Friday Facts #373 - Factorio: Space Age

[DanGio]

So nice to have weekly FFF back. Thanks and glhf for the coming year !

[GrandMasterB]

No by-products or waste products.

One small example but uranium processing generates U-238 that we have to deal with.
I think there are plenty of by-products, waste products and ways to deal with waste that some mods add.

No pressure losses in the pipes

There is pressure loss in the pipes. Both normal pipes and heat pipes lose pressure with length.

No process generates waste heat. No transport or conversion losses in the power grids. I would be happy if such extensions make it into the game.
maybe there could be some kind of brain bug that you have to kill to get certain resources.

The common characteristic, and arguably the common problem of these mechanics is that they hurt predictability. Most players, including me, love the fact that we can calculate exact inputs and outputs and build perfect-ratio factories or use planning tools to plan for scale in advance. We can calculate the exact number of belts, assemblers, solar panels, etc. that we will need before seeing it in action. Implementation of real-life-like physics and chemistry could take predictability out of Factorio and that would be a very, very controversial change.

Ok yes there is a very simplified pressure drop model. But the pumps are shown even simpler. I would be happy if you could always read out the pressures at the input and output and use them to control the speed of the pumps. That you need to turn down pump speeds to prevent overpressure, because otherwise pipes burst. That tanks can overflow and that pumps can overheat.

I thought it was fantastic when you have to cool or heat chemical conversion processes, in a chemical reactor. If you had to build heat exchange networks.

Honestly, the factory calculability is very simple and the same calculation over and over again. I don't want to become a mental arithmetic world champion, but I want to solve complex problems which are not exactly computable. These problems have to be solved by a clever control system. But maybe you are right and that would overwhelm many players. But it would be nice as an optional extension.

All these things would be nice, but actually I want more defense options and more enemies that require a reaction from me. I am fine if it is a simple logistic game. Process simulation is my job and I do not need the same problems and solutions in my free time But if something like this is planned, I will be happy to help you realize these goals.

Kind Regards,
Bobo

[jodokus31]

Honestly, the factory calculability is very simple and the same calculation over and over again. I don't want to become a mental arithmetic world champion, but I want to solve complex problems which are not exactly computable. These problems have to be solved by a clever control system. But maybe you are right and that would overwhelm many players. But it would be nice as an optional extension.

You should check the game Oxygen Not Included

[ptx0]

so the DLC announced >1.5 years ago is now announced to be entering another year+ of development? haha. trying to remain relevant or something? people certainly forgot by now. maybe this is a good way to remind them. good luck!

[pointa2b]

so the DLC announced >1.5 years ago is now announced to be entering another year+ of development? haha. trying to remain relevant or something? people certainly forgot by now. maybe this is a good way to remind them. good luck!

Yet here you are, apparently not having forgot.

[Mooncat]

so the DLC announced >1.5 years ago is now announced to be entering another year+ of development? haha. trying to remain relevant or something? people certainly forgot by now. maybe this is a good way to remind them. good luck!

New to the Factorio release schedule?
At least they have revived FFF. I won't demand too much.

[GrandMasterB]

You should check the game Oxygen Not Included

I did. The game looks interesting, thanks for the tip. But I don't like the graphic style, too cute and not technical enough! Even if it is pretty in and many like that for sure. Also, there are citizens with abilities. So it is a society simulation with needs etc, so a survival game. I love that this is not the case with Factorio. Also the tower defense part with the logistic requirement of the ammunition supply is great. But I will give the Oxygen Not Included a change, maybe it will surprise me.

[Vynomer]

Well, I am very excited about this news.

I have a question about multiplayer, and here's a bit of background first.

My friends and I like to play in a way that we have our own tech trees, which lets us each go at our own pace. The way we accomplish this currently is to go to PvP mode, set us all on different teams, and make those teams all allied. This way, we can still interact with and use each other's things if necessary, but we still get to spread out in our own direction and go at our own paces.

Will this mode of coop multiplayer still be available? Or, if not this, will we still have a way for multiple players on the same team to each have individual tech trees?

[ptx0]

so the DLC announced >1.5 years ago is now announced to be entering another year+ of development? haha. trying to remain relevant or something? people certainly forgot by now. maybe this is a good way to remind them. good luck!

Yet here you are, apparently not having forgot.

oh wow! super clever reply! yeah I had a streamer go through the FFF announcement. otherwise, it would have definitely slipped past the radar, and I had completely forgotten about the expansion.

I have to extrapolate from this experience, since I'm not unique by any stretch of the imagination - others most likely shared this experience, and even more likely is to just forget and never remember.

most people i think don't even launch a rocket in this game, let alone become terminally obsessed with it.

[agrx]

Since the goal was to make the overall expansion experience as good as possible, we have rebalanced the tech tree. This means, that with Space Age enabled, some items that are available in vanilla are unlocked later on some planet. This specifically applies to artillery, cliff explosives (this is the masochist part of me speaking), Spidertron, best tier of modules, and some personal equipment upgrades.

No please don't do this, it doesn't make sense to lock cliff explosives behind space technology.
The cliffs are already a PITB for the base building in the early game.

