Friday Facts #365 - Future plans

[RMJ]

I'm definitely in total agreement with an expansion. Don't think me wrong i am a big huge fan of more free content. But i feel like after playing at least 1000 hours of Factorio. I wouldn't mind paying for a full priced expansion. You have earned that right with your dedication to this game.

I don't think ive ever seen another game receiving the amount of support Factorio has.

Kinda crazy when you think back on how just humble and simple Factorio started out, to where it has come now, both in terms of gameplay, but also graphics.

[timtemple]

I've had fun playing some third party scenarios like:

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Nauvis-Post-Collapse

Currently considering supporting MaelstromDr on Patreon

I'd love to see some fun scenarios with some serious WUBE trademark polish

Echoing the popular sentiment: WUBE, just give me a way to throw more money at you

[Cyclonut]

Congratulations on your milestone and for snagging Earendel, I love his Space Exploration mod! We will have a bright Factorio Future Forever! Your approach to forthcoming work sounds very well thought out. No need to rush publishing too many new things, as in my opinion we have several hundred hours of gameplay with the current developments, with many good mods, especially in SE, maybe years. Love that you also list Tuplex at the top of Youtube video gamers, so these people will surely bring new players and keep loyalty to this game. Maybe some new worlds will have aliens other than space bugs?

[adam_bise]

Best news all year. Really!

[ptx0]

Hi, large DLC sound nice, but Factorio 2 full 3D where you can mine your way underworld sound cool no ?

The thing is, as said by others in the past, 2D fits the genre so well :
- you can see all your factory easily, more than in a 3D game like Satisfactory
- building is so much easier
- all of this result in a very pleasant gameplay where you feel connected to the game, where every idea you have is implementable in seconds, and where the result is visible right away

nothing you can't do in 3D.

Dyson Sphere Program has top-down view. Satisfactory has flying mods that let you get top-down view.

Building is really easy in Satisfactory. until Factorio added the recent belt-building QoL improvements, building belts were easier in Satisfactory. that said, 3D can make things harder. Dyson Sphere Program is a clunkier interface than Satisfactory.

my factory is so large in Factorio that I can't zoom out even to see the entire map in Map View [M]. I can barely see a single build on screen when not in map view.

and nothing has felt more immersive than Satisfactory's first person view... you're actually in the world and making things happen. when you ride a train around your map, there's a feeling of scale that is not in Factorio, even though my outposts are ~10km away from my central core.

[LetTheJamesBegin]

Preorder please. I'll take one for me and two for charity.

[catma]

Wishlist:

-Earendel on team, check.

-Factorio in space, probably check.

-A oneway power line. To help power only priorities during limited power. Doable currently via completely separate power networks that share steam in an annoying manner using flow control pipes(are these a mod? I can't even imagine the base game without them), or a painfully slow to react accumulator setup, but one way powerlines or powerstations would be FAR better and immersive and realistic.

-Pollution TYPES. Including radioactive. A good engineer always remember to get a proper hazmat suit if they're not going to clean up certain pollution types!! Furthermore pollution types could cause biter evolution to take different paths such as "more" and "tougher" and "more acid"...

-Improved ore processing options. Like angel, except saner (not just "sane")?

-Fish breeding. Unless you think fish are a joke that can't be engineered into fish production?? Also requiring pollution control if you don't want to use much more expensive airtight fish breeding buildings...

-Permanent engineer implants!!! Because the transhumanist crowd loves factorio!! Even up to multiple bodies switched to and from, as the engineer reaches AI like status and thus becomes immortal (until power failure where his old body is activated again that is).

-Lot of improved mod support!

-"delete empty chunks", a maintenance option that would make a large area without player structures on it non-generated again. Except it wouldn't generate ores and other non-infinite ressources on re-generation of these areas. This is MUCH NEEDED to clean up the foaming-at-the-mouth megabase mad space exploration players who eventually want to dump large areas or entire planets as obsolete for lag reduction reasons...

