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

[Yoyobuae]

Smoothie pipe setups such as this one will continue to work. The fluid mixing prevention only occurs on machines with passthrough ports, such as boilers, steam engines, and electromagnetic plants.

And also space platform thrusters? And also do thrusters remain unflippable?

[jackthesmack]

I still have 4 QoL that I'm waiting for:
• Wireless connection for logistic chests

You can already do this using a radar though in 2.0, and you can use channels for much more refined control is 2.1.

[32583279]

space casino is the only interesting approach to quality.
making it is something new, it was a lot of fun to design well working casino.

all other approaches are just flat out boring, just copy the same shit all over again.

you have removed fun and innovative part of the game in favor of stupid grind.

this completely overshadows all the other stuff mentioned in the fff.

if a change was really needed, then it should have been the other way round. keep space casino, and nerf lds shuffle.

I think the quoted comment is correct.

While the FFF describes this as a combination of multiple mechanics, in practice most quality production ends up being the same logic repeated for different materials. It is repetitive and tedious.

Space Casino is an interesting quality strategy

I also don't agree that it makes every other quality approach obsolete. Space Casino cannot improve the quality of materials such as Tungsten Plates or Holmium Plates, so other quality production methods are still required.

Because of that, when I read:

"Nonetheless we do our best to make the features and gameplay of Quality as good as possible"

I find it difficult to agree that removing Space Casino moves Quality gameplay in that direction.

That said, I think many of the other changes in this FFF look great, and I am very much looking forward to 2.1.

[Omnifarious]

I really like all the changes in this FFF.

My biggest question is this....

I've noticed that it's difficult to work with quality in flexible ways in mods. The attributes of an entity affected by quality seem pretty fixed. And how those attributes are affected also seem pretty fixed.

I'm only asking because quality seemed a major theme here. Maybe you intend to talk about this in a future FFF.

[xcape]

Also, Diagonal ramps for elevated rails when???

Probably never, IIRC they had scrapped the idea because the locomotives and wagons would then need another hundred renders for each different angle they could be in. Tho it might have been something else similar, but the same logic applies.

[zhonbi]

The new stromatolites and especially the new Vulcanos rocks look bad.

I think they look great! They're so much better than the old versions~

[zhonbi]

Getting rid of the "Space Casino" is the best thing to see here. I always viewed it as a cheaty exploit and refused to ever do it.

How will the change make the game more fun for you?

How do you feel about other people being upset at it's removal?

I've never heard an answer to these questions that satisfies me.

It doesn't make the game more fun for us, although the removal of its temptation is appreciated. The devs are specifically citing the casinos as being too ubiqutously powerful in comparison with other quality up-cycling options. They also made a point to appologize not to try to ruin people's fun, and I personally derive no joy from upsetting you. However, the dev's job is game balance. Asking why you can't keep the casinos is similar in spirit to asking why we can't just give the player a legendary mech armor at the start. You can always just add more power to the game; it's a quesiton of progression and power of opportunity costs, subjective such that it may be

[redtank]

Amazing update.
I feel like the balancing decisions are appropriate.
I probably won't be using the quality wagons as I love having my base full of moving trains, but I'll definitely be using the new legendary locomotives with my legendary nuclear fuel .

[ecapstone]

Nerfing space casinos is a mistake, IMO. It’s the most interesting way to approach quality, and the fact that the ratios are advantageous feels like an appropriate reward for figuring it out.
If the devs are concerned about balance, the fact that it doesn’t help with tungsten, holmium, or carbon fiber still forces players to engage with more tedious methods of getting legendary materials.

[LizardOfOz]

While Quality is helpful on space platforms, unlocking Quality adds a whole extra step/click to selecting a recipe, which you do very often. I wish there'd be a way/setting to skip that step/click and always assume Common unless specified otherwise.

[JohnMeister]

I wonder why they mentioned quality artillery wagons. Those are already possible.

[jamesjung]

It's a pity to lose the "asteroid casino", but have you considered that most of our blueprints are based on it? This would break all my blueprints. Also, the thing I most want to implement is the legendary bottle. I know it's overpowered, but it's not a universal solution. Maybe you could add a recipe toggle when creating a map – leave the choice to the players instead of simply deleting it.

Regarding the lag caused by too many asteroid chunks in the broken planet, and the lag from the movement of the 5-legged worm – do you have any new optimization plans for these? That's what I'm hoping to see.

[ivan_349876]

The Space Casino nerf is extremely disappointing. It was one of the few places where you could apply a creative solution to quality.

