Factorio Forums

Conventia wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 10:46 am The previous design had one major issue for me, which is that between researching BOP and researching AOP, there's no effective way to deal with an oil deadlock. This is because:

{...}
2. The ratios are such that you can't use the various oil products evenly.
3. There isn't a way to burn off oil products.

2. This is mostly because just about everything meaningful at this stage requires only PG. If they had shuffled some of it, like sulfur production, this could have helped greatly.
3. Solid fuel???

mmmPI wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 9:27 am

Theikkru wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 9:46 am

5thHorseman wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 10:06 am

I feel like a better use of that anology would be to say that the park service has decided to cut down this tree because some visitors say it’s blocking their view of the other trees behind it.

Deadlock989 wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 10:37 am Welcome to being an adult.

Bam nice one. I guess I should stop posting incessantly about how the developers of a video game are ruining my life.

5thHorseman wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 11:51 amBam nice one. I guess I should stop posting incessantly about how the developers of a video game are ruining my life.

Or you could try to avoid needless hyperbole. No-one said it ruined their life. But don't let facts get in the way of drama. That always goes down well on internet discussion boards.

FuryoftheStars wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 11:35 am

Conventia wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 10:46 am The previous design had one major issue for me, which is that between researching BOP and researching AOP, there's no effective way to deal with an oil deadlock. This is because:

{...}
2. The ratios are such that you can't use the various oil products evenly.
3. There isn't a way to burn off oil products.

2. This is mostly because just about everything meaningful at this stage requires only PG. If they had shuffled some of it, like sulfur production, this could have helped greatly.
3. Solid fuel???

Solid fuel works for experienced players, but is not an all-proof solution. Even if you figure out right at your 1st playthrough how to redirect solid fuel to replace coal in power plant & furnaces (which requires to know well how splitters work), your solid fuel consumption is capped by your power consumption (furnaces, power plant & rail included). Experienced players claim that solid fuel is a solution to BOP deadlock because they get to AOE quite soon after 1st oil setup, but if you let this situation last for too long, these setups would deadlock too and would need to spam tanks.

Also, there isn't one but six redwood tree in total :

DanGio wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 12:00 pm Solid fuel works for experienced players, but is not an all-proof solution.

The person had made a statement (on the forums which indicates they may have a bit more knowledge than the typical "new player") that "there isn't a way to burn off oil products" and this is simply not true. Just pointing that out.

DanGio wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 12:00 pm Even if you figure out right at your 1st playthrough how to redirect solid fuel to replace coal in power plant & furnaces (which requires to know well how splitters work)

Who ever does? Isn't that part of the challenge to a game? If you get everything right 100% of the time first time through, then it sounds like it was a pretty easy game.

DanGio wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 12:00 pm your solid fuel consumption is capped by your power consumption (furnaces, power plant & rail included). Experienced players claim that solid fuel is a solution to BOP deadlock because they get to AOE quite soon after 1st oil setup, but if you let this situation last for too long, these setups would deadlock too and would need to spam tanks.

Yes, and I've mentioned several times that I feel as though having such a high demand on PG while next to nil on the other two is a large factor contributing to the issues that some are complaining about. And I said quite a few times, including in the post that you quoted, that balancing out the usage of the products would go a long ways towards that (for example, moving sulfur).

If you think about it, under the old setup, you had to push close to or over half of all the products produced to solid fuel to be able to run on BOP indefinitely. If something like sulfur production was moved from PG -> HO, then this could potentially cut that in half. Why does that matter? Well, less solid fuel that needs to be produced means less that has to be burned off, meaning a smaller base can consume enough to keep things going (seems new players are less apt to build out big their first time). The next problem then is just UI/tutorial/some kind of feedback to the player so they know that they should do this, etc.

Also, just nitpicking, so long as you are producing and burning solid fuel, you can't truly "deadlock". You just end up with stuttering production.

On more productive lines (sorry Koub), in my current game my transition from basic to advanced oil processing went very smoothly.

I was able to get there quicker than in the past which was appreciated. In fact, thanks to queuing I actually didn't notice I'd unlocked it. Also, and I don't know if this was intended, the new basic processing really does put the petroleum products in their own place, mentally, in a way I'd not thought of them before.

Keep up the good work, there are those of us who are enjoying the results.

Well, ultimately, I don't disagree that the change makes things easier. I just feel as though there were better ways then gutting BOP and pushing a bunch of techs around to compensate.

I posted this over in Friday Facts #305 - The Oil Changes
So I won't repost the whole thing here.