Mod support improvement wishlist:

-A no-games-mechanics decoration remover tool or effect of putting down a building or concrete (or even as a bot task that costs only power), as supported by many mods that broke frequently or got glitchy --- make it STABLE. There is no DENYING the joygasm of an OCD organizer unlocking bot cleanup tasks and have all the tree stumps and other terrain quirks flattened on demand!!! DOPAMINE RUSH HERE I COME!!!

-Some way to put signs of any game icon (including signals and a few others unique to signs including sign of a sign factory) on buildings and or signs, that doesn't suffer the complicated set of annoying exceptions of the current mods (factorissimo factories can't display fluids, the various signs can't display basic ores and other basics because they are never unlocked by a new tech and may be introduced by a mod, you can't place a SIGNAL in a factorissimo factory or most sign mods, you can't make the factorissimo or signs show on the map or show on the map or do it cleanly... and most of these mods are HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY in need of GUI redesign)

-FNEI (and "what is it really used for" and "recipe book") are nice but the main team can do better, cleaner, non-laggier, not crash when there are recipe loops or too many options leaving all advanced steps undocumented, etc. (but mostly answer: "what is one way to produce X even if it's not the only or ideal one, and what new tech and ingredients do I need to do it? And how do I produce these ingredients?" --- complexity should be in engineering BETTER, not learning I need "plainwater to mod_plainwater and then a mod_plainwater to plainwater_mod converters which require plainwater_mod_misc to build the converters" to be compatible with another mod which typically takes me 6 to 12 hours to discover)

-An ingame virtual reality device, for creative mod ratio and production tests without starting or loading another game which will accidentally not have the same mod_start settings so I can't actually test ratios.

-A way to reorder the manual crafting list without dropping or losing stuff (or queuing new manual crafting early instead of late). Or at least a manual cancel of craft option that stops cancelling when it would drop 10'000 items on the ground mixed to your every belt and hidden in cracks between buildings which is always a PITA(by the time it's fixed locally, some items are on the belts which will block some other part of the megabase 22 screenfulls away ARRRGH). How about cancelling to a chest instead of the ground as a non-drop-all-over option?

-Whatever the arcospheres are doing. I won't give any spoilers. We need MORE OF THAT.

-Factorissimo2 except that factories CAN be put in blueprints, with all their potentially recursive content (this was used in the past to reduce nuclear reactor lag in megabases that were not otherwise using factorissimo2 factories). And a way to label factories that make or input liquids or provide services such as voiding, are about prioritizing an input source over another of the same material for AngelBob balancing, need to be labeled by ARBITRARY TEXT AND MORE THAN 4 CHARACTERS IN 2 ROWS PLZ, or have a VERY generalized purpose (say 3 solid inputs, 1 liquid input, 4 solid outputs) which comes used dramatically often in AngelBob type mods.

[ScottyWired]

Read through the thread so far- lots of stuff I agree with on my 'wishlist'.

Most critically is a 'guiding hand'. I love the freedom of solving small puzzles, because I rarely have the focus or motivation for big ones. It's perfect in Kerbal Space Program that uses a contract system.

• "Position a satellite with this equipment, on this planet, at this altitude, at this angle."
  "Recover green sandstone from Minmus."
  "Test TD-06 Decoupler at 16000 metres travelling between 600m/s to 650m/s."

Each of these are simple unique tasks requiring a tweak in my rocket design and piloting, but the funding and research points and lessons that come from solving them always set me up for future challenges.

Similar to that- variation and randomness. Weather events, biomes that matter, and pollution types that require different forms of handling. (and interaction between these three gameplay elements)

To that end, I think an eco-focused expansion would be awesome. Making the player care about the environment would absolutely turn this game on its head. A limited planet size that forces the player to think about recycling resources would be great. Potentially multiple worlds, each with different resource strengths and environments?
Plant trees to make oxygen to make smelting on that planet more efficient, ship that pollution to a different planet build up an atmosphere there to melt the ice and form oceans, use those oceans to breed iron bacteria, ship the harvested iron back to the original planet that has run out of iron... Cycles!