[BlueTemplar]

Are we going to see an engine update that handles greater than 60hz refresh rate?

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.

For factorio alone, no. But if they happen to have one for other reasons, it's obviously also getting used for factorio. And manually setting the refresh rate is extra work... (Can't SDL be made to paper over this issue?)

"SDL" ?

The graphic library/backend factorio uses https://www.libsdl.org/

Ah, Simple DirectMedia Layer (why not SDML ??) ?
I thought that Factorio had (mostly?) gotten rid of it with Wube's own game engine released with 0.17 ?

----

[...]
I thought it was fantastic when you have to cool or heat chemical conversion processes, in a chemical reactor. If you had to build heat exchange networks.
[...]

You will probably love Fantario then !
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Fantario
(No electricity before space science !)

[Locane]

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.

I'm not asking for faster animations. If just the screen scrolling would be rendered with 120 fps, it will look much smoother despite a lower item update rate of 60 fps. Entities would look sharp while scrolling, with no motion blur. It would make the whole game look more solid. It's difficult to describe to someone who never saw the effect of > 60 fps. It's not the animations, it's the whole impression of the screen.

How scrolling looks fundamentally different with different fps, investigate the results from the various tests on this website: https://testufo.com/
If you have 60 Hz monitor, see the comparison between 30 fps and 60 fps. It's about the same with 60 fps versus 120 fps, only another step better. Scrolling with 60 fps instead of 30 has no flicker but still motion blur, while 120 fps not even has motion blur. It's crystal sharp, always.

TL;DR:

This. I feel like people who say they don't understand why refresh rates are such a big deal have never played a game at 60hz and then 360hz and compared them. It's just more responsive, fluid, and real. It FEELS better.


Longer version:

360hz (or just generally higher than 60...) refresh rates makes it easier to track moving things on the screen, so instead of playing Factorio in the *look* *move* *look* *move* *look* *move* *look* pattern where you're only really able to see what's happening in detail while standing still, it feels like opening your eyes and seeing what's going on for the first time. Suddenly, you can see in better detail and track more easily the biters running after you while you are fleeing and shooting them, or the objects moving on the belts around you, or the inserters swinging their loads around.

As an aside, yes I am aware 360hz monitors are expensive. Since getting one, I genuinely believe it's THE MOST noticeable upgrade and bang for your buck a person can get on a gaming machine in these years of peaked-out video card performance. If I had to choose right now between upgrading my mediocre graphics card or getting a 360hz monitor, I would get the monitor without a second thought, and just turn the graphics down on whatever game I'm playing to hit 360+fps. It really is that big of a difference.

To reiterate - high refresh rates aren't about high quality graphics, they're about responsiveness and feel. Your input is more immediate, and the screen blurs a lot less when you're moving around. As a result, games (including Factorio) feel visually punchier and more immersive.

[Locane]

No need per se, rather factorio being the odd one out:
I haven't seen factorio changing the refresh rate yet, nor any other monitor setting. (I assume factorio has no function to do so.) Thus it gets run with the refresh rate the monitor used before starting factorio, which is likely the natural refresh rate of the monitor, leading to the issue getting noticed.
Once the user knows factorio should run at 60Hz they can take the necessary steps to make it run smoothly. But at the same time other applications might not exhibit this behavior (e.g. for the most desktop applications and video players running below the natural refresh rate is the norm and can handle it correctly; a high FPS game makes use of whatever monitor and graphics card can handle), leading to the user blaming factorio as the only program/game not being able to cope with refresh rates above 60Hz.

That's why I'm wondering in my last comment if SDL can't just handle it, as it should be a somewhat common problem for games running at a fixed update rate. Wasn't double/triple buffering invented to decouple the update loops for game logic and display?

Factorio is locked at 60hz and does not render any faster than that, no matter what your monitor settings are.

My monitor displays the current refresh rate in the top right corner for me - all other games work great at 360hz, Factorio cannot go past 60. My understanding is that the game is designed this way from a technical standpoint because the engine's timing is locked at 60 ticks in a second.

The mod I found that allows you to raise the limit just down-scales the tick timing for everything, but there are some things it doesn't / can't touch, like the rate at which the warnings and map alerts flash, and some bugginess with how bugs evolve and robots move.

[FuryoftheStars]

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.

I'm not asking for faster animations. If just the screen scrolling would be rendered with 120 fps, it will look much smoother despite a lower item update rate of 60 fps. Entities would look sharp while scrolling, with no motion blur. It would make the whole game look more solid. It's difficult to describe to someone who never saw the effect of > 60 fps. It's not the animations, it's the whole impression of the screen.

How scrolling looks fundamentally different with different fps, investigate the results from the various tests on this website: https://testufo.com/
If you have 60 Hz monitor, see the comparison between 30 fps and 60 fps. It's about the same with 60 fps versus 120 fps, only another step better. Scrolling with 60 fps instead of 30 has no flicker but still motion blur, while 120 fps not even has motion blur. It's crystal sharp, always.

