Friday Facts #74 - The brainstorming

[Drury]

As a suggestion, I recommend that you add a large number of High tech level power systems for the ship as a steam powered space ship, while cool, is not exactally feasible in space, where coal/oil doesn't as far as we are aware, exist.

You know we need to be able to chuck a few logs in the rocket and off to space we go!

Reminds me Starbound has coal-powered spaceships. Weird game overall.

[StanFear]

I'm really excited about the plateform stuff, not really because of the way it has been presented, but more because of what doors it opens for moders, Beeing able to create new "worlds" or layers !
we could then have caves, that could be dug, have train go under the water, create wholes factories underground and pushing it to the ground to be used (with obviously the polution not dissipating underground !)

it also could allow us to go to other planets (with stargates ?)

anyways, preety excited !

[Nemoricus]

The idea of sending out a rescue ship is a good idea. Great idea, even. But please, please don't let that be the complete endgame, nor the only thing we can do with spaceships.

I'd really like to be able to send out ships to gather exotic resources so that I can build still more advanced things. And what I really want to see in Factorio's endgame is the need to build a factory where you have to maintain a certain throughput for a while. Currently, unless you're going for time, the throughput of your factory doesn't really matter, and you can let the factory idle whenever you want. I'd like to see something like colonization where you have to be able to consistently supply an outpost/town/city.

[Drury]

I'm really excited about the plateform stuff, not really because of the way it has been presented, but more because of what doors it opens for moders, Beeing able to create new "worlds" or layers !
we could then have caves, that could be dug, have train go under the water, create wholes factories underground and pushing it to the ground to be used (with obviously the polution not dissipating underground !)

it also could allow us to go to other planets (with stargates ?)

anyways, preety excited !

Yeah there really ought to be good modding support for endgame content, just to see people come up with crazy stuff like that.

[ssilk]

And what I really want to see in Factorio's endgame is the need to build a factory where you have to maintain a certain throughput for a while. Currently, unless you're going for time, the throughput of your factory doesn't really matter, and you can let the factory idle whenever you want.

I think this is really important! I would like it.

On the other side, this is also what a beginner distincts from advanced player. What new players are saying "uh, that took me a long time," makes advanced eventually just yawning.

I'd like to see something like colonization where you have to be able to consistently supply an outpost/town/city.

This goes into the same direction. But that would be an idea: how much colonists are you able to supply? That part of the game goes straight into the Anno-direction. Is that really wanted?

[Drury]

It'd be fairly easy to force throughput on the player - make biter attacks more frequent. Not really hard to take out or anything, just consistent to the point that once you have 5+ biter nests in your polluted area, the guns are going nonstop and eat through ammo reserves like crazy and just need more and more metal to throw at them.

Yeah there are other ways, that was just the first thing that crossed my warmonger's brain. For instance, smelting could be modded to require high throughput by changing the way heat works - you need a lot of coal burning in the furnace at once, not just single chunks. Similarly, instead of plates, they'd churn out ingots which would take multiple pieces of ore each, and if you fail to keep a constant (high) temperature, the ore doesn't smelt properly and you get pig iron (brittle and useless, has to be re-smelted in a separate furnace). This way you'd be forced to keep that coal pouring in, and, as a consequence, also keep the ore intake up to make the most of the heat.

[imajor]

And what I really want to see in Factorio's endgame is the need to build a factory where you have to maintain a certain throughput for a while. Currently, unless you're going for time, the throughput of your factory doesn't really matter, and you can let the factory idle whenever you want.

I think this is really important! I would like it.

On the other side, this is also what a beginner distincts from advanced player. What new players are saying "uh, that took me a long time," makes advanced eventually just yawning.

I'd like to see something like colonization where you have to be able to consistently supply an outpost/town/city.

This goes into the same direction. But that would be an idea: how much colonists are you able to supply? That part of the game goes straight into the Anno-direction. Is that really wanted?

Not sure about the Anno-direction, I might like it, but I definitely support the idea for maintaining throughput. Either by supporting a colonization, or supporting the ship while it is on its mission.

[vampiricdust]

This idea of space market keeps springing up, but what's the point of a space market in the context of Factorio? Why would trade be so important?

You get all the resources you need on your planet, you don't need to buy iron or copper from other players. You also don't need subproducts like advanced circuits since you can easily produce those yourself as well. Everything you could hope to trade for, you already have on your planet or can be produced easily.

In fact trade is very much against the idea of Factorio, since you trade for products made by other players instead of building your own factory for the purpose of manufacturing those products, which is the core of the gameplay.

