Version 2.1.21

[MechBFP]

Perhaps a composite speed formula would have been better, e.g. 80% based on weight and 20% based on width.

Hard disagree. Using width at all is completely illogical so it being in the formula at all is a bad idea in my opinion.

[linktothepast83]

Fixed recycle time of items that recycle into themselves did not scale with item result count. (135548)

Nice, now the recycling time of bitter eggs is 5x faster or you need 5 times less recyclers for bitter egg upcycling. Generally i like the change to the speed formula for the spaceships as well but perhaps it should be a bit more forgiving with weight in order to reach higher speeds overall and not too much lower than before. It makes more sense to be based only on weight but it should not make most cases slower, people even went to stacking to achieve higher speeds so a lot will be bummed to see lower overall.

[WhereNever]

The change of the meta for all spaceships is terrible. All my ships have been made significantly slower. Days of designing concepts for promethium ships are now wasted. The top speed with this balance is way too low, even a ship that is all thrusters and barely anything else goes less than 700 km/s. Devs should refrain from making such balance changes in a building game where people poor weeks or months of their lives into ship design

[Alfonse215]

I like this patch. And calculating spaceships via weight makes more sense in space compared to with.
Does the weight also apply to ship payload?

The weight computation has not changed. It's only based on the number of tiles on the platform, just like always.

Will same system gets ported to trains?

Trains always used weight to determine how fast they go. That's why longer trains are slower.

Will LDS shuffle get nerfed like space casinos?

They already said that they decided against it.

[erectile_pisfunction]

The absolute upper bound of top space platform speed is now 10,054.34 km/s. There can be no platform that ever exceeds this speed (without editing the platform mid-flight). This is also not the tightest upper bound; the ~10k km/s number is calculated using 401 legendary thrusters operating at full thrust propelling a platform of 12,896 foundations. The only entities occupying space on that platform are the space platform hub and thrusters.

A tighter bound can be calculated by adding platform space for the minimum number of buildings required to feed the thrusters, but alas, nobody would ever actually be operating in that regime because it cannot be sustained due to the raw number of resources required to keep the beast fed.

[melind]

Overall I really like the balance change moving from width to weight since it should be much more understandable that bigger platforms require more thrust to go fast. If there is some kind of diminishing returns on speed I'm not a fan of that and would much prefer a simple thrust/weight calculation without diminishing returns. If players want to build racing ships I think they should be able to. There are already systems in the game that makes it difficult to build ships like this (less time to react to asteroids with weapons/grabbers, asteroid hits do more damage) so I'm not sure why the game needs to restrict player agency here.

[Loren Pechtel]

Please tell me "read free space" is coming to trains and asteroid collectors!

Why would I want to read free space on an asteroid collector?

I do want it on trains, and in train control. (We have until full, I want an until no space remains + idle time. Don't hold the train because you don't have enough to fill that stack.)

[Alfonse215]

Overall I really like the balance change moving from width to weight since it should be much more understandable that bigger platforms require more thrust to go fast. If there is some kind of diminishing returns on speed I'm not a fan of that and would much prefer a simple thrust/weight calculation without diminishing returns. If players want to build racing ships I think they should be able to. There are already systems in the game that makes it difficult to build ships like this (less time to react to asteroids with weapons/grabbers, asteroid hits do more damage) so I'm not sure why the game needs to restrict player agency here.

The original width-based equation already gave diminishing returns on speed. It's just that thruster stacking exists, which allowed players to bypass those diminishing returns (the diminishing returns were based on width, and stacked thrusters don't contribute to width). WUBE didn't want thruster stacking, so it's not a surprise that the new equation is one that implements diminishing returns in a way that thruster stacking cannot avoid.

Thruster stacking still gets to exist, and can still be useful, but primarily as a means to avoid widening the space craft (and thus avoiding adding more guns and ammo production/consumption). But it can't no longer allow for arbitrary speed, since even stacked thrusters create more weight.

Before, I believe the functional maximum speed of a platform without stacking was somewhere around 500-600 kps.

[DmitriiP]

For small ships new drag coefficient is disaster

Factorio v2.1.20 For speed: 500.00 Legendary xThrusters
Thrusters: 4 Width: 17 Max Weight: 183.00
Thrusters: 5 Width: 21 Max Weight: 323.80
Thrusters: 6 Width: 25 Max Weight: 419.80
Thrusters: 7 Width: 29 Max Weight: 489.60
Thrusters: 8 Width: 33 Max Weight: 542.60
Thrusters: 9 Width: 37 Max Weight: 584.00
Thrusters: 10 Width: 41 Max Weight: 617.60
Thrusters: 11 Width: 45 Max Weight: 645.00
Thrusters: 12 Width: 49 Max Weight: 668.20
Thrusters: 13 Width: 53 Max Weight: 687.80
Thrusters: 14 Width: 57 Max Weight: 704.60
Thrusters: 15 Width: 61 Max Weight: 719.20
Thrusters: 16 Width: 65 Max Weight: 732.00
Thrusters: 17 Width: 69 Max Weight: 743.40
Thrusters: 18 Width: 73 Max Weight: 753.60
Thrusters: 19 Width: 77 Max Weight: 762.60
Thrusters: 20 Width: 81 Max Weight: 770.80

