes please x 1000.

I've never understood why the players personal equipment seems so limited. What's inherently wrong in giving players higher capacity batteries / fusion reactors / personal robo's? So we could rock up to an outpost, smelting array or whatever and get stuff done without having to go make a cup of tea while the bots recharge (again).

We've got spidertrons now for that

Increased flight time for robots would be nice, though. Speed helps a bunch with the first couple of upgrades but after that the fixed power/tile moved term dominates.

Wouldn't mind an infinite tech -- or at least a limited-repeatable, like braking force -- for damage resist thresholds, just to cut down on the annoying 'a wall got scratched!' notifications.

[Koub]

Increased flight time for robots would be nice, though. Speed helps a bunch with the first couple of upgrades but after that the fixed power/tile moved term dominates.

Maximum recharge rate would make so much more sense

[NotRexButCaesar]

Increased flight time for robots would be nice, though. Speed helps a bunch with the first couple of upgrades but after that the fixed power/tile moved term dominates.

Maximum recharge rate would make so much more sense

Until you end up with a roboport being drained faster than it can fill its buffer from the network

[Koub]

Increased flight time for robots would be nice, though. Speed helps a bunch with the first couple of upgrades but after that the fixed power/tile moved term dominates.

Maximum recharge rate would make so much more sense

Until you end up with a roboport being drained faster than it can fill its buffer from the network

Yeah actually, what I had in mind is +X% to roboport recharge rate & output ports rate.

[QGamer]

Wouldn't mind an infinite tech -- or at least a limited-repeatable, like braking force -- for damage resist thresholds, just to cut down on the annoying 'a wall got scratched!' notifications.

The way damage resistance works in Factorio is that flat resistance cannot reduce damage to 0, but instead damage below 1 approaches 0 asymptotically. This means that researching "Wall Resistance 30" technology will make your walls very very strong...when hit, they might take only 0.01 damage, which will still make the annoying notifications pop up.

[NotRexButCaesar]

Yeah actually, what I had in mind is +X% to roboport recharge rate & output ports rate.

There is no such thing as roboport output rate, only bot consumption speed. Somehow the roboport buffer size would have to be enlarged to compensate for the possibility of bots draining the entire port in one tick; this may or may not be difficult to add.

[foamy]

I'm not sure about boosting roboport output. I guess the goal is to reduce robot downtime, which is fine, but personally I'd like to address the actual range a 'bot can fly on a single charge as well.

[Koub]

I'm not sure about boosting roboport output. I guess the goal is to reduce robot downtime, which is fine, but personally I'd like to address the actual range a 'bot can fly on a single charge as well.

The bots' consumption is a fixed constant drain + a certain amount per tile. No matter how fast a robot goes, its range is limited to 1.5M/5k = 300 tiles (when the speed is arbitrarily high).
At that moment, the 300 tiles are travelled through in the blink of an eye, and the bot spends almost the whole time it flies either recharging or waiting for a recharge.
Assuming a robot always finds a recharge slot at the precise moment it needs it, there is a soft cap on the bots' speed : 300 tiles quasi instantly, then 1.5s recharging, so 200 tiles/ second.
More buffer capacity would mean fly longer, but recharge for longer, with exactly the same ratio.

The only way to allow a bot to travel more than 200 tiles/s is to make it spend less time recharging for the same capacity (or to raise its capacity with the same time recharging)...

There is no such thing as roboport output rate, only bot consumption speed.

... And according to the wiki, the roboport control the robots' recharge rate : https://wiki.factorio.com/Prototype/Rob ... ing_energy.

[NotRexButCaesar]

There is no such thing as roboport output rate, only bot consumption speed.

... And according to the wiki, the roboport control the robots' recharge rate : https://wiki.factorio.com/Prototype/Rob ... ing_energy.

There must be another parameter for bot recharge rate, because I distinctly remember editing it when I first bought the game.

[foamy]

I'm not sure about boosting roboport output. I guess the goal is to reduce robot downtime, which is fine, but personally I'd like to address the actual range a 'bot can fly on a single charge as well.

The bots' consumption is a fixed constant drain + a certain amount per tile. No matter how fast a robot goes, its range is limited to 1.5M/5k = 300 tiles (when the speed is arbitrarily high).

That's the precise reason I want researchable bot battery increases, yes. Actual throughput can be achieved by throwing infrastructure at the problem (which isn't to say a research option wouldn't be handy on that end of things) but actually increasing how far a robot flies on a single charge is not. In particular this'd be handy for stopping the occasional bots-caught-in-eternal-loop issue that can crop up when you have a concavity in a roboport network.