Friday Facts #399 - Trash to Treasure

[FuryoftheStars]

As far as I'm aware, the scrap on Fulgora is not infinite, but why does that matter? You are right, we don't know much about it, but I imagine the devs have balanced it to have a similar net yield, at least, as Nauvis, and when was the last time you ran out of resources to find and mine on Nauvis?

But it is premature to try mathing this out now without being able to play it.

I am not trying to mathing anything out.

I am simply pointing out that the differences make them incomparable.

[...]

There are three general asteroid types:

• Metallic asteroids for iron ore used to produce gun turret ammunition and thruster oxidizer.
• Carbonic asteroids for carbon which is a new resource used on the platform to produce thruster fuel.
• Oxide asteroids for ice which is melted into water, then used to produce thruster fuel and oxidizer.

A new machine called a crusher is used to process the asteroids. Later on, more resource types can be obtained from asteroids using advanced crushing recipes.

Note, too, in that very quote they say there are 3 "general" types. This implies, to me, that there are not a perfect 3 variations (and not just small, medium, large).

Though, again, we don't know for sure, yet.

I believe the 'three general types' in that quotation block refer to the metallic, carbonic, and oxide types.

If they were referring to the size of said asteroids, then that would make for nine different types.

Yeah, one could do that. Not sure how that relates, though. Remember, the discussion here is about changing the ratios to prevent backups with less reliance on voiding. And one of your supporting arguments seemed to be about the player not having the skills (prior experience) to deal with it.

Yes, that is one facet of it.

Another facet of the same argument is that the more complicated something is, the Factorio pre-Space Age Veterans might be struggling with it at some point.

The colossal gap between asteroid collecting vs. scrap processing makes me wonder if more unrevealed recipes exist that don't always produce predictable results.

Before the Space Age expansion, there used to be only one recipe that had a randomized output: Uranium Ore Processing. Even then, the Uranium Kovarex Enrichment exists, which adds more steps and, in exchange, gives players greater control of the amount of U-235 vs U-238 isotypes.

You're starting to drift.

How is that?

Uranium Enrichment's second step gives players the tools to "re-balance" or "tweak" the imbalance of different materials from an RNG recipe into something they can control without voiding.

I brought up the asteroids as a method of getting experience with having to void unwanted/unused resources with smaller variations prior to reaching Fulgora where the scrap yields a higher variety. The fact that asteroids are infinite, or are of fewer types, etc, does not make it invalid or "incomparable". It actually reinforces the point that it's a learning experience.

Uranium has a specific process and outlets for everything. As we don't know everything that's in the expansion yet, using this as a comparison doesn't work.

Nope. Stop. You are confusing me with someone else here. I am in no way making an implication towards the disease. Please do not confuse that.

My usage of the word is very directly the action of. Nothing more.

Then, don't use the word 'hoarding.' It has a negative connotation and is usually associated with a disorder.

Don't believe me? Google 'hoarding' the entire first result page is precisely what one would imagine: Plyushkin's Disorder.

Amassing, Saving, Stockpiling, Accumulating, piling up, collecting, and gathering are far more neutral tones. Yes, I know I used the term myself a few times, but I prefer those neutral terms.

No.

I will not partake in further discussion down this road because that road leads down to the flaming banned rabbit hole.

[Koub]

Nope. Stop. You are confusing me with someone else here. I am in no way making an implication towards the disease. Please do not confuse that.

My usage of the word is very directly the action of. Nothing more.

Then, don't use the word 'hoarding.' It has a negative connotation and is usually associated with a disorder.

Don't believe me? Google 'hoarding' the entire first result page is precisely what one would imagine: Plyushkin's Disorder.

Amassing, Saving, Stockpiling, Accumulating, piling up, collecting, and gathering are far more neutral tones. Yes, I know I used the term myself a few times, but I prefer those neutral terms.

No.

I will not partake in further discussion down this road because that road leads down to the flaming banned rabbit hole.

[Koub] Thank you, and yes please, don't see insults where there aren't. And if there might be, and you're not sure, assume they are not.

[XT-248]

I brought up the asteroids as a method of getting experience with having to void unwanted/unused resources with smaller variations prior to reaching Fulgora where the scrap yields a higher variety. The fact that asteroids are infinite, or are of fewer types, etc, does not make it invalid or "incomparable". It actually reinforces the point that it's a learning experience.

