Research requirements for requirements

[AceMcCloud]

One of the things I'm finding to be a pain point is figuring out what I need to research, out of what I can currently research, that will help me get to a certain technology.

Part of that is that the Switch interface (especially playing on the built in display) is awkward. Though I'm not sure that there would be a better way to do it.

Part of it is that the wiki lists the direct requirements for technologies, but for new players who aren't familiar with all the technologies, that's not so helpful because we don't know their requirements.

Would there be any objection to adding a table to the page for each technology that traces back the entire prerequisite tree, listing all of the required technologies?

[Bilka]

That sounds like something more suited for an interactive site, like https://davemcw.com/factorio/tech-tree/ where you can click on each technology to see its prerequisites.

[AceMcCloud]

That's very nice, but not easily findable. If a new user goes to look up a technology on the wiki, how is he going to know to go to that page?

[Bilka]

That's very nice, but not easily findable. If a new user goes to look up a technology on the wiki, how is he going to know to go to that page?

Usually people use general internet search engines which would find the website linked above. Anyway, adding it to the page isn't out of the question, but there are several advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

• Tech pages tend to be quite empty currently, this would change that
• Helpful because of reasons given in the post that started the thread
• All info is one place for people who only look game info on the wiki, not other websites

Disadvantages:
It's a lot of info - the worst offender is likely rocket silo and beyond with a total of over 30 prerequisites. This means it's

• hard to format well within the limits of the wiki
• tedious and error-prone to document by hand - could be automated, but that needs to be done by me and it'd be a few months before I could start work on it

Generally I find it hard to judge how helpful it would be on the wiki when it's already available on the website linked above and in the in-game tech tree. I find that even on the switch navigating the tech tree works very well. Perhaps it's an issue of that not being well explained for new players, which could be solved by adding more info on how to scroll the tech tree and start research to the wiki. Here is roughly what I think may be missing:

Selecting a technology from the list and pressing A highlights it in the tech tree pane on the right. The tech tree can be scrolled either with the scroll bar on the very right (in and out of free cursor mode or with the touch screen), or navigating within the tree with the left stick (when not in free cursor mode). When a technology is selected within the list on the left or in the tech tree, the research can directly be started by pressing ZR + A.

This info might fit well on https://wiki.factorio.com/Research (when combined with the same info for mouse and keyboard).

[Tertius]

If I recall my own experience, I wanted to check and explore the tech tree most when I was a brand new player. For about the first 2 walkthroughs. I searched for the big complete overview picture and found one or two web pages (unfortunately, the one posted above was not included). After that, I knew the general structure enough and the ingame tech page/tech tree got sufficient, because it delivers the proper balance between interactivity and scope/size.

So, if there is a change in the wiki, the most benefit in my opinion would be some kind of complete presentation of the whole tech tree that will help beginners who don't yet have the complete picture in their mind. There is a complete picture in https://wiki.factorio.com/Technologies, however it's not really useful, because it's not interactive and the icons are so small, you simply don't get anything from it.