Unreachable items

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Frahel
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Unreachable items

Post by Frahel »

Hello,

I've been playing Factorio for a few days now, and think it's a fantastic game, bravo!

May I just suggest that the limited distance to reach an object is very very very annoying and counter-intuitive? As long as something is visible in the main view the player should be able to interact with it regardless of the distance.

Could you also give us the ability to fly over uncovered lands regardless of the player's position (and provide a quick way to refocus the view on the player)?

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Re: Unreachable items

Post by FuryoftheStars »

Sounds like what you want is sandbox/god mode, which already exists.

Otherwise, only thing I’d want change in this regard is opening of a structure interface for looking at the info in there from further out. I’m good with the other restrictions.
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Re: Unreachable items

Post by Serenity »

You're playing a character on the screen, not some invisible god/overlord. And as the game progresses your physical presence becomes less important

There are mods to increase reach:
https://mods.factorio.com/query/reach?version=1.1

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Re: Unreachable items

Post by mmmPI »

Frahel wrote:
Tue Nov 16, 2021 8:38 pm
May I just suggest that the limited distance to reach an object is very very very annoying and counter-intuitive? As long as something is visible in the main view the player should be able to interact with it regardless of the distance.
If you mean changing receipe of machine or rotating inserters i agree and find it sometimes frustrating because the camera/view is so much wider than the reach distance. There are ways to mitigate this feeling either in game with science progression or with commands, cheats and mods, i would advise exploring the game proposed options first, to make it easier to possibly later change only what you have experienced the worst if it's still annoying.

For picking up item in chests i find it more intuitive to have the character required to be close. And the in game robots are very powerful at this task later on.
Frahel wrote:
Tue Nov 16, 2021 8:38 pm
Could you also give us the ability to fly over uncovered lands regardless of the player's position (and provide a quick way to refocus the view on the player)?
I think this is offered by the map view. The uncovered areas are required to be covered by radars for the map view to show them as if your character was physically present.
The default hotkey i think is M and then using the mousewheel. In this mode you can see but not touch and pressing echap exit the mode.

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Re: Unreachable items

Post by Tertius »

The limited reach is the simulation of a person manually doing some stuff. He doesn't have arms with infinite length. You're encouraged to automate things (that's what Factorio is mainly about), so you don't need your arms that often. If you progress with the game and do more research, you find ghosts and blueprints unlocked and building robots. Ghosts and blueprints are a means to plan a larger structure over a bigger area (the reach to create ghosts/use blueprints is the radar range), and building robots will swarm out and actually build what you put as ghost. This way you don't need a long reach that often any more.
The robots are quite a game changer. I consider the gameplay before robot availability as some kind of warm-up at the start of a new game that is reached quite quickly, if you have more practice.

However, putting stuff in or out of a machine still needs local presence.

About the view: use the map to look far away. However, you need the map uncovered/charted, which can be done by walking there first or remotely with radars or with shooting artillery shells over uncharted land.

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Re: Unreachable items

Post by blazespinnaker »

I concur with the OP, the reach issue is deeply irritating. Some kind of early technology which allows for limited auto placement into ghosts I think would fit very well in the game. A sort of limited personal roboport where you have to shift-mouse over the ghost in order to place it, and it can run out of energy relatively fast.

Ghosts and blueprints right now are fairly useless until bots, which I think is a real shame. I imagine a lot of people give up on the game before they get to bots because of this issue.
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Re: Unreachable items

Post by ssilk »

moved from general to suggestions

For me it’s no wonder, that the range-extender-mods are so popular. ;)

In the early days I thought this limited range is cool. Brings in some kind of realism into the game and extending the range felt like a relief and you really can feel with the mouse that you make progress.

Meanwhile I think this is a gameplay-issue. It kills a lot of the fun when you come from others games and/or played long time in full researched mode.

To play like do I would like to see, when I can operate with which entities. Because that’s also not the best idea (hard to implement) I would increase the reach a lot by default or make it an option.
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Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by Frahel »

I've been playing Factorio for 526 hours now, and really appreciate the game.
Whatsoever, I still think that the distance limit to interact with an item is a very bad design choice!
In my opinion, if you can see something on the screen, you should be able to react it, whatever the distance.
What is the point for these limitations and the very annoying "unreachable" messages ? (not sure of the translation, as my mother tongue is french).
Does it add anything to the gameplay or is just a mean of frustrating players ?