Uranium has a specific process and outlets for everything. As we don't know everything that's in the expansion yet, using this as a comparison doesn't work.

The asteroid resources are unique and require a moving space platform to collect usable resources from asteroids.

Scraps come from static electric miners (Nauvis and Vulcanis type included) and yield everything from iron to stone.

Regardless of how both asteroid mining and scrap processing resources become usable to players, they all have endpoint usage. IE: stone->brick for construction, stone->railroad sections, stone->furnace, and stone->Nauvis' Landfill. Ices, Iron ore, and carbon have some obvious end-uses and some unannounced end-uses.

Asteroid collecting is only comparable to scrap processing because they both have end-uses.


Everything else about the two processes is different and distinct, so one can not compare them meaningfully.

It is like comparing the Vanilla Factorio smelting process to the Bob & Angel smelting process. They both yield usable ingot/plate and whatnot, but the difference is that the latter involves several different techniques that don't have an equivalent in vanilla Factorio. Never mind the distinct raw materials used therein in Bob & Angel Smelting that are not in vanilla Factorio.

[Svip]

I think the point being made is; on the space platform, you need to sort the yields of the asteroids, because even though there are three types, they come through the same machine. The asteroids don't produce a lot of variety in terms of items, but some is more useful than other, and you will need to deal with voiding them. So the process of filtering, sorting and scrapping is a new process here, that one can argue prepares the player for the rather scaled up loop on Fulgora. Only really uranium processing comes close to this, and in vanilla, it does not have the concept of useless byproducts.

[XT-248]

I think the point being made is; on the space platform, you need to sort the yields of the asteroids, because even though there are three types, they come through the same machine. The asteroids don't produce a lot of variety in terms of items, but some is more useful than other, and you will need to deal with voiding them. So the process of filtering, sorting and scrapping is a new process here, that one can argue prepares the player for the rather scaled up loop on Fulgora. Only really uranium processing comes close to this, and in vanilla, it does not have the concept of useless byproducts.

They haven't shown much about the crushing process. Remember, they mention several advanced crushing recipes, which means there is more than one way to crush asteroids. The crusher machines are also set by recipe, and you can see that the various chunks from an asteroid collector are split into three different crushers and are not mixed.



Here, you can see that the crusher has three distinct basic crushing recipes.




The fact that crusher has a pre-defined recipe sets them apart from scrap processing, which only has one recipe that we currently know of, with variable possible outcomes.

The science pack assembler having several inserters that move items from those machines, iron smelter, ice crusher, and carbon crusher, tells us that the yield is one-to-one (similar to iron plate -> assembler -> iron gear).


No one is saying that stone is a useless byproduct. Different players use different amounts of stones; some may need more, and some may need less.

[GregoriusT]

This discussion reminds me that you could just have a small Spaceship that has purely the purpose of being a mobile Mini-Mall using Selector Combinators to select Recipes for things that you have less than, lets say 30, and then just have ONE Assembler craft those things from harvested Asteroid Material. Such a basic Setup would only use a handful of Combinators (unlike the elaborate demo in a recent FFF), and therefore make it so you have an absurdly small Mall Ship, that you can colonize all four of the other Planets with.

I say absurdly small but it also will need self sustaining Fuel and Ammo Production and all those other Luxuries ofcourse!

But yeah, you should not worry too much about getting basic Iron and Copper from those Planets right away, only Nauvis needs to have that available immediately, because that is where you actually start at, the rest can be acquired via shipping or with mobile manufacturing platforms (especially with the new remote view).

[tjark_neutronium]

Can you pls add a battery wagon to transport energy by train

It is already there, it is called Fluid wagon
https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_wagon

Fill up train by steam, then attach turbine at remote station.
https://wiki.factorio.com/Steam_turbine

But on the new planet you cant do that you would need a way to recycle the water to turne it to steam again also you would need electric boilers

Scrap can give you both ice and solid fuel, that's all you need to make steam

But if i wanna power everything with just lightning that would be much cooler

[FuryoftheStars]

There's too much for me to go through this point by point. Let me try explaining it like this:

With the space platform, the process of the asteroids spawning in, being shot and broken apart by the turrets, and then collected by the asteroid collectors, is analogous to the process on Fulgora of the miners mining and sending scrap to the recyclers. They both then output multiple products. In the case of the asteroid collectors, they have few enough possible outputs that you can just simply use filter inserters to filter them out directly onto their own belts. With the scrap and recyclers, there's enough variety that you need to output everything to the same belt and then filter on the belt.

