Friday Facts #380 - Remote view

[Loewchen]

777.png
changes in the duration of day and night and the power of panels for planets

Im curious why there is a differentiation between "solar power in atmosphere" and the "solar power in space", anyone knows?

Ask someone from venus

[Vulkandrache]

If you place a blueprint and it doesn't change tint you know that it's not being built without having to wait for the bots to deliver everything else or interrogate the little out-of-stock blinker on the bottom of the HUD.

I was expecting that answer but i still cant believe someone actualy wrote this.
We are talking about seconds of "prewarning" in a game played on a scale of hours, days or even weeks.

If the blueprint is small enough that you can comprehend it on sight then you dont need extra confirmation.
And if something is not available you still need to run to the mall to fix it regardless.

If the blueprint is large then you will totaly be able to tell which of the 15k entities isnt changing tint right now.

I would be on board with this if the color of the ghost did an actual change.
But from some blue to some other blue, yeah no.

If we are going with this then the passive ghosts need to be way less noticeable then whats planned
while the delivering one's need to jump into your face in bright red or pink.
Or idealy let me define my own color and saturation for this without needing a mod.

Speed runners in all categories regularly place belts and/or poles to make sure that things bots are placing can start working immediately.

Im not a speedrunner but if we are designing parts of the game based on the needs of small groups then i have some ideas.

[mmmPI]

Im not a speedrunner but if we are designing parts of the game based on the needs of small groups then i have some ideas.

Maybe you should post them in the suggestions and ideas part of the forum ? So far it look like your main criticism is that the change of color for things being delivered is useless, while also saying it should be more visible.

[Qon]

Something not mentioned yet is picking up items (normally by pressing "F" while standing near items on the ground or on a belt).

Will that be possible to do remotely? To fix situations where items have accidentally entered the wrong belt, for example, because underground was placed sideways in front of a splitter?

I could see items being marked for pickup, but I wonder if this is feasible on transport belts.

Deconstruction planner > Ctrl + Z

But item-on-ground exists as filter, so an item-on-belt filter added would be useful for this.

[Qon]

If you place a blueprint and it doesn't change tint you know that it's not being built without having to wait for the bots to deliver everything else or interrogate the little out-of-stock blinker on the bottom of the HUD.

I was expecting that answer but i still cant believe someone actualy wrote this.
We are talking about seconds of "prewarning" in a game played on a scale of hours, days or even weeks.

Some kind of instant feedback when building exclusively with the remote building tools is nice to have. If the bots and I are both far away then the biggest benefit might actually just be that it feels better to play if you get some instant feedback and don't have to wait for a minute until the bots arrive that things are happening. People will play remotely more, and even if the world lasts for weeks the gameplay loop of placing stuff and doing actions second to second is what the player is actually experiencing.

If the blueprint is small enough that you can comprehend it on sight then you dont need extra confirmation.
And if something is not available you still need to run to the mall to fix it regardless.

If the blueprint is large then you will totaly be able to tell which of the 15k entities isnt changing tint right now.

If I place a blueprint down, seeing the whole thing light up means I know I can move my focus somewhere else. The fact that a huge blueprint can't be inspected like this as easily doesn't mean it won't be useful for smaller blueprints. For that you will still need to look at how the building progresses. But it might take many minutes for the bots to complete the whole blueprint. So the entire blueprint won't lit up immediately anyways. And if it takes that long to build it, then it is more reasonable to use the map view to see actual build completion with the lag time of maybe tens of seconds. But if it's just a screen then bots might build the entire thing in 1 roundtrip and if it then completes in 1 second after 1 minute then it's kind of annoying to wait that time to confirm it worked out.

[melind]

If you place a blueprint and it doesn't change tint you know that it's not being built without having to wait for the bots to deliver everything else or interrogate the little out-of-stock blinker on the bottom of the HUD.

I was expecting that answer but i still cant believe someone actualy wrote this.
We are talking about seconds of "prewarning" in a game played on a scale of hours, days or even weeks.

If the blueprint is small enough that you can comprehend it on sight then you dont need extra confirmation.
And if something is not available you still need to run to the mall to fix it regardless.

If the blueprint is large then you will totaly be able to tell which of the 15k entities isnt changing tint right now.

I think there are definitely some use cases for both large and small bases where I expect it to be helpful. For example if you've used large blueprints before, you've probably discovered there is a bot assignment limit. Having a tint for parts of the blueprint will make it clear exactly what the bots are trying to build (and sometimes more importantly what they aren't trying to build) and should make it easier to work through these kinds of problems.

That said, I actually think the most useful spot will be early game with smaller blueprints where you really want to make sure a blueprint will be fully completed before moving on to the next blueprint. Being able to just look at the blueprint you've placed down and make sure the whole thing is assigned before moving onto the next is much more straightforward process and information we actually don't have at all right now. It will be interesting to see exactly how all this will work with the changes to bot assignment in FFF #374, but its definitely better player information and the readability looks good to me.

[Qon]

777.png
changes in the duration of day and night and the power of panels for planets

Im curious why there is a differentiation between "solar power in atmosphere" and the "solar power in space", anyone knows?

Amazing picture

Thought of the same picture. It's so memorable and cool. An extreme environment, one of the only pictures taken from that surface, the color palette making it very alien but with still recognizable ground. And then the lander itself, the only artificial part in view. Actually basically in any view at all maybe?

