Add elevated big power pole in fulgura together with elevated rails, or lower foundation tech requirements

[Dixi]

Here is a map I'm playing on Fulgora. Default map generation settings.

Untitled-1.jpg (164.32 KiB) Viewed 1699 times

As I understand main complain in this theme is that other small islands with rich resources are not accessible until Aquilo tech.
While I'm trying to show that the map have enough place and resources on good sized bigger islands. They have less resources, but this "less" that is equal to about 200-500k per spot is more then enough to build and research everything until you get to Aquilo.

Having access by train to nearly unlimited spots of 50M+ scrap only after you visit Aquilo is not at problem, from my point of view. It's same thing, why you visit Vulcanus 1st, to have better miners, and use them everywhere right after that, to have less resource shortage and depletion.

[EustaceCS]

I think it would be helpful here to refocus--what is the compelling problem with Fulgora right now? If it's that we don't always have enough power where we want it, I think that the devs very clearly stated that's one of the core challenges of Fulgora, and completely intended.

From my (very slim currently) experience, power on Fulgora is not a problem at all.
Even if, somehow, 1x1 sized lightning attractors are failing to do their job - scrap recycling provides absurd quantities of fuel cubes AND ice cubes.
Which leads to weird situations like clusters of stone furnaces operating on rocket fuel so these both save ~1-3 tiles of space per placement AND help get rid of all those cubes while doing something useful.
In other words, you HAVE to run backup power in a form of boilers and steam engines in almost any case in each production sector if Scrap is involved (which means "almost everywhere" on Fulgora)... but SOMEHOW people are still demanding power poles and failing Reading skill checks
(no, really, I'm under impression that Scrap > cubes ratio is slightly too damn generous... by the time I've built my first rocket silo on Fulgora, I had all these cubes everywhere)

[BlueTemplar]

There are other ways to use these (even without completely wasting them).

----

Having access by train to nearly unlimited spots of 50M+ scrap only after you visit Aquilo is not at problem, from my point of view.

The discussion has never even been about that :
- you already get (potentially somewhat awkward) rail access to those 10+M scrap tiny islands potentially even "before" you get to Fulgora
- you already get quite comfortable rail placement anywhere as 1/2 late

Vulcanus

+ Fulgora techs (but not Aquilo-late).

The discussion has been about also having power lines to go with that (which is already possible, even before Aquilo, under some conditions).

(And also maybe about having the capacity to completely landfill Fulgora - the issue here is that having the capacity to only partially landfill Fulgora is very tricky to balance in an exponentially growing production game that is Factorio.)

[Tinyboss]

Having access by train to nearly unlimited spots of 50M+ scrap only after you visit Aquilo is not at problem, from my point of view.

It's not a problem at all, because you do have unlimited scrap access pre-Aquilo. Until someone shows a save where there are no large enough versions of the super-rich islands that can be reached by train and with enough room for accumulators, this suggested change has zero justification.

[DeadMG]

With efficiency modules and quality accumulators, I've not found this to be a problem at all. Large islands you can spam up a ton of accums and Quality them, small islands you draw very little power due to efficiency drills.

[Rykuta]

Maybe we add a third layer of oil that is "less dense" than the other two of which you can use for some limited "landfilling" in the early-game so you can maybe extend your islands a little or have close islands that can connect to one another more easily without breaking any of the challenge or mechanics of the planet.

You can't connect islands without breaking the challenge, though. Your overall power is limited by the area you can harvest lightning from.

Later on Fulgora you can research the better lightning rods which double the amount of energy you harvest per lightning strike, as well as letting you harvest it from a somewhat larger area. You can also make quality accumulators, which get the best quality bonus in the game. (x2, x3, x4, x6 capacity!)

I'll ask again--what is the compelling problem with the current state of affairs that justifies the suggested changes?

I was offering alternative solutions to OP that could still be viable without breaking the challenge entirely. But you mentioned that connecting any islands at all breaks the challenge so I'll address that: You can currently connect some islands together. There are random factors in the world gen that sometimes makes situations in which you can connect them (there is actually a screenshot in this thread where someone does exactly that). I have encountered these myself on normal settings.

To be clear, I too do not see an actual problem with the current state of affairs that justifies any changes.

To OP, I messed around a bit in the world settings. Maybe the fix for you is to just generate a world where the fulgoran island coverage and size are cranked up to absolute max. This should give you the massive island chains you are looking for without the need for any game changes.

[Tinyboss]

But you mentioned that connecting any islands at all breaks the challenge so I'll address that: You can currently connect some islands together. There are random factors in the world gen that sometimes makes situations in which you can connect them (there is actually a screenshot in this thread where someone does exactly that). I have encountered these myself on normal settings.

