Friday Facts #387 - Swimming in lava

[FasterJump]

"Casting" pipes (aqueducts) made from high fusion point metal or ceramic (or just stone? since we already have stone) would make sense. Not sure what to do with offshore pumps though, how about changing the base recipe so it includes stone?

I wonder if calcite will be viable enough to be transported to Nauvis for improved smelting, rather than just transporting finished products.

I feel like most names are still temporary (Giga Drill Breaker anyone?) Not a fan of the "Legendary" "Big Drill" of "Vulcanus".

The screenshot shared in the first page of the comments is inspirational, I only ever used trains for ore transport (even with a 1k SPM factory), looking forward to design a more complex train network.

[DanGio]

Whoa, great work, great FFF...

I don't know how finished the fluids aspects are, but I think molten copper and lava should look more different.
I also wonder if the molten metals "fluids" will get a thicker, slower spread in pipes. All the time i encountered molten metals in mods I thought they spread too easily and too fast, almost as if they were gas.

[Mecejide]

Better yet, from the molten iron and molten copper we can cast more advanced items like iron gear wheels, copper cables, or even steel directly. Recycling an iron gear wheel will still return iron plates but it's less efficient than making the iron plates from molten iron straight up.


And because we want to make specifically the rocket part production easier, the Foundry can also craft the normal recipe of Low density structures. Copper and Steel plates for the Low density structure are much easier to craft too.

Why not go one step further and let foundries cast low density structures directly from the molten metals, without needing any plastic?

[Pirate_Rance]

Cant remember if this was talked about in a previous FFF but it was stated "Tungsten ore is hard to mine and normal mining drills aren't capable of it." is this done via a cap on ore "toughness" that regular miner drills can work on or is there a new system in place for requiring certain machines like we have for the fluid requirement for uranium?

[FasterJump]

On one of the videos, we notice that a drill is oscillating between green and yellow, due to insufficient belt speed. That reminds me of issues where a mining field would produce 99.8% of the theorical production because drills sometimes can't find a gap in the belt for their ore.

Can I suggest increasing the drill buffer? I think that currently it's 0 or 1 ore before the drill stops working. Increasing it to 2 (or even a full ore stack) would streamline ore production. Anyway it doesn't really matter if productivity research is still present mid-game, because outpost production always increases.

Good thing that the new mining drill will allow to faster clean up the almost entirely depleted ore fields.

Lastly, since new planets have great terrain, how about adding "ocean-deep" water to Nauvis, like water that can't be landfilled until late-game (but eventually can be "landfilled" using metal-baded platform tiles, acting like the structure is anchored/floating over the water?

[GregoriusT]

Good thing that the new mining drill will allow to faster clean up the almost entirely depleted ore fields.

Doesn't that get cancelled out partially by the reduction of ore consumption that the more efficient drill does, especially if it has quality enhancements? Also one would THINK overlapping Ranges deplete an Ore Patch faster, but the Drills are cycling through individual Tiles, so the larger Range also spreads out the consumption, cancelling out the speed of overlap depletion, so the only way this speeds up consuming the Patch is by how much Speed the Drill has when mining, which is unrelated to its Range.

That said, the huge Range does have the benefit of being able to place Speed Beacons between Miners, which is vastly more efficient than spamming more Miners, resulting in probably eating up a patch real fast even with the quality ore consumption reduction. Lots of stuff to think about ^^

Edit: shit I realized I misunderstood the "almost depleted" part, yeah overlapping multiple drills over like one tile of Ore will definitely eat it faster. OOPS XD

[gGeorg]

Tungsten has interesting electrical properties, maybe it can make better solar panels, or superconductor based entities that generate 2x the power.

Tungsten has better usage as bullet core. Reason why depleted uranium is sometimes used is reduced price, but tungsten has the top performance. My guess is that you will need tungsten piercing ammo to face superbugs on a Jungle planet.

[Roxor128]

Will the map generation include special checks to ensure that anything minable that spawns near lava is accessible by the new mining drills?

In current Factorio, if you get a small island with some ore on it that a drill won't fit on, you can just use some landfill to expand it enough to fit the drill and a belt to get the results out. However, you said that lava can't be landfilled, which means that if ore spawns near it, there's a chance it'll end up on a small island or on a narrow bridge that the drills won't be able to access, which will infuriate many players.

So, what's the solution?

The way I see it, you'd need to include some sort of buffer zone around lava which ore can't spawn in (at least half the footprint of the biggest mining drill), or if lava goes down late in map generation, which would remove already-placed ore. Maybe graphically this buffer zone could be rendered as something akin to a beach, where the lava has already been and washed away any ore that may have spawned nearby.

[Drury]

On top of that, adding new recipes was made even more difficult due to the recycler, which was already in the game as a part of the quality branch before we started work on any of the planets. If an item has alternative recipes, it's not clear which ingredients should be returned on recycling this item. This makes adding alternative recipes pretty much a no-no.

Man you shouldn't have even mentioned this, it kinda ruins my day that you scrapped alt recipes for quality I love that stuff in mods and this knowledge will just haunt me now for no reason.

[mmmPI]

However, you said that lava can't be landfilled, which means that if ore spawns near it, there's a chance it'll end up on a small island or on a narrow bridge that the drills won't be able to access, which will infuriate many players.

So, what's the solution?

From FFF 386 =>

Over time, the lava has become more of a pivotal part of the gameplay because it provides a lot of new opportunities: It is a new obstacle that you can't landfill (for a long time), a new resource, and a new way to void items.

Lava can be landfilled eventually.