[computeraddict]

Im not a speedrunner but if we are designing parts of the game based on the needs of small groups then i have some ideas.

About 12.4% of the people who have finished the game on Steam have also done spoonless. That's a pretty big chunk. Speedrunning streams and VODs are also some of the most consumed Factorio content. It's moderately popular, certainly enough for the developers to give thought to. Like many other things that are "useless" for a slow play style because they only save fractions of a second or a click or two per operation, everyone benefits from the attention given to making speed running more accessible because giving attention to it results in an overall smoother UX for everyone.

[ryanalpasta]

I was quietly screaming throughout this entire post. Every single little change I was like "Holy crap that's so SMOOTH I love that you can just DO that'. This coming from somebody who has dabbled in modding only to fix little things I wanted to see work. It just really feels like you're hitting just the most satisfying "little" changes over and over again. Obviously some poeple are gonna prefer however they got used to it originally, but I think your before/after posts really speak for themselves, and there's little harm in casual QOL changes like the changed tint on blueprints when bots are on the way, which is SO satisfying. You didn't mention this specifically, but I assume there will be a shortcut to jump between planet views, like in space exploration currently (N for satelite), maybe even a "back" button, kinda like alt-tab on Windows. It would be familiar to a lot of users of Windows and would feel really natural in flipping between locations.

[FritzHugo3]

Extreme helpfull nice things comming. Not needs a ton of qol support mods for whater buildings and many more.
Thats verry good.

So i really hope you have work too at the extreme performance problems with train signals and power pool netweorks. It makes no fun to play with 30 fps.

But its one of the greatest game i layed ever. 4.600 houres playtime now. And i learned not out. I learn after this long time new things in the game. Its fantastic.

[Twisted_Code]

This is why now you can just "mine" entities remotely to mark them for deconstruction.

Oh you magnificent bastards. You have no idea how long I've been wanting this and didn't even realize it because I got used to the "current way" of doing it.
... What's the ETA for the expansion again? I really need this (and the rest of your QoL, but especially this) in the base game ASAP

Touching up the appearance of ghost entities had internally been haunting our minds

I see what you did there.

[myridium]

If you able to change recipies in assambler and direction of belts right from the beginning will kill the fun of having to walk trough your tiny factory. (remote building is not a thing you have to research for bots first). The difference between RTS and WSAD-controlled character fades out if remote actions are available on early game stages.

Completely agree. It will totally change the feel of the game to me, in a negative way. I think it should all require logistics robots.

[Gergely]

I also have to say that I don't like the instant remote rotation. You go through all the trouble to make remote view better (ghost items, remote configuration) and of all things rotation is to be left out. It's these sort of inconsistencies that taint the experience the same way as mentioned in the previous FFF.

Also, I think there is something satisfying about watching the bots do it for you.

[Niyu.Cuatro]

I have to say. Those clover leaf intersections taking advantage of the new bridges look really nice.

[Philip017]

I hope the level of tint is adjustable, because with that level of tint i cant see anything under it. personally i would remove the tint completely as i never had any issues distinguishing the difference between ghosts and regular buildings.

I'm curious why you'd need to be able to see the ground tiles under the ghosts?

ground tiles, no, but the ghost entity its self is invisible as the blue overpowers everything and i cant see what i am missing easily. ex which inserter, what belt, which assembler, imo leave the colors alone so i can see what type i am missing

[Tertius]

I have to say. Those clover leaf intersections taking advantage of the new bridges look really nice.

Definitely! I tell you what, the first thing I will do after downloading the expansion will not be creating a new map. I will be creating a new sandbox map in god mode and map editor. Then I will create such clover leaf intersections in the map editor and run a few trains through it, just to see this myself.

And then I will start a new regular map and start the game from scratch.

[FuryoftheStars]

I hope the level of tint is adjustable, because with that level of tint i cant see anything under it. personally i would remove the tint completely as i never had any issues distinguishing the difference between ghosts and regular buildings.

I'm curious why you'd need to be able to see the ground tiles under the ghosts?

ground tiles, no, but the ghost entity its self is invisible as the blue overpowers everything and i cant see what i am missing easily. ex which inserter, what belt, which assembler, imo leave the colors alone so i can see what type i am missing

Hm, ok. For me it's the opposite. The old style it was often hard for me to see everything snd know what is there and if I left any gaps. I use the blue tint ghost mod as a result because that makes it easier for me.

[dyllooo]

I feel like this won't get seen because it's an older fff but why have a remote view at all? Couldn't you just throw the top left gui into map view and call it a day? Since we already use the map and radars as a remote view anyways?

[SupplyDepoo]

Couldn't you just throw the top left gui into map view and call it a day?

Good idea. But they already thought of that, if you read the full FFF.

But once we started playing, it became obvious, that this system is horrible.

The solution was to integrate everything together. Whenever you open the remote view (the map), it always shows the planet/platform selection on the left, so you can use remote view normally and do everything, but also switch between places.

[MRIYA]

I found it hard to operate multipal sipders at the same time, since romoters bounded to different spiders look identical. Would it be cool to colorcode them like with trains and players? (btw, sorry for my bad words, I'm not a native speaker