Yeah sorry, I didn't say that correctly. What I meant (and have said explicitly earlier in this thread) is that we won't and shouldn't get a change that makes it *normal* to be able to connect islands. The occasional lucky situation is fine. But we know the devs' intent is that we typically have to manage separate power grids per island, because they told us exactly that.

[BlueTemplar]

Also, I kind of forgot because I wasn't that far yet, but Epic quality (in particular, Epic Big electric poles that siniox mentioned) can be unlocked before Aquilo, it's a late

Gleba

tech.

How close that is to Aquilo and the end of the game is going to depend on your planet order...

[5P4RK4]

Being able to power link an island is an extreme luxury and not at all required. All your little island has to do is run the miners and the inserters for your train loading. if it cant fit enough accumulators (which is super unlikely with eff modules) all it does is reduce its throughput. You could just just have fewer miners and more accumulators if this was the case.

Easy grid linking would completely trivialize the come up given your 'big island' has unlimited power effectively.

[Tinyboss]

Being able to power link an island is an extreme luxury and not at all required. All your little island has to do is run the miners and the inserters for your train loading. if it cant fit enough accumulators (which is super unlikely with eff modules) all it does is reduce its throughput. You could just just have fewer miners and more accumulators if this was the case.

Easy grid linking would completely trivialize the come up given your 'big island' has unlimited power effectively.

Exactly this. Also, accumulators get the most extreme quality bonus in the game--uncommon is 2x storage capacity and rare is 3x. These can be made very easily with just Fulgora tech, and completely solve the small-island loading station power problem.

[mooklepticon]

Another vote for Fulgora power platforms or something. Seems weird I can run trains but not power wires.

[PureTilt]

vaults are trivial to power miner consume very little power, ability to stretch poles across ocean would allow to trivialize space constrains for main base by just moving 2 square kilometers of accumulators to other island

[nljr]

Why bother having rails and electric poles separate anyway? Couldn't elevated rails just include power lines?

The answer is, because they want electric grids to be separated to create a new kind of challenge.

[mooklepticon]

> Why bother having rails and electric poles separate anyway? Couldn't elevated rails just include power lines?

Yeah, gimme that 3rd rail power action!

[charonme]

-1

I don't know if anything changed since November, but on my map I have yet to encounter a small super-rich island that can't fit a couple of big drills, a train stop for 4 cargo wagons, a radar and enough accumulators, substations and collectors to power it all. Most of the time I even have enough space for a balancer to feed the cargo wagons evenly.

And it would work just fine even if the islands were much smaller and we'd have to run the drills at night only

[quineotio]

I don't have a problem with Fulgora island size or power generation, even on small islands. But I think foundation is too expensive, and also too late tech. I'd like to build a large base on Fulgora without the size restriction - not for the first base, but late-game, as a sorting challenge. But foundation is just too expensive for me to bother.

I don't think the Fulgora "challenge" of limited space is actually fun. It's not an issue at all when building the first base, because there's plenty of room for that. It only comes up when I want to go big, and then I just don't bother because I'd either have to make a big train network or spend a ridiculous amount of time making a lot of foundation. The interesting part of Fulgora is not building a train network, it's sorting the scrap. Building a bunch of trains to connect different islands is just a big time sink and not an interesting challenge, but rather a hindrance to fun.

It also doesn't make any sense that you can't at least fill in the shallow oil ocean relatively easily. We can fill in normal ocean, and we can walk on the Fulgora ocean, so you'd think it'd be easier to build on. Like many things in Space Age it feels arbitrary (we are forcing you to play in this particular way because that's just what we want). If there was a Fulgora landfill tech I think that'd work, because you'd still have to build a base up until making science. And then the landfill could be similar to refined concrete and perhaps require holmium ore, so that you're giving up science to fill in land (it's a tradeoff). And you don't get a lot of stone on Fulgora - as a waste product yes you get some, but not landfill quantities.

I don't understand the "it's part of the challenge" talk that people keep repeating. I understand what the intended design is. I don't agree with the design. I think you could make an argument that Fulgora is just unfinished. The oil ocean has only one resource that you need very little of, and so it's essentially wasted space. It'd be interesting if there was some other resource there so that you needed to landfill to get it - maybe a liquid, or maybe something you mine. Imagine if the deep oil ocean had a different resource that required you to landfill to get to - then you'd need to balance how many of your resources you devote to landfill vs more productive stuff.

But as far as foundation goes, the cost is a bit of a slap in the face. We can build interstellar spacecraft before we can figure out how to build on oily ground? It breaks the logic of the game for "gameplay reasons" - which I think makes the game less fun. It pushes yet another thing into the "I could but I can't be bothered" category. There's "intended challenge" and then there's "it's a sandbox game" - it can't be both. Space Age is way too much "intended challenge", which is the opposite of 1.0, and I don't like it.