Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

[Zaflis]

Otherwise in order to have factory design flexibility we need to push onto belts and that feels like an unnecessary UPS killer.

Alternatively, the resources could build up inside of the recycler and we can pull them from there.

Contrary to popular beliefs, inserters are not that great VS loaders when it comes to UPS. And this system is not loaders but something new. You also need 4 stack inserters to make a compressed belt, 3 if you also use splitter but those aren't UPS free either.

[blazespinnaker]

I don't know if I like the change of endless productivity on labs. It would completely break how SPM work in the game. I know that SPM is very dependant on infinite technologies, and you need to play a world over hundreds of hours if you want to reach a point where you can get the most out of it, but now the more productivity you have, the more SPM you will get, forever. It will no longer be about how optimal a base is, but of how long you've been playing that world.
I like the extra productivity, but in my opinion it shouldn't be endless.

The lab prod won't impact this, but endless prod research anywhere else will, like RCUs (though I thought there was a 300% cap?)

The latter seems like some kind 'of we want you to stop playing' sort of change because 'you're getting too much playability out of so little $$'.

Maybe the video game mafia is putting the squeeze on Kovarex.

[solidzaku]

While I'm not as much of a power player to know how or if these new researches will break SPM's, I have to say I'm MUCH happier about this early game change than I was about the randomness FFF. I think putting certain technologies behind achievements gives the player a bigger sense of agency about their accomplishments, rather than all their knowledge of how to do even basic things being locked behind beakers of red goo. Very supportive of this change!

[AvengerStar]

I'm still apprehensive about quality. I've said my piece about it last thread, so I'll just say that this blog post didn't really do much to address my grander concerns of samey solutions and item bloat. But at the very least y'all acknowledge that a mechanic being optional isn't meant to be an excuse for it being bad. (As long as the mechanic doesn't end up being bad, at least...)

The rest of the stuff is fine. Trigger technologies I feel have some degree of sense, and they'll be quite useful in a mod environment. Perhaps the conditions may be tweaked, but I don't think it's anything that would take too long or many resources to adjust, so I reckon some mass player feedback will iron that out soon after release.

The research queue always being on is a highlight. Took you guys long enough. I've also seen that you're open to queue rearrangement, which is also a much needed improvement. Now to support more slots and shift-clicking a particular research to set it and everything required for it but unresearched to the queue, and I'd say we can call it good.

The productivity researches are an odd addition. Perhaps this is supposed to coincide with quality modules as a post-game option, so folks can use those modules instead of productivity as there's going to be a prod cap. At this rate, I wonder what the productivity modules are even doing in the game.

[BrainlessTeddy]

But the "downside" of involving the community into the development process is that the community is to a certain extend part of the development team. So if the team faces serious backlash when introducing a feature even if it's entirely optional, well you invited the community into the development process so you need to deal with the fact that they will take the chance to change the game to their liking. And tying into your second argument, yes the devs have actually already changed features and sprites *cough* beacon redesign *cough* because of the backlash from the community so if there's enough people threatening to not buy the expansion or just showing their disapproval of a feature they basicly have two options work with the community or take the risk of sticking to their plans.

Yeah, turns out they or especially kovarex is willing to take the risk of sticking with it. Yeah I'm still unsure about the quality thing. Here's my take on your counter arguments:

You still bring up the it's optional argument (first and second to last point) but saying it's optional to use when and where I want feels like beacons in the vanilla game. Kinda optional but there are kinda some minimum amount of uses required to go big. The problem with that is quality still maked different products. Not alike beaconed setups. Having a different product from quality setups makes it even less optional since you need those to build your factory itself. Because buildings, inserters, well everything can have quality. So it's kinda not like beacons. Beacons just upgrade your setups but don't fundamentally change them. Quality fundamentally changes the production and it's products. Tying into your argument of "the best strategy needs to be fun". Yeah and quality is the best strategy. So it really is not optional.

The rest I mostly agree with. Huge numbers make randomness become probability. Checks out. And calculating with that sounds ok for me.

Edit:

But to be honest my main concern with quality is that it's going to make the game even more tedious. Yes, building the quality production lines might be fun and calculating with probabilities is good enough. And recyclers are awesome. But the game is pretty tedious already. Even just getting the whole factory up to assembling machines 3, blue belts, stack inserters etc. is a long and tedious process in and of itself. Then adding pretty rare pristine (legendary) versions of all those top tier items. Yeah idk but I'm just really afraid it's going to be even worse.

