Do not pause game when looking at research in single player

[eradicator]

I totally want the game paused while I'm in the research menu, and if one day there was an ingame blueprint editor, I hope the game will also pause while fiddling in it.

Are you sure that you always want it paused without any possible exception ever? I think that for most people there's times where they want pause, and times where they want the factory to work. It's just jarrining to not even have an option to unpause. There's a toggle-pause hotkey that doesn't unpause. The modding API can't unpause. Yet there's multiplayer that shows it's clearly possible! It's especially weird when you switch frequenty between single- and multiplayer. Over the years there have been tons of QoL and usabilty improvements. Yet a basic thing like unpausing isn't possible? This should be an unimportant note in the next changelog, not a 4 year long discussion.

[Koub]

I have never ever wished I could unpause the game while in the research screen. And I think it's unlikely to change anywhere in the future.

But I know my tastes are not universal, so I would be fine with an option. I just wanted to voice the opposite side. For you, a second spent IRL with your factory not producing is a second lost. For me a second spent ingame by my factory polluting and letting the biters evolve is a second lost forever (undoing evolution is impossible, while 1 second production takes just one second to catch up).

[mrvn]

Never wanted to do something next that requires some research and wanted to go through the research tree for the next goal while you wait?

[eradicator]

while 1 second production takes just one second to catch up

Paying another second to catch up a second is a zero-sum game. There's no catching up in a finite amount of time :p.

[ssilk]

It is interesting how much my point of view changed over the time with this one.

When I reread this I suddenly understood: we talk here about time. Once it is game-time and the other it’s player-time (real-live-time).

And both are the most worthy thing in a game. So I go with the idea to have for example an pause-button in the research screen to run/stop the game (with a hint for the option to change the default behavior).

A no-brainer: Easy to implement (because the basic functionality is already there), very high gameplay-value.

[Koub]

while 1 second production takes just one second to catch up

Paying another second to catch up a second is a zero-sum game. There's no catching up in a finite amount of time :p.

Yeah I know I didn't find the right words to express it exactly, but I'm sure you understood what I was trying to say. It's like texting while on the wheel. In theory, the optimal way to go is text while driving to optimise the distance travelled for a given unit of time. In practice, It's worth pausing the car while texting because during the time spend texting, I lose control of what's happening to the vehicle.

In a nutshell, it's a time vs safety trade. I'm clearly on the safety side, I don't want things happening ingame while I'm not actually taking care of my factory, at least in single player (but I don't play multi, so basically, it's all the time for me).

Never wanted to do something next that requires some research and wanted to go through the research tree for the next goal while you wait?

This happened only when I was trying to do the "there is no spoon achievement", where expanding the factory past the point one has all what's needed to launch the rocket is counterproductive. On any other game, any time I have to wait, I just spend it to expand or refactor the factory.

[eradicator]

but I'm sure you understood what I was trying to say.
In a nutshell, it's a time vs safety trade.

I understand the "safety vs time trade". That's why I'm arguing for un/pause to be optional. Not for complete removal of the pause functionality. Like I said: There's a hotkey for it, why doesn't it work?! I don't really have any more substantial arguments other than that because I don't even understand why such basic functionality has to be argued about. And I've seen no arguments so far against adding an un-pause option. All I see is "but I want to pause", and from my POV nobody's trying to take that away. If someone has an actual logical argument against making the pause toggle work I'd be interested to read that. The only non-argument I can come up with is that the current GUI lacks a representation of un/pause state while the tech screen occupies the whole screen.

For me a second spent ingame by my factory polluting and letting the biters evolve is a second lost forever (undoing evolution is impossible, while 1 second production takes just one second to catch up).

Apart from that I utterly disagree with your assessment of scale-of-loss. Imagine you had spent a year in jail and someone told you that you "just need to spend one year outside to catch up". It's just not how time works - no matter how much time you're talking about. After all the whole game is about doing things in parralell to make it faster....

[Koub]

We both agree that an option would be the best compromise, I wanted to voice my preference for the pausing because I didn't want the pause just removed (you know, preventing the "why bother adding an option when the offensive feature can be removed as in multiplayer" kind of solution).

I would even push the idea one step further : A "don't pause while in the menus" option would probably make even more sense. It would change the habits of people, but make a coherent behaviour. Like that, if, in the future, a blueprint editor was added *heavy breathing intensifies*, it could benefit from start from the same option. Same with the main menu : there is no reason game should be paused while in the menu if there is an option for that : there is an explicit pause feature, with its own key binding.

An option to "pause the game while in the menus", activated by default (because it's a more beginner friendly behaviour), that, when deactivated, would let the time run whenever not explicitly paused (with the pause keybinding).

The only non-argument I can come up with is that the current GUI lacks a representation of un/pause state while the tech screen occupies the whole screen.

Ironically, I don't agree with the counterargument : the tech screen is translucent, it's possible to see when things move behind (OK when enough things move enough, I guess a small and brief movement would stay unnoticed).