TL;DR:

This. I feel like people who say they don't understand why refresh rates are such a big deal have never played a game at 60hz and then 360hz and compared them. It's just more responsive, fluid, and real. It FEELS better.


Longer version:

360hz (or just generally higher than 60...) refresh rates makes it easier to track moving things on the screen, so instead of playing Factorio in the *look* *move* *look* *move* *look* *move* *look* pattern where you're only really able to see what's happening in detail while standing still, it feels like opening your eyes and seeing what's going on for the first time. Suddenly, you can see in better detail and track more easily the biters running after you while you are fleeing and shooting them, or the objects moving on the belts around you, or the inserters swinging their loads around.

As an aside, yes I am aware 360hz monitors are expensive. Since getting one, I genuinely believe it's THE MOST noticeable upgrade and bang for your buck a person can get on a gaming machine in these years of peaked-out video card performance. If I had to choose right now between upgrading my mediocre graphics card or getting a 360hz monitor, I would get the monitor without a second thought, and just turn the graphics down on whatever game I'm playing to hit 360+fps. It really is that big of a difference.

To reiterate - high refresh rates aren't about high quality graphics, they're about responsiveness and feel. Your input is more immediate, and the screen blurs a lot less when you're moving around. As a result, games (including Factorio) feel visually punchier and more immersive.

I completely understand higher FPS for shooters. But this is a top-down sprite based factory builder. 60 FPS is more than enough for while moving. Only times I have to do a look-move-look-move approach is when driving, at night, with a mod that makes nights darker. And frankly, as to the comment that it feels more "real", lack of motion blur actually feels more artificial to me. IRL, as I look around me, things do not stay in perfect clarity.

[blazespinnaker]

so tempting to hijack this thread and just talk about SE.

[Locane]

I completely understand higher FPS for shooters. But this is a top-down sprite based factory builder. 60 FPS is more than enough for while moving. Only times I have to do a look-move-look-move approach is when driving, at night, with a mod that makes nights darker. And frankly, as to the comment that it feels more "real", lack of motion blur actually feels more artificial to me. IRL, as I look around me, things do not stay in perfect clarity.

Sure, I get it. Not everyone thinks it's as amazing as I do, I'm just glad to know you've tried it to see the difference so that you know what you're talking about.

[LuxSublima]

What a week - I'm so happy to see five things:

1. Weekly FFF resumed.
2. An FFF post with both Kovarex and Earendel (who answered my unasked questions to boot).
3. Another FFF post bringing back technical problem-solving details. I learn a lot from these.
4. More "how I approach things" from Kovarex (increase QoL before/while adding features).
5. Additional planets in the expansion!

Space Exploration has been my favorite overhaul mod so far. I look forward to seeing this different take on a similar theme, designed for a smaller playtime, with direct engine support.

Here's one thing I suggest: Let us retain the ability to destroy cliffs somehow, without nukes, before launching the first rocket. When not using mods, I prefer to play vanilla without changing the default settings (for at least one playthrough of the most finely balanced "intended" core experience), and eventually unlocking the ability to get rid of pesky cliffs is very satisfying. Having that feature unlock only later, only via nukes, or disabling cliffs altogether, all seem off the mark. My $0.02. I may be wrong when I see how the other balance changes you're working on play out.

Also, is "Space Age" a working title or the final name for the expansion?

Thank You and keep up the great work, Wube.

[LuxSublima]

so tempting to hijack this thread and just talk about SE.

For real.

But to keep it topic-related: I've wondered if the hiring of Earendel (such a good move) was the reason SE was taken off the "Featured Mods" section of Factorio.com, months ago. I was sad to see that such a great mod was no longer being so prominently promoted. But after the hiring was it too much self-promotion? Or too much in the same vein of the coming expansion? Both make sense.

In any case, *waves* to a fellow Space Explorer.

[FuryoftheStars]

so tempting to hijack this thread and just talk about SE.

For real.

But to keep it topic-related: I've wondered if the hiring of Earendel (such a good move) was the reason SE was taken off the "Featured Mods" section of Factorio.com, months ago. I was sad to see that such a great mod was no longer being so prominently promoted. But after the hiring was it too much self-promotion? Or too much in the same vein of the coming expansion? Both make sense.

In any case, *waves* to a fellow Space Explorer.

The Featured mods section, iirc, uses a combination of mod metrics and randomization to choose what to show. Earendel has been working for them before that part of the mod portal even existed, I believe.

[Xorimuth]

so tempting to hijack this thread and just talk about SE.

For real.

But to keep it topic-related: I've wondered if the hiring of Earendel (such a good move) was the reason SE was taken off the "Featured Mods" section of Factorio.com, months ago. I was sad to see that such a great mod was no longer being so prominently promoted. But after the hiring was it too much self-promotion? Or too much in the same vein of the coming expansion? Both make sense.

In any case, *waves* to a fellow Space Explorer.

The Featured mods section, iirc, uses a combination of mod metrics and randomization to choose what to show. Earendel has been working for them before that part of the mod portal even existed, I believe.

No he’s talking about the 3 mods shown on the factorio.com home page.