[Splitframe]

Wow how shameless, at first you have the audacity to release an already solid and reasonably stable game as
early access and then you even have the nerve to follow up with rich and meaningful updates until it's actually finished.
All this just to lure people to buy an expansion. The criminal energy is off the charts, how can you even sleep at night?
Consider the addon bought.

[r0dric]

An expansion is a must, and I'm pretty sure that most spaghetti designer won't mind spending more cash on it. I'm spending most of my gaming time on Factorio, especially in these covid time while all my other kinda expensive game just sit around on steam without even get install. On the other hand, with high price, new player might hesitate to join for example the CVI6 you need to spend more then a hundred to get all the dlc and that make most of my friend don't play (even I don't buy all the dlc yet).

On what to expand, like most people think, Space Exploration is great (already many great idea from the SE mod). Personally, I'd love the improvement on Multiplayer over Forces & RTS, Trading (Black Market is also a great mod). With these two mechanic, multiplayer would be an epic game that can be play as peaceful trading with each other or just gifting nuke over a bad deal (so that nuke would go less to our old friend, bitter).

And last thing on trading, instead of just spend time killing bitter all day, they can be make into a powerful civilization or super strong small tribe that demand our product and promise to not invade our base or trade with their local specialty as we satisfy their need. Then the game can change or modify that in place of pollution, our produce that feed their demand can also make them stronger or expand. I think this idea is quite good with single player

Anyway, thanks to all dev for this great game!
*already write this on reddit, just copy/paste here to make my voice heard

[r0dric]

I'd like to echo TheEnemy42's sentiments and congratulate the entire team at Wube for this fantastic journey.

I discovered Factorio through a complete stranger I met in the pub, about 5 years ago. He was actually sitting and playing this game on his laptop while drinking at one of the tables in the bar, and it immediately gave me flashbacks to my addiction with the first Civilization game (yeah, I bought that when it first came out in 1991!), Total Annihilation and Command & Conquer.

To find a game that captivated me that much once again? I immediately bought a copy on my phone.

What a fantastic journey it has been! Thank you, Kovarex and team, for taking us with you on it.

As for the FFF future plans, I also think expansion packs would be the way to go. I'll never flinch about buying new add-ons to Factorio, since there's no doubt Wube can can create wonderfully captivating content.

I'd also be very happy to pay for being part of those packs during Early Access and help to shape their final form.

Lol, just come here to share what in my mind & see ur post. I'm currently in a cafe working some stuff and this wired cafe is transforming into a pub right now (from morning to evening they do cafe and then pub till midnight). After see the post now Im decide to stay for some beer & lunching my base for an hour or two

[Zool]

What an amazing journey it has been so far - I randomly found this game many years ago, watching livestreams while being in hospital. The first thought Ihad when leaving hospital was „I need to get this thing!“

Since then, I have spent around 5000 hours in it, usually playing it as cooperative multiplayer with a group of friends. And we tried the weirdest modpackages availabe. „Höllenmodpack“, that has been designed to be close to unbeatable, „Seablock“ and what not - all in all at least like 300 different mods that are worth to be remembered, and absolutely amizing people who created these mods.

Some people here say „what can the WUBE-Crew bring,thats not already modded in?“ - I was thinking the same at some point on Factorio 0.7x ... and with every single update since then, you proved me wrong and showed what incredibly amazing things you can implement, sometimes the tiniest changes that have such a huge impact into the game. The way you are completely addicted to polish the game to a state that I can only discribe as „best-practice-example for game development in early access“.

So far, this is the only game in my gaming history where I have the feeling of „having payed too little“ for the game.

I could go on like this forever, but the important thing is: I what you do, and I‘m super exited on what you bring in future. As long as you don‘t let a huge company buy yours and dictate your development, I‘d even buy a wube-statue ingame-dlc for 30€ just to support your teams future.

And I‘m 100% confident that each of us will love whatever you come up with as expansion.