In either case, though, if there's a backup in the usage of one of the outputs and there's no voiding taking taking place, that backup will reach the asteroid collector or recycler and stop it from outputting anything else. It doesn't strike me that the asteroid collector can collect either carbonic or oxide asteroids if it's full up on metallic. Even if I am wrong on that (and the collectors look like they can have filters set on them so they only collect one type per collector anyway), many will still go for compact builds (everything to one belt), because many people just do that, and because size and number of entities on the platform contribute to its weight, slowing it down and requiring more fuel.

Then there is this text from the very bit that you once quoted before:

There are three general asteroid types:

• Metallic asteroids for iron ore used to produce gun turret ammunition and thruster oxidizer.
• Carbonic asteroids for carbon which is a new resource used on the platform to produce thruster fuel.
• Oxide asteroids for ice which is melted into water, then used to produce thruster fuel and oxidizer.

A new machine called a crusher is used to process the asteroids. Later on, more resource types can be obtained from asteroids using advanced crushing recipes.

So later, we may very well have crushers that output more than the shown 1 primary plus the chance of an uncrushed asteroid fragment, in which case the line for the comparison I made above moves to the crusher.

And there is this line from right after the very next video clip in that same FFF:

It can happen that the platform collects too many asteroids or some recipe byproducts just accumulate too much. Here's one simple feature that we love: You can dump items overboard with inserters.

Why would voiding on the space platform even be needed if it wasn't possible for one of these to cause a backup and halt the whole process?

And again, the fact that asteroids are infinite, or are of fewer types, etc reinforces the learning experience because this makes the whole system more forgiving if something does get backed up or you find your only way to efficiently prevent backups is to just void everything unused. For example, you don't have to worry about running out of fuel on your way there....

[XT-248]

There's too much for me to go through this point by point. Let me try explaining it like this:

With the space platform, the process of the asteroids spawning in, being shot and broken apart by the turrets, and then collected by the asteroid collectors, is analogous to the process on Fulgora of the miners mining and sending scrap to the recyclers. They both then output multiple products. In the case of the asteroid collectors, they have few enough possible outputs that you can just simply use filter inserters to filter them out directly onto their own belts. With the scrap and recyclers, there's enough variety that you need to output everything to the same belt and then filter on the belt.

In either case, though, if there's a backup in the usage of one of the outputs and there's no voiding taking taking place, that backup will reach the asteroid collector or recycler and stop it from outputting anything else. It doesn't strike me that the asteroid collector can collect either carbonic or oxide asteroids if it's full up on metallic. Even if I am wrong on that (and the collectors look like they can have filters set on them so they only collect one type per collector anyway), many will still go for compact builds (everything to one belt), because many people just do that, and because size and number of entities on the platform contribute to its weight, slowing it down and requiring more fuel.

So later, we may very well have crushers that output more than the shown 1 primary plus the chance of an uncrushed asteroid fragment, in which case the line for the comparison I made above moves to the crusher.

And there is this line from right after the very next video clip in that same FFF:

It can happen that the platform collects too many asteroids or some recipe byproducts just accumulate too much. Here's one simple feature that we love: You can dump items overboard with inserters.

Why would voiding on the space platform even be needed if it wasn't possible for one of these to cause a backup and halt the whole process?

And again, the fact that asteroids are infinite, or are of fewer types, etc reinforces the learning experience because this makes the whole system more forgiving if something does get backed up or you find your only way to efficiently prevent backups is to just void everything unused. For example, you don't have to worry about running out of fuel on your way there....

I already covered this point earlier. Crushers can always process them into Space Science packs (iron plates from iron ore, carbon, and ice) for infinite technologies, which can consume how many science packs to unlock? In a 50-hour game? 5000-hour game?


Short of gathering too much or improper sorting. There is no real risk of backing up on space platforms, which makes them incomparable to 'Fulgora scrap processing' that gives out something players disagree on how much they need and use, which is evident in our replies back and forth.


