Factorio Forums

WOOL wrote: Sun Nov 17, 2024 9:57 am
If you are already on Fulgora use the Electromagnetic Plant as you get 50% productivity bonus making the accumulators

MisterDoctor wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 8:32 pm I had an idea...

there is a LOT wrong with Fulgora, IMO it is a travesty to the game. this is a mostly great game, but Fulgora is an embarrassment and should not have been released in this state. I lose some but not all respect for Wube over this, but I guess they got burned out or something and had to release before things were really finished.

but anyway in going over the problems for the bazzilionth time I thought of one thing that could maybe improve it (not everyone will agree I am sure): play without lightning rods! (at least at first)

the lightning is not actually all that dangerous. it does 100 AOE damage if it happens to hit something. the player is basically immune since they can have 100s of regenerating shield HP and 100s of regenerating health. vehicles have 100s or 1000s of health so are in zero danger also. and then even that tiny bit of danger is removed completely by lightning rods. (as an aside... maybe the damage should be variable? maybe you should be worried about "the big one" hitting you eventually, something like that. you need to actually be afraid if you go adventuring too far kind of thing.)

but if you did NOT have lightning rods... all of a sudden you need to repair things, all of a sudden you WANT and NEED repair packs, and you very much want construction bot coverage. also the "danger" scales with the size of your base as well. the more you build, the more bothersome the lightning strikes get. and then you also see the tech that gives you lightning rods and WANT it. (if it needs to be said, making the player WANT things is good.) so the effort of protecting a larger base scales up, as it should.

this is not perfect and does not fix most of the problems but it is one small improvement. in fact I suspect this maybe could have even been intended at some point but they couldn't balance it or something and were too worried about stranding a new player there that couldn't cope. (hence the "free" Fulgoran lightning rods you get when you first land for example.)

further thoughts are:
- lightning should probably (for some reason) scale with the evolution factor. (something that we do should probably contribute too, like running EM buildings or something.)
- that is mostly if there are no other enemies; I think I might prefer actual enemies, since we also need a reason to have electric weapons, but if the lightning was the "enemy" that might be ok too. if there was an actual enemy, it should probably have something to do with the lightning. the enemies could be spawned by the lightning strikes or they could interfere with your lightning rods when you do get them, or their presence could draw more and bigger lightning strikes, that kind of thing.
- when you DO research lightning rods, they should be expensive (ie: they should require holmium ore products). it should be a challenge to get your whole base covered with them. and ideally they should not be quite 100% effective, somehow. not entirely sure how that should work.
- I am not thinking about the electricity part of lightning so far, but that's because I don't find that very interesting. if we still need that free electricity, then perhaps the first lightning rod tech could not prevent most damage, but still gives you electricity. so instead of no rods, we have 25% effective rods or something. not sure.

anyway, I suppose the fundamental point becomes: lightning rods are OP and should be (significantly) nerfed.

MisterDoctor wrote:there is a LOT wrong with Fulgora, IMO it is a travesty to the game. this is a mostly great game, but Fulgora is an embarrassment and should not have been released in this state. I lose some but not all respect for Wube over this, but I guess they got burned out or something and had to release before things were really finished.

and then scrap... that needs more work and should be split into many more recipes and sources, and not be so plentiful. but that is not a quick fix.

BlueTemplar wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2024 12:53 pm For experienced players, mostly yes to most of these, but Wube also has to balance it for new players.
(Well, as 'new' as you can be while managing to get to Fulgora in the first place : most players won't.)

and then scrap... that needs more work and should be split into many more recipes and sources, and not be so plentiful. but that is not a quick fix.

«not be so plentiful» is a quick fix.
Otherwise, I just realized : there are a lot of similarities between Fulgora and dangOreus :

Could try replacing scrap by mixed item 'ores' ?
(You would lose on the feature «recyclers are a bottleneck you must go through for everything but electricity and heavy oil, with an additional opportunity for quality upgrade» though.)

BraveCaperCat wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2024 10:00 pm Well, Gleba also sucks. [Spoilers] or lack thereof.
But in the opposite way to Fulgora - I mean, Fulgora has not enough challenge and Gleba has too much challenge. Then there's Vulcanus which is straight-up boring. Aquilo though... Well that's a hard one - since I've never been there. If I had to say based just on the content the developers released in the FFFs, I'd say it's a complete balance between Fulgora and Gleba. Gleba has too much enemy and Fulgora has too little. Aquilo has just enough. Fulgora has too much resources, Gleba (and Vulcanus) has too little. Aquilo has just enough.

angramania wrote: Thu Nov 07, 2024 1:15 am

Mango wrote: Wed Nov 06, 2024 11:33 pm The Lightning rod (or collector later) is the only way to make power on Fulgora (Other than importing ice/uranium/fluoroketone from space).