I was hoping the expansion would make getting the factory up to top tier items easier. After having a huge factory which is easily expandable and works at top productivity then you can go beyond the limits of the current game like space. Maybe have the main factory feed the space colonies with ressources and stuff so they survive on an "alien world" against tougher enemies with different ressources maybe not include iron and copper to make setting up a base even more complex.

Just an idea: Have the player expand downwards towards the planet core. To get maybe heat for some even crazier energy production to fuel... space elevators or other electricity based space travel methods. Maybe have the player run into different obstacles like heat and melting of conventional steel. And introduce the quality system for these new materials and items.

But don't just slap it on existing stuff and call it a day. Maybe you need like super processing units which have a failure rate or something. What you have shown us up to this point feels like you are focusing on making the current game just longer. More sciences (that's what the planets are for as it seems) more steps to get the factory up to top tier but what I'm missing is actually new stuff.

Why bother with science after space science? Simply said of course. But why not shift the goal of the game to something else than research after having the first rocket launched. Treat it like a production step but introduce a new, bigger goal after reaching space.

Just my ADHD brain hyperfocusing from here on out:

Maybe expand the lore and have the player actually return to whereever he came from. But it turns out the planet system he's on is pretty ressource rich so he starts trading as a one man country. Or not trading but he's still loyal to whoever he was serving before and your goal is to send more and more complex machinery back home. All for naught because he's a patriot.

Have the player crash on purpose in the beginning. He's some sort of drone and is tasked with sending 10 or more spaceships of his yellow kind to other close by planetary systems. And it's all for an effort to find a specific planetary system for humanity of some shit. But the rocket we build in the end of vanilla is not nearly as powerful as the yellow one and can't support another drone. So the player (drone) is forced to exploit the planetary system we landed on to build more interstellar spaceships and build more drones to send of to new planetary systems. The goal could be to find the ressources to build a duplicator for the player (drone) and the advanced materials needed for such a spaceship and it's fuel. Maybe have the ressources randomised on the planets around Nauvis and randomly mixed with different kinds of terrains or enemies so each run needs different strategies to extract those ressources.

I don't have a clue if that would work but going beyond the goals of the first game sound wayyy more interesting than making the current game with it's objectives longer.

[Zaflis]

Omg, the idea of triggers is HORRIBLE!!!
Why would I want to craft random amounts of res to unlock random tech? That doesn't make any sense and it is highly annoying.
Speedrunners will def have problems with it, as many other players who just put some techs on auto research from the get go. Now it will be impossible to do that, cause i need to "explore first". What if I don't like to explore? I like to use my RADARS and never go outside of my cozy base.

Maybe you can add a toggle for that, but that's laughable: you take away one toggle to put another in place.

Are you really complaining about a research for 50 iron plates? You only need to craft like 6 burner mining drills and you got your research complete because each one needs 9 plates. How does that affect speedrunners at all, they normally craft probably triple that amount.

Also building oil refineries before pumpjacks is just a matter of order. The refineries won't even start without that oil.

[blazespinnaker]

Contrary to popular beliefs, inserters are not that great VS loaders when it comes to UPS. And this system is not loaders but something new. You also need 4 stack inserters to make a compressed belt, 3 if you also use splitter but those aren't UPS free either.

So sushi belts and splitters, then? I guess. I'll agree at least that larger containers tend to simplify the puzzles a bit too much.

[Vulkandrache]

Omg, the idea of triggers is HORRIBLE!!!
Why would I want to craft random amounts of res to unlock random tech? That doesn't make any sense and it is highly annoying.
Speedrunners will def have problems with it, as many other players who just put some techs on auto research from the get go. Now it will be impossible to do that, cause i need to "explore first". What if I don't like to explore? I like to use my RADARS and never go outside of my cozy base.

Maybe you can add a toggle for that, but that's laughable: you take away one toggle to put another in place.

Are you really complaining about a research for 50 iron plates? You only need to craft like 6 burner mining drills and you got your research complete because each one needs 9 plates. How does that affect speedrunners at all, they normally craft probably triple that amount.