Stones are noteworthy in being used extensively optionally or not at all, except for one or two end-game products, unlike asteroid chunks, which factories can process into resources consumed en-mass across the various worlds.


I will bring in something else that you have been overlooking so far.



Notice how the Foundry yields excess stones to process lava and calcite into metallic liquids.

Two processes yield stones, across two revealed worlds so far, as byproducts without a way to non-void sink them.


Suppose Factorio Space Age ends up with four processes for four worlds that produce excess stone without one way to recycle them into another usable resource, 'Kovarex Enrichment' style.

I will be less inclined to play Space Age.

[catpig]

Bit late on reading this one... but seriously... shut up and take my money

[FuryoftheStars]

XT-248, nothing of what you have said changes how the processes are similar and do not make them incomparable. You're very obviously missing the forest for the trees, and this isn't the first time, either. As such, I'm just going to borrow someone else's one-liner in response and will have nothing further to say on this topic:

Wrong.

[XT-248]

XT-248, nothing of what you have said changes how the processes are similar and do not make them incomparable. You're very obviously missing the forest for the trees, and this isn't the first time, either. As such, I'm just going to borrow someone else's one-liner in response and will have nothing further to say on this topic:

Wrong.

I came here to offer constructive criticism feedback, and it ends with you deciding that your opinion trumps my own for no good reason.

You need to change your altitude if you want people to listen to you.

[Kasyu52]

isn't stone still needed in boilers, electric furnaces, rails, and refineries? I would say that the stone byproducts are a bit excessive (mostly for lava processing) but stone is still a vital resource. production science needs a ton, and bases are gonna need loads of rails to transport materials.
in any other setup, I'd probably agree with you, especially on nauvis, which has stone deposits, but from what we've seen, these byproducts are the only ways to get stone on vulcanus and fulgora.

[Khagan]

isn't stone still needed in boilers, electric furnaces, rails, and refineries?

And landfill. Landfill eats stone like there's no tomorrow.

[XT-248]

isn't stone still needed in boilers, electric furnaces, rails, and refineries? I would say that the stone byproducts are a bit excessive (mostly for lava processing) but stone is still a vital resource. production science needs a ton, and bases are gonna need loads of rails to transport materials.
in any other setup, I'd probably agree with you, especially on nauvis, which has stone deposits, but from what we've seen, these byproducts are the only ways to get stone on vulcanus and fulgora.

Take a good look at the new stuff: Space Platforms, Vulcanis Electric Miner, Vulcanis Foundry, and Fuglora's Electromagnetic plant. Do you think they are built with stone or any products that use stone as an ingredient?


You are correct that stones are an ingredient in landfills, boilers, furnaces, rails, walls, refineries, artillery, rocket silo, Nuclear Infrastructure, and other buildings/items. However, they are one-time costs. Once you build enough refineries for your needs. You stop producing refineries or let the chest fill up at your shopping mall. The same applies to other buildings or items that use stone, with a single exception.


The exception is rail, which is continuously consumed by assemblers for purple production science packs. Let's assume that, on average, 100 scraps will yield five stones and six concretes for each single holmium ore.

Concrete can be recycled into one stone (Concrete + Recycler 25% of 5 stone = 1). That is 11 stones to one holmium ore. How many purple/production science packs can you craft with 11 stones vs one holmium ore?

Eleven stones are enough to produce approximately ~2.2 purple/production science packs without any modifications.

Looking at the increase in total raw material it costs to make packs going from red to late-game science packs; it is safe to assume that we will end up with an excess of purple/production science pack vs. Fulgora's science pack (even after factoring into the Fuglora's electromagnetic plant's innate 50% productivity bonus).


It's the same problem with the Vulcanis Foundry lava processing recipe. The more iron and copper one needs. The more byproduct stones they will have to deal with.


So, we are circling back to the original issue. What do we do with excess stone without voiding it?

And landfill. Landfill eats stone like there's no tomorrow.

Landfill for Nauvis, which has readily available surface stone deposits? Eh.

It might make sense for Vulcanis and Fulgora to have some access to stone to produce landfills, but not at the expense of unfun gameplay: unblocking production lines.

[meganothing]

So, we are circling back to the original issue. What do we do with excess stone without voiding it?

Void it?

The game is a sandbox. One player will build roboports like crazy, another might plaster everything with granite floor and build railroads all over the map. Those two would have a very different demand for stone. To accomodate them both the game could provide more stone and give the first player the option to void the stone.

