Friday Facts #97 - Greenlight preparations

[kovarex]

Forgot to ask - just who is the OpenTTD modder?

Well, it is secret until the end of the test period

[Drury]

If it's not V453000 I owe you a beer. It's too obvious. So obvious you can't even shield it with the atomic shelter of a building you set your company up in.

All in on V453000, no bluffs this round.

EDIT: If it's not him, I'll go sit on the toilet and piss up to my face.

[vampiricdust]

I think a good investment would be a community coordinator who can work on promoting Factorio by community building events & projects. The influence of community contributions on gameplay is rather great in this game and I think it's an asset that is worth considering how to utilize.

http://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-93
Search for "betka". She's also in the forum.

Wow, totally missed that bit. Already way ahead of me.

[genericname1]

You probably should think about expanding the single player campaign before releasing on steam, i'd hate to see complaints that the game was short

The game is as long as you want it to be. Sure it ends with the satellite launch, but its entirely up to you when you build it. You can spend hundreds of hours developing your infrastructure, if you want. Even so, in average it takes me about 40 hours to actually end the game ( well it used when there was just the rocket defense, I have no idea how long the satellite takes), even if I just focus on the finish. That is more than many, many other games offer when fully finished.
[snip]


...And maybe sorting the research screen...

I think he means that the last thing you do in the base campaign is fly away "somewhere quiet". Certainly that can be a segue into freeplay mode, but in context it feels more like a segue into a final set of campaign missions; It feels incomplete.

This was exactly what I was thinking.

I've spend hundreds of hours playing the non-campaign mode, but the campaign mode seems to have a plot behind it, which just stops. If the game is supposed to have an 'end' then there should somewhere be some justification for it.

The easiest way to do this is with a few more missions.
next one should introduce the logistics and construction robots, and a final lets get off this planet (essentially the New Game mode) perhaps with a little starting materials, some basic research already complete and a little guidance. Depending on what form the end game actually takes it may be desirable to add a final final mission to introduce people to that too

[wwdragon]

I really like how the upgrades in a machine, now show up on the machine when in smart view (alt) mode.

[Overread]

You probably should think about expanding the single player campaign before releasing on steam, i'd hate to see complaints that the game was short

The game is as long as you want it to be. Sure it ends with the satellite launch, but its entirely up to you when you build it. You can spend hundreds of hours developing your infrastructure, if you want. Even so, in average it takes me about 40 hours to actually end the game ( well it used when there was just the rocket defense, I have no idea how long the satellite takes), even if I just focus on the finish. That is more than many, many other games offer when fully finished.
[snip]


...And maybe sorting the research screen...

I think he means that the last thing you do in the base campaign is fly away "somewhere quiet". Certainly that can be a segue into freeplay mode, but in context it feels more like a segue into a final set of campaign missions; It feels incomplete.

This was exactly what I was thinking.

I've spend hundreds of hours playing the non-campaign mode, but the campaign mode seems to have a plot behind it, which just stops. If the game is supposed to have an 'end' then there should somewhere be some justification for it.

The easiest way to do this is with a few more missions.
next one should introduce the logistics and construction robots, and a final lets get off this planet (essentially the New Game mode) perhaps with a little starting materials, some basic research already complete and a little guidance. Depending on what form the end game actually takes it may be desirable to add a final final mission to introduce people to that too

Campaigns tend to be the kind of thing added late in a development cycle. That's because they tend to be more scripted events and thus when a game is still in the phase of having content added its pointless to spend long hours re building the campaign each time because new things were added. I think that more missions will be added, but only once more of the core game and content is completed.


Already the game is heading toward an open-ended no-end approach as once the new rocket is launched a whole section for building a space platform/station is set to be added. I'd also argue that in the long term Factorio is the kind of game where skirmish/survival needs either no ending or an optional very clearly triggered player one. Otherwise many will rant that the game ended because they finished something, but they were still working on finishing their "perfect" factory or some-such.

[Phasma Felis]

One problem I've noticed is that the consolidated laser turrets are not capable of dealing with the 50-alien waves as well as the many smaller turrets.
They have a lot of overkill and target newer ones slower, allowing the aliens to get many more shots each wave; this allows turrets to be destroyed every time.

So... when are we getting the big ass aliens, so that their waves shrink considerably?

I was thinking it would be really cool to allow players to set target priority for different turret types. You might have lasers target large biters first, and only target small biters when there's no large/mediums left; meanwhile, MGs target small biters by preference, medium second, and entirely ignore large biters to save ammo, since they're nearly bulletproof. (Or you might think that my example priorities are stupid--it's up to you. )

IMHO, it would encourage players to mix different turret types, making defense planning more interesting and possibly opening up possibilities for more specialized types of turrets (since the optimal strategy wouldn't just be "spam the best turret you have").

Maybe I should make that a suggestion post.