Friday Facts #442 - Flip, Flow, and Fresh Paint

[Hurkyl]

You're trolling at this point. No-one is forced to do it, and no-one who does it is complaining about it ruining their fun.

Whelp, I tried to be charitable. but at the end of the day you just don't care about other people.

WTF... that is the most completely surreal hot take.

You complain that - despite your assertion that you don't do it and never would - the mere existence of a method of playing a mostly single player video game which you disagree with is negatively impacting your enjoyment of the game. And, therefore, because you should never be subjected to that kind of maleficent temptation/discomfort, it should be removed from the game regardless of whether anyone else enjoys it. In short, that your needs trump everyone else's, and people who disagree with that stance "just don't care about other people".

Just wow. I cordially invite you to make this make sense.

First off, you're mixing me up with someone else who was arguing this point; I am not among those who said they don't do it and never would.

And you and quineotio seem to absolutely refuse to even entertain the thought that game imbalance ruins fun for other people, and instead misinterpret it as a malicious attempt to hurt you.

And may I remind you that I was spitting quineotio's exact words back in his face.

[Eulenberg]

You're trolling at this point. No-one is forced to do it, and no-one who does it is complaining about it ruining their fun.

Whelp, I tried to be charitable. but at the end of the day you just don't care about other people.

WTF... that is the most completely surreal hot take.

You complain that - despite your assertion that you don't do it and never would - the mere existence of a method of playing a mostly single player video game which you disagree with is negatively impacting your enjoyment of the game. And, therefore, because you should never be subjected to that kind of maleficent temptation/discomfort, it should be removed from the game regardless of whether anyone else enjoys it. In short, that your needs trump everyone else's, and people who disagree with that stance "just don't care about other people".

Just wow. I cordially invite you to make this make sense.

First off, you're mixing me up with someone else who was arguing this point; I am not among those who said they don't do it and never would.

And you and quineotio seem to absolutely refuse to even entertain the thought that game imbalance ruins fun for other people, and instead misinterpret it as a malicious attempt to hurt you.

And may I remind you that I was spitting quineotio's exact words back in his face.

If you feel a "imbalanced mechanic" that favours the player ruin there game for you, i have really bad news, your game gets ruined by inserters, chests and assemblers too. I recommend you remove base, quality, elevated rails and space-age, from your next playthrough to get a more balanced experience.

[SuperBananaBomb]

Since underground pipes are now connectable to circuit-network, hope we also see it for underground belts.

[rapus]

While [flipping] some things will always be impossible (Train stops, Rail signals, etc.), we do what we can.

Sentences like this are a bit more bittersweet to read now that we're in the final stretch of development, huh?

How so? If a train stop would move to the other side of a rail, a blueprint would change between left-hand-drive and right-hand-drive, which i think would make it pretty much useless feature since it would create a blueprint that is incompatible with the rest of the rails system.

I think the RHD/LHD argument is a red herring. It derails a feature meant for unidirectional setups (stations/stackers) and single-track bidi by holding it hostage to the plain 2D geometric impossibility of preserving handedness under mirroring.
This logic is particularly off because if you want to reorient an RHD/LHD intersection while preserving handedness, rotation is the geometrically appropriate operation anyway, not mirroring.
If the engine just decoupled a signal's "visual sidedness" from its "logical direction" (and maybe added a tiny directional triangle pixel-overlay to chain signals and stops), we could flawlessly mirror the unidirectional blueprints where this feature is actually needed.

[Tertius]

[...]

And you and quineotio seem to absolutely refuse to even entertain the thought that game imbalance ruins fun for other people, and instead misinterpret it as a malicious attempt to hurt you.

Yes, some fun is actually ruined for me by game imbalance. Not that bad but some. Whenever I tell others of my upcycling and legendary builds in forum and Discord, I expect comments like: "No Space Casino? You dumb." or more politely: "But Space Casino is more efficient, any other builds don't matter".
So I don't publish my work but instead stay silent.
That's not positive.
Having a few viable builds is sane, having just one isn't sane.

The people who just use blueprints are left dead on the road as soon as they realize space casino is just able to produce the standard resources but no planet specific ones. They don't even get the idea what is upcycling about. This leads to frustration on their side as well on the side of the people who try to explain what it is all about and all you get in return is lack of understanding. [And funnily enough, this lack of understanding is leading to the reason of my personal criticism about quality: "lack of direction".]

