Factorio Roadmap for 1.0.

[Hannu]

Have you tried to feed boilers with rocket fuel?

I have never used oil products in boilers or furnaces except some solid fuel in emergency situations. Utilizing of sparse and irregular oil fields is the part of resource gathering I like at least. I think it is much more easy to put 100 miners on large coal patch and get 10 million coals than get oil which gives such an amount of energy. I use solid fuel as a locomotive fuel to imitate oil based diesel fuel, but even largest train network does not consume significantly compared to plastic and sulfur production.

[DeathMers]

Have you tried to feed boilers with rocket fuel?

I have never used oil products in boilers or furnaces except some solid fuel in emergency situations. Utilizing of sparse and irregular oil fields is the part of resource gathering I like at least. I think it is much more easy to put 100 miners on large coal patch and get 10 million coals than get oil which gives such an amount of energy. I use solid fuel as a locomotive fuel to imitate oil based diesel fuel, but even largest train network does not consume significantly compared to plastic and sulfur production.

well... im trying to run 3 GW-ish (top peak) demanding factory with 28k solar panels, 18k accumulators, 2800 steam engines, it is not optimized enough now, but average consumption is 592 RF/m. Considering RF has 225 MJ fuel value and coal has 8 MJ fuel value, I would have to supply 16650 coal/m its two 4 wagon trains/per minute = at least 4 coal patches-4belt-bus in energy peaks.... per minute... of course its easier - just copypasta coal mining field and trainstop, but it seems to me its more fun barrel crude and supply oil refinery and then supply everything that use solid fuels with rocket fuel.
And second - with 8 MJ fuel value of coal and its speed of consumption, blue belts and top upgrades at stack inserters its impossible to keep supply satisfied and belts backflowed without rocket fuel.

[Deadly-Bagel]

For example 1000 engine coal plant needs enormous amount of stuff to remember and bring with, especially because I want to fill straight shore and put machines on concrete floor. Sometimes my work train have 10 wagons. It would probably need extra trip to base to get more chests and inserters, at least because I forget something. Huge storage area filled with belts, inserters and 1 tile chests is not very aesthetic, in my opinion. Some kind of larger warehouse is much more elegant. It is mostly just my personal opinions what is fine and entertaining way to do things. Of course it would not be laborious (build by construction bots) or take significant amount of resources.

I am not strictly against decreasing chests. Even wood chests are practically infinite in most purposes and limited size could maybe give some interesting challenges in mid game phase. My examples was extremities.

IMO large amounts of storage should take up space. I get why chest/inserter array isn't appealing to you but it's still practical, just not aesthetic, doesn't mean chests don't need nerfing.

There are a few solutions I can think of... Having the steel chest as a sort of 4x4 warehouse that you can merge by placing in a rectangle would do the trick, but I wouldn't want to encourage swapping belt buses with chest columns, or using them to transport items via storage teleportation (insert into one end, immediately remove from the other). There are a few things that could be done, requiring power and being expensive to craft (maybe a little pollution) would discourage them as transport, and restricting merging warehouses to square shapes removes possibility of chest columns to feed your factory. Not sure how feasible it would be to have each chest with their own storage, but when placed next to each other there is a sort of 'flow' of resources to equalise them? Not really an efficient way of implementing it but it would solve some of the balance problems.

[Grobert]

I was looking forward to the technology rework described in Friday Facts 159, but I don't see it listed on the roadmap here. It's coming too, right?

[daniel34]

I was looking forward to the technology rework described in Friday Facts 159, but I don't see it listed on the roadmap here. It's coming too, right?

The science/research revolution? Yes, it's coming in 0.15.

It's just that the roadmap was last updated August 26, 2016 and the research revolution wasn't planned then, the roadmap might need to be updated by the devs.

[Frightning]

For example 1000 engine coal plant needs enormous amount of stuff to remember and bring with, especially because I want to fill straight shore and put machines on concrete floor. Sometimes my work train have 10 wagons. It would probably need extra trip to base to get more chests and inserters, at least because I forget something. Huge storage area filled with belts, inserters and 1 tile chests is not very aesthetic, in my opinion. Some kind of larger warehouse is much more elegant. It is mostly just my personal opinions what is fine and entertaining way to do things. Of course it would not be laborious (build by construction bots) or take significant amount of resources.

I am not strictly against decreasing chests. Even wood chests are practically infinite in most purposes and limited size could maybe give some interesting challenges in mid game phase. My examples was extremities.

IMO large amounts of storage should take up space. I get why chest/inserter array isn't appealing to you but it's still practical, just not aesthetic, doesn't mean chests don't need nerfing.