We don't want to be fun killers, but it just makes any other approach to quality obsolete.

Yes, because there is one [0] other approach to quality. Is the intended gameplay loop for quality really copying the same old recycling blueprint over and over again with a few tweaks? Awful.

[0] There's the LDS/Blue Circuit loop, but realistically you already need to have high quality buildings before you can make use of it.

[Ralt]

Bit sad all you're doing is on the production of quality items is knocking out the space casino. I was hoping for...I don't know what but something different for quality, I definitely thought LDS Foundry/Liquids would be dead too.

[Erfar]

I still have 4 QoL that I'm waiting for:
• Wireless connection for logistic chests

You can already do this using a radar though in 2.0, and you can use channels for much more refined control is 2.1.

you probably missunderstud what I mean.
Right now you can disable logistic chest with wiredconnection
BUT
EVERY OTHER entity could be disabled by logistic connection. EXCEPT for logistic chests

[Erfar]

Also, Diagonal ramps for elevated rails when???

Probably never, IIRC they had scrapped the idea because the locomotives and wagons would then need another hundred renders for each different angle they could be in. Tho it might have been something else similar, but the same logic applies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaOjgIA66fs

Technology is exist at lest in demo-mode (video of D.O.R.F RTS currently in development)

[dannyus]

The Space Casino nerf is extremely disappointing. It was one of the few places where you could apply a creative solution to quality.

We don't want to be fun killers, but it just makes any other approach to quality obsolete.

Yes, because there is one [0] other approach to quality. Is the intended gameplay loop for quality really copying the same old recycling blueprint over and over again with a few tweaks? Awful.

[0] There's the LDS/Blue Circuit loop, but realistically you already need to have high quality buildings before you can make use of it.

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.

[Geels]

I'm sad to see the space casino go, especially because it only produces resources that can be found in space. However, I understand that this change makes quality upcycling on Nauvis something we are now encouraged to do. I wish that instead of being removed entirely, it was perhaps gated behind some late-game tech so that it wouldn't feel so "free."

Changing topics, I'm extremely happy to see that we are getting quality for trains. Now that only a couple of items have useless quality modifiers, is there any plan for the others?

I really hope to see at least something for belts—either item stacking or increased speed, whichever is more tick-efficient. Something else I'd love to see, though I doubt it will happen, is a quality upgrade for the circuit network. Giving us "logic pages" would let us use the same component for multiple logic paths, similar to real-life ICs that house copies of their own circuits. That way, we could drastically reduce both the footprint and the number of combinators necessary.

As for rail signals, pipes, and walls, I can't really see what quality could add—aside from walls perhaps dealing return damage, scaling higher in HP than other structures, or gaining flat damage reduction. Because of that, I wouldn't mind if those specific items didn't get additional quality effects.

[credomane]

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.

Surely there is some way to make it possible in "most" cases.

Mirror BP with stops/signals like any other BP followed by flipping the stops/signals to the opposite side of their track to preserve left/right-handed drive. After that then check if final placement of stop/signal would become invalid (due to collision with another entity in the BP or new signal placement won't attach to the rail anymore [namely on rail curves]) after everything then throw an error saying "Unable to flip this blueprint because {Train stop / Rail Signal / Rail Chain Signal} placement would be invalid." or "Circuit wire would become too long between {Entity X} and {Entity Y}."


Almost all of my use cases for flipping rail BP's is to get the loader/unloader setup for an entire train stop to the opposite side.

[MrMarvel7414]

I find the space casino change to be a bad move because the dumb up-cycling strategy is even less engaging of a mechanic to play with. I think having the space casino work by integrating interplanetary travel is really cool, and has the dual use of being able to ship items on a consistent schedule with an influx of otherwise difficult to obtain resources.

I would like to politely dispute the vibe that all recycling is solved by the space casino either, as planet specific recipes still require the same facet of “classic” recycling because they use resources specific to their planet. Tungsten, Fruits/carbon fiber, Holmium, and even biter eggs from Nauvis! To remove space casino's therefore subject to the same design logic that already applies to these items to all items, which is just less diversity, even if it’s for balancing reasons.

I really appreciate the work that you are doing but I think it’s wrong to remove the most fun system of setting up and scaling quality and instead offer a quality-free experience instead. There may be “no other room for quality styles”, but I think that basic recycling just isn’t very engaging as a technical challenge anyways. I’m interested in seeing the new changes in quality, but at the moment I feel this is a bad decision for the dynamism of the “Space” in “Space Age.”