Factorio Forums

Land mines on space platforms now damage the space platform tiles in a radius

this is rather big change and will break lots of people ships & games leaving really bad taste when they realise new patch broke their builds half way between planets etc

I think it's too late for this change in 2.0, I would suggest to delay it to 2.1


and also, I think you should add something beneficial instead while we are loosing mines, I dunno, walls to actually do something in space would be nice or something like that?

SHADOW13 wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 2:43 am

Land mines on space platforms now damage the space platform tiles in a radius

this is rather big change and will break lots of people ships & games leaving really bad taste when they realise new patch broke their builds half way between planets etc

I think it's too late for this change in 2.0, I would suggest to delay it to 2.1


and also, I think you should add something beneficial instead while we are loosing mines, I dunno, walls to actually do something in space would be nice or something like that?

Walls already do something, but it has to be extremely nerfed like this to prevent the same thing that Landmines were doing before.


I would still suggest having the platform bits only be destroyed by Landmines if it does not create Donuts.

Having read the discussion here, I think it makes the most sense to simply forbid landmines in space (I.e. make them require a surface gravity, just like chests and roboports). I think you'd still be able to produce them on the platform, just not place them.

My reasoning for this is:

• Having landmines not destroy/damage nearby platform tiles makes no sense, and is inconsistent with the fact they will damage nearby buildings
• Having landmines destroy the nearby platforms can create holes
• Having the landmines not destroy platforms if it would create a hole, is also inconsistent and makes no sense
• Making the hole bigger so that it's no longer a hole would be horrible
• Having landmines destroy chunks of your space platform seems like a horribly expensive thing that most people won't want to do
• There is no land in space to mine

The only argument for the old behaviour however is that it makes the game easier, but this was definitely not the intention of the developers (they were expecting to use other things, like gun turrets, not landmines!).

As for the rocket fuel thing, I'm surprised they didn't just prevent rocket fuel from being recycled, as they've already prevent a lot of random things (like landfill for example, and that doesn't even have a "chemical process").
(Note that I haven't been to aquillo yet, nor played with anything hatching on my space platform, so I don't know if the game is too hard with these new changes)

It's not mentioned directly in the patch notes but the solid fuel recipe on Aquilo was also changed - it's now 6 crude oil + 15 ammonia for 1 fuel, and takes 0.5 seconds instead of 1.

The old recipe was 20 crude + 50 ammonia, so I believe that means rocket fuel on Aquilo actually has the same cost as it did before (60 crude oil + 650 ammonia). So it shouldn't be much harder to make than before. However it takes a bit longer for one machine to make enough solid fuel now, so if you had a big rocket fuel plant you may need to add some more solid fuel machines for the right ratio.

mouzy wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 4:24 am It's not mentioned directly in the patch notes but the solid fuel recipe on Aquilo was also changed - it's now 6 crude oil + 15 ammonia for 1 fuel, and takes 0.5 seconds instead of 1.

The old recipe was 20 crude + 50 ammonia, so I believe that means rocket fuel on Aquilo actually has the same cost as it did before (60 crude oil + 650 ammonia). So it shouldn't be much harder to make than before. However it takes a bit longer for one machine to make enough solid fuel now, so if you had a big rocket fuel plant you may need to add some more solid fuel machines for the right ratio.

Apparently the time was also changed, see viewtopic.php?p=649019#p649019

It didn't take long for someone to make a mod undoing the landmine changes: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/SpaceMines,
No oned downloaded it yet though.

Alas. Bringing the "slap some ERA blocks on it" bit to Factorio was fun, as was playing around with railgun firing arcs to minimise landmine kills, though I was surprised to see no self-splash damage after initial tests.

Will have to play around and see just how much self-damage in how large an area they do now.

My suggestion is, landmines in space destroy all landmines in a certain radius and those landmines will not deal damage. So using landmine as a last resort is still acceptable, but abusing them in large scale will not be practical.

cyx2020f wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 8:29 am My suggestion is, landmines in space destroy all landmines in a certain radius and those landmines will not deal damage. So using landmine as a last resort is still acceptable, but abusing them in large scale will not be practical.

