Friday Facts #397 - Factoriopedia

[pleegwat]

For inserters, you could put in that it transfers "Up to N items/sec", thus implying that it won't reach that in practical situations where belts are involved.

[Tertius]

Inserter item/s is no primary value. It isn't defined in the game engine. It results from the environment the inserter is used in. To obtain it, you need to establish some environment, then measure the value. Such a value cannot be shown in an encyclopedia whose values are based on the ingame defines. The wiki contains a section with different values where different environments were measured by users, but as far as I see, the Factoriopedia is a visualization of the defines in the game engine and contains no extra user supplied values.

A really cool thing would be an automated measurement within the game engine. For example, if you hover over an inserter, the game could show the measured throughput of that inserter during its lifetime so far, while the inserter was active and actually either grabbing things, swinging, or putting things away. However, I guess the game engine doesn't count items transferred or time active.

[FuryoftheStars]

I guess I wouldn't care which was displayed as the exact item/s doesn't concern me, and I really only care about rotational speed in so far as being able to see that one is faster, or the same speed as, another (which also could be obtained from item/s).

But as pointed out, the exact item/s is going to be different between each setup. Chest to chest would be fastest. But how do you measure burner or yellow inserter from blue belt to anything? If the belt isn't full, then these have a hard time even grabbing something. There are actually literally some belt loadouts that they'll never be able to grab from. Additionally, inserters can operate at different speeds taking from a belt depending on the layout.

Inserters Burner can't take.jpg (76.78 KiB) Viewed 3795 times

Inserters Different speeds.jpg (49.77 KiB) Viewed 3795 times

Figure, too, that mods can change belt and inserter speeds, and stack count would affect this. You could live monitor and display the items/s, but this would only be its current operational speed, not its max, and is a UPS drain. You could just calculate the theoretical max going chest to chest and say "up to", but to me, this isn't any more helpful for every other situation than being given the rotational speeds. And trying to come up with the formulas that pre-calculate the items/s for all possible scenarios, hoping you don't miss any or that mods don't introduce new ones is just a pita that, imo, is not worth the effort.

[aka13]

This is a whole different can of worms, which is off-topic to the displayed value.
The current "degrees per second" figure is legitimized by "items per second would be wrong".
De facto, what that means is, "there is no meaningful value provided by the game, you can go alt tab and read the wiki for the specifics, or just accept that you don't know how fast the inserters are".
After 10 years, I still do exactly that - I know which inserter is slower, which faster, and I go alt tab to the wiki to check the specifics otherwise.
That is a gameplay problem, not a wiki problem - which I don't think has an elegant solution.

Same goes for the assemblers, furnaces and all other crafting machines - you either eyeball it, or you go alt-tab to an external calculator.
Nobody except for the most motivated players is doing the calculation for "how many machines needed" inside his head, or inside the game - it's just way to cumbersome, but that is again, a different, not a wiki, but a general ui-gameplay-problem.

What I am saying in regards to inserters is, that if you are either way expected to eyeball it, a value like "up to X items per second" is something you can work with reasonably, without an external reference.
With degrees per second you can not, and it's a waste of space.

[TheRaph]

whateverpedia,

YES! That is the name. "Whateverpedia" sound so universal, you should definitively add this to the game

[ryanalpasta]

So very convenient, this makes me feel more comfortable about convincing my friends to get this game, I know it can be quite overwhelming for new players!! Would love to have a bigger factory squad =D

[FuryoftheStars]

After 10 years, I still do exactly that - I know which inserter is slower, which faster, and I go alt tab to the wiki to check the specifics otherwise.
That is a gameplay problem, not a wiki problem - which I don't think has an elegant solution.

I'm going to quip on the idea that not displaying items/s for something that has a variable items/s rate depending on what it's taking from and putting to (and in some cases can even depend on the pattern the items form on a belt) is a "gameplay problem". It's not.

Same goes for the assemblers, furnaces and all other crafting machines - you either eyeball it, or you go alt-tab to an external calculator.
Nobody except for the most motivated players is doing the calculation for "how many machines needed" inside his head, or inside the game - it's just way to cumbersome, but that is again, a different, not a wiki, but a general ui-gameplay-problem.

To continue from what I said above in that this isn't a gameplay problem: Knowing the items/s rate of insterters is not required to play the game effectively, or even set up most ratio perfect setups. In fact, I'd dare say that only the really motivated even care about having ratio perfect setups/factories, and only the most motivated then also care about items/s rates of inserters.

It's not that I don't want items/s... that doesn't matter so much to me. I just 1) disagree to the idea that a lack of it is a gameplay problem, and 2) feel as though the options for displaying it are unreliable (even an "up to" changes by a noticeable amount for fast inserters and is far, far worse for stack (soon to be called bulk) inserters when not used in chest to chest scenarios).

Yes, rotation speed isn't any better, but I will say that at least it's a true value vs whatever can be done for items/s. *shrug*

[Notsononymous]

...saying "mountainous volcanoes" is a bit redundant, for all volcanoes are mountains.

Many Icelandic shield volcanoes are closer to small hills in size (only a couple hundred meters high), but they are definitely "volcanoes". :)

[Notsononymous]

May I suggest Factorpedia as something slightly easier to roll off the tongue? Though I see factped as the likely name no matter :)

Neither of these suggestions roll off my tongue. And what is Factorpedia anyway? A wiki that lists prime factors of integers? [;

[vernir]

1. It’s funny how everyone is talking about placing Unlocked by to the bottom but no one mentions the huge title image at the beginning. Everyone loves juicy images regardless of space they spare As regular UI designer the space usage was of course the first I mentioned, but guys, we’re looking at the wikipedia. It SHOULD be long and boring.