[ickputzdirwech]

I can understand why you don't want to make pre-orders. It creates a lot of pressure and you have to set a price way before you even know what you are going to create. However considering the high demand how about the following:

In about half a year sell "pre-orders" for 1€/1$. People who buy it will be in a new backer list (and maybe get 1€/1$ off of the extension pack).

In half a year you will know what your plan is and how long it might take to finish. 1€/1$ isn't a lot of money and it would already be worth it to be in the backer list.

If you never release the expansion pack you could either give people their money back (depends on the system you use) or create a small update for Factorio with the new backer list.

As you might have guessed buy now I'm a bit sad that I joined the party to late to be in the backer list.

PS: You should probably make this post and #364 - 1.1 stable sticky.

[DeeHants]

4.4 years of playtime per resolved bug report

Also translates to 4.4 years to identify each bug! That's not bad!

[Dubby]

Dunno if yall have ever played it, but there's an old ascii game called "Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead" where-in it's possible to construct fully functioning vehicles on a grid, layer by layer (such as structural components, axles/treads, flooring, furniture, interior space, exterior armor, turrets, etc.), then drive them around, live in, attack enemies with guns/cannons, etc. Such a feature would be really cool for Factorio, and would make it possible for some really gnarly stuff from modders (I'm looking at you, Space Exploration!)

[henderb]

If you're in the market for ideas...

After some number of satellite launches, say 10, ships flying by your planet take notice of you.

Some might buy ship parts, fuel, food etc.

This could turn into a second factory space on a space station with the player deciding what gets done on earth and what gets done in space, and what gets launched or dropped back to the planet.

Some offer colonists.

They could demand:

various foods, produced in farms that are degraded by pollution
Housing, hates pollution, demands protection from aliens
Goods/food/services delivered to houses (probably turns into drone deliveries to logistic boxes)
Internet, capacity increased by more satellite launches
Passenger space shuttle? Elevator?
Entertainment destinations? Transport from/to houses, and supplies delivered to service building.

[TheRaph]

I wonder why you don't start Factorio 2 with Isometric view? With real height-levels.

Like going from SimCity to Simcity2000 ... Or C&C Tiberian Dawn to Tiberian Sun
It would be a 2D-Game as it is, but could have more depth.

You could make ammo range depend on position of weapon like in C&C Tiberian Sun.
It would also be possible to build bridges and tunnels.
Speed of vihicle and trains could depend on slope and so on.

And isometric view solves a lot of graphical issues (and brings new ones) and looks soooooo much better.
Adding a rotate-button so one can look trough 4 different angles (like Stronghold).

Why not use your experience for making something new based on whats already done?

[Klonan]

Why not use your experience for making something new based on whats already done?

We want to make new things for Factorio because we like playing Factorio

[posila]

I wonder why you don't start Factorio 2 with Isometric view? With real height-levels.

kovarex doesn't like isometric view and he made Factorio the way he wanted it to be

And isometric view solves a lot of graphical issues (and brings new ones) and looks soooooo much better.

I (and as far as I know, also our art director) agree with you on that

[Squaresoft]

YES! Factorio --> Factorio

Broodwar

Expansion.
Congratulations for reaching this point,
This new chapter in your life must be something HUGE inside everyone of you.

My word:
1) A big expansion with well-defined content (Factorio EXP).
And meanwhile, if you want to give us some love, you can launch uncommon 'free updates forever' separately for the original game, whose content will be 100% 'Factorio 1' so not to interfere or step on EXP's work.
Once EXP is released with new well-defined content, these 'free updates forever' can switch to be EXP only. (Frequency tied to real need)

2) A mega-base is too much for me to handle, I suffer a lot of anxiety and once I launch my first rocket...it doesn't take much until I start to feel like I hate my original base and feel the urge to start again with new ideas...that I'm lacking a "next objective".

The real end-game is a mega base, but I'd like to see an end-game with goals established within the game. Otherwise there is many things I won't do or explore by myself. The tutorial is simple but it always gave me a new objective (oh I love the tutorial, it's a mini-campaign). Being forced to buid a train was the best thing the tutorial did for me.

PS: Haven't tried any end-game mods like Space Exploration yet.