I also regret that I cannot use the mouse to point a direction for the player and the vehicles, like in any modern game.

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Re: Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by FuryoftheStars »

While I agree that anything in view should be reachable for the purposes of viewing and possibly setting recipes, it shouldn't be for the purposes of inventory (adding/removing items).

You are a physical character on the screen. It doesn't make any sense to be able to reach up to 100 meters away and just put things in / take things out of something.

For that, I recommend Sandbox, as that puts you into god-mode from the start.


EDIT: Oh, ffs, why are you starting another thread on the same subject??? viewtopic.php?f=6&t=100636
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Re: Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by ssilk »

EDIT: Oh, ffs, why are you starting another thread on the same subject??? viewtopic.php?f=6&t=100636
Seems, that it really pisses someone off. :)

What I would add to this discussion besides that in the pointed suggestion-thread is this:

- an unlimited (access what I see) range is no way, because it allows some kind of cheating; the player with the bigger, higher resolution monitor wins. Will never come to vanilla.

- there are lots of mods, that change this range in different ways.
E.g. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/long-reach-clone
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/themightygugi_longreach https://mods.factorio.com/mod/qol_research
https://mods.factorio.com/query/Long%20 ... ersion=1.1

- you can play in godmode (I think it’s called sandbox), where you sweep over the world and that has no range limitation.

- the game knows about all these issues and that’s per sure one of the reasons, why you later get ghosts, that can be printed and interact even on map view.


But what I would find very useful is a better support for visible interaction between objects. What I mean is, that there is a missing graphical interaction between the character (the player representation on screen) and the thing he operates. For example seeing the player swinging an axe on trees. But with growing range this would look quite strange.
But there could have been much more effort in some graphical nice stuff to feedback/show a players interaction between objects, because that would lead to much more acceptance by the players of this limited range.
For example:
- show symbolic transfer of items between player and gun turret.
- opening an assembler: the player and the assembly is connected by some kind of wire. I think to Waldo-arms (http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=23)
- same with trees, items on ground, etc. Growing length of Waldo-arms increases range.
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Re: Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by FuryoftheStars »

ssilk wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:15 am
to feedback/show a players interaction between objects, because that would lead to much more acceptance by the players of this limited range.
I obviously don't know for sure/can't truly speak for this person, but based on their continued dislike of the subject, their first thread mentioning being able to have the character just fly around, and other threads similar in nature, it seems like they are coming from the aspect where other games that are similar in nature are by default played in god-mode. As such, I'm not sure how much of showing that there is a physical interaction going on will help. I think they just need to play in sandbox mode and be done with it (or use some of those mods you pointed out). :/
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Re: Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by ssilk »

I still think it would help a lot. Not only for beginners. Even for players like me, who uses such range extender mods. Maybe I would turn them off, just to see, how those “hands” are moving around.

I think it would be worth some try to see if I’m wrong. And I think this “visible interaction” can be done with a mod.
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Re: Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by ptx0 »

FuryoftheStars wrote:
Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:16 pm
You are a physical character on the screen. It doesn't make any sense to be able to
you carry around cars, locomotives, an entire factory in your pocket. please stop using realism as reasons for dismissing others' requests, lol, it's a game. the water pumps don't require power, belts don't require power yada yada

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Re: Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by JimBarracus »

The only thing that actually annoys me about the limited range is that you can't enter the user interface of the machines from distance.
There is only the workaround of building a machine next to you, toggle your settings, make a blueprint and place a ghost where it is meant to be built.

IDK maybe a research that allows you to enter the interface when the machine is within a robot network could be a solution.
There are wireless logistic networks, why not remote access to the machines?

I know there is a god mode, but I kind of like the idea, that you could actually build yourself a god mode and basically forget about the character.

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Re: Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by FuryoftheStars »

ptx0 wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 5:33 am
FuryoftheStars wrote:
Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:16 pm
You are a physical character on the screen. It doesn't make any sense to be able to
you carry around cars, locomotives, an entire factory in your pocket. please stop using realism as reasons for dismissing others' requests, lol, it's a game. the water pumps don't require power, belts don't require power yada yada
And you can reach further than a meter. So it's already outside realism. If you want to nuke it further, I present god-mode.
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Re: Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by jodokus31 »

When I started playing, I was really annoyed by all the limitations:
- reach limit
- blocked by pipes and building.
- biters :)
- no bots in early game
- even placing power poles, which seemed to be unnecessary for the core gameplay.

