Friday Facts #365 - Future plans

[Asteru]

Given the success of early access for the game, and the game polish as a result of the early access process, will you also be doing early access for an expansion?

[NotRexButCaesar]

Given the success of early access for the game, and the game polish as a result of the early access process, will you also be doing early access for an expansion?

They almost definitely will, at least for bug finding before the full release.

[Lithane]

I'm definitely in favor of a big expansion, it's an excellent way to continue funding the game, without the hassle that dlc's become. As a fan of Paradox games I am thoroughly sick of dlc's lol.

[SKKiro]

Really eager to see in which direction this big expansion will take! I also wonder what the price of it will end up being too. But that's all stuff we'll have to wait in order to see.

[Impatient]

I'm definitely in favor of a big expansion, it's an excellent way to continue funding the game, without the hassle that dlc's become. As a fan of Paradox games I am thoroughly sick of dlc's lol.

Paradox' dlc policy really turned me away from their games, which I otherwise liked initially.

[Daenoth]

An expansion seems like a good idea. One idea is to focus some on the aliens and increase their variety. Specifically make different types of them of them that live in different terrain types or perhaps that would be randomly chosen with new maps.

For example sentient plants, rock creatures, humanoid aliens that can use equipment and so forth. Ideally they would take different strategies to fight and would not all attack based on pollution. Some may simply be territorial where others may attack if trees are cut down and so forth.

You could also bring back the idea of getting research from aliens, but don't ever make it required research for anything. Instead it would be used for creating counter-measures to those aliens or for engineering your base in some way based on that alien type. Perhaps you could learn some unusual abilities from them as well. For example:
- The sentient plants may provide a research that allows you to regrow trees and could give research for hydro-power or to improve solar power. The idea would be to make the factory less destructive to the world.

- The rock creatures could give better methods for shaping the terrain, allowing the player to create cliffs, dig channels to re-route water, and to make tunnels for more objects such as rail tunnels.

- The humanoid aliens would give research to create their unique weapons and defensive structures (new types of turrets, for example).

- The existing aliens in the game could provide research that would allow structures to regenerate health on their own, or perhaps a way to lure the aliens to attack specific places by figuring out what it is about pollution that lures them. Obviously there could be research to reduce the pollution output of your factory as well.

None of these unique technologies would be required for anything currently in the game and the items used to research them would not be used for any other science packs.

[LuxSublima]

I know I'm late replying to this, but wanted to say:

Thank you so much for such an incredibly polished final release. The results are gorgeous. So much attention to detail, so many improvements, such a high bar for quality-of-life features. Factorio's been an amazing game for years, and the final product is phenomenal. And I love the sense of humor on one of the menu backgrounds (chase biter, then get chased yourself)!

Congratulations again, and good luck on the expansion pack! I'm thrilled to see what it will be!

[jamiechi1]

For the Map Editor, I would like to see some support for externally generated maps. Something simple like what was done with SimCity games. Either just a simple bitmap, or something that could be imported (and flattened a bit if needed) from the World Machine program. This would simplify greatly the generation of river, lake and ocean and even cliff features. Currently I believe one still needs to do this manually in the Map Editor.

[TheRaph]

Someone's probably said it already, but an obvious upgrade would be 3D rendering. Might make the game a lot smaller, too.

Maybe, but show me a game that can render 30 000 3D objects (instead of sprites) on the same screen.

So I like to suggest isometric view and 4-position map rotation.
I think about evolution from C&C tiberian dawn to tiberian sun - isometric looks so much better and this kind of hight-levels, bridges and tunnels used in C&C TS are pretty nifty. And in terms of map rotation i think about Stronghold - it has also hight-levels (more limit-less but optical not as good as C&C) and Map-rotation.

[ptx0]

Someone's probably said it already, but an obvious upgrade would be 3D rendering. Might make the game a lot smaller, too.

Maybe, but show me a game that can render 30 000 3D objects (instead of sprites) on the same screen.

how many objects can be rendered on screen at once in Factorio? the zoom is limited. speaking of zoom, LODs are used at different distances to provide different levels of detail in an 'object' (i think you meant model, unless you're talking about, idk, UObjects or something, in which case 30,000 on screen is nothing).

[Silari]

Someone's probably said it already, but an obvious upgrade would be 3D rendering. Might make the game a lot smaller, too.

Maybe, but show me a game that can render 30 000 3D objects (instead of sprites) on the same screen.

how many objects can be rendered on screen at once in Factorio? the zoom is limited. speaking of zoom, LODs are used at different distances to provide different levels of detail in an 'object' (i think you meant model, unless you're talking about, idk, UObjects or something, in which case 30,000 on screen is nothing).