[mmmPI]

On one of the videos, we notice that a drill is oscillating between green and yellow, due to insufficient belt speed. That reminds me of issues where a mining field would produce 99.8% of the theorical production because drills sometimes can't find a gap in the belt for their ore.

Can I suggest increasing the drill buffer? I think that currently it's 0 or 1 ore before the drill stops working. Increasing it to 2 (or even a full ore stack) would streamline ore production. Anyway it doesn't really matter if productivity research is still present mid-game, because outpost production always increases.

This will occurs anyway when the mining drill speed is more than the belt speed, you can use a splitter trick so that the mining drill can go twice as fast before that phenomenon occurs, but if 1 mining drill output is more than the speed of a full belt, you need to output instead in a logistic chest or train wagon directly for less downtime. Changing the buffer would help only if the problem is compressing the belt/finding a spot but you can also do that using belts doing some additionnal sideloading to the output so as to make such buffer outside the mining drill itself.

[mmmPI]

On top of that, adding new recipes was made even more difficult due to the recycler, which was already in the game as a part of the quality branch before we started work on any of the planets. If an item has alternative recipes, it's not clear which ingredients should be returned on recycling this item. This makes adding alternative recipes pretty much a no-no.

Man you shouldn't have even mentioned this, it kinda ruins my day that you scrapped alt recipes for quality I love that stuff in mods and this knowledge will just haunt me now for no reason.

I think this was not the final stage of reflexion that you quoted, i love that stuff in mods too, and when i saw the video with the 4 foundries i immediatly thought there was some alternative receipes since iron gears, iron plates, and copper wire are made from molten iron or copper. Which i think will be handled by the recycler as if they had not been made from molten metal. It made me have "great hopes" that one can choose for an item which receipe to use for the recycling ( the modder's job ) or something that would incorporate such mechanic in the game, at least for "iron plate", if you can make them from molten iron, you could also most likely still make them from iron.

I understood the sentence you quoted as part of the constraint felt by the devs when incoporating those new mechanics, the reason why it's difficult to balances things with alternative receipes, and also giving insight as what will be the limitations, maybe all alt receipes yielding 1 product will have to recycle into the same receipe with the same % because that's a "per-recycled-item" thing. Maybe the limitation is more severe and alt receipes can't have more ingredients than the original, or is less severe and players will just be unable to get back those additionnal ingredients with the recycler.

[Roxor128]

From FFF 386 =>

Over time, the lava has become more of a pivotal part of the gameplay because it provides a lot of new opportunities: It is a new obstacle that you can't landfill (for a long time), a new resource, and a new way to void items.

Lava can be landfilled eventually.

[facepalm] Me big dummy...

[Carnivale]

I think the Foundry looks too good, It puts everything else to shame.

[Edriel]

For me this was the best FFF related to the expansion yet.
I loved everything you designed here: from the foundry to the multiple ways you can use lava as an "ingredient".

I'm getting more and more excited for the next planets reveals.

P.S. The new mining drill is jawdropping btw.

[ThePiachu]

I'm loving this FFF! The new miner is addressing one gripe I had while playing Space Exploration mod for about 900 hours now - that setting up new mining bases is a chore and not that fun. I'm glad the new miners are way more powerful than the existing ones, plus getting more yield so I don't have to cover new patches anytime soon and so on! Can't wait to combine this with Quality as well to really get those resources going!

[Splitframe]

I'm loving this FFF! The new miner is addressing one gripe I had while playing Space Exploration mod for about 900 hours now - that setting up new mining bases is a chore and not that fun. I'm glad the new miners are way more powerful than the existing ones, plus getting more yield so I don't have to cover new patches anytime soon and so on! Can't wait to combine this with Quality as well to really get those resources going!

Hard agree on that one. I am constantly torn between small, but unlimited ore mod which kinda feels like cheating and the normal settings and making new extraction points every 30 minutes.

[Earendel]

Also, I don't remember anymore, but I could have sworn, that you were active on ic2 forums 10 years ago, no? I can't seem to find it anymore.

No, not me. I should probably make a unique avatar but I like this one.

[Tyrannosapien]

Lowkey disappointed from this statement:

If an item has alternative recipes, it's not clear which ingredients should be returned on recycling this item.

Something I've always wanted is for entities to have unique IDs, so that we can create names, descriptions, and other custom properties. If the game can't know what recipe created a particular entity, then it's unlikely the entities are unique.

[GregoriusT]

Something I've always wanted is for entities to have unique IDs, so that we can create names, descriptions, and other custom properties. If the game can't know what recipe created a particular entity, then it's unlikely the entities are unique.

So you want a quite insane amount of Data bloat for every single Entity? This stuff goes up exponentially, even if you only assign IDs to each possibility, you need to know what that Green Circuit that is inside the Red Circuit that is inside the Blue Circuit that is inside the Power Armor, was made of.

So if you have two Recipes for Green Circuits, you suddenly get two Recipes for Red Circuits made of those two different Greens, and 4 Recipes for Blue Circuits where the Reds have been made with one kind of Green and the Greens have been made with the other Recipe, resulting in 4 different Recipes for Power Armor, each with a different kind of Blue Circuit, all of which needs to be kept track of for the Recycler.

Not to mention the ton of alternative Recipes for Modules that just a single alternative Green Circuit Recipe would cause to this proposed system.

Sure from the outside Player perspective it looks like all of the different Greens are the same, they might even stack with each other through some extra data or so, but such a system would be painful to implement.

It would be a lot better to just let the Item itself decide what it recycles into, instead of doing some reverse Recipe lookup, but that might not work well in Marathon Worlds, where you need to account for more expensive Recipes.