Pre-17.60 Science:

Automation (Red) – No Oil products
Logistics (Green)– No Oil Products
Military (Grey) – No Oil Products
Chemical (Bule) – Solid Fuel (HO/LO/PG) and Plastic (PG)
Production (Purple) – Plastic (PG)
Utility (Yellow) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Lubricant (HO)
Space (White) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Solid Fuel (HO/LO/PG)

Ok, so where does this come from? So what does this tell us?
It appears that we only need 2 refined oil products. Light Oil is completely useless.
Yes, I know it’s more efficient for Solid Fuel, but is it completely unnecessary.

Post-17.60 Science

Automation (Red) – No Oil products
Logistics (Green)– No Oil Products
Military (Grey) – No Oil Products
Chemical (Bule) – Sulfur (PG) and Plastic (PG)
Production (Purple) – Plastic (PG)
Utility (Yellow) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Lubricant (HO)
Space (White) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Solid Fuel (HO/LO/PG), Light Oil (LO)

So where does it come from now? So what does this tell us?
Light Oil finally has a use in white science.

Did this create relatively balanced use for the oil products???

Suggestions:

Each Oil Fraction should have it's own unique product.

Various posters have pointed out that Heavy Oil has higher sulfur content and I have adjusted the chart below accordingly.

Solid Fuel / Sulfur should be adjusted so only 2 of the oil fractions (a Primary and a Secondary) can make the product.

I also saw recommendations in the thread that Basic Refining should have multiple recipes, one for each fraction.
This allows new users to “Add refining as needed” and introduces new fluids one at a time.
It will also allow for bots to be built pre-Chemical Science.

I would also like to suggest that we should have another product in the science packs made from oil.
I don’t have a suggestion for what this product would be, but based on the above suggestions, the result should look something like this:

Basic Refining with 3 recipes: Resulting in New Science (based on 17.60):
Automation (Red) – No Oil products
Logistics (Green)– No Oil Products
Military (Grey) – No Oil Products
Chemical (Bule) – Sulfur (HO/LO) and Plastic (PG)
Production (Purple) – Plastic (PG)
Utility (Yellow) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (HO/LO), Lubricant (HO)
Space (White) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (HO/LO), Solid Fuel (LO/PG), Rocket Fuel (LO)

Conclusion:

Multiple Basic Refining single output recipes allow for selecting the oil product you need without the problem of backing up the fluid outputs.
Multiple Basic Refining single output recipes allow for producing con bots Pre-Chemical Science.

Single output Basic Refining recipes can and should remain inefficient. Using 300 crude to get 50HO, 50LO and 50 PG is bad (but quick) vs Advanced Oil where 300 Crude + 300 Water equals 150HO, 150LO and 150PG (numbers are examples).

Changing Solid Fuel and Sulfur recipes spreads out the use of the various oil fractions so they are more evenly distributed in science packs.

Unique products from each oil fraction place a unique draw on each fraction, leading to a more even usage.

Moving Sulfur to HO/LO and Solid Fuel to LO/PG helps to balance usage and requires that those fractions be set-up, have a use, and are not just cracked down to PG.

Any additional products are not required, but it looks like it would fit well with the above chart (just an idea, 'cause symmetry is cool).

-Zaka

FuryoftheStars wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 1:35 pm Well, ultimately, I don't disagree that the change makes things easier. I just feel as though there were better ways then gutting BOP and pushing a bunch of techs around to compensate.

Time will tell, maybe the actual solution's drawback will be highlighted the same way devs got aware of a spike difficulty in oil/blue science, changing the productions of sulfur from PG to HO or LO feels interesting to play for me as a close-to-vanilla modded game, but is not guaranty to make it easier than before so it may not be enough,more precisely the changing of receipe proposed along to make this works are numerous and range from making the game almost the same but a little easier, to making the game straight up harder.

The difficulty curve if it is to be smoother means it should be easier at the start , and harder and the end ?

After the change i didn't really notice much difference in the general way i would use oil for late game, it's a bit different early game, the harsh step in blue science is still the amount of ore thoughput and furnaces you need ( to my eyes ) but on the other hand you have an hint, red science is made in 5 second, green science is made in 6 second, that should give you a first hint, maybe make 5 of the first one and 6 of the second one. Then you got that 24 second for 2 blue science, how can you tell better the player to scale up by a factor of 2?

