assembling machine

[Gertibrumm]

Where am I in your player-distrubution ssilk? I am the 1% that dont post their blueprints but show them off anyway

[Deadly-Bagel]

It's not so much the blueprint as the design, if it's enough that someone can copy it without understanding it then there are people who would copy it.

[Gertibrumm]

I am not sure if this is
1 - a problem of player education
2 - a problem of how you should launch your rocket (the old fashioned way vs new smart factorys)
3 - an overall problem with anxiety of everything that might be too complicated (combinators bad enough)
or a problem for the devs (they know how to make such a feature playable if they want to)

1- Yes gameplay wise I bet only gurus will have fun with figuring out the ultimate setup, but in general such a complex circuit machine WILL bring circuit network closer to people who never bothered because now they use the blueprint and they see these combinators in their own world and the chances they get interested in the circuit thing is higher than when they never downloaded that blueprint anyway.

2- It is not a problem of blueprinting -> since we got blueprints we got ideal setups;
also blueprinting a whole factory (THE perfect smart factory) with maybe a running CPU and a million parts seems weird since these factories are running like a blackbox with specific input and output. If a player decides to blueprint 16 of these factories in a grid and launch 100 rockets / second .. so be it (I am sure that player had some genuine fun while playing this way)

3- To play factorio in the first place takes quite some revived interest in complex setups.. factorio = messy complex setups with few basic building blocks
I do not believe that the biggest player base would never take a closer look at combinators if they where using them in blueprints.
Some players simply will never bother about circuit network like I would never bother about logistic network.

My personal opinion is that every one plays their way, we should not anger ourself with a players playstyle (that is player discrimination)
And every type of player needs their updates and features, wether that is circuit related, combat, belt or logistic related.

[Deadly-Bagel]

I don't think it will get anyone involved in circuits, as has been said there is a necessary complexity involved where you either need to insert the correct number of parts or have it somehow remove any extra when the recipe is changed. It's like turning 16 and trying to learn to drive in a bus, this isn't an introductory feature to the circuit network, it's just going to turn them off it entirely. In fact if they start thinking that's how the game is supposed to be played it would very negatively impact their perception of and progression in the game.

True enough the number of people who would just copy and use such a design in ignorance would be few, but that's still not a selling point of the feature which I'm yet to find anything convincing. Sure, the devs probably could put something in somewhat easily that deletes any additional materials (simplest way) but despite the huge number of requests for it I think it would negatively impact more players than it positively impacts.

Here's an example. Smart Railway and the FARL are extremely popular mods, they're pretty much the first two (non-overhaul) mods that anyone hears of, at least before the improvements to trains in 0.13. There are Smart Railway designs all over the Railway Creations topics and I've seen the FARL mentioned repeatedly (due to its nature there aren't really any creations to show off). The features these bring to the game are therefore definitely worthy of consideration. Smart Assemblers? I vaguely remember someone mentioning it a while ago... Haven't seen anything in Show Your Creations. When someone asks for it it's four days before someone points out it exists as a mod. Pretty good indications it's not going to be a popular feature.

[Engimage]

While there is some demand for this feature I think this should not make its way into the game.
Factorio is about making complex things out of simple elements. Every element has the most simple functionality possible. This particular device will be complex as hell no matter how do you solve material recycling.

And I am also sure that noone will ever copy blueprint of a universal building block cause you can never achieve a compact and efficient design with it. I do understand that having an assembler per item type will never be compact but its function is clear to anyone.

[Yoyobuae]

While there is some demand for this feature I think this should not make its way into the game.
Factorio is about making complex things out of simple elements. Every element has the most simple functionality possible. This particular device will be complex as hell no matter how do you solve material recycling.

Simple solution: Don't solve material recycling problem. If there's materials left in assembler, it is stuck with it's current recipe until it is cleared.

That's