2. I would just probably suggest adding collapse/expand capabilities to the subsection headers like Wikipedia do and to remember their states while watching between different pages.

3. I wonder what does the rest half of the Steel furnace page contains? Others end on just Can craft.

[samogot]

The best recipe I've seen in factory games was in Captain of Industry. A single screen that list all the recipes that includes the given item (both as input and as output in two separate blocks).

The caveat is that it was that good because CoI gameplay heavily relies on both multiple recipes for a single item and on multiple output products per recipe. In base factorio both of this cases exists, but so unfrequently that it doesn't worth to adjust the UI for this case. In Factorio Space Exploration though it needed so much! FNEI helps there, but it's UI is borderline unusable. How it will be in Factorio Space Age regarding multiple recepies and multiple outputs I don't know, but even for the mods it might be useful. BTW CoI does count recipes in different tier building as different recipes, and it makes perfect sense there because it is not always strait production speed increase.

Having all recipes listed together allows quick understanding of what it is and what it's used for and also allows easy navigation back and forth even without dedicated history buttons.

What also makes CoI recipe book great is that it acts as a perfect guide of what will be available in a future. It shows that there will be a better recipe in the future (grayed out), but you don't have research/production building for it yet.

Another tiny but extremely useful bit is button that normalises all recipes to 60s production cycle. It persists when traversing the recipe book, but is not hidden somewhere in the settings, as you need to change it quite often, to switch between understanding of "how much material and time I need to produce X items" and "what ratios I need to produce constantly"

Here how it looks like:

coi-recipe-book.png (640.79 KiB) Viewed 3090 times

To be perfectly clear, I'm not saying CoI has best recipe book UI implement it instead. I'm trying to articulate what I love about it's UI, so you can assess if it makes sense to do some of that.

For example one of the downsides of said CoI recipe book UI is that it is JUST a recipe book. It has no additional information as in Factoriopedia like fuel consumption, unlocked by, can craft, etc. One of the reasons for it is that in CoI all items are just intermediate materials that needs to be assembled into the building on the construction site (similar to how rocket construction works in vanila, but simpler).

So frankly, although I love CoI recipe book UI, I don't know if it is transferable to factorio case. But maybe some of the ideas I highlighted can be adjusted (like statistics button?)

[PS for those to have actually seen this message on reddit, sorry for double posting. I just felt bad realising that after typing all of this no one will read it, because it is buried under 3 days worth of upvoted comments]

[zhonbi]

What in the world is that weird icon in the Vulcanus overview screenshot? It looks like a mix between a fish and an explosion; I've not seen anyone else talk about it. Does anyone have an idea what it is

[Cerberus]

I am euphoric, finally stack size easily visible in 2.0

[quaatal]

I see that this "Epic" / "Legendary" labels are still there

Can you consider changing the? I admit that my reaction to them may be extreme, but I have seen lives destroyed by gambling (yes, including gacha games) so I have quite immediate revulsion to anything connected to that.

I very much agree that the naming should be changed to something a bit less childish. There already is a tips-and-tricks menu and now an entire in-game wiki is introduced; these two menus could be interconnected through the use of hyperlinks as kizrak suggested, meaning explanations to the quality system are going to be easily available. The primary advantage of the current "well-known" naming scheme disappears when it only takes a few seconds to alt-left click on something related to quality and learn that in Factorio "exceptional" and "perfect" mean "epic" and "legendary" etc. (which might not even be needed since the blue/green/purple/orange colour scheme offers more than enough guidance).

[sarge945]

Could you make it so that non-unlocked things show as question marks in the Factoriopedia (so if an object is Made By a factory we don't have yet, it shows up as a question mark).

This would stop potential spoilers.

I know you can see the items by looking at the research tree, but it's a far more annoying process.

[FasterJump]

Should't it be "Rocket's capacity" rather than "Rocket Capacity"?

[KatherineOfSky]

One thing that is missing from the GUI is the machine that the item is crafted in. This is crucial information for new players, and even experienced ones because of the new machine on Fulgora

[BraveCaperCat]

That looks really great. Tho if I may, I'd suggest a name change to Factoripedia. Just easier on the tongue.

I'd go with one of these:

• Encyclopedia Factoria

If you're going that route, you gotta spell Encyclopædia.

Don't forget Encycloπdia!

[BraveCaperCat]

Should't it be "Rocket's capacity" rather than "Rocket Capacity"?

Wrong way around.

[husnikadam]

I suggest that items in "used in" section should have colored background based on their research status. Researched items green, researchable yellow, unavailable red. Same could potentially go for all Factoriopedia places where items are displayed.

Also, have you considered hiding items till they are researched? Not knowing unresearched items brings some surprise factor while not overwhelming a new player to the game (just an idea, not a suggestion)

Edit: Idea improvement. What about not displaying (yet) unresearchable tech at all? It doesn't make any sence to display the whole research tree while the poor engineer doesn't even know what an advanced circuit is. Maybe you could just indicate that "this research is important and may unlock a lot of further researches and items" while not being specific

This could be just the default behavior for new players. Or it could be toggleable in settings/new game settings. Or both. Anyway, I find the idea of not knowing what comes next amazing!