Friday Facts #381 - Space Platforms

[Salty_Legume]

These graphics look AMAZING!!! Can't we have the expansion now??

I am curious about a couple of things:

Thing the first: Will the space platforms' primary use of solar panels invalidate the steam all the way achievement? I guess this depends on the victory condition for the game. If, like today, victory is the same as launching a rocket, then we can continue on as today by launching the rocket and then using solar to our heart's delight. If, however, the victory is after the launch to space, then it seems like the achievement here is going to be difficult or impossible to achieve. I really hope there's an FFF with achievements in the near future.

Following the first, there's mention of

The rocket silo is directly connected to the logistic network and works as a requester chest.

Will this invalidate the logistics embargo achievement?

I dont see how the "Steam All The Way" achievement will be possible unless its achieved when you launch the rocket. Because if you wanted to use nuclear in space you will probably still have to kick start the process with a solar panel. Because once you've got all the materials up there you still need water. You could bring it up in water barrels but would need to extract the water from a barrel which requires an assembler which requires electricity. Getting it from asteroids requires the grabby arm things which i assume require electricity, if not the crusher and chemical plant necessary to get the water need electricity anyway. So with whats been shown so far i dont think theres any way to get the achievement as it is now. Unless theres some new building which could produce electricity, like maybe a RTG.

[fieldmouse]

Personally, Im having a bit of a problem with how unrealistic it is, how would those belts works? Why are there fans on stuff in space? Those arms look really weird, couldnt those be harpoons or something reasonable instead?
Building a floor and placing buildings also make little sense. Would have been cooler if it was more of a space station feel than building ground in space and placing normal buildings on it. This seems a bit "we took what we already had, ok?"

Buuuuuut all in all im really looking forward to this extension, all the new features and new planets! =D cant wait to play!

[exi2163]

The graphics for the thrusters and their engine plume look amazing. However If there is no atmosphere for burner entities then there is no way an engine plume will look like that. Unfortunately rocket plumes in space look kinda boring (*) so most games just omit them. If you keep the plumes you could also add shock diamonds as physics has been thrown out of the window a long time ago

(*) Boring as in for gameplay, in real life its stil stunning to see:
https://wtop.com/gallery/media-gallerie ... residents/

[Vulkandrache]

The graphics for the thrusters and their engine plume look amazing.

The fire looks ok, the engine looks like something you might encounter in a Doom game.
It seems far to much like an organic piece and is very wobly.

The Hub thing looks like a parody of a superhero enthusiasts wet dream of what a supervillain hideout should look like.
Was this designed by the guy that made most of the graphics for the Py buildings?

I also dont understand why there isnt a single screenshot with alt-mode enabled.
I want to see, not guess, what stuff does.

[mmmPI]

I also dont understand why there isnt a single screenshot with alt-mode enabled.

I thought maybe you don't have the video activated and you missed the 3 videos with the alt-mode enabled but this is not a video :

I don't understand your comment, there are plenty of alt-mode enabled images and video.

fff-381-nuclear-platform.png (1.36 MiB) Viewed 3474 times

[Serenity]

If there is no atmosphere for burner entities then there is no way an engine plume will look like that.

Yeah that threw me off too. It's really unnecessary for the scene composition. Just the blue flame looks amazing. And together with the moving engine it adds enough visual "clutter" to the scene.

[AileTheAlien]

This expansion looks really good already! So hopefully I don't sound too negative - I have a bit of a concern with this statement:

This means efficiency modules are now much more useful than before.

Because:

I hope Efficiency Modules 1 will finally be nerfed (keyword: miners)

This is basically what I do in my games - slap down E1s into all my miners early on, then into my electric furnaces until I get E2s. Assembler 2s are good enough with E1s, and then if you get assembler 3s you just slap in four E1s because they're cheap enough until you want to start doing module beacons and more complex things. And on rail worlds, efficiency modules are even better since the reduced pollution helps avoid biters, as you're expanding your rail lines out for resource patches.

I usually am too tired to calculate the optimal ratios of things, and don't have any megabases yet so I'm not like a speed-running expert or something. But I'm kind of hoping this expansion can include some kind of rebalance or tweaks to modules, since they've been sort of a trivial puzzle in the game for a long time. (Either basic efficiency 1 and 2 everywhere, or some speed beacons and productivity everywhere if you don't care about pollution or energy-usage. I think there were still some open threads discussing all of the modules' balance, at least this year when I came back to check.)

Anyways, thanks again for this great game and the expansion - I've got so many hours in it!

[Ashandy]

Please tell me, will this all be in version 2.0 or in some kind of extension? And what is the approximate release date?

[catpig]

Is this a preview of the new big update? Or what do these Friday facts mean?

It's about the expansion/DLC they're working on, called space age. Like in many games, some of the improvements will also be made to the base game, for those who do not buy the expansion.

[Tertius]

The ALT-mode grinder icon seems a bit strange - it's looking as if 2 hands are holding an item. The 2 grinding wheels look like 2 hands. May be the coloring could change - more blue or violet perhaps and not that warm orange tint.