(By the way: The only thing I have against voiding is that it makes it just too easy to avoid any production blocks)

[GregoriusT]

Incoherent Rambling: Activate!

-----

Okay why exactly is it so bad to have too much Stone if you can void it once you have stored enough?

These are all the other Planets, not the starting Planet.

Once you are in Space, resources like Copper, Iron and Stone are infinite. (even if slow)

Drop Pods are cheap to make and will only use ingredients you can get from Space, so you can make as many of those as you need to deliver necessary raw Materials from Space to those Planets. No need to send them up from Nauvis at all.

You can even harvest Asteroids to just send em down to Nauvis if you so desire, and suddenly it is infinite there too!

-----

Ofcourse I know it is an icky feeling when you void resources instead of making use of them, but may I remind everyone here what is happening to this finite Resource called "Wood" in ALL of your vanilla games? Oh you're not wasting it? Think again!

- What is your pollution Cloud doing to the Trees?
- What are your Boilers and Burner Inserters doing to the Wood?
- What is your Flamethrower doing to the Trees? Or your Grenades? Or your Poison Capsules? Or your Nukes?
- What are your Vehicles doing when they crash into a Tree? Apart from triggering an Achievement even if you didnt make any Cars or Tanks.
- What about the Chest full of Common Wooden Power Poles you will never really use? This will get even worse with Quality Modules since Uncommon Wooden Poles have objectively ***BETTER*** stats than Medium Poles, yet they dont cost any Iron to make!

So really, why exactly is anyone complaining about wasting/voiding resources they do not need? Clearly all of you do it to Wood already, why not Stone as well?

I know those resources were once the limiting factor in past gameplay, it will just take time to get used to Iron, Copper and Stone being infinite, like Water and Oil already are on Nauvis.

-----

And I didnt even get started on trying to use the quality Recycler to ship the high Quality Stone and Stone Bricks back to where you need them to craft something, like a high quality Rocket Silo! And it will save so much Storage Space!

[mmmPI]

You are correct that stones are an ingredient in landfills, boilers, furnaces, rails, walls, refineries, artillery, rocket silo, Nuclear Infrastructure, and other buildings/items. However, they are one-time costs.

You are wrong for at least 2 reasons, stone is used for purple science, for which, you need rail AND electric furnace made out of stone brick that's not a single exception.
Also walls are not a one time cost you need to maintain them.

So, we are circling back to the original issue. What do we do with excess stone without voiding it?

This is not a problem , as you were told around 12 times on this topic by different players since you are given at least 4 or 5 ways to deal with it. Let say you are playing a game that goes as far as purple science and you have biters on. That's great to have infinite source of stone, or iron or copper, otherwise it forces you to always expand or risk your factory being destroyed when you don't have enough ressources for repair pack.

The drawback is that some player may not understand the tools given to them so that they can handle the infinite stone. It's unfortunate, but hopefully they can learn how to use one of the 4 or 5 method to get rid of stone. Other will refuse to use the tools given to them, that's fine it's a sandbox. You don't even know what holmium is used for, if holmium is only used for linghting rod and not science. Then you don't need to void stone at all x). I think your feedback is not constructive because you keep repeating the same thing that are based on incomplete knowledge.

Also you said long ago it was your last post on the topic, and it is obviously not the case, that's not a good point if you want people to listen to you.

[GregoriusT]

The drawback is that some player may not understand the tools given to them so that they can handle the infinite stone.

May I remind you of the Ingame Tutorial Hint System that is definitely going to tell people how to void Stuff? That or they just build Chests upon Chests to store all the Stone because they skipped the Hint like I do all the time.

[Thales_Vaz]

I like the concept of scrap resource, but if I was a dev, I create layers of recycling.
The scrap could turn electronic scrap, metal scrap, or rubble; or this could be different types of resource in planet

The electronic scrap could turn copper scrap, plastic scrap, or sulfur.
The metal scrap could be turn iron scrap, steel scrap, or holmium scrap.
The rubble could be torn concrete, ice, stone, low density structure or solid combustible.

And copper scrap, plastic scrap, iron scrap... could be melted or turned copper plate, plastic, iron scrap in a furnace.

It's just an idea, I just want to give this suggestion.