This feels like it could also work if the design was "Landmines will destroy space platform under them/next to them, but not space platform under walls. (and possibly other buildings, either just turrets or in general)

Since I do recall one of the FFFs talked about space platform foundation tiles inheriting additional health from the object on top of them, and my initial assumption was it landmines would at least destroy their own tile when they went off.

Feels like it would incentivize producing platform foundation and possibly repair packs in space, especially with how the former already shares ingredients with railgun ammo, and encourage sparse placement of landmines to avoid fratricide.

Not on experimental, so maybe it already works that way, but it feels like a way to make them into "Still very useful, but require more technology and expense than on the ground."

I don't use reactive armor with landmines, but many do based on blueprint stats on factorioprints and factorio.school. It should be postponed to 2.1 and rethought, but it should not break hundreds of game runs or even more.

The Phoenixian wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 9:45 am

cyx2020f wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 8:29 am My suggestion is, landmines in space destroy all landmines in a certain radius and those landmines will not deal damage. So using landmine as a last resort is still acceptable, but abusing them in large scale will not be practical.

This feels like it could also work if the design was "Landmines will destroy space platform under them/next to them, but not space platform under walls. (and possibly other buildings, either just turrets or in general)

Since I do recall one of the FFFs talked about space platform foundation tiles inheriting additional health from the object on top of them, and my initial assumption was it landmines would at least destroy their own tile when they went off.

No. It is defined here as "damage-tile" and has 100 damage, according to definition and my test video I think it ignore entities above them.
100 damage can destroy the tile(50 hp), and destroying the tile destroys entities(legendary wall, 875hp) above them as well.

cyx2020f wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 11:09 am

The Phoenixian wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 9:45 am

cyx2020f wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 8:29 am My suggestion is, landmines in space destroy all landmines in a certain radius and those landmines will not deal damage. So using landmine as a last resort is still acceptable, but abusing them in large scale will not be practical.

This feels like it could also work if the design was "Landmines will destroy space platform under them/next to them, but not space platform under walls. (and possibly other buildings, either just turrets or in general)

Since I do recall one of the FFFs talked about space platform foundation tiles inheriting additional health from the object on top of them, and my initial assumption was it landmines would at least destroy their own tile when they went off.

No. It is defined here as "damage-tile" and has 100 damage, according to definition and my test video I think it ignore entities above them.
100 damage can destroy the tile(50 hp), and destroying the tile destroys entities(legendary wall, 875hp) above them as well.
2024-12-06 19-03-17.mp4

Well I guess the mine would be closer to the 'ground' than the wall, but this seems weirdly inconsistent. I would expect it to behave just like an asteroid impact, but with an AOE and not just a single tile.

Could you, instead of stating that updating can take long, show how much MB its to download?

someone1337 wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 12:22 pm Could you, instead of stating that updating can take long, show how much MB its to download?

I believe that will depend on what version you are updating from, it will be less the newer your current version, and most for a fresh install.
Oh and of course, it will be smaller if you haven't bought space age.

cyx2020f wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 11:09 am

The Phoenixian wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 9:45 am

cyx2020f wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 8:29 am My suggestion is, landmines in space destroy all landmines in a certain radius and those landmines will not deal damage. So using landmine as a last resort is still acceptable, but abusing them in large scale will not be practical.

This feels like it could also work if the design was "Landmines will destroy space platform under them/next to them, but not space platform under walls. (and possibly other buildings, either just turrets or in general)

Since I do recall one of the FFFs talked about space platform foundation tiles inheriting additional health from the object on top of them, and my initial assumption was it landmines would at least destroy their own tile when they went off.

No. It is defined here as "damage-tile" and has 100 damage, according to definition and my test video I think it ignore entities above them.
100 damage can destroy the tile(50 hp), and destroying the tile destroys entities(legendary wall, 875hp) above them as well.
2024-12-06 19-03-17.mp4

Okay yeah, if that's how it works it definitely feels like the intention here was to soft-limit landmines after Gleba and advanced asteroid reprocessing by ensuring there was a copper cost to using them, and adding other limits like effectively delayed rearmament and limited density on top of that, but it feels like it could be done better.

