Friday Facts #442 - Flip, Flow, and Fresh Paint

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-442

[ThaPear]

Great updates, thank you!

[burninghey]

Choose the output lane? Never knew I need that so badly. Great work!

[mikiqex]

Choosing lane is flippin' awesome!

[Inscius]

These graphical reworks are great. I was never really bothered by the old graphics, but in hindsight they really feel like placeholders when compared to the new ones.

[Erfar]

I still have 4 QoL that I'm waiting for:
• Wireless connection for logistic chests
• Ability to track achievements without deleting them
• Superforce building over pipes having same logic as over belts (unless fluid input conncetion)
• Deconstruction as part of blueprint

[GregoriusT]

A semi-related change, related in the way of drop consistency, is that inserters will now always drop to the input sides of splitters.

this was always such a pain to work with when trying to optimize builds for space!

This whole update is gonna make me redo my mid-nauvis onpatch electric smelting again!

[Erfar]

Also, Diagonal ramps for elevated rails when???

[Tomeshec]

I was thinking about this literally earlier today, specifically with the burner miner, thank you very much

[SHADOW13]

And you left Storage tanks not increase storage amount with quality ?!

All other storage buildings do increase, fluid wagons do increase, make Storage tank increase Fluid storage volume too

[revilowaldow]

> the primary change being splitting the Recycler to its own tiny separate mod.
Is the secondary change making asteroid collectors at common quality not be absolutely trash?
Getting uncommon collectors is literally my only interaction with quality outside of the recycler.
Please can they get a base upgrade.

[GregoriusT]

So Asteroid-RE-processing cant do quality anymore (good thing)

Does this affect Asteroid-to-Ore-Processing recipes too? (would be meh if so, but understandable)

[nixxquality]

While [flipping] some things will always be impossible (Train stops, Rail signals, etc.), we do what we can.

Sentences like this are a bit more bittersweet to read now that we're in the final stretch of development, huh?

[cbtmessageman]

I like all of the visual changes, but I'm hoping there is another one that didn't get mentioned: Coal on Vulcanus. It's tough to spot the differences between the coal and the ground at times, hopefully there is time to address this before the update drops.

[SHADOW13]

pipe circuit connection should also have "Read % amount", not just temperature

[Kyralessa]

Vertically, I always had to set up inserters and belts and just watch and see which side the ore ended up on; I could never remember.

Just having the arrow show it is great.

Being able to flip the inserter and have it drop on the other side of the belt is huge.

Having inserters always drop on the insertion side of a splitter is utterly fantastic!

BRB, gotta go update all my blueprints.

[boskid]

While [flipping] some things will always be impossible (Train stops, Rail signals, etc.), we do what we can.

Sentences like this are a bit more bittersweet to read now that we're in the final stretch of development, huh?

How so? If a train stop would move to the other side of a rail, a blueprint would change between left-hand-drive and right-hand-drive, which i think would make it pretty much useless feature since it would create a blueprint that is incompatible with the rest of the rails system.

Choosing lane is flippin' awesome!

Just be aware that choosing works only in places where there is ambiguity due to belt being perpendicular. Those cases were the cause of problems for blueprint flip reliability.

[JohnMeister]

I hope we get a release date for the experimental branch soon.

[JackTheSpades]

There is so much awesomeness in this update but I'm most excited about the higher train capacity.
Stacked belts have almost made trains more of a burden than a benefit. A stacked green belt could empty an ore cargo wagon in like 8 seconds which causes huge congestion on the tracks if a train had to depart every 8 seconds. The only option was to make more than one wagon for each belt but that increased the size tremendously.

I still think it would be better to have a way to compress/pack ore at the very least.


Losing the asteroid casino is a bit of a shame.
The real problem with quality is that is a "nice to have" during the normal play through but becomes a necessity when you want to build a megabase. I just can't imagine anyone forgoing legendary machines and modules when designing for even just 100k spm.
But I suppose we just have to upscale the less powerful "casinos".

[Ondre58]

I think there sould be another quality-related update. Agricultural science packs' scaling is kinda broken - for legendary packs capacity is 6 times higher, but spoil time is only 2.5. It means that you actually lose more science points per tick in comparison with regular packs. As I know, almost nobody uses high quality science packs, especially on Gleba, and of course people hate spoilage. So, I think rebalancing high quality science packs' spoil rate scaling could fix both of these issues.