[Xorimuth]

Please tell me, will this all be in version 2.0 or in some kind of extension? And what is the approximate release date?

Please read https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-367 and https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-373

Tldr: this will be in the Space Age expansion, releasing in around a year’s time, which will cost $30 or $35. Space Age will release alongside a major free update: 2.0.

[Ashandy]

Please tell me, will this all be in version 2.0 or in some kind of extension? And what is the approximate release date?

Please read https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-367 and https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-373

Tldr: this will be in the Space Age expansion, releasing in around a year’s time, which will cost $30 or $35. Space Age will release alongside a major free update: 2.0.

Oh, thanks. So it will be at about August.2024. I'll will be waiting.

[Brambor]

I wonder how repair packs work...

[Vulkandrache]

I don't understand your comment, there are plenty of alt-mode enabled images and video.

I am talking about screenshots that show the whole plattform, not 2 machines and a stick.

[mmmPI]

I also dont understand why there isnt a single screenshot with alt-mode enabled.
I want to see, not guess, what stuff does.

I don't understand your comment, there are plenty of alt-mode enabled images and video.

I am talking about screenshots that show the whole plattform, not 2 machines and a stick.

Sorry that was not clear from your comment because you wrote you didn't understand why there wasn't a single screenshot with alt mode enabled, which is not correct as most of the screens and videos have alt-mode active which allow to see the liquid on pipes or the receipe/icon on most items that are also present in the video without the alt-mode. So i thought maybe you couldn't see them and that's why you couldn't guess what was in the video because otherwise it's pretty easy to do as the platform is quite small and you have several close up screenshots. Anything you can't still guess ?

[blazespinnaker]

[Moderated by Koub : Off topic, I will not let yet another a flame war start]

[blazespinnaker]

So, ok - space debris is fine, it makes sense. You don't want to build up mass on the platform because of fuel costs during deceleration. It's not really added space debris because you're taking existing asteroids and mining them. The infinite asteroid supply however is questionable. Also the mining mechanic is weird and candy crushy.

Kovarex post on reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... are_button

The platform is thick enough to have some machinery inside. We didn't show it, as it is still work in progress, but there is going to be a scaffolding animation related to building tiles and entities.


From a game design perspective, getting down is for free. There is some capsule landing animation/mechanics in progress, while in the current playtesting version, things just teleport down. When it comes to the way how do you request things down there and how it all works together, it will be covered later.

You can't keep your inventory, only your armor. Platform payload is quite limited, more on it later.

I get it, but don't think it was necessary or even consistent with Factorio. Transporting stuff via inventory is a workaround in vanilla as well. A tedious workaround. That's literally the whole point of factorio - automate the tedium.

Rockets are not limited per stack, but per weight, more on it later. But even so, you are going to send quite a big amount of rockets in the expansion (many thousands at least, probably more, but don't forget rockets are 20 times less expensive now), this is why rockets were made much cheaper and little bit more simple to produce, to not make the whole expansion about the rocket production.

By default, rocket is always waiting for the full capacity of the requested item, to not waste resources. So if you built one belt, by default, full rocket of belts is sent. You can also make mixed rockets, but only manually if you really care about not sending anything extra, there is not a big motivation to do it, as one rocket is not such a big deal anymore. The request can be configured to not wait for the full capacity, and specific number can be specified, but it is rarely used.

Sounds like they twisted themselves in knots to avoid combinators. I get it, combinators are not just complex, they're also 'weird'. The latter could have been fixed, the former probably not. For people who want complexity the answer is obvious - SE.

LDS is blue science. It is a detail, so I can tell it here, but RCU was cancelled as an item, and blue chip (processing unit) is used instead of it. This is to lower the focus on rockets, especially because you have to produce rockets on every planets eventually.

Interesting. Sounds like they wanted to minimize changing recipes, which makes perfect sense, so instead they just removed stuff.

Each asteroid type has a different preffered weapon. Laser turrets are only efficient against the small asteroids, and the medium one need at least a gun turret. Since energy is quite scarce on the platform, it is usually better strategy to just use gun turrets for both small and medium asteroids.

Wait, what? "Different preferred weapon" but oh btw use gun turrets. Sad face. Mechanics encouraging greater weapon mix (at least in hard modes) is one of the things I've been hoping for.

Robots so the platform remains a belt logistic puzzle.

I sorta get the feeling that wube decided to throw out any suspension of disbelief because time/resources I guess. Sad face. They could have had some mechanic like SE which allowed robots but then nuked them via solar radiation or something. Like really amped it up to make it become obviouslly silly to have robots all the way through.

Chests to prevent excessive buffering.

I mean... it's like they're building candy crush or something. Sure, fun, but no suspension of disbelief. Why not have a fuel mechanic and a total chest inventory counter? Have an important consequence to build-up of mass on the space platform?

Factorio was the perfect game for a hard-core sci-fi fan. This DLC feels like it's leaving that core behind. The perils of popularity I suppose.

[mmmPI]

[Moderated by Koub : Response to a moderated comment]

[blazespinnaker]

[Moderated by Koub : Response to a moderated comment]

[Anachrony]

[Moderated by Koub : Response to a moderated comment]