Friday Facts #432 - Aquilo

[Wilm0rien]

i just read through the FF about Aquilo and now I'm wondering: where are the enemies?

[Sunseille]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObccgHQdos0
soon

[Jesperhk]

Looks great but the sound of the railgun is way to high pitched, its like nails on a chalkboard..

I didnt like it, think if i had 20 of these cannons my ears would bleed.
maybe its the sound quality that makes it worse, not sure, but it doesnt sound as smooth as the other weapons in Factorio.

[meganothing]

The alternative solution to the railgun discrepancy (if there is one) would be to rename it. A cool name would be lost, but coolness isn't everything, even on Aquilo

[TheVeteraNoob]

Just a bit of nitpicking that could be an interesting mechanic. Everything in factorio consumes an unholy amount of electricity and as people know. Everything that consumes electricity is a 100% (or sometimes higher) efficient electric heater. So it would be interesting if machines that were running continuously would be self heating. And particularly inefficient things such as productivity infused machines could actually warm the surrounding machines.

[gnutrino]

So, the more I think about the heat mechanics, the more it doesn't sit right with me. From a real world physics point of view, it's about the worst possible solution to the problem: "My machines keep freezing, should I modify the design to include a simple and efficient electric heating element given that it's already got a supply of electricity or should I run miles of uncovered, uninsulated copper heat pipes all over the place on the basis that being next to a chunk of 30 degree copper will surely thaw them?" Not to mention things like pipes full of clearly-liquid-at-ambient-temperatures ammonia somehow freezing over, or the plasma generator pulling several million degree plasma needing a 30 degree heat source to keep from freezing.

When speculating about what a heat mechanic on a frozen world would look like, I was imagining that machines would generate heat proportional to their electricity draw/fuel burnt (because, you know, that's how thermodynamics works) and run slower when under temperature, eventually stopping completely below a threshold. You could then use your skills learned on Gleba to make sure production keeps flowing to keep your assemblers working and producing heat to keep themselves operating and/or pull heat from other areas of the factory (or direct from nuclear reactors/heat towers as we got) to supplement parts of the factory falling behind or just to make sure things don't completely fail to frozen. Maybe have some sort of manual way to get machines up to temperature initially (the fun way would be using the flamethrower, the more sensible way might include some sort of "warmth capsule" that's basically just a thermos full of hot water that you splash around). The cryo-plants could then work the opposite way, needing the heat of operation carried away by coolant and heat pumps (essentially what the cryo-plant in coolant cooling mode does, although it seems a bit over the top to use such an expensive building for such a basic operation...) in order to keep them operating optimally.

I dunno, maybe I'll change my mind once I've played with it a bit, but I can't help but be a bit disappointed that instead we seem to have ended up with Yet Another Routing Puzzle: No Undergrounds Edition instead .