Friday Facts #398 - Fulgora

[Tontaube]

Splendid!

Any chance for:
- having some sprites showing the wind blowing over the plains
- having muddy foottracks for a while (diminishing) as you walk away from oily sand

And most important:
Having a statue/ machine ...barefoot and bare (or without tracks) while their robot-arms mocks you and they stare coldly... WallE? Or Robotron with arms?

>>What about bitters, do they crawl under ground ?
Worms, anyone?

[Svip]

I wonder... what killed them all. Was it the weather? Was it themlseves? Or something else... alive out there?

Or was it the Factorio engineer in a past life, just reliving his torment in an endless loop?

[Saftorange]

A lot of sand, no water, a wind-swept plateau and heavy storms? Shai-Hulud is coming for us

[aka13]

Looks great, reminds me of scorn/geiger work somehow. Really looking forward to it.

[mrcill1]

And during nighttime the rotten alien corpses rise form the sand and attack your base...

[Terrahertz]

It's funny if they really do add a Lightning Rod as a power source because a single Lightning Strike on Earth has only enough total power to run a Lightbulb for a Day and that is it. That is what high Volts and low Amps gets you, after all Humans have proven to be able to survive a Lightning Strike so it cannot be all that many Joules.

Well the numbers there might be what makes the difference, starting by the amount of lightning strikes going on, but if the atmosphere is dry they might also have a bit more power behind them.

Would be interesting if the environment was your real or only enemy on this planet, seems like you need to build those lightning rods like a grid all over your factory. An interesting mechanic would be if your grid would need empty storage capacity for the energy to go to otherwise the lightning rod gets damaged.

[mrudat]

having some sprites showing the wind blowing over the plains

The description mentioned sand carried in the wind, so perhaps something like film grain that moves with the wind might look good.

Thinking about it a little, sandstorms imply you need different sprites for Fulgora; they wouldn't have the grunge of Nauvis; they'd be some combination of polished and sand-blasted, with grunge and paint only capable of existing in wind-shadows.


If it's particularly windy, does this suggest we'll see windmills instead of solar panels?

It's funny if they really do add a Lightning Rod as a power source because a single Lightning Strike on Earth has only enough total power to run a Lightbulb for a Day and that is it.

Huh. A lamp for a day? So roughly 2MJ/strike/chunk for however many strikes hit in a storm, for whatever portion of the day is stormy. So, something like a meteor shower that leaves behind coal.

Wikipedia suggests 7GJ for a lightning strike, though capturing all of it could be tricky.

I doubt you could easily power your factory using lightning, but if you have to put up lightning rods every chunk, hey free power! =)

[quaatal]

Please disclose what you did to fix biters. Lore is cool only the first time you encounter it while biters are supposed to keep every run interesting.

[mrudat]

An interesting mechanic would be if your grid would need empty storage capacity for the energy to go to otherwise the lightning rod gets damaged.

I'd expect basic lightning rods that just ground the strike, with an advanced version capable of power cspture.

Perhaps the ability to toggle lightning collection on and off via circuit network?

If you don't turn it off, and you eat a lightning strike with full batteries, it lets the magic smoke out.

[FromageChaud]

I'm guessing this is the ideal planet for recycling or train hook mechanics Let's see next week!

[stretch611]

Worms, anyone?

That's what I was expecting... Large enough to swallow an entire train (or a spice harvester.) After all, the lightning is nothing more than wormsign.

[plepper1]

Pretty cool... I'll be here next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel!

[orbit]

You are not alone in there!

[GregoriusT]

Wikipedia suggests 7GJ for a lightning strike, though capturing all of it could be tricky.

Don't forget most of those gigajoules are wasted on the heating up of the air to plasma all the way down to the ground

[tvardero]

If you remember last FFF about factorio-pedia, there were connections from Vulkanus to two different plannets. First one was Nauvis, but seconds... The second does not look like Fulgora!


So we have to expect 4th planet blogpost some time soon (I hope )


P.S. Maaaan I feel same vibes as when Space Engineers first added planets to the game. How old and rusty I am.

[forsaken75]

Oh come on, you're really going to make us wait another week to see what's going on?! Earendel, you TEASE!