[Robosium]

about not being able to flip train signals one option could be that flipping a blueprint with train signals just strips the unflippable things away or marks them in red permanently to signify they cannot be placed

also quality trains is so awesome but them coming along side with removal of the least annoying way to get quality materials stings, really hoping that 2.1 brings an overhaul to the quality system to make it less RNG based so that players don't have to rely on the law of big numbers to get the expected output of quality items, like imagine if productivity instead of filling up a bar as the machine was producing instead had a random chance to just give double the resources whenever it produced

one way to de-rng quality would be to have adding quality into a machine add a bar like productivity that is made of up to 4 sub-bars (one for each quality above common) that fill up while crafting at appropriate speeds for the qualities and once a bar is full the next batch produced will be at that rarity and decrease that bar's fullness by 100% (bars should be able to go above 100% full to keep quality bonuses accurate), and if the machine is using higher quality materials then only the sub-bars of higher quality will be present, that should remove the rng from the system, might not work great on recyclers though

[Cygnus]

I've been hoping for the ability to select specific red/green wire circuit selection within machines for a while now, so I was glad to see it in the final image.

However, the main problem I wanted to solve with it was multiple outputs from the same machine contaminating each other; When I was making my own "omni-crafter" I needed to set recipe, read ingredients and read contents, but the ingredients and contents combined and were impossible to separate (I needed to read contents in order to stop the inserter loading hundreds of each ingredient into the machine, slowing down switching recipes).

For me, the update I was looking for was the ability to set red or green wire piecewise for each variable, (e.g. output ingredients only to the red wire, output the contents only to the green wire, and set recipe based only on what is in the red wire). This could be done with check boxes next to each variable, just like how it already works in combinators. (Also, the ability to set output wire piecewise for combinators would also be great.)

Another feature that would be really useful for 2.1 would be an update to turret priority. I noticed that my railgun turrets would sometimes cause my ship to take damage because they would prioritise a huge asteroid further away than another because it had higher priority in the list. A check box that can be switched on if the turret is set to “ignore unlisted targets” that says something along the lines of “ignore priority order” and just means the turret will shoot the closest filtered target regardless of the order the filters are in would resolve this. (Although the ability to add turret filter groups similar to logistic groups would also be greatly appreciated).

I also think that railgun turrets should ignore health for huge asteroids and just shoot the closest, even if it on not at full health.

[radical_larry]

imagine if productivity instead of filling up a bar as the machine was producing instead had a random chance to just give double the resources whenever it produced

That actually sounds awesome.
Productivity is really just a worse and more confusing version of quality for 'intermediate resources', with no clear definition of what that is. Back when the game was still in really early access it was a great idea, but for 2.0 it should have been fully refactored and integrated with quality. Allow for higher quality resources to either be used as they are now, to craft high quality items, or if they're used in a lower quality recipe they give a random productivity bonus but a low quality output. Quality becomes a separate resource coupled to items, but it can be spent to either save on items or invested into high quality items.
As for the productivity module and productivity buildings, their bonus would instead apply to the productivity gained from using quality items in lower quality recipes. This bonus could be larger than it is now, because instead of conjuring items out of thin air, you are spending a tangible resource (quality) to be converted into more resources where needed.

[Gundyr]

It amazes me how people want to ruin the game for other players because they hate the space casino. You cry about imbalance and all that. But what's the point? It's like they're forcibly strapping you to a chair, giving you a space platform, and forcing you to mine legendary items. Just revert to older versions before the DLC releases so there aren't any unbalanced mechanics.

[Necronium]

There are actually two other approaches to quality - trickle and filter from regular production lines and then the dedicated upcycling. One is extremely boring and the other does not scale well at all. Yes, the space casino was OP, but the core reason why so many people use it is because the whole quality feels half baked and at least the space casino allows you to skip the boring "grind".

I wish they would revisit the quality as a whole, for regular play through the trickle method is interesting challenge, but when you get to mid/late game or megabases you really want to be able to scale and currently the only method is copy-paste upcycling loops or making the casino. Mod allowing the casinos to continue will be my first download after the 2.1 patch.

People use space casino cause exactly was boring solution to logistic problem and it is easy to setup and bypass biggest points of quality. People want easy rewards without putting any work to getting them.

Factorio is easy to mod so they can bring it back with mods but it always baffled my. If you use sapce casino why not just mod in everything legendary.

At that point you're overinflating the power of space casinos. Even if you build a space casino you'd still need to gather many other materials by repeating the conventional methods across multiple production chains, so why is a bit more variety that big of a problem? I don't think people would rely nearly as much on space casinos if the other approaches were less tedious - and I don't mean challenging, just tedious - but I don't think it's reasonable to expect many changes to quality, so why bother removing a different approach from a system that already lacks variety?

It is more that you people try to downplay space casinos being OP. We wouldn't have that much meltdown by their removal if it weren't OP. And as Ive said if someone wants to have that not OP solution they can mod it in back. But at that point why not just mod in legendary everything rather than pretneding that you engage with mechanic.