What would space trade endgame bring to the game? You have player A producing circuit boards en-masse and selling them on the market - who buys them? Who's player B? All endgame factories ought to have tens of thousands of circuit boards stored for immediate processing. Alien artifacts - fair enough, people playing peacefully might have a shortage of those, but you don't really need a lot of them for research (a few hundreds, barely enough to fill a chest) and the tech that is researched from them is for the most part useless for peaceful players. Weapons - each player crafts their own. Ammunition - cheap crafting recipes, it's super simple to get ammo production going. What else do you need in large numbers? Nothing.

I like the idea of trading in games like EVE or Team Fortress 2, where value is distributed unevenly and players are forced to trade with other players who gain access to valuables at random. But in Factorio, value is distributed perfectly evenly and one can even set how many resources they want on their map. Every player gets everything that can be gotten in the game. There is no point in trading since there is nothing to trade for. You get everything you need.

There is no player b. So far multiplayer is mostly cooperative with a pvp mod available. There's no connection to other worlds created by other players, this isn't a MMO. Trade would be from the player to npc markets that grow and change based on supply. trading pollution heavy goods for ships full of money. Maybe swap pirates for bitters in space and mostly the same game with a purpose for those endless resources. The endgame would start with fairly low demands, then as they are sated, the colony worlds start demanding more & more high end items. Players go from building a factory to grow, to building factories to fill ships.

Could have maybe ship upgrades purchasable through markets as well as special ships. With a galaxy to play in, you could have certain systems procedural generated to offer various exclusive items or raw resources you can't find on your world. Better fuels, maybe a new science pack for ship related tech, or anything else you could come up with. Personally, it would be really satisfying getting rich while watching a galaxy grow and develop on the resources you've sent through the stars. Factories will expand far more than before because the galaxy is a really big place and it's a good thing maps are infinite.

For a competitive multiplayer, it'd be a wealth game. Players try to find the most lucrative markets first and race to not only produce the stuff, but get it sold. Distance matters as shorter distances have less turn around time for your ships, so players will have to weigh distance versus rewards. Players could buy from another if they so wished to take advantage of someone making too much of something so they can focus on something more profitable.

A space run rescue either means a time limit of some form or a game of maximizing the ship for an easy win. The depth required to build a ship for the space run doesn't sound very deep at all. Once you have a design to win, the design would probably win more often then not and there would be very little replay ability. If you went with an open ended galactic market that was unique generated like the map, every end game would be different as worlds would request different things & give different items. You'd have to balance your current production ability against profitable markets, meaning your factory will change from map to map as one game you may make easy money on trains, but another map gets you rich on tanks as they went to war.

The space run idea is great, but it doesn't meet the depth they ask for in ideas. A market game opens up a lot of dynamics that can be modded to give players different goals. While wealth is main reward, it is more of an indicator of your progress towards win goals. Things like achieving the greatest construction boom since humans first left earth, developing technology that develops itself faster than humans could, or becoming one of the richest people in the galaxy. Every play through would be different and mods could use this framework to make all sorts of galactic goals achievable by a lone player working hard on a factory that changes the destiny of humanity.

Grandeur is bigger than a single colony ship.

[Geonosis]

I was mainly hoping for an EVE like market end game. Where you build up your factory to supply a galactic market system, building space ships to haul your goods to more & more markets. The end game would be nearly endless as you struggle to meet such massive demands that eventually your computer can no longer handle the size of the factory you've got built.

There would be 3 aspects to your space platform: rocket capture to supply resources & goods to the platform, the guts of the platform for storage & operation, & the ship docks which oversee the loading & unloading of goods.

The rocket capture would be the rockets sent from the silo for delivery. Various things needed to not only build and operate the platform, but also for shipment to market. As you build the platform, you can add in a rocket capture bay to increase the number of rockets being captured & unloaded. Not sure how they intend to do travel between platform & surface, but this would be the handling of shipments.

The guts of the platform would be the building of power generation, storage control, the maintenance & fueling of ships, dock loading systems, and planet side supplying. The platform would become a sprawling station handling hundreds of ships emptying your factory of goods & resources for profit. Potential hazard would be random debris striking the platform, you would have to build laser turrets to defend areas from these strikes, which would be about the pace of bitter attacks for current settings. A must is a shipyard to build your galactic trading fleet, investing huge quantities of goods for construction of ships.

The ship docks will be the gateways of your factory's might. As you grow your ship fleet, you'll need docks to not only load your ships, but to expand your vested markets. Everything can be sold where there's a demand. Though something would have to be done that either loading ships is dependent on what you set them for or a way to automate the correct cargo amounts.

This idea sounds very much like something I would love! To the other post, that critisised this is not needed as all products are already available, I want to mention that this would in my opinion require new products and resources, that can only acquired from space and are needed as raw materials for super advanced production (everything even more complicated than now!).

edit: And I also agree with the arguments presented in the post just before this one: awesome!