Factorio v2.1.21 For speed: 500.00 Legendary xThrusters
Thrusters: 4 Max Weight: 113.60
Thrusters: 5 Max Weight: 149.80
Thrusters: 6 Max Weight: 187.60
Thrusters: 7 Max Weight: 226.60
Thrusters: 8 Max Weight: 266.60
Thrusters: 9 Max Weight: 307.60
Thrusters: 10 Max Weight: 349.40
Thrusters: 11 Max Weight: 391.80
Thrusters: 12 Max Weight: 434.80
Thrusters: 13 Max Weight: 478.20
Thrusters: 14 Max Weight: 522.00
Thrusters: 15 Max Weight: 566.20
Thrusters: 16 Max Weight: 610.80
Thrusters: 17 Max Weight: 655.40
Thrusters: 18 Max Weight: 700.40
Thrusters: 19 Max Weight: 745.60
Thrusters: 20 Max Weight: 790.80

[nekicowek]

For small ships new drag coefficient is disaster

not only small ships, it is disasterous for all ships..
entire mass mechanic is problematic, just it did not matter before 2.1.21..
You send one platform starter kit with one rocket(weight 1 ton), and You get 60 ton platform.. 60!!!
and it has 10 platform foundations which when applied add to 62 ton..
but that is not all..
You send 1 ton of platform foundations (50 pieces) with one rocket, and those 50 in space, add 10 tons of mass!
in other words, all platforms should actually weight at least 10x less than they weight now..
it is easy to fix and find nice balance, i really hope we will se that rebalance in next patch or so..

[erectile_pisfunction]

For small ships new drag coefficient is disaster

Factorio v2.1.20 For speed: 500.00 Legendary xTrusters
Trusters: 4 Width: 17 Max Weight: 183.00
Trusters: 5 Width: 21 Max Weight: 323.80
Trusters: 6 Width: 25 Max Weight: 419.80
Trusters: 7 Width: 29 Max Weight: 489.60
Trusters: 8 Width: 33 Max Weight: 542.60

Factorio v2.1.21 For speed: 500.00 Legendary xTrusters
Trusters: 4 Max Weight: 113.60
Trusters: 5 Max Weight: 149.80
Trusters: 6 Max Weight: 187.60
Trusters: 7 Max Weight: 226.60
Trusters: 8 Max Weight: 266.60

I would argue that with those numbers, the new drag coefficient is much more intuitive. In the old system, going from 4 -> 5 thrusters, +25% thrust, resulted in your max weight going from 183.00 -> 323.80, +77% max weight, which doesn't make much sense at all. In the new system, 4 -> 5 thrusters results in max weight going from 113.60 -> 149.80, +32% max weight, which is much closer to the proportional change of +25%.

Sure, a nerf to some of our favourite platforms is less than desirable, but just imagine the new design space that is waiting to be explored!

[Alfonse215]

I don't think the formula as it currently stands is a problem. Given the current numbers however, I wouldn't mind a small buff to thruster output. Perhaps 10-20% of the current number. This would make it a bit easier to develop faster platforms, while still requiring more effort to get the fastest possible platform.

[DmitriiP]

I would argue that with those numbers, the new drag coefficient is much more intuitive.

intuitive or not... but Legendary thrusters on small ships now 40%-50% less effective.

[Alfonse215]

I would argue that with those numbers, the new drag coefficient is much more intuitive.

intuitive or not... but Legendary thrusters on small ships now 40%-50% less effective.

Is that a problem though? That platforms may be less effective in their current configuration is to be expected. The question is whether the new equation allows for creating reasonable platforms with those performance characteristics.

Consider the 10 thruster design under the new system. At 617 tons, that's 2885 tiles (-40 tons for the hub). That's actually less heavy than my end-game inner planet ship (though that one was only intended for 400+kps). Yes, that design uses only 5 thrusters, but 2885 tiles is definitely enough room to create a 10 thruster design with equivalent storage capacity and performance. I could probably do it in 9 or 8 thrusters. In fact, I could probably do it by just strapping 2 thrusters on each side of the platform with zero other changes.

By the endgame, legendary thrusters are not a rare commodity, nor is it particularly difficult to keep 8-10 thrusters fueled. So the fact that you need more thrusters per weight to achieve equal performance is not per-se a problem.

[SolTom]

What does the "retuned" damage mean?

[eugenekay]

What does the "retuned" damage mean?

utility-constants.lua had the asteroid_min_damage_modifier change from 0.1 to 0.05.
space-ag/prototypes/entity/asteroid.lua had the shared_damage_per_hp lookup table updated, which is used for setting the AsteroidPrototype::damage_per_hp property.

Good Luck!