Only that Space Casinos are not OP at all, if you consider that only the first 2 science packs are done with it on a larger scale base, the other science packs lack a method that can be scaled to the same level as common science, without the need to buy a new CPU and RAM.
Its true it makes bootstrapping a majority of base quality buildables trivial but so does ore washing with the only diffrence beeing you need 100x more buildings, but you need so little buildables anyways even for the largest bases that you can use ore washing on nauvis and never depleate a single patch to make all buildables for a 10M eSPM base. If we dont get any changes its clear to me devs dont play with quality and they didnt playtest there own game in this aspect of the game at all.

The only thing that is impacted by removing the casinos is quality science, not the buildables at all, since only need a very little trace amount of quality compared to science. Getting Legendary Quality buildables is as easy as it is before, only more boring, less engaging and with less of a logistical challenge than before, but with a longer grind tied to it
However Quality science is removed from the game, and that is the saddest thing about this.

It is funny when you people mention that they are not OP and then say that they are OP yourself. Quality science is not removed. The boring and OP solution to it is removed. Your entire argument comes as most of those comes that we should simplyfy game even more casue then it will be more fun. So assembler should just get ore in and throw a lot of science cause it will be even more UPS and who needs balance in single player game /s. As Ive said you can mod that in and pretend that you put effort in in getting something.

[bobucles]

I'm just gonna quickly signal boost this old bug report in the wake of the FFF.
2.0.76 Plasma throughput from reactor to generator has limit
High end flow rate issues are being fixed, but there was no mention of Fusion flow rates changing one way or the other. Is it safe to assume they're staying the same, or are their flow rate limits up for the chopping block as well?

[Eulenberg]

People use space casino cause exactly was boring solution to logistic problem and it is easy to setup and bypass biggest points of quality. People want easy rewards without putting any work to getting them.

Factorio is easy to mod so they can bring it back with mods but it always baffled my. If you use sapce casino why not just mod in everything legendary.

At that point you're overinflating the power of space casinos. Even if you build a space casino you'd still need to gather many other materials by repeating the conventional methods across multiple production chains, so why is a bit more variety that big of a problem? I don't think people would rely nearly as much on space casinos if the other approaches were less tedious - and I don't mean challenging, just tedious - but I don't think it's reasonable to expect many changes to quality, so why bother removing a different approach from a system that already lacks variety?

It is more that you people try to downplay space casinos being OP. We wouldn't have that much meltdown by their removal if it weren't OP. And as Ive said if someone wants to have that not OP solution they can mod it in back. But at that point why not just mod in legendary everything rather than pretneding that you engage with mechanic.

Only that Space Casinos are not OP at all, if you consider that only the first 2 science packs are done with it on a larger scale base, the other science packs lack a method that can be scaled to the same level as common science, without the need to buy a new CPU and RAM.
Its true it makes bootstrapping a majority of base quality buildables trivial but so does ore washing with the only diffrence beeing you need 100x more buildings, but you need so little buildables anyways even for the largest bases that you can use ore washing on nauvis and never depleate a single patch to make all buildables for a 10M eSPM base. If we dont get any changes its clear to me devs dont play with quality and they didnt playtest there own game in this aspect of the game at all.

The only thing that is impacted by removing the casinos is quality science, not the buildables at all, since only need a very little trace amount of quality compared to science. Getting Legendary Quality buildables is as easy as it is before, only more boring, less engaging and with less of a logistical challenge than before, but with a longer grind tied to it
However Quality science is removed from the game, and that is the saddest thing about this.

It is funny when you people mention that they are not OP and then say that they are OP yourself. Quality science is not removed. The boring and OP solution to it is removed. Your entire argument comes as most of those comes that we should simplyfy game even more casue then it will be more fun. So assembler should just get ore in and throw a lot of science cause it will be even more UPS and who needs balance in single player game /s. As Ive said you can mod that in and pretend that you put effort in in getting something.

Quality science is gone. Not a single science can be made now with quality, efficiently. it will require 100x the assembling machines and inserter to produce a fraction of the eSPM compared to common. The system needs a overhaul, not remove the only way to make it borderline viable.
If we would consequently follow the arguments of people who think quality casinos are too op and want it removed, we have to remove inverters, chests, belts and miner because they remove the fun in handmineing, handcrafting, handfeeding, and inventory management. Casinos make quality borderline viable, not more or less. For buildables it does not matter in the first place since you can buffer them, and there are even easier ways than casinos to get more than enough you need for all buildables.