Go and play Nullius for a few hours.
My beginning of the end was when the mod forced me to set up rubber production, completely locking up the techtree otherwise.
Making the rubber isnt complicated but its multistep, almost all chemplants and fluids, which are zero fun to build with compared to belts.
It took about 40 minutes to plan and make.
The ~50 pieces of rubber then sat on the belt for another 3 hours until i actualy needed it.

While not good enough at programming to fix this shit i did manage to replace all the milestones with "craft 1 iron plate".
Should i ever return to that mod thats what im going to use instead.

Also building oil refineries before pumpjacks is just a matter of order. The refineries won't even start without that oil.

Except maybe i want to build the production already.
Maybe i want to fit a trainstration next to it. Do you expect me to to build all the piping around some ghosts?

But if we really want to have a discussion about this:
I hate the way prerequisites are handeled in most of the techtree.
Tech should requite tech that makes sense and not tech that unlocks what i need to make the items.
Basic example:
Red ammo tech should only require yellow ammo tech not steel.
Red magazines costing steel is irrelevant.

[BrainlessTeddy]

But don't just slap it (quality system) on existing stuff and call it a day. Maybe you need like super processing units which have a failure rate or something. What you have shown us up to this point feels like you are focusing on making the current game just longer. More sciences (that's what the planets are for as it seems) more steps to get the factory up to top tier but what I'm missing is actually new stuff.

Also about focusing on the current mechanics and the vanilla experience: I got the same feeling when you where talking about trigger technologies and productivity research. If it serves a real goal like getting faster to a rocket or something else I'd be fine with that but it seems like you're trying to change the core game which kinda feels too late to do. It's an expansion which I thought would expand on the vanilla game. Not an overhaul which changes the vanilla game.

[Anachrony]

My beginning of the end was when the mod forced me to set up rubber production, completely locking up the techtree otherwise.
Making the rubber isnt complicated but its multistep, almost all chemplants and fluids, which are zero fun to build with compared to belts.
It took about 40 minutes to plan and make.
The ~50 pieces of rubber then sat on the belt for another 3 hours until i actualy needed it.

Rubber is used in the next research pack, plus numerous factory building supplies. It's not just a random unnecessary intermediate, and you wouldn't have been able to procrastinate it for much longer no matter how the tech tree was organized. The tech tree is always frozen when you've researched everything else and don't have the materials for the next research pack. It happened in a slightly different order, but it was inevitably about to happen anyway. It sounds like your actual problem is that you don't like fluids, in which case that was never going to be the mod for you, because there's a ton of chemistry, and that's not going to stop. Nothing about the Space Age expansion has indicated that it will have as much fluid crafting as overhaul mods do. Your anger at trigger techs seem misplaced.

[Locane]

But being stuck forever in RNG is not Factorio, to us.

Please only speak for yourself and let Factorio staff collect feedback and weight the significance themselves.
Personally, I'm fine with the new functionality.

Yeah good callout - I was speaking for the dissenters of the proposed Quality system. I think it's fair to say that being stuck in RNG is not Factorio to the people who don't like the Quality system as it's been proposed.

[MrDayne]

I don't know if I like the change of endless productivity on labs. It would completely break how SPM work in the game. I know that SPM is very dependant on infinite technologies, and you need to play a world over hundreds of hours if you want to reach a point where you can get the most out of it, but now the more productivity you have, the more SPM you will get, forever. It will no longer be about how optimal a base is, but of how long you've been playing that world.
I like the extra productivity, but in my opinion it shouldn't be endless.

The lab prod won't impact this, but endless prod research anywhere else will, like RCUs (though I thought there was a 300% cap?)

The latter seems like some kind 'of we want you to stop playing' sort of change because 'you're getting too much playability out of so little $$'.

Maybe the video game mafia is putting the squeeze on Kovarex.

You're right, productivity on labs don't count as consumed science. I don't have issues on other endless prod techs, as long as they don't put it into everything. Past a certain point you won't see much of a change, and I'm sure the extra complexity of having other planets will more than make up for it.
Labs were my real concern, since extra prod directly increases science per minute, but not science consumed per minute as you pointed out.
By the way, I completely disagree with your take on "we want you to stop playing". I don't see how any of these things would make me play less.