Even just blocking damage if there's a non-mine item on top feels like it would go a long way. (Thus minimizing the amount of tiles lost, but still requiring at least one platform be replaced since I'm not aware of any building you can fit a landmine between in space. Even railguns with their tight packing still take up enough space that any mine will jut out and can't fit between them)

Alternatively, doing less than a full damage might also fit the bill. (Thus requiring repair packs and the craft chain for them, and from that a source of copper for the circuits, though repair packs generally feel very much like space platforms aren't designed for mass use of repair packs like this would generate. They transport too easily, platforms only repairing one item at a time is too slow for this kind of use case and can lock up with high-quality buildings, and making it scale for larger platforms would need a way to do so without scaling for smaller ones. Specialized building or something.)

FactorioBot wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2024 3:03 pm Balancing

• Changed rocket fuel from ammonia recipe to require the same amount of solid fuel as the main rocket fuel recipes to prevent a recycling loop. (122574)

...

Collecting from the replies wrote: Adjusted solid fuel and rocket fuel production on Aquilo to have the same yield, but the Aquilo specific rocket fuel recipe now takes 10 solid fuel to prevent recycle loops.

Are you sure you are not making it worse? From what I've read, the solid fuel production has increased to compensate, i.e. faster production, less input required. Doesn't this make solid fuel abundant on Aquilo?
Even right now, I burn my excess solid fuel in a heating tower, connected to the heat exchangers intended to be heated by imported nuclear. But heat generation by solid fuel is enough, my controlled reactors do not use uranium fuel any more.

Other possible fixes:

• The recycler only returns 25% of 3 solid fuel when recycling rocket fuel. <- somewhat unintuitive
• The recycler only returns 25% of 3 solid fuel when recycling rocket fuel on Aquilo. <- recycler works different on different planets, seems like a hack
• have a per recipe (not per product) maximum productivity bonus, and set that of Aquilo rocket fuel accordingly <- I like that idea best. Doing the numbers... that would max out at 20% productivity, painfully low.

I hope you find a better solution, or dedicate at least an issue of fff at the dilemma and options (there are more possibilities here).

GregoriusT wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 2:28 am The problem with Biters hatching is usually that it is near impossible to clear Biter Eggs off of the Belts/Cryoplant/Hub after the collected Promethium ran out, so at least a dozen or so Biters will hatch no matter what, hundreds if you have Nauvis resupplying Biter Eggs once the station goes low on them, because ofcourse we cant just stop that from happening.

Impossible? It's just another logistics puzzle, easily solveable.

My idea of landmines nerf is to allow to build them only when the platform is in orbit. So they will be a one-time use per trip. Enough to ward off some stray asteroid, not enough to fight them all. And if accompanied by unable-to-build-landmines-during-trip alert (after they do their job), it gives early warning that platform defenses are lacking.

nixxquality wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 4:19 pm

GregoriusT wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 2:28 am The problem with Biters hatching is usually that it is near impossible to clear Biter Eggs off of the Belts/Cryoplant/Hub after the collected Promethium ran out, so at least a dozen or so Biters will hatch no matter what, hundreds if you have Nauvis resupplying Biter Eggs once the station goes low on them, because ofcourse we cant just stop that from happening.

Impossible? It's just another logistics puzzle, easily solveable.

1. Unload biter eggs from hub when moving from = Nauvis
2. Set recipe on promethium science only when stopped at Nauvis
3. When recipe clears while moving away, filter inserters unload leftover ingredients to proper places (quantum processors back into hub, chunks back to storage, biter eggs out into space)
?. If you have eggs on a belt, just add an inserter that takes them off the end of the belt when moving from = Nauvis

Congratulations, Nauvis sends up another load of Eggs, which then hatch while you're on your way to the Shattered Planet. This is exactly what I meant by that.

And do you really want to send those Eggs up non-stop (which you kindof have to), wasting Rocket Parts and Eggs at the same time?

Factorio is all about finding elegant solutions. Now someone did find a solution devs couldn't imagine, using mines in space, and you prohibit it? What a shame.