( i mean i don't remember what i thought at the time i discoverded it, i tend to think new player act as stupid, that is a "biais" they are not stupid ofc, they just don't have experience, they can still understand stuff maybe i'm wrong thinking for them that they won't understand that the scaling is required, so maybe the real problem was the "wall of oil" and not some impressions that it is the scaling for blue science because that's the only tedious for me who understand oil now)

The scaling itself should be pretty easy for experience players, you cut on the tedious because you can plan beelining robots with a temporary setup, and new players may not find that too annoying, since it's something that is quite new for them, making furnaces array and miners, and splitters to feed the coal , this may not seem repetitive, but like a training when you try to make the next one better.

If it doesn't work at least we can provide with alternative solution like the proposed Mods, AND with time there can be some feedback on the mod proposed, maybe some things were overlooked, maybe when you used them you thought about something new, maybe they work perfectly fine but this time you would have same games, screenshots , and real testing of those to back-up propositions. I am confident the devs would implement a better/good idea from the community, i saw it happening before.

For now i have several different games to play with different mods and that's just fine

Klonan wrote: Sun Aug 04, 2019 11:27 am
I think the progression is less linear now, before it was essentially mandatory to sprint for advanced oil processing,
Now the player is free to keep the basic production running, while they explore the other technologies and features on offer.

I don't want to pile on to the "Devs don't know anything" theme that is starting as of late. I appreciate you joining the fray.

I do want to address this point though.

I think your belief is mistaken.

Choices:
0.17.59 oil, I could choose to do construction bots or blue science first.
With 0.17.60, now I must do blue science first.
It's more linear now.

The Rush
0.17.59 oil, there was seriously NO sprint for Advanced Oil. Everyone says this, and it's just not right. In 0.17.59 oil, as I posted earlier, the usual set up should be: Pet Gas for Plastic and Acid, HO for Lubricant, LO and excess HO into solid fuel. There was already a sink for the other fluids here. I think adding solid fuel to blue science was a really smart idea, as it made the player make fuel already, and then they saw it was easy, and could put it into his factory, to save his coal for plastic production. At this point, my factory is basically self sufficient, I can leave it run on Basic Oil for a long time, and explore everything. Solid fuel in Blue Science "fixed" the problem, it just wasn't given the chance.
0.17.60 oil, now, there is a rush because I get Basic Oil, do blue science, and then to get any more meaningful progression: solid fuel (from something other than Pet Gas, as it's stressed out with plastic and acid) or robots, I have to get Advanced Oil. Now, I have to rush it because I am stuck without it.
It's more linear now.

I think 0.17.59 was the sweet spot. The game was already telling you to use your excess products, LO and HO, as solid fuel, which means less lock ups.

I just think that automatically burning off HO and LO, so new players don't get locked up, at the expense of every single person who has played passed this point more than once, just feels like a kick in the shins. Now we have to manually plug away with more stuff, instead of using our construction bots to be more efficient. In a game about efficiency...

Anecdotical evidence: On sunday I was adapting my factory to the changes of 17.60 and was confronted with a backed-up oil production because of HO. The thing is: I needed 5 minutes to recognize the problem even though I looked into plants and refineries. But I had to look at that yellow background color at least 5 times before it's significance dawned on me.

Irrespective of whether I'm just intellectually challenged or not , that yellow color has to be changed to red, the same background color that denotes missing ingredients.

meganothing wrote: Tue Aug 06, 2019 4:18 pm Irrespective of whether I'm just intellectually challenged or not , that yellow color has to be changed to red, the same background color that denotes missing ingredients.

Agreed - either way it's blocking production.

It could be argued either way for whether it should be changed on single-output recipes or not: consistency is good, but it's only blocking production of something you don't have if there's an (nearly or entirely) empty output.

I agree that 0.17.59 was the sweet spot - the HO and LO were used to create the solid fuel which in turn was used to create chemical (blue) science and now if and when I upgrade to the next version (0.17.64 just came out today) I will definitely use the mod that reverts that in my existing factory for 0.17.

I don't think or say the devs don't know what is good, I love most of what they've done with this game so far and the way they develop side by side with mods, but these changes don't make sense to me and, it would seem, to most of the current community

Here is my experience of 0.17.60+ !

Before I saw 4 ways of playing :

• Hand crafting and chest to chest by inventory
• mix of belts and bots
• full belts
• full bots

I always played a mix hand crafting (because it's freaking annoying to built a factory for drills, you need few of them at start) and a mix of belts system fed by chest. Nothing really new.

Now, with the way you need to use things, it's merely impossible to play without a bus of plates and Sulfur/Sulfuric Acid.