[blazespinnaker]

I don't see how any of these things would make me play less.

There's a pretty big culture around creating blueprints and factories that optimize SPM.

Let's say for example there is infinite prod research on RCU, and like you say, just play for a long time and you've got massive SPM, regardless of how clever your factory is designed.

This could undermine that whole sub culture and ruin a big part of the game. Yes, some people will enjoy racking up that infinite SPM I guess, but anyone could probably do it just by leaving their computer on overnight.

I had a similar experience with SE mod, with the whole teleporty thing. Once I get to that level, I'm like, this is unbalanced. If I get the teleporty thing, the game becomes boring. If I don't get it, I'm just playing some made up game in my head. Not really a shared experience with the rest of the SE community.

It'd be like having some bug/hack which makes speedruns irrelevant.

But, maybe the description was a little misleading. Maybe it's not really 'infinite productivity research' and it's actually all capped at 300%. Something seems wrong.

[Anachrony]

But, maybe the description was a little misleading. Maybe it's not really 'infinite productivity research' and it's actually all capped at 300%. Something seems wrong.

The overall 300% cap applies to this productivity bonus too (and is probably the reason it was added). If you somehow manage to exceed it then it might free you up to replace a productivity module with a speed module, so there is still a benefit.

Like all "infinite" research it's not actually infinite. There is no predetermined maximum, but the cost increases exponentially for each level of the tech, so at a certain point it becomes impossible to proceed.

[Miamato]

I would like to leave some short feedback on the quality topic.

In general it makes sense to implement crafting better items by some possibility. But what I find really awkward is that during deconstruction of Tier 1 item you can get higher tier components. If you watch latest animation with factory sample, you can get Tier 4 components from Tier 1 item. This doesn't seem right to me.
From my point of view deconstruction should always return some part of components either same tier or lower tier in comparison to initial item. Probably if randomness is introduced - there should be chance either get each component during decomposition, or get 'damaged' ie - downgraded version, or completely destroyed part, when you get nothing nothing.
I understand that it's a game, but still it somewhat always represented realistic model of assembly lines on factories, and I doubt it's believable or realistic that by tearing apart some machinery you could extract better components than it was initially built from.

[blazespinnaker]

The overall 300% cap applies to this productivity bonus too (and is probably the reason it was added). If you somehow manage to exceed it then it might free you up to replace a productivity module with a speed module, so there is still a benefit.

o'rly? I missed where that was said. Do you have a source you can cite?

All I saw was this:

This is also why we created an overall machine limit on productivity to be +300% (modifiable by mods if needed), so even when some mods add machines with more module slots and/or better productivity modules, it will always be prevented from getting broken accidentally.

I assumed by 'overall machine limit' it actually means overall machine limit (prod research included) and that you can't exceed it.

Like all "infinite" research it's not actually infinite. There is no predetermined maximum, but the cost increases exponentially for each level of the tech, so at a certain point it becomes impossible to proceed.

Well, it's either infinite or it isn't, I believe.

I suspect the answer is that it isn't infinite, that there is a 300% over all machine cap, and the prod research is just a way to use quality/speed/green (heh) modules instead of prod modules for whatever you prod research.

Or maybe it is infinite, but it's like asymptotic. That'd be cool.

[Anachrony]

Well, it's either infinite or it isn't, I believe.

Infinite research is already a concept in the base game. Look up how it works. In general it's not actually infinite, especially the ones with exponential costs. Any new infinite research is going to be similar in that respect.

[blazespinnaker]

Huh, I didn't know that. So I can't keep researching, say, laser bonus?

[Anachrony]

Huh, I didn't know that. So I can't keep researching, say, laser bonus?

It has an exponential cost. You can only double it so many times before it breaks stuff and it's effectively impossible to proceed. The exact point at which that happens is not defined, but it happens.

In addition, they already mentioned there will be the 300% cap on the productivity bonus you can achieve, so even if you had an absurdly high productivity bonus from research, all it would accomplish is to allow you to swap in other modules instead of productivity modules.

[blazespinnaker]

In addition, they already mentioned there will be the 300% cap on the productivity bonus you can achieve, so even if you had an absurdly high productivity bonus from research, all it would accomplish is to allow you to swap in other modules instead of productivity modules.

Agreed.