Allow thruster-less platforms unlimited upward height

[urquelle]

TL;DR

Space platforms without thrusters should be allowed to expand (quasi) indefinitely in all directions.

What?

Currently, due to the exploitable nature of very tall spaceships, the max upward height is limited to 200 for all space platforms.
This may be an understandable limitation for all space platforms that use thrusters. However, my colleagues and I, who greatly appreciate symmetric designs in Factorio, have found this limitation greatly impacting the aesthetic and practicality of some of our late-game builds.

For instance,

ugly platform.png (424.21 KiB) Viewed 921 times

is a calcite-producing platform without thrusters, which has 4 symmetric arms extending from the center. This design is fully modular and allows it to expand in either direction almost indefinitely. Sadly, due to height limitation, the top side has to remain fixed at 200 blocks tall, which results in a very limited production throughput for this branch. This is just a single example, but we have found that most of our symmetric designs fail to scale up for the same reason. Currently, I could not find a mod that lifts this limitation and I believe the core game could benefit from only enforcing this limit when thrusters are built on the space platform.

Why?

Such a change would not result in another spaceship exploit, as platforms can expand in the other 3 directions almost indefinitely anyway. However, it would allow for fully symmetric designs of large space platforms. I realize my sample size of 3 veteran Factorio friends is not representative, but we all have independently found this limitation frustrating.

[boskid]

Unfortunately i am not seeing this idea as being feasible. This feature would create a lot of annoying corner cases that would be hard to communicate to players because if the space platform would get past the 200 tiles from the north, we would have to disallow placing thrusters with some type of message suggesting that in order to build thrusters the platform needs to shrink from the top. Without such messages players could get stuck building large space platform and then being unable to place thrusters without knowing why they are blocked. We really do not want to have players build beyond 200 tile to the north to avoid the spear strat.

[urquelle]

Maybe we could get a cheat command that allows to disable this limit entirely? Usually such big platforms are built past the official game ending anyway.

[boskid]

Mods can change this limit in data stage. There is a utility constant related to this:

space_platform_max_size = {{-1000000, -200}, {1000000, 1000000}},

[eugenekay]

Sadly, due to height limitation, the top side has to remain fixed at 200 blocks tall, which results in a very limited production throughput for this branch.

Asteroid Spawn Speed is Constant while a Platform is at Rest; building it larger will not help improve Throughput by permitting you to collect more Asteroid Chunks. The solution to collect more Asteroids is for your Platform to move through space with Thrusters…. Which brings up all of the Balance questions around Width vs Thrust etc. This does not matter if you are exclusively shipping resources up from the Surface to process.

[urquelle]

400 hours in expansion and I just learned asteroid spawn rate is fixed for stationary platforms.
I guess this kind of resolves this issue?

EDIT: Nvm, some of our builds are without collectors.

EDIT2: Something is not adding up. I tested small (2 segments on each side), medium (12 segments on each side) and large (20 segments on each side, except for top) sizes of this template. Small plateaus at around 60 calcite/min, medium is around 150/min, and large had about 200/min before it got destroyed. If the spawn rate is the same for any size of the platform, why are there any differences if the entire platform is packed tight with collectors?

[eugenekay]

If the spawn rate is the same for any size of the platform, why are there any differences if the entire platform is packed tight with collectors?

The Asteroid Spawn Definitions function for "parked at a planet" specifies a static Speed which is equivalent to 1m/s. The Asteroids themselves spawn around the Edge of the explored Area, with a semi-random Angle, gravitating towards the Center of the Platform Hub (0,0). You appear to be using a + shape of Platform, which will miss some of the Asteroids that fly-by the corners. As the Platform gets larger you will notice a diminishing-return as it nears 90%, 95%, 99% "Collection".

Good Luck!

[erkki772]

You have to change perspective. Instead of "pad have to be middle" to "pad is top". You could've built straight down and build from top to bottom, not from middle to up. Build large? Build down

[PunPun]

If the spawn rate is the same for any size of the platform, why are there any differences if the entire platform is packed tight with collectors?

The Asteroid Spawn Definitions function for "parked at a planet" specifies a static Speed which is equivalent to 1m/s. The Asteroids themselves spawn around the Edge of the explored Area, with a semi-random Angle, gravitating towards the Center of the Platform Hub (0,0). You appear to be using a + shape of Platform, which will miss some of the Asteroids that fly-by the corners. As the Platform gets larger you will notice a diminishing-return as it nears 90%, 95%, 99% "Collection".

Good Luck!

Actually the asteroid spawning code takes that static speed and multiplies it with

getAsteroidSpawningArea().getWidth().getDouble() + this->getAsteroidSpawningArea().getHeight().getDouble()

And that spawning area is just platformBoundingBox + asteroidSpawningOffset

And that means bigger platforms spawn more asteroids. And as far as I can tell there is no upper limit to the spawning other than how big you can make the platform.

Source = https://gist.github.com/Rseding91/aecc4 ... 3bf3f3c63f

[eugenekay]

Actually the asteroid spawning code takes that static speed and multiplies it with

getAsteroidSpawningArea().getWidth().getDouble() + this->getAsteroidSpawningArea().getHeight().getDouble()

And that spawning area is just platformBoundingBox + asteroidSpawningOffset

And that means bigger platforms spawn more asteroids. And as far as I can tell there is no upper limit to the spawning other than how big you can make the platform.

Source = https://gist.github.com/Rseding91/aecc4 ... 3bf3f3c63f

Well, at least they gave us the C++ routine instead of having to decompile things to find the real algorithm.....


It is still a lot faster (in wall-clock-time) to mine Asteroids via Travel, rather than Waiting for them to run into you.