[jimbobjeff85]

If they are going to nerf the Space Casino, which is fine and I agree with, I really wish they'd nerf LDS Shuffle as well as it trivialises production of legendary Steel and Copper far too much.

This feels like a halfway-house solution where no-one is happy.

[evandy]

And the reason for them being OP is because they combine too many powerful things into one universal solution that overshadows all the various productivity upcyclers.

This statement is definitively not true. They are not universal. They give less than half the resource types.

[Eulenberg]

And the reason for them being OP is because they combine too many powerful things into one universal solution that overshadows all the various productivity upcyclers.

This statement is definitively not true. They are not universal. They give less than half the resource types.

Yes you are right, but Wube better be to remove the inserters since its the universal solution to pick and drop items, waaaay to overpowered. They ruined hand feeding for me so they have to go.

[yngndrw]

The action against space casinos ruins quality for me. Now it's just a grind, yay.

Thanks, fun killers. Games are meant to be fun.

There are workarounds, sure, but UPS is going to be worse for the same output.

[stillmoms]

The people who just use blueprints are left dead on the road as soon as they realize space casino is just able to produce the standard resources but no planet specific ones. They don't even get the idea what is upcycling about. This leads to frustration on their side as well on the side of the people who try to explain what it is all about and all you get in return is lack of understanding. [And funnily enough, this lack of understanding is leading to the reason of my personal criticism about quality: "lack of direction".]

I mean, you could say that about literally anyone who “just use blueprints” about any mechanic in the whole game. “People who just use blueprints don’t understand the fluid system.” “People who just use blueprints don’t understand belt side loading.” “People who just use blueprints don’t understand building to ratio.” In the Internet age there will always be a continuum of people, from those who want to do/figure out literally everything themselves and never look up anything in a guide or tutorial, to people who just want to know “how to win” and don’t want to learn anything—and, crucially, the vast bulk of players who fall somewhere in between those two extremes. In a (primarily) single-player game, what any one person does is irrelevant to anyone else.

Just as there’s no need for people to be dismissive of non-space casino blueprints or approaches, there’s really no need to remove the space casino approach to quality. I maintain that it serves as a fun and elegant end-game approach to scaling up, and because there’s less waste it feels good for those who enjoy efficiency. I got to space casinos after several hundred hours playing my game, doing a whole quality scrap recycling setup on Fulgora, and found it to be a really rewarding feeling approach after working with others. I still had to learn plenty, and also spent hundreds of hours in theory crafting editor games working on legendary, rare, and normal blueprints of my own. I’m no Factorio novice, is my point.

It just seems like this change is really divisive, and when a change is that divisive, I feel it should be left in the hands of players. “Allow quality asteroid reprocessing” could be a game setting just like “Peaceful mode”, disabling some achievements even. But to have to rely on mods, which make the entire game’s set of achievements completely unobtainable, seems punitive.

Unless there’s some “replacement” approach to quality, as some are speculating, yet to be revealed in a future FFF about 2.1. Which could happen! Maybe it’ll be interesting. But IMO end-game approaches should feel a little “broken”. It feels like a reward for a job well done, having gone through all the rest. If some people don’t actually go through any of the rest, that’s on them.

[bobucles]

“Allow quality asteroid reprocessing” could be a game setting just like “Peaceful mode”, disabling some achievements even.

Nah, that's dumb. Only people with very specific niche knowledge will even know what the game setting is about. People who know what it's about can simply make the choice on their own. It's a meaningless option, and regular game settings shouldn't require a phd. to have the necessary context in the first place.

Asteroid reprocessing is mostly useless on its own and only shines under the casino. The recipe could use some tuning.

[SystemParadox]

When I first learned about the "LDS shuffle" it just felt so silly and broken, so I'm really disappointed that this isn't being fixed. What is the rationale for leaving it like this?

[radical_larry]

When I first learned about the "LDS shuffle" it just felt so silly and broken, so I'm really disappointed that this isn't being fixed. What is the rationale for leaving it like this?

The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the real issue are the recipes on Vulcanus.
Getting ~3/50 legendary calcite for each common oxide chunk isn't the problem, turning each calcite into >30 legendary stone is the problem.
Getting ~3/50 legendary coal for each common carbonic chunk isn't the problem, turning each coal into >2 legendary LDS is the problem.
If I had to strike a compromise for making everyone happy, then I'd simply remove the quality versions of both recipes. Or rather, allow for using up higher quality calcite/plastic in lava and molten lds recipe, but set the recipe output to be common for all of them.
Like this:
uncommon/rare/epic/legendary calcite + lava -> common stone + molten copper/iron
uncommon/rare/epic/legendary plastic + molten iron/copper -> common LDS