[Drury]

What would the new resources be used for, though?

It'd be neat if you had to trade for special resources needed to progress even further in the tech tree, but that's not endgame, that's just an expansion of midgame. Can't imagine it working as a definite ending to the game, whereas the idea of rescuing colonists to finish the game would actually serve to wrap your efforts up.

[Zequez]

TBH I don't really like the direction of the endgame. I would rather have a colony on the surface of the planet and get an infinite simulation in a SimCity-like fashion. And more resources, and more automatization! And be able to build an automated society! I don't like that you are able to "win" the game.

[ssilk]

This direction is still possible.

I read all the posts about "this is not a good end game", "let's have colonists" etc.

What people might forget, and what the devs forgot to say: they are searching for content to finalize the current development to go to Steam.

That doesn't mean development ends there.

[squisher]

If we could have a sim-city of sorts with colonists, and factories that make and distribute food, oxygen, housing parts, i think i'd gasm...

[Darthlawsuit]

You know one end game thing you might want to think about is terraforming. This is an alien planet, who is to say that the air is breathable/non-toxic to normal humans. It would be interesting to have an "air scrubber" that converts the native air into human breathable air, however that air is a pollutant to the natives so by preparing a site for humanity it will piss off huge numbers of the natives. It would help make the natives attack us more during the end game and force us to claim additional territory, holding off the barbarian hordes.

If we could have a sim-city of sorts with colonists, and factories that make and distribute food, oxygen, housing parts, i think i'd gasm...

There are games where it is sim-city in space, this game really isn't that. If anything make generic food production and housing complexes to "prepare" the landing site for the colonists.

[Stx3]

i think this is killed standart factorio idea

[RawCode]

I have only one question:

will player relay on "steam" power on space platform or something a bit more logical will be available?

[Drury]

I have only one question:

will player relay on "steam" power on space platform or something a bit more logical will be available?

Solar panels will most likely work, hydrogen is mentioned multiple times on the whiteboard.

[Nemoricus]

A note on my thoughts about colonization: I don't envision the colonists themselves doing much. They're simply a way of keeping track of how much population you can support, and it's still up to the player to build and supply the systems that sustain the colony.

[Yaua]

Very interesting and promising ! I love this idea of the space-part of the game ! And it doesn't close doors for something else after/alongside this part. So for me it's actually great and exciting !
And I love the look of the space platform. It reminded me (in a very good way) the space parts of the first starcraft. I'm loving it !

Great work

[HexZyle]

logistic trash area in player's inventory - get rid of things you don't need by sending them to the logistic system

Place an active provider chest, put stuff inside, pick it up after empty.

What's the point of having logistic slots in your pockets at all then, if you can just place down a requester chest and order your stuff via that?
It seems weird that you can have robots deliver things to your pockets, but they can't retrieve things from them.

Also note that you can't just stand around placing items into an active provider chest when you've got large biters nipping at your heels: a time when you would most likely want items taken off your hands real fast.

personal construction robots - speedup of later game stages

And if the bots should feed from your inventory - just place a roboport and a storage chest and dump the same items inside and the construction bots, you probably have to carry along either way, can get it from right there.

The problem with that idea is that it:

• Doesn't work if the blueprint is larger than the coverage area of the Roboport
• Requires the Roboport to be connected to the power grid
• Sucks a hefty 40MJ from the grid you're connecting it to immediately upon placement, a passive 200kW, and more for every construction robot you're running. If you're building in a remote location: the very reason you'd need personal construction robots, you more often than not would have this amount of power being produced/stored locally.

A single construction robot, however, could be run off the power armor's portable fusion reactor with no problems.

automatic railway building - don't micro manage the railways building, just draw the plan and let the robots build it

Isn't this the same as placing a blueprint with railroads on it? And if not - why have a separate logic for railroads, but not for belts or even production sites?

It is the same if you have a railroad blueprint in the exact length and with the exact change in latitude or longitude that you need, and that you have one of these blueprints for every single situation.
If you don't, and you have modular railroad blueprints, this addition would save you the time of needing to run along and place each one, making sure that they're aligned, and removing the blueprints that jut out too far.
If you could place a "start" and "finish" railroad blueprint, the construction robots could construct a railroad track taking the shortest possible route from start to finish, without you needing to micromanage anything. Automation, my friend.

As a suggestion, I recommend that you add a large number of High tech level power systems for the ship as a steam powered space ship, while cool, is not exactally feasible in space, where coal/oil doesn't as far as we are aware, exist.

Solar power plants would have higher output in space, as there is no atmosphere. Also they would produce power continuously, as there is no day/night cycle.

There's still a day/night cycle in orbit, when the satellite travels behind the planet.

EDIT: Well shoot, didn't see that there was 8 pages of comments.