For the part about blue science, it's really a wall now.
Explanation :
Now you much more petroleum to have blue science, it's more complicated. If it was only that with the old recipe, it would have been ok, but now you have merely half of the petroleum you should have, because there's no Light and Heavy to frack.
So you have to focus your research to get Advanced Oil, and then, your productivity double, by magic, and you can produce real amount of plastic and sulfur.

Unlocking that leads to : Electric furnace !
You don't need your coal anymore, and by then, you have solar panel with batteries ! So you pollute less.
And you unlock : Efficiency module !
Another reduction of power needed, and also pollution.

It's like a rollercoaster of science : at first you grow fast, because there's no oil, only plates
Then, Oil appears, but the wall is not created by Oil itself, but by how many recipes depend on it : nearly all basic recipes. Having 3 fluids instead of 1, even for a first playthrought, is not the challenge. The challenge is to setup the whole thing : plastic, sulfur, engines (a lot), massive red circuit production, massive blue science (still too slow), modules, batteries,etc.
The setup is a pin in the "donkey" and requires massive setup to start with. You need like 60 assemblers to have decent productivity (you need 24 for Engines, 15 for Red circuits and 15 for blue science. I don't count the 12 you need for sulfur and plastic (6 each).

So now you have decent production, and you have already like dozens of research @200+ blue science each to be ready next level => re-designing the whole bus with eletric furnace and start using other ores because the one you have are nearly empty. Another slow and painful thing.

I think the ratio of time spent "building blue science" vs "going basic to Advanced Oil" is like 10 for 1.
It could be greatly reduced to 4 to 1 with giving us back some other oil material (heavy or light oil to crack at first). The lack of petroleum is a nightmare sincerely.


I like the change in complexity, but it's not balanced with the fact that you have less Oil to start with. This is the main default of this update.
Bots are delayed, sure, but who cares in the end ? Recipes changed : good !
You want to treat people like they are playing Satisfactory and put only 1 output ? Do as you want, even if we warned you about the effect on the community, or what we think will happen (more "I quit because I have to rebuild everything once again", and less "Oh, a complex recipe to deal with ? Challenge accepted !").


But the balance of the game, please, put something on the table about this cost in Oil during the whole thing between Basic and Advanced Oil which is slow and painful and not fun at all. We already have to use a bus, and after unlocking blue science, redesign the whole plates production, add trains, etc.
Oil was fun before, because once you nailed the thing, it was going as fast as you wanted.
Now you just have to wait.
No fun at all.

I even used a long belt with barrels because it was faster and easier than setting up train into that nightmare bus I had to deal with. (you have to prepare it for plastic and sulfur).

Instead of running at your own speed between the walls, as tall as they are for you (green science/oil/blue science/blue chip/etc.), we crawl between them, spending the entire time waiting for a recipe

nafira wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 5:16 pm Here is my experience of 0.17.60+ !
...
For the part about blue science, it's really a wall now.
...

I've had the opposite experience, almost exactly. I've been playing Warptorio so a bus is basically impossible, and I was able to - with a bit of fun work - fit blue science in the hallways that mod provides in a very limited Factorissimo-like world. One belt each of iron and copper, plus a pipe of petrol and some coal got me 6 assembler 2's making blue science.

It's not going to win any SPM awards but by the time I needed AOP I'd already unlocked it long before.

5thHorseman wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 12:57 am

nafira wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 5:16 pm Here is my experience of 0.17.60+ !
...
For the part about blue science, it's really a wall now.
...

I've had the opposite experience, almost exactly. I've been playing Warptorio so a bus is basically impossible, and I was able to - with a bit of fun work - fit blue science in the hallways that mod provides in a very limited Factorissimo-like world. One belt each of iron and copper, plus a pipe of petrol and some coal got me 6 assembler 2's making blue science.

It's not going to win any SPM awards but by the time I needed AOP I'd already unlocked it long before.

Using a mod which changes the design restrictions on such a broad level can't exactly provide feedback indicative of how the oil changes affect the base game.

nafira wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 5:16 pm Here is my experience of 0.17.60+ !

Before I saw 4 ways of playing :

• Hand crafting and chest to chest by inventory
• mix of belts and bots
• full belts
• full bots

[...]
Bots are delayed, sure, but who cares in the end ? Recipes changed : good !
[...]

It seems that you have been confused by the unclear terminology :
Hardly anyone cares about delays to LOGIbots (since you need the late-game Logistic System to be able to fully use them anyway), however the delay to CONbots is annoying.