Friday Facts #397 - Factoriopedia

[Nidan]

And I noticed something else about the unlocked by in the screenshots. The Foundry is unlocked by itself. Have I misunderstood something or is this a mistake?

Looks normal to me, foundry (tech) unlocks foundry (recipe) which creates foundry (item) which places foundry (entity). In 1.1, techs that only unlock a single thing also tend to follow this pattern.

[dmsilev]

Small power poles will now be unlocked by Electronics? So will something be changing about how the first couple of research items be handled? Because without any sort of power poles, right now it's kind of difficult to run the labs....

I guess I could see hand "crafted" research being a thing, with labs also arriving at Electronics to enable automation of research.

As of now, you need to craft 10 Copper Plates to unlock Electronics, see FFF-376

Ah, right, thank you for the reminder. I had forgotten about that change.

[Panzerknacker]

I hope the Pedia only shows unlocked stuff and hides everything that's still locked.

[malecord]

Awesome!

Now what we really miss is a british actor reading a quote whenever a tech is researched.

[Stevearchie]

Love this!

Perhaps one other useful bit of information to include would be what building the item can be produced in (for example whether the item can be made in an assembler, a smelter, a chemical plant, etc). Perhaps this can go in the same box as the "unlocked by" section.

Edit: I see one of the items shows a "made in" section. I think that would be useful information for all items!

[Hellpest]

Wondering how this will work for mods that add multiple recipes for one item.

[picklock]

Looks normal to me, foundry (tech) unlocks foundry (recipe) which creates foundry (item) which places foundry (entity). In 1.1, techs that only unlock a single thing also tend to follow this pattern.

You're right about the naming, but as far as I've seen in the FFF, the corresponding research packages are listed under the research image when research packages are needed to unlock. However, this is not the case with the Foundry. That's why I got suspicious.

[kizrak]

So happy reading about Factoriopedia!

One suggestion, which you may have already considered, having bi-directional links between relevant Factoriopedia sections and "tips and tricks" pages. For example, the "tips and tricks" for power poles, or trains, or liquids might link to the Factoriopedia sections on poles, trains/stations, or pumps; and those Factoriopedia sections would link back to the relevant "tips and tricks" pages. As an engineer, I love bi-directional links in all my technical documentation.

Amazing post, very much look forward to it — Thanks!

P.S. Bonus idea, could there be a way to link to specific Factoriopedia and "tips and tricks" pages via a link in chat? For example, I'm trying to show a friend something, and I could just link to the specific Factoriopedia or "tips and tricks" page in game-chat, and they could click it and see what I'm trying to show them?

[AileTheAlien]

Feature request: a button to show a tree of sub-components.

Long:
Instead of just clicking each item individually from the recipes, could there be a button to show a tree of all the sub-components, sub-sub-components, etc? Like, if you click on green circuits, it should show iron plates and copper wire, which expand into a lower level of iron ore and copper plates, and the bottom is copper ore.

(Going the opposite direction, to show what a thing is used in, and then what those are used in, would probably branch too much to be useful, and just clog up the whole screen. So skip that one, IMO.)

Why:
Clicking through each recipe individually to find all the sub-components I need is really cumbersome. If I'm planning out a smaller factory and/or train station, I want to see all the items at a glance, and don't really care about the stats, flavor-text, etc that's in the factoripedia. I just need to know that for this station to produce blue circuits, I need many other sub-sub-sub...assemblers etc.

[jaenster]

It might be a nice addition to make this work with an extra screen, like it pops up from the game. I feel like the % of people that play factorio with multiple screens is very high, and people look these things up on their second screen anyway right now.

And it maybe an gateway to actual multiple screen setups. I would like to see a viewpoint somewhere else on the plant (or another) on my second screen anyway

[AileTheAlien]

I like this idea. For me, a real game changer was this tool that can calculate a whole supply chain and the needed factories for it:
https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm ... ircuit:f:1

Maybe, it is worth an idea to add a similar functionality also in the Factoriopedia, so for example provide an extra button "Show supply chain" which shows a graph of all raw ingredients that are necessary to craft this product.