[ssilk]

There is surely some space left, where the alarm-icons could be displayed… with that you can see, if something bad happens in background.

[jodokus31]

The only other reason that I can think people would want their game paused is if they're going for a speed run, but it seems like those people could just learn to pause the game manually first and not have the game do it for them.

That's funny, because especially speedrunners don't want their game paused. The measurement goes by real time, so any pause is really bad. Most play in multiplayer mode.

I can see, that it would be a nice option for single player. If you start playing, enter the tech screen and notice, oh i'm not in multiplayer.
However, I also like the other way round to take a breath while in tech screen, esp. if I'm playing death world.

The only danger is for people, who accidentally activate the option, and let the game running, while thinking it's paused. I'm sure, there will be people step into this trap out of habit

[Anachrony]

Most play in multiplayer mode.

For other reasons, or solely to avoid the pause from research? Either way, sounds like it would be positive to have the option for speedrunners too. I know that real speedrunners use external clocks, but I was thinking more of the timed achievements. The achievements are the only kind of speedruns that the majority of players would ever attempt. Does the in game clock for those keep running while pausing to look at research, because if so that's sadistic. I haven't seriously tried for the harder speed run achievements, but I naively assumed that surely the in game clock for achievements can't keep running while the game is paused.

[jodokus31]

Afaik, speedrunners use multiplayer mode mainly to avoid pause while in research. Unless, of course, they do a run with multiple players

I don't think, the internal clock runs while paused in tech screen. So it should help to get timed achievements.

[mrvn]

Afaik, speedrunners use multiplayer mode mainly to avoid pause while in research. Unless, of course, they do a run with multiple players

I don't think, the internal clock runs while paused in tech screen. So it should help to get timed achievements.

In a speedrun you aren't allowed to pause. Otherwise people would just pause, carefully plan their next step and then unpause for just the time to needed to do the next step.

[jodokus31]

Afaik, speedrunners use multiplayer mode mainly to avoid pause while in research. Unless, of course, they do a run with multiple players

I don't think, the internal clock runs while paused in tech screen. So it should help to get timed achievements.

In a speedrun you aren't allowed to pause. Otherwise people would just pause, carefully plan their next step and then unpause for just the time to needed to do the next step.

You are allowed to pause, but the real time clock runs regardless

[BlueTemplar]

I for one don't know why one would ever want to stop the entire factory while playing.

I find difficult not to be outrun by time based biter evolution (on standard settings) to the extent that I have a second installation of Factorio just to take my time designing factory parts without the time ticking against me. For most people, biters are just a x% resource sink, not even worth being mentioned. For people like me (understand : "who suck at developping quickly and defending efficiently"), they're a serious threat until quite far in the game.

[...]

You'll probably like this mod :
Vlads Auto Time

Tired of biters evolving too fast while you are planning your science pack assemblers but don't want evolution cheating? This mod adds game speed buttons and also automatically slowsdown game time when you do nothing so you can plan, adds fast-slow speed shortcut.

viewtopic.php?p=557478#p557478
P.S.: Of course, using this with other players present is likely to result in weirdness...

[FuryoftheStars]

Honestly, and maybe technically this would be a separate suggestion that already exists (I haven't looked, yet), but I'd be fine with the game not auto-pausing with research open if we were still allowed to do stuff (open and interact with various guis and blueprint planning, etc) while the game was paused.

[Anachrony]

Afaik, speedrunners use multiplayer mode mainly to avoid pause while in research.

It's weird that the game requires you to set up a multiplayer server to play single player rather than provide this obvious QoL feature as option.

A no-brainer: Easy to implement (because the basic functionality is already there), very high gameplay-value.

I very much agree. I don't know the technical details but it seems like it couldn't be too drastic of a change. And for many people it would make a big impact. For those that wouldn't want it, they can keep the old behavior with an option.

This request was first posted exactly 5 years ago. That's a long time in the development of Factorio. A lot has changed in 5 years, but not this. Is there anything we could do to increase the chances of someone in a position to do something about it considering this feature?

[ssilk]

It’s not so, that the devs have nothing todo. And their internal list is surely sorted by game-play-value multiplied with the reversed implementation effort. Something like this.

[malventano]

It’s not so, that the devs have nothing todo. And their internal list is surely sorted by game-play-value multiplied with the reversed implementation effort. Something like this.

If it was sorted as you state, then a fix that had high game-play-value and a minimal 1/implementation-effort would be at the top of that list.

[aka13]

There is surely some space left, where the alarm-icons could be displayed… with that you can see, if something bad happens in background.

Alarm icons become useless very fast. You can't configure them, and if you have a large enough factory, you are constantly attacked. At a certain point, you constantly have something destroyed.
Researching big enough artillery range to reach your pollution cloud also quickly becomes impossible. There is no point in pausing a megafactory.

If research queue can be allowed after researching everything, or at map start, so could the research pause.