Scrap provides both ice and solid fuel. Solar panels provide starting electricity. Boilers are quite useful to solve energy problem before getting uncommon/rare accumulators. But of course it would be boring to have them as main source of power on Fulgora.

J-H wrote: Thu Nov 28, 2024 1:17 pm

BraveCaperCat wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2024 10:00 pm Well, Gleba also sucks. [Spoilers] or lack thereof.
But in the opposite way to Fulgora - I mean, Fulgora has not enough challenge and Gleba has too much challenge. Then there's Vulcanus which is straight-up boring. Aquilo though... Well that's a hard one - since I've never been there. If I had to say based just on the content the developers released in the FFFs, I'd say it's a complete balance between Fulgora and Gleba. Gleba has too much enemy and Fulgora has too little. Aquilo has just enough. Fulgora has too much resources, Gleba (and Vulcanus) has too little. Aquilo has just enough.

Having recently gotten Gleba to a place where I'm happy with my base (producing more science than I will likely need), I'd say the enemy levels aren't too high. I've had my farms attacked only two or three times, and a couple of artillery pieces are currently enough to keep the enemy bases from getting within the spore cloud. Its challenges are ore production through a kovarex-like process, spoilage, and scaling up throughput while feeding nutrients.

Vulcanus was the most fun because it was a unique base-building experience without being too difficult. I would gladly do more Vulcanus, but it lacks a requirement to expand beyond acquiring Tungsten. Its challenges are mostly related to base layout and doing without some resources, while having too many of others.

Fulgora's challenge is about inventory management and optimization, including reverse supply chain of cracking blue and red circuits into components. How good are you with belts? It's a different challenge than the other two.

With three different planets so far, I think everyone's going to have a favorite or least favorite.

As for Aquilo - I tried going there last night and failed. I suppose I'll have to build some missile turrets.

BraveCaperCat wrote: Sun Dec 01, 2024 12:23 pm

J-H wrote: Thu Nov 28, 2024 1:17 pm

BraveCaperCat wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2024 10:00 pm Well, Gleba also sucks. [Spoilers] or lack thereof.
But in the opposite way to Fulgora - I mean, Fulgora has not enough challenge and Gleba has too much challenge. Then there's Vulcanus which is straight-up boring. Aquilo though... Well that's a hard one - since I've never been there. If I had to say based just on the content the developers released in the FFFs, I'd say it's a complete balance between Fulgora and Gleba. Gleba has too much enemy and Fulgora has too little. Aquilo has just enough. Fulgora has too much resources, Gleba (and Vulcanus) has too little. Aquilo has just enough.

Having recently gotten Gleba to a place where I'm happy with my base (producing more science than I will likely need), I'd say the enemy levels aren't too high. I've had my farms attacked only two or three times, and a couple of artillery pieces are currently enough to keep the enemy bases from getting within the spore cloud. Its challenges are ore production through a kovarex-like process, spoilage, and scaling up throughput while feeding nutrients.

Vulcanus was the most fun because it was a unique base-building experience without being too difficult. I would gladly do more Vulcanus, but it lacks a requirement to expand beyond acquiring Tungsten. Its challenges are mostly related to base layout and doing without some resources, while having too many of others.

Fulgora's challenge is about inventory management and optimization, including reverse supply chain of cracking blue and red circuits into components. How good are you with belts? It's a different challenge than the other two.

With three different planets so far, I think everyone's going to have a favorite or least favorite.

As for Aquilo - I tried going there last night and failed. I suppose I'll have to build some missile turrets.

Vulcanus just seems... boring to me. There aren't any enemies which come and attack me, I have to go to them (or be near their territory waiting to attack me) to even have a slight challenge. Not only that, but there's infinite lava and I only need calcite to turn that lava into whatever resource I want + stone. This decreases logistical complexity below that of fulgora - and we all know that fulgora doesn't have enough logistical complexity already..

mrvn wrote: Mon Dec 02, 2024 6:23 pm You also need tungsten. The only reason why you have to kill a worm or raid it's territory.

mrvn wrote: Mon Dec 02, 2024 6:23 pm It's much much harder to build the rocket silo and rocket parts than to produce the exotic new science packs. That part I found disappointing.

mrvn wrote: Mon Dec 02, 2024 8:19 pm You don't need tungsten for metals. But you don't even need metal for the science pack on vulkanus. The only reason to bother with metals at all is to build the rocket to lift the science packs to orbit.