That's the trick. They release some vague information, and have us speculate about the implications, and then they scoop up the good ideas and implement them.

all of 2.0 has just been a refined/simplified Space Exploration with the top 10 mods rolled in. Factorio is and always will be my #1 but to newcomers, there are many factorio alternatives and they really needed to step up their game with 2.0 and i have yet to see anything at all innovative with 2.0 other than re-skinned rolled-in mods done better because they are the OG devs and have access to the newer engine others dont have access to. Of course this is an unpopular opinion and i expect to get flamed, just tired of all the OMFG THIS IS AWESOME when it all already exists.

[Svip]

If you remember last FFF about factorio-pedia, there were connections from Vulkanus to two different plannets. First one was Nauvis, but seconds... The second does not look like Fulgora!

Or you could go back to #373 when this graphic was posted:


Clearly the graphics for planets have changed since then.

[Neelost]

Oh come on, you're really going to make us wait another week to see what's going on?! Earendel, you TEASE!

That's the trick. They release some vague information, and have us speculate about the implications, and then they scoop up the good ideas and implement them.

You truly don't understand how long coding new features takes, don't you ?

[Svip]

Oh come on, you're really going to make us wait another week to see what's going on?! Earendel, you TEASE!

That's the trick. They release some vague information, and have us speculate about the implications, and then they scoop up the good ideas and implement them.

You truly don't understand how long coding new features takes, don't you ?

It's difficult to navigate how to respond to someone, who clearly thought I was being serious.

But I feel like an upbeat response would be: That's just how good the Factorio devs are!

[mmmPI]

Woaaa ! so much new things, like everything !

I like the lighthing bolt, at first i thought it was the thunder, but after several strike i thought, no the human is getting targeted, there is something aiming at it, and then i thought oh that's an alien tesla coil, that's where it comes from, but then i wasn't sure maybe it's a lighting rod and the structure actually protect.

Seeing all the city after was pleasing, intriguing, making me want to explore and understand what happened, what can be salvaged and resued or analyzed.

One must be able to harness that lighting for electricity somehow, i think that's brilliant, if that is managing hazard through automation, like water which can cause flood or be used for energy with a bit of technology, but here this is for the space age, high tech thunder taming. Making a planet feel dangerous at first, but later that danger is free energy give a good sense of progression.

I'm curious if the engineer will discover where to go next from the ruins of that ancient civilization. And at this point i'm pretty sure there is a deliberate strategy to keep any news about biters for the FFF just before release, in some sort of crescendo in the revelation. I was afraid that all the goods things would be shown first, but i realize it's not the case and some of the best was and probably still is getting kept for later

Vulcanus is Venus, Fulgora is Mars. Any objections?

Venus atmosphere is so thick and heavy it's the same pressure on the surface than being 1km deep in water on earth, and the high heat and acid atmosphere makes is so that most things from our planet landing there are almost immediatly destroyed. I think durable project on Venus are envisioned as things that would float high in the sky like static zepellin but not on the actual rocky surface, which has active volcanoes; Together with the acid those are some similarities but to me it cannot be Venus still. I thought maybe Mercury, but the volcanoes are not active anymore according to wikipedia making it Venus the closest contender, but again, not exactly !

all of 2.0 has just been a refined/simplified Space Exploration with the top 10 mods rolled in. Factorio is and always will be my #1 but to newcomers, there are many factorio alternatives and they really needed to step up their game with 2.0 and i have yet to see anything at all innovative with 2.0 other than re-skinned rolled-in mods done better because they are the OG devs and have access to the newer engine others dont have access to. Of course this is an unpopular opinion and i expect to get flamed, just tired of all the OMFG THIS IS AWESOME when it all already exists.

Some of the things shown also reveal adaptation to the engine by the OG devs that will allow the future generation of top 10 mod to be filled with new things compared to the current top 10 mods. Clearly i'm in the OMFG THIS IS AWESOME team x) most of the time, i think part of it is also because i didn't expect the game to change to the point where i would not recognize it, i wanted some new things but with the same flavor, i can play other game if want other things. You haven't mentionned any of the things that could have make you think "this is awesome" so it is hard to understand what you are refering to, maybe it's the kind of thing that would have make me think "oh that's just a copy of the mechanism from [game]".or "this is not an expansion this is a different game this should be called factorio 2 ". Maybe you are thinking about things that the dev will reveal later in an FFF, that has happenned to me