Friday Facts #432 - Aquilo

[adam_bise]

Lately I've been finding myself going to bed early on Thursdays, and having a little trouble going to sleep, for posts like this.

[gGeorg]

I know this might be a bit nitpicky and I also know that it is just a game, but... am I the only one that gets thrown off that the railgun has a cratridge that gets ejected? I mean the basic principle of a Railgun is to take basically a metal spear and yeet it forward using magnets (I will let myself happily correct by others), So why is there a cartridge that would typically hold the propellant?

+1
Agree Cartridge is nonsense.
Ammo belt visuals should be changed to a belt of rods and cartridge animation removed.

[gGeorg]

Why the railguns are shooting backwards in space? The asteroids are not usually catching up with the platforms from behind.

Maybe on Aquilo even parking in orbit gets you bombarded with large asteroids, and if you are not moving those may very well come from behind.

You need a rail gun propeling metal rods, basically spears, to catch a space whale or a space bug. His Majesty Lexx :

[PascalDUFOUR]

A question about the liquid ammonia. Considering the density, for liquid ammonia, it's about 0.6, and for solid water, aka ice, it's about 0.9, how could the ice float on the liquid ammonia, even if there's no air, the density is still much higher than liquid ammonia.
Thus maybe using the liquid air, or we can call it the mixture of liquid nitrogen(ρ=0.81) and liquid oxygen(ρ=1.14), to make the "sea", and solid ammonia(ρ=0.82) as the things floating on the "sea", could be better than liquid ammonia as sea with ice as floating things. And change the ratio of liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen, we could even make solid water float on the "sea" as well.

[malecord]

So the embargo lifts on Monday.

I don't know if I will have the change to play the week after release and I will avoid content cretors for a while.

If I come back here for FFF will there be spoilers too? Or will it be safe?

[Chard]

My research suggests that ice sinks in liquid ammonia. So they're less icebergs than they are ice mountains.

The best landing spot you could find was this large iceberg. The sheet of ice is only a few meters thick and seems to contain a lot of trapped air, but frozen water is a very solid material as long as it stays cold. It's able to support a landing pad, so that's good enough.

They already thought about that

Ooh. I missed that detail. Thanks! So we're basically building on a balloon...

[Terrahertz]

My research suggests that ice sinks in liquid ammonia. So they're less icebergs than they are ice mountains.

The best landing spot you could find was this large iceberg. The sheet of ice is only a few meters thick and seems to contain a lot of trapped air, but frozen water is a very solid material as long as it stays cold. It's able to support a landing pad, so that's good enough.

They already thought about that

Ooh. I missed that detail. Thanks! So we're basically building on a balloon...

A pontoon if you want to be exact

[Brathahn]

can we provide heat to the base with steam pipes also? or maybe let a heat exchanger work in both ways? (steam in/heat out)

[Voidling242]

On Aquilo if you land with nothing then you can do nothing

So does that mean you can soft lock yourself there if your space platforms gets unrecoverably borked?

Well, I think by the time you get there you should be able to remotely build a new one.

What you should be able to do is irrelevant, if it's possible at all to softlock yourself there someone is going to do it

You could probably take off your life support equipment and respawn on Nauvis or something

[OldFart]

Pipe routing is usually the most annoying part of Factorio. I hate that this expansion doubles down on that

[JackTheSpades]

I'm very happy to see heat pipes being used for something else.
My biggest grievance with nuclear power was always how isolated it felt. No upgrading your way to nuclear like a lot of factorio but just making a heap load of buildings for the explicit purpose of nuclear power AND NOTHING ELSE.
Super heated steam also feels a lot like a completely separate fluid, since it doesn't really interact with normal steam or steam engines in any way.

As such, I often thought it would be cool if a higher tier machine would require cooling through heat pipes and/or water cooling plant to stay operational. So it's interesting to see the twisted version where you have to heat your machines to make them work.

Perhaps it would be an interesting challenge if certain machines break when falling below a certain temperature, requiring scrapping. In real life, from what I know giant industrial forges have to remain heated at all times since the metal inside solidifying would basically break the whole thing.

Also, since the build able surface is made from ice, is there any interaction with the fact that heating is required?

The blog also mentions that we have plenty of time, so I assume then there are no enemies? No deep sea creatures that will jump out and try to eat our base?

[cbtmessageman]

I know this might be a bit nitpicky and I also know that it is just a game, but... am I the only one that gets thrown off that the railgun has a cratridge that gets ejected? I mean the basic principle of a Railgun is to take basically a metal spear and yeet it forward using magnets (I will let myself happily correct by others), So why is there a cartridge that would typically hold the propellant?

I'm fine with it. The US Military railgun tests in the 90s included a system that had an armature that was discarded after every shot. Further, if a railgun uses an APFSDS round there will be a discarded component with every shot.

[mmmPI]

Nice a cold snowy planet !

It really works well with the others to me, to create variety that doesn't feel forced. I like the choice of "natural ressources" , liquid ammonia feel convincing and alien to me.

The heating mechanism i found very impressing and i like it a lot. I understand now where the graphics for the "winter" FFF came from. I was sure it was not done only for one FFF and finally it's there the whole snowy base .

I guess the heat transfer math replaces somewhat the puzzle that was represented by the previous fluid mechanic to me.