Yes, this! I missed your post earlier - I want supply-chain info! (Although calculating items per minute is also a nice bonus. : )

[Zaflis]

Don't worry you can just ALT + Left click practically anything

Sooo... default keybinding for changing Alt mode from left alt to right alt when? I have already done that long time ago (And i feel very sorry for new players who don't!), it's annoying if Alt+Tab turns off Alt mode. Probably more so with new keybind like this for Factoriopedia.

[BraveCaperCat]

Don't worry you can just ALT + Left click practically anything

Sooo... default keybinding for changing Alt mode from left alt to right alt when? I have already done that long time ago, it's annoying if Alt+Tab turns off Alt mode. Probably more so with new keybind like this for Factoriopedia.

No one uses the alleged ALT+TAB anymore. It is said that all who used it switched to using WIndow Button instead! (Spooky noises)

[Svip]

One problem: Alt+LMB will be unusable on Linux because it's binded to "reposition window". Not sure is it possible to override... Alt+RMB also have binding for window resizes.

Sounds like this is something specific to your window manager, not Linux as a whole. In my case I have those same actions bound using the meta (Windows) key which generally shouldn't collide with any other shortcuts.

It's Linux Mint default bindings. I'll need to check Ubuntu later.

It's also the default for XFCE. But not to worry, all key bindings can be modified in Factorio.

[Thorgeous]

Great addition!

One little piece of feedback: I noticed that the title for the power pole has a tiny 2x in front of it. This probably means that the recipe produces 2 items for the given inputs. Placing this information in the title makes it rather easy to miss. This was already a bit of a problem for me in the vanilla tooltips, too.

Totally agree and wanted to point out this also becomes and issue with recipes that have bi-products. This is very common in overhaul mods. This may have a resolution but the light oil example doesn't show the volumes produced. If combining item and recipes this leads to lots of tricky situations. I suspect the Devs have thought this through, but worth noting.

[jjcf89]

One problem: Alt+LMB will be unusable on Linux because it's binded to "reposition window". Not sure is it possible to override... Alt+RMB also have binding for window resizes.

Sounds like this is something specific to your window manager, not Linux as a whole. In my case I have those same actions bound using the meta (Windows) key which generally shouldn't collide with any other shortcuts.

It's Linux Mint default bindings. I'll need to check Ubuntu later.

It's also the default for XFCE. But not to worry, all key bindings can be modified in Factorio.

Ubuntu Gnone is Win+LMB. I never knew this before so learned a new hotkey

[pleegwat]

Instead of just clicking each item individually from the recipes, could there be a button to show a tree of all the sub-components, sub-sub-components, etc? Like, if you click on green circuits, it should show iron plates and copper wire, which expand into a lower level of iron ore and copper plates, and the bottom is copper ore.

May be good to also allow expanding individual components.

[Merssedes]

Don't worry you can just ALT + Left click practically anything

Sooo... default keybinding for changing Alt mode from left alt to right alt when? I have already done that long time ago, it's annoying if Alt+Tab turns off Alt mode. Probably more so with new keybind like this for Factoriopedia.

No one uses the alleged ALT+TAB anymore. It is said that all who used it switched to using SHIFT+TAB instead! (Spooky noises)

Should I consider myself oldschool then because I still use Alt+Tab?

[Toguro21]

Anyone notice how it looks like quality is going to be a separate mod?

I really hope that it's not and it's just the base game locked behind researched technology. I know several people are against it, but unless its standardized as a base part of the game, I believe it's going to be frowned upon by many base designers for whether or not your SPM was with quality enabled or disabled.... this should be part of the base game so that you optimize your base while dumping tons of resources into obtaining the the best quality everything to optimize your SPM instead of just a new division between quality / non-quality bases.

[Qon]

Anyone notice how it looks like quality is going to be a separate mod?

I really hope that it's not and it's just the base game locked behind researched technology. I know several people are against it, but unless its standardized as a base part of the game, I believe it's going to be frowned upon by many base designers for whether or not your SPM was with quality enabled or disabled.... this should be part of the base game so that you optimize your base while dumping tons of resources into obtaining the the best quality everything to optimize your SPM instead of just a new division between quality / non-quality bases.

It is a separate mod, it is separate both from base and from SA. And it requires purchase of SA.

Also feel free to not use it if peer pressure is your highest value. But no one is going to care about you playing "unmodded".