Friday Facts #402 - Lightspeed circuits

[vark111]

You know, just last night I was re-organizing my overly-complicated train station blueprints, and moving combinators around was such a pain in the ass because I had to remember what was connected where, and then you get to that situation where you want to move one combinator one spot, but decide "eh, screw it, I'm leaving it because I can't be bothered figuring out where and how its connected after I move it".

So, thank you.

[vark111]

I checked the original foundry video and yeah, its not in there. I think you are right that it is on the player but I can't imagine what use the player would have for an excavator dig-arm. Anybody else got any ideas?

Didn't they mention early on that there was going to be Power Armour beyond Mk II? Maybe that's what it is? Power Armour Mk III?

[Hares]

@Devs, what will happen with the lightspeed assemblers connected to the circuit network?

Didn't they mention early on that there was going to be Power Armour beyond Mk II? Maybe that's what it is? Power Armour Mk III?

I still have no idea what are you talking about
I did not see any arms there. Are you talking about shadows or smth?

[Kinnonii]

Will this be available in just Space Age or 2.0 as well? Or maybe mixed, like lightspeed-crafting being a base optimization a wireless circuit radars being exclusive for Space Age?

[TheKid0z]

Here is a compilation of radar questions for the devs

• Is it one radar channel per force per surface? In some scenario games like biter battles and many others the radar circuits can be game breaking.

• If one places two radar like a million tiles away are the circuit signals available?

• Sounds like we have a new need of identifying which radar on the map has the desired signal source. I feel on large maps it gets daunting to figure out the source.

• How can we transmit signals between space platform and other planets? A new building in the future perhaps. Personally I would add a new building that connects to the silo

• Can we please have 7-8 circuit(easy uint8) channels, if not at the least enable it for the mods?

[FuryoftheStars]

Didn't they mention early on that there was going to be Power Armour beyond Mk II? Maybe that's what it is? Power Armour Mk III?

I still have no idea what are you talking about
I did not see any arms there. Are you talking about shadows or smth?

It's easier to see it in the video as it's moving. Just along the right edge of the open window over the lower section of the foundry. Looks like a little excavator arm that twitches every few moments.

[Terrahertz]

Found the teaser! Notice this excavator-claw-looking arm... thing on the player, hidden behind the UI window?

Whoa, I didn't even notice! Usually I at least see what they're hiding/teasing even if I'm not 100% sure.

I checked the original foundry video and yeah, its not in there. I think you are right that it is on the player but I can't imagine what use the player would have for an excavator dig-arm. Anybody else got any ideas?

Are you sure this is the player? The arm seems to be quite high in the air, even if the player is as close the the foundry as possible. So either this type of power armor also affects you size, or this is more like a Fallout Powerarmor, more of a vehicle than personal equipment.

[gambo]

The foundry crafting at light speed looked mental to me as a vanilla player

[iggy2539]

But adding 8 channels would be, ... you know better.

You can't have, say, radar A transmitting to radar B, while radar C transmits to radar D.

I would rather have option to set 8 channels, so we get 8 independent wireless networks.

One channel is enough for most people's use cases. However those who need 8 channels, or 60, or even 1000, can do circuit network magic to transmit an arbitrary number of channels through a single cable using a scheduling system and a global clock. It won't take too many combinators and someone's going to post a set of blueprints for anyone to download, taking advantage of the parametrised blueprints described earlier. The only cost will be a bit of a delay making circuits not as responsive, but even with 60 channels that's only a 1 second delay at most.

[Upserter]

Found the teaser! Notice this excavator-claw-looking arm... thing on the player, hidden behind the UI window?

Whoa, I didn't even notice! Usually I at least see what they're hiding/teasing even if I'm not 100% sure.

I checked the original foundry video and yeah, its not in there. I think you are right that it is on the player but I can't imagine what use the player would have for an excavator dig-arm. Anybody else got any ideas?

How else is the player supposed to dig down to level z=-1?

[trad_emark]

Now make the foundry animation go faaaasssttt too

[MEOWMI]

I'm so glad you made these additions. So many game devs just wouldn't bother, yet these were some fairly substantial bumps that you just smoothed out.

[Speedy]

The engineer digging might be related to hostile fauna activity. Maybe digging moats or trenches to make perimeter defense more effective?

Engineer will be making initial landfall on new planets with EXTREMELY limited supplies. Roboport networks may not be possible until some infrastructure is built up, in which case the engineer might need some personal equipment to be able to build defensive perimeters fast enough?

[Speedy]

Now make the foundry animation go faaaasssttt too

I hadn't thought about it, but I suppose for many buildings (especially the foundry with its pouring of liquids), the animation shouldn't be sped up past a certain point. Otherwise, it'd look ridiculous.

Foundry animation running at 26x speed would be a perfect example. Liquids would be falling faster than gravity. And if the open molten metal container were moved around that fast, it'd be sloshing all over everything.

[rorybecker]

After about 2 days of looking over the code, re-arranging, and writing comments explaining parts to myself, I had a plan for how I was going to make it work. The final changes to make everything function correctly took about 1 hour to write, and worked correctly the first try.
.
.
That's not supposed to happen and left me with doubts.

This, is the way.

[gGeorg]

But adding 8 channels would be, ... you know better.

One channel is enough for most people's use cases. However those who need 8 channels, ...

For simplicity reasons we have research scaling.
Research 1. Radar signal transmit
2. add a channel
3. add 3rd channel
4.
5. and so on up to 8 research boxes.

If you dont need it, then do not research it.

[Wickn]

i am playing factorio with a friend and whenever i drive by him, i always want to honk. can you add a honk button to the game. maybe make it so the spidertron, train and tank have different honks.

[JackGruff]

So you are saying the assembly logic was pre-optimised

[Tertius]

From the FFF:

That's almost exactly how my rail blueprints look like - could have been a screenshot from my current factory
I also added red and green wires "just in case a real use case pops up". I'm still waiting. The wires are everywhere but not being used.

Currently, I don't see a compelling use case for use signal transmission by radar - the same as with far reaching wire. At least not globally from every outpost, since all signals from all connected outposts are merged, so you don't know what outpost sent which signal. You need to have some kind of outpost ID, then encode signals with that ID do be able to identify who sent what. All current ways for this are rather clumsy.

[mcmase]

Are you sure this is the player? The arm seems to be quite high in the air, even if the player is as close the the foundry as possible. So either this type of power armor also affects you size, or this is more like a Fallout Powerarmor, more of a vehicle than personal equipment.

Well, no, I'm not sure it is the player. But it seems awfully close to the foundry to be another building, and not on the scale of most buildings, especially newer ones. So yeah, it was definitely giving me some sort of player backpack/armor vibes but again, to what end would the player build a dig-arm to carry around on their backs...?

Especially the idle animation. Buildings don't have idle animations when they aren't active... this to me is the biggest indicator that it is the player.