Friday Facts #387 - Swimming in lava

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-387

[SnowZyDe]

Omg

[Shadow_Man]

Another Friday teaser.
I'll burn a chair before I get to 2.0

[Engimage]

Really nice!

One question to clarify:
The new mining drill has an insane coverage area. But on your video several of them are definitely covering multiple resources while still outputting single resource. Does that mean mining drills are getting a built-in filter?
Or have I missed this one in the 1.1 game now?

[Raphaello]

Great! I especially appreciate you are focusing on fun and are not afraid to cut out features that complicate things for the sake of complication.

[KvasDimas]

Why didn't they give us 5 or 3? It's rude to give four.
Me on the forth planet.

Screenshot 2023-12-01 142028.png (311.24 KiB) Viewed 14062 times

[Svip]

The new mining drill has an insane coverage area. But on your video several of them are definitely covering multiple resources while still outputting single resource. Does that mean mining drills are getting a built-in filter?

Look at the two bottom left drills, they have mixed output. The one on the left outputs both coal and iron, while the one on the right outputs both uranium and iron.

[Tooster]

Yeaaah, nice big bulky machines, they fit perfectly, really like the foundry idea!

On another note of feedback — have you noticed that (all) mining drill's digging sound is very dull and almost as if it were of a low quality??? Almost as if it was recorded with low quality microphone. It is pretty apparent on the second video you linked, where the drill frame moving is nice and crisp, but the digging sounds sound as if video quality on YT dropped to 144p. It contrasts so much when I play it on repeat.

[IForgotMyName]

It's a bit of a shame that interesting mechanics are being removed to maintain the pace of progress. I think they should be added, but for a different game mode, for example "Marathon". At the moment, this is a rather crude mode, so it would be nice to implement non-standard complication of recipes. This will give Factorio veterans a fairly challenging experience, while newbies can ignore the complications and still get a fairly full-fledged experience

[aka13]

I really really like the big miner, the ore-to-component, and general obvious mining outpost fatigue reduction. This is the weakest point of vanilla and SE right now.
The graphics are also amazing. Really looking forward to it.

[mmmPI]

What a pleasant read ! Very hyped by the foundry ! Looks great ! And more importantly sounds like very appealing to use and fitting the gameplay !

Nice to learn a little more about the philosophy of the expansion, the reason for the number of planets, the reasonning for their theme and gameplay implication.

Nice to see how lava is used, the offshore pump getting additionnal function, and the way inserters just throw things into lava i like it !

I like the Big mining drill, but maybe the name is a little offensive for the mining drill and maybe it should be called tall mining drill, or improved-footprint-mining drill. And no that's not serious but since all the choosen name had gotten criticism and we got invited to do so for this one i tried my best.

I like the idea that othet planets shouldn't just be mining outpost, and i feel it's fun to think about the environment differently than in nauvis with the no water no crude oil no uranium rule, it really makes for good way to push a challenge like an independant "level" could feel. But you still can bring back things from Vulcanus to Nauvis, it's not just a disconnect "level".
I think it makes perfect sense then to try and reduce the feeling of repetition that may arise if one need to do 4 time "the same base" by twisting the rules to make them different, or adding shortcut, like direct sulfuric acid harvesting. The unique science pack feeling like one reward for passing the level, and the big mining drill like another one so that you don't just go there for science because the game told you to, but also to get tungsten because that's how the good drills are made.

Good to know it is possible to recycle iron plate albeit at a prohibitive cost, it make more sense than crafting basic ammo to recycle them in order to increase quality of iron plate.

Good to know it is possible to use molten copper or iron directly to make gears or wire, that is the case in several mods, and has always felt natural to me, knowing that the recycling of those is going to be handled in the expansion is a good news because it's hard/impossible for modders to make it work all together when one of the appeal of playing modded is to have the freedom to pick and select a personnal taste combo. Knowing that the mechanics will be in the engine is making me have great hopes

Same with the mechanic of depleting ressources only sometimes to make ore patch last longer !

Hoping we learn about the "sounds of factorio" soon

[authorized411]

Better yet, the resource drain % is affected by quality of the drill

Quality?

Do tell.

[MEOWMI]

Those foundry audiovisuals are just pure candy! The drill looks amazing too.

I keep saying it, there was never any real doubt, but every FFF just keeps showing how utterly impressive the expansion is.

[Kyralessa]

Something I started to wonder upon reading:

Are the new planets (practically) infinite size like Nauvis?

(I know that in the Space Exploration mod many planets are quite small, but core mining ensures that you can never run completely out of resources and get stuck, as long as you have at least one core mining drill.)

How will this be handled in the Factorio expansion?

[silentium_noxe]

I think that developers make factorio more casual with this DLC. I consider myself to be a player who loves hardcore. My default game has the next preset biters 600/600, expensive recipes, and a multiplier of tech x10 or more if I want to play harder with biters.

The default preset of marathon passing for 3 hours. I'm silent about the normal preset. Trying to speed up the gameplay to launch the player into space only simplifies a lot of mechanics. I didn't come here to walk on the lawn and build a factory. I can do this in Satisfactory. The war with biters is the main engine that forces gameplay. The fear of being destroyed is the main reason why I want to research new technologies. What sense of 1M green circuits if I can't feel the challenge? When I have lasers and uran weapons, biters become too easy.

I don't need more planets. I need more hardest biters, more smarter, more extended gameplay for the war. Integrate rampant to the game natively

[againey]

Quality? Do tell.

Friday Facts #375 - Quality

[Inscius]

Calcite is a new resource used as a cleaning/purifying ingredient in various recipes like sulfuric acid neutralization, lava processing, or melting iron/copper ore.

Does this mean we need to ship calcite to Nauvis if we want to use the more efficient smelting recipes there? Or will there be some way to obtain calcite on planets other than Vulcanus?

I really like calcite from a game design/flavour point of view. The other natural resources we have are all pretty basal, so it's nice to have a material that works more like a supplement. To use a food analogy, it's like adding some spice to the meat and potatoes that are iron/oil etc.

Also, these buildings have me wondering what the other planets will offer to dissuade me from going to Vulcanus first every game.

[grzybk]

Yeaaah, nice big bulky machines, they fit perfectly, really like the foundry idea!

On another note of feedback — have you noticed that (all) mining drill's digging sound is very dull and almost as if it were of a low quality??? Almost as if it was recorded with low quality microphone. It is pretty apparent on the second video you linked, where the drill frame moving is nice and crisp, but the digging sounds sound as if video quality on YT dropped to 144p. It contrasts so much when I play it on repeat.

Yeah it's quite jarring to me too. I think it's fine for regular drills since you usually have at least 10 so they all mix together.

[IForgotMyName]

This FFF pleasantly surprised me. I was quite pessimistic about the idea of an interplanetary factory. But fortunately, the developers really care about balance, so eventually (hopefully) the planets will be more unique than "mining outposts", and at the same time have interacting mechanics, rather than being several isolated game sessions

[IForgotMyName]

Does this mean we need to ship calcite to Nauvis if we want to use the more efficient smelting recipes there?

This is a (my favorite) screenshot of the factory shown in FFF 380. Above the hotbar there is a station with a Calcite icon, and to the left with Orange and Pink Science icons. So the developers have definitely thought about how resources can be used on other planets