Loading up my base and not even moving to a busy section has well over 30000 sprites being rendered at once. Everything on a belt is a sprite, so that's 12000 just from iron and copper plates alone.

[DrParanoia]

Someone's probably said it already, but an obvious upgrade would be 3D rendering. Might make the game a lot smaller, too.

Maybe, but show me a game that can render 30 000 3D objects (instead of sprites) on the same screen.

how many objects can be rendered on screen at once in Factorio? the zoom is limited. speaking of zoom, LODs are used at different distances to provide different levels of detail in an 'object' (i think you meant model, unless you're talking about, idk, UObjects or something, in which case 30,000 on screen is nothing).

Have you even read the FFF post? They are happy that they've finally finished the game engine and can work on new content. So you want them to throw all that away and waste time on making the game 3D? What a waste that would be...

[Enderdraak]

Not sure if it is said already, but in one FFF (forgot what one) you mentioned allowing a mod to only use the game engine and not even the base game.
Might be an idea to work a bit more on that? or make a mod like that as the factorio devs to show what it can do and/or explain how one can do that.

[Bilka]

Not sure if it is said already, but in one FFF (forgot what one) you mentioned allowing a mod to only use the game engine and not even the base game.
Might be an idea to work a bit more on that? or make a mod like that as the factorio devs to show what it can do and/or explain how one can do that.

Do you mean this? The mod is still maintained, so there shouldn't be any large problems for modders looking to make a base-mod-incompatible mod.

[Enderdraak]

Not sure if it is said already, but in one FFF (forgot what one) you mentioned allowing a mod to only use the game engine and not even the base game.
Might be an idea to work a bit more on that? or make a mod like that as the factorio devs to show what it can do and/or explain how one can do that.

Do you mean this? The mod is still maintained, so there shouldn't be any large problems for modders looking to make a base-mod-incompatible mod.

Yes that is indeed the mod I meant, but so far I have not seen a mod that uses it. I may have just missed it, but the downloads do not seem numerous.

[J-H]

My biggest late-game headache is "oh, have to stop building to send out the Destroyer train again (2 engines, 1 tanker, 6 arty wagons w/ 600 rounds of ammo) and then babysit/repair whatever arty base full of turrets is closest to the enemy while it drives back the biters." Since I run one-way rails I usually end up having to manually back the train out to the nearest turnaround loop.

It's taking up at least 1/3 of my time on the base I've been building since the August 1.0 now. QoL things I'd like:
1) Something faster than the spidertron or trains; maybe a power-sucking teleporter for fast travel over long distances.
2) Some way to stop having to deal with so many aliens everywhere.
3) Circuit network tutorial. Still can't make it do anything.

[ptx0]

Have you even read the FFF post? They are happy that they've finally finished the game engine and can work on new content. So you want them to throw all that away and waste time on making the game 3D? What a waste that would be...

if you're going to quote my post, at least read it first.

i didn't say they should change the game engine to 3D.

i challenged kovarex's statement about 3D game engines.

it's fine that they don't want to build a 3D game engine! understandable, even. I'm a software engineer, I understand about timeboxing and prioritisation.

however, i'm not a fan of bad logic being used to prop up good ideas. i want him to give a better answer that's not made-up laziness.

edit: even "we just don't want one" would be a better answer.

[Hornwitser]

Maybe, but show me a game that can render 30 000 3D objects (instead of sprites) on the same screen.

Not a game but a physics engine doing collisions for 110k cubes, in 2012.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jGZv1YYe2c

[Djinnetic]

I would happily purchase an expansion. Very excited for this.

[Aardwolf]

My biggest late-game headache is "oh, have to stop building to send out the Destroyer train again (2 engines, 1 tanker, 6 arty wagons w/ 600 rounds of ammo) and then babysit/repair whatever arty base full of turrets is closest to the enemy while it drives back the biters." Since I run one-way rails I usually end up having to manually back the train out to the nearest turnaround loop.

It's taking up at least 1/3 of my time on the base I've been building since the August 1.0 now. QoL things I'd like:
1) Something faster than the spidertron or trains; maybe a power-sucking teleporter for fast travel over long distances.
2) Some way to stop having to deal with so many aliens everywhere.
3) Circuit network tutorial. Still can't make it do anything.

Imho this would all be fixed if only the artillery train could fire while riding, rather than having to stop to fire