I modded the hell out of it, right from the beginning. I only played the campaign vanilla and got into A&B.

After several months, I started to embrace the limitations more and more. In the meantime I think, that the limitation add to the game experience, as you progress out of it while playing.
ssilk wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:15 am
EDIT: Oh, ffs, why are you starting another thread on the same subject??? viewtopic.php?f=6&t=100636
Seems, that it really pisses someone off. :)
I think, it should be merged. But don't understand the mysteries of moderation.

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Re: Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by Tertius »

ssilk wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:15 am
- an unlimited (access what I see) range is no way, because it allows some kind of cheating; the player with the bigger, higher resolution monitor wins. Will never come to vanilla.
This is kind of invalid, because Factorio doesn't scale to monitor resolution. In normal play mode, it scales to a maximum distance of about 100 tiles, which creates a visible field with a diameter of about 200 tiles. You get the biggest field of view, if you use a quadratic monitor, because this will get you 100 tiles in each direction. The narrower your monitor, the smaller your view. Quadratic is possible with windowed mode - regardless of the native monitor size.

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Re: Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by BlueTemplar »

Note that the area that a player can reach has already been almost tripled in 0.17. (Manipulation reach 6 => 10.)
Frahel wrote:
Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:08 pm
I also regret that I cannot use the mouse to point a direction for the player and the vehicles, like in any modern game.
I'm not sure that the complaint is fair even for the character... (pretty sure that not *any* "modern" game has this)
Though having the character to pathfind & move to the out of range object until it's in reach would probably be nice ? (Including for melee combat.)
(A feature for the official Factorio expansion ?)

I'm not sure that you realize the difficulty of implementing something like this well for vehicles (which can't strafe and have limited turn rate !) - do you even know of a game that has this ? AAI Programmable Vehicles features this, but it's very clunky.
(Though it's *already* implemented for the *completely* path restricted trains in the train map through Ctrl+click. Or the Pavement Drive Assist mod for vehicles.)

----
JimBarracus wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 6:40 am
The only thing that actually annoys me about the limited range is that you can't enter the user interface of the machines from distance.
There is only the workaround of building a machine next to you, toggle your settings, make a blueprint and place a ghost where it is meant to be built.

IDK maybe a research that allows you to enter the interface when the machine is within a robot network could be a solution.
There are wireless logistic networks, why not remote access to the machines?

I know there is a god mode, but I kind of like the idea, that you could actually build yourself a god mode and basically forget about the character.
IIRC Space Exploration has a "satellite mode" ?
Satellite mode

Launching a navigation satellite unlocks the Navigation Satellite Uplink. This allows you to look around from the satellite’s point of view, detached from your character. You can look at any planet you have discovered and scout the surface. You can even make data-changes while in this mode, changing combinator, requester, or inserter settings. You can also use blueprint library blueprints, the deconstruction planner, copy and paste, etc. Press N to start/end an uplink.
Looks like that it doesn't allow you to directly manipulate assemblers though ?

----
jodokus31 wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 12:31 pm
- blocked by pipes and building.
Yeah, even pipes in theory force you to plan a clean base layout with specific paths for the character.
But when playing with biters, and being under suden attack, getting stuck on a pipe corner is just *too* aggravating - so I still play with Squeak Through

Biters also explains the range limitations : until mid-game, you're *supposed* to have to deal with large biter attacks manually, and "turret creeping" is *already* too powerful as a tactic !
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Re: Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by ptx0 »

BlueTemplar wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:30 pm
Note that the area that a player can reach has already been almost tripled in 0.17. (Manipulation reach 6 => 10.)
what? tripling would mean 6 => 18.

what happened there is it increased by a little more than 1/2. it's almost a doubling, but it's not a tripling.

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Re: Distance limit: a very bad design choice

Post by FuryoftheStars »

ptx0 wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 3:08 pm
BlueTemplar wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:30 pm
Note that the area that a player can reach has already been almost tripled in 0.17. (Manipulation reach 6 => 10.)
what? tripling would mean 6 => 18.

what happened there is it increased by a little more than 1/2. it's almost a doubling, but it's not a tripling.
BlueTemplar was referencing area, not range. That’s why they said tripled. Technically correct, but misleading.
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