I am intringued to read about a hand held version of the rail gun, that was not at the LAN party =), i guess it will be impossible to spoil everything as devs seem to keep some surprise for everyone x).

The lack of "surface" and the need to extend the iceberg make me think of "seablock" which are great mods, but you usually rely on making the "raw" ressources with loops, not importing it from other planet. It's quite an interesting twist.

On Aquilo if you land with nothing then you can do nothing

So does that mean you can soft lock yourself there if your space platforms gets unrecoverably borked?

Well, I think by the time you get there you should be able to remotely build a new one.

What you should be able to do is irrelevant, if it's possible at all to softlock yourself there someone is going to do it

It doesnt matter if someone does softlock though x)

I think that's part of video games, if it's possible to "not softlock , play smart and win the game", someone is going to do it too =) I think it does involve making sure you have things to use from the "remote view" to make a replacement platform if you need, or maybe bring material to repair the platform once it's arrived. I think if you make it to Aquilo, you can probably make it back, otherwise you'd die and lose the platform before reaching it on the way in, that would be to harsh to make the way back harder than the way in i think. I think also you can send the ship back and forth first, without being on it, to see if it can make it safely, and only then you as your character take the trip.

You can also hum "save game" in solo, or "play smart" and have back-up in multiplayer

You could also softlock your self in nauvis if biters destroy your elevated rail and you get stuck on an island. Someone will do it !

You can already lose the game if you get spawned camp in Nauvis like if you start and move away from spawn then make a base, then die and respawn where the biters have expanded in the meantime. Happened to me !

[gravityStar]

The best landing spot you could find was this large iceberg. The sheet of ice is only a few meters thick and seems to contain a lot of trapped air, but frozen water is a very solid material as long as it stays cold. It's able to support a landing pad, so that's good enough.

fff-382 says:

However the weight system implies that the player can potentially hold tons of rockets worth of items in their inventory, so for traveling to space, you can only carry your armor and your guns, nothing else (not even ammo).

I did not realize that on the new planets, the engineer lands with a functional landing pad. I had expected (and actually even hoped, as per fff-382) that engineers landed with nothing but their armor and would need to produce a landing pad through locally sourced production.

But I guess fff-382 only talks about the engineer traveling to space, not traveling from space. So it's technically correct.

[JackTheSpades]

Honestly, just about the only downside I see with this is that belt weaving + heat pipe laying will be a bit of a hassle.
If you could run a belt over a heat pipe without requiring underground belts it would make things a lot more comfortable.
Perhaps only allow said crossing if they run orthogonal to each other, so you can't run the heat pipe "below" the belt all the way.

[Sneak555]

tbh, the sound of the railgun kinda hurts my ears.

I don't like the dingging part of the sound and prefer it emphasized the thump more (one of the versions sounds ok)

hopefully we can get some modded soundpacks for things like that.

edit: ooh, actually, kinda feel like maybe the railgun should have a setting where you can have it fire faster--but if it fires while its still hot it takes damage.

Maybe it could even be the first turret that accepts modules (efficiency -> produces less heat, costs less electricity, slower firerate. productivity->more damage but creates more heat while firing slower, speed -> higher fire rate). So you can either commit to repairing it with drones, piping coolent into it, or accept a lower firerate, all depending on what modules you apply.

[MP23]

The last planet and its associated gameplay looks awesome !
Somehow, I thought the graphics of the ice melting was not up to the same quality of the rest of the animations on the game. It is a detail, but the abrupte disappearance of the snow looks pretty unnatural (and we are used to such a polished experience for the rest that it looks a bit weird). Is that still being worked on ?

[JigSaW]

Another week, another FFF introducing "new" things I've already experienced in mod overhauls (albeit with a different coat of paint). This time it's mechanics from seablock and IR3's steam era (i.e. routing pipes to everything). How Wube gets away with selling a repackaged mash-up from free overhauls will forever remain a mystery to me, ig the game is just that addictive that the playerbase will eat up anything that's put in front of them. Very disappointed in what this "expansion" has to offer, the actually original ideas can probably be counted on one hand.

[jamaicancastle]

I can come up with several pseudo-scientific explanations of what exactly that cartridge held that was essential for the turret to function, but we won't know which one is more believable without knowing what this cartridge was made of. Something tells me its ingredients include more than just some iron.

It has a kind of bluish tint that reminds me a bit of the Aquilo science pack. Maybe the "cartridge" is a one-shot coolant pack? (Although if they're using open-cycle coolant, I would definitely expect to see vapor flushed from the barrel.)

[Sneak555]

Another week, another FFF introducing "new" things I've already experienced in mod overhauls (albeit with a different coat of paint). This time it's mechanics from seablock and IR3's steam era (i.e. routing pipes to everything). How Wube gets away with selling a repackaged mash-up from free overhauls will forever remain a mystery to me, ig the game is just that addictive that the playerbase will eat up anything that's put in front of them. Very disappointed in what this "expansion" has to offer, the actually original ideas can probably be counted on one hand.

considering that there are tens of thousands of modders, its basically inevitable that most possible features will already have been done by somebody.

also, theres alot of value to be had in:
1): supporting the developers, especially as their the ones who made alot of the higher-quality mods you take for granted anyway.
2): getting said features in a pre-built, well-supported "pack"; it remains to be seen how stable this "modpack/overhaul" will be of course.