There are a few solutions I can think of... Having the steel chest as a sort of 4x4 warehouse that you can merge by placing in a rectangle would do the trick, but I wouldn't want to encourage swapping belt buses with chest columns, or using them to transport items via storage teleportation (insert into one end, immediately remove from the other). There are a few things that could be done, requiring power and being expensive to craft (maybe a little pollution) would discourage them as transport, and restricting merging warehouses to square shapes removes possibility of chest columns to feed your factory. Not sure how feasible it would be to have each chest with their own storage, but when placed next to each other there is a sort of 'flow' of resources to equalise them? Not really an efficient way of implementing it but it would solve some of the balance problems.

Chests should stay 1x1, the small size is important to quite a few of their uses (they build into logistics chests after all), that said, nerfing their stack count (to like 8-16 stacks depending on type) and then introducing 3x3 Warehouses with high stack counts (e.g. in the 40 to 80 stacks range) would open up additional design considerations (need for storage capacity or not vrs. size and impact thereof on layout).

[JackGruff]

Factorio 0.16 (This is planned to become 1.0 when stabilised)
Planned:

• Dirty mining. (Way to get more resources from mining posts at a cost of additional industry, logistics requirements and investment)
• More high res stuff

What happened to the space platform? 1.1? Would like an update on that

[Hannu]

IMO large amounts of storage should take up space.

I agree that. 6 x 6 warehouse from mod looks much better in coal plant than long row of chests.

However, I would not make too much to prevent crazy ways of abuse things. Often it restrict good things too. If I do not like some functions, for example abuse of unrealistic details, I just do not do it and do not care if anyone else does, if it is their way of get fun. It does not take anything from me if someone replaces a belt bus with line of warehouses and inserters. I have to do such personal restrictions in most games because I am somewhat realism freak.

[Masterfox]

Now I wonder if it is possible to make Chests that get larger by connnecting them freeform...

[stretch611]

Is that a rocket in your pants pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Why yes, it is a rocket... and a flame thrower, rifle, sub-machine gun, 250 rounds of ammo, car, tank, 2 Diesel Locomotives, 5 Solar Panels, 12 Gun Turrets, and a lot of steel pipe...

And everyone is debating about how much a chest can hold.

According to the wiki, one belt tile (both lanes) can hold 7.1 items. So one belt can fit 7.1 other belts in its space... And to go further, one belt takes up the same amount of belt space as 1 iron plate, or 1 iron gear wheel; even though it takes 2 iron plates to make a gear and one of each to make a belt... but they are all the same size as each other when on a belt (and the same size as everything else that can be placed on a belt.)

The physics of this model are out of whack in this context. Many other concepts are just as unrealistic... that you are not required to eat 3 fish for each day/night cycle or you will starve, that belts operate without electricity, even that burner inserters can insert coal (or a different fuel) into themselves when they have no existing fuel to operate.

The devs simplify some things to make it easy on the players or to not inundate them with minor details. Other details are numbers are changed to adjust for difficulty as well. Overall, things are done for game balance. If everything used realistic values and forced all the minor details, the game would be too boring and/or too difficult for anyone to actually want to play.

I am happy with the current game balance. Please do not ask for nerfs in the sake of realism because IMO they are not needed, and if every request for realism was granted, I assure you that the end product would not be one that anyone wants to play.

If it truly bothers you, create a mod.

[Grimakar]

Why yes, it is a rocket... and a flame thrower, rifle, sub-machine gun, 250 rounds of ammo, car, tank, 2 Diesel Locomotives, 5 Solar Panels, 12 Gun Turrets, and a lot of steel pipe...

And everyone is debating about how much a chest can hold.

Well, this is no RTS or Ego-Shooter, this is more about building factories and automize things. Maybe that is why things like chests become more important compared to a game like Fallout or whatever.

The devs simplify some things to make it easy on the players or to not inundate them with minor details. Other details are numbers are changed to adjust for difficulty as well. Overall, things are done for game balance. If everything used realistic values and forced all the minor details, the game would be too boring and/or too difficult for anyone to actually want to play.

I am absolutely with you and something similar was my argument, when it got to the explosion of a power plant. Of course, we compare everything with the reality, but we may not forget, what is good for the game and so far the devs are doing great.
But nevertheless when I build a buffer, I would prefer a bigger structure that looks more atmospheric than those chest farms.

[Frightning]

Is that a rocket in your pants pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Why yes, it is a rocket... and a flame thrower, rifle, sub-machine gun, 250 rounds of ammo, car, tank, 2 Diesel Locomotives, 5 Solar Panels, 12 Gun Turrets, and a lot of steel pipe...

And everyone is debating about how much a chest can hold.

According to the wiki, one belt tile (both lanes) can hold 7.1 items. So one belt can fit 7.1 other belts in its space... And to go further, one belt takes up the same amount of belt space as 1 iron plate, or 1 iron gear wheel; even though it takes 2 iron plates to make a gear and one of each to make a belt... but they are all the same size as each other when on a belt (and the same size as everything else that can be placed on a belt.)

The physics of this model are out of whack in this context. Many other concepts are just as unrealistic... that you are not required to eat 3 fish for each day/night cycle or you will starve, that belts operate without electricity, even that burner inserters can insert coal (or a different fuel) into themselves when they have no existing fuel to operate.

The devs simplify some things to make it easy on the players or to not inundate them with minor details. Other details are numbers are changed to adjust for difficulty as well. Overall, things are done for game balance. If everything used realistic values and forced all the minor details, the game would be too boring and/or too difficult for anyone to actually want to play.

I am happy with the current game balance. Please do not ask for nerfs in the sake of realism because IMO they are not needed, and if every request for realism was granted, I assure you that the end product would not be one that anyone wants to play.

If it truly bothers you, create a mod.

You're right that gameplay should decide what happens with this idea, but I disagree with the implication that there are not gameplay reasons to nerf chest stack counts and have larger warehouse type building(s). It would also incidentally 'solve' the storage density 'imbalance' between barreled oil in chests and storage tanks as a side effect. The gameplay reason to want larger warehouse buildings is that you can put more inserters around them, which is handy for making high throughput buffers without having to fuss with combinator magic to make sure it loads them in a balanced fashion (as is currently needed for an 'ideal' design). A single 3x3 warehouse could work as a buffer for a line with up to 6 stack inserters worth of item throughput with no combinators required, and you have the added simplicity of everything being in a single container (which makes it easy to move item stock in and out of the system via that single warehouse rather than messing with multiple chests and likely futzing up the balancing between them, which will lower system throughput until the imbalance is corrected).

[Deadly-Bagel]

This is now somewhat off-topic and should probably be suggested and discussed in Balancing.

[TWalk]

High res graphics introduction (This means just some parts of the game will be in high res in this version)
New terrain
Gui reskin and possible improvements

I'm running a pretty nice machine so I would love to see any screenshots you can share of some of the visual improvements? I would LOVE to see a version with high-res sprites (or much higher res, lol). I love this game - look forward to the next release!

[boksiora]

WHAAAAAAT????????????????? 0.16 to be version 1.0


But what about FPS improvement on big bases

I cannot get more than 11-20 FPS - my PC is 8GB ram and i5 processor

The game becomes unplayable on large bases

Will version 1.0 will still run at 20 FPS ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

wont you do something about performance improvements for v1.0

[Frightning]

WHAAAAAAT????????????????? 0.16 to be version 1.0


But what about FPS improvement on big bases

I cannot get more than 11-20 FPS - my PC is 8GB ram and i5 processor

The game becomes unplayable on large bases

Will version 1.0 will still run at 20 FPS ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

wont you do something about performance improvements for v1.0

They will probably continue to try and improve performance, but there's only so much they're going to be able to do. Simulating a large base involves tracking millions of objects in real time....that's no small feature even on modern hardware.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Improvements to belt handling I think are coming in 0.15 as well as a TON of other optimisations. The devs have been going around uber saves (like the light movie, go check out that topic as they posted stats on the improvements) and finding huge performance improvements over the current version.

However the more they optimise the game the bigger bases will get, and while an i5 is an excellent balanced processor you really need an i7 for raw power.

[FunMaker]

I remember a screenshot from the devs of the internal ticket system - so my question is:

programmable assemblers: Included in 0.15? Or do we have to wait for 0.16? i know there are some edge cases to consider but that would be some nice mechanic to open up an extremly diferent playstyle.
Would be nice to see a FFF on that topic.

[dasiro]

Now I wonder if it is possible to make Chests that get larger by connnecting them freeform...

seems like it could be easily abused to make huge lines of them or even grids so belts and robots would be obsolete

[hoho]

However the more they optimise the game the bigger bases will get, and while an i5 is an excellent balanced processor you really need an i7 for raw power.

As long as clock speed is same, going with I7 over I5 makes no perceiveable difference for Factorio as extra "virtual" cores is all i7 has over i5.

Factorio has one thread that is slowest and every other thread is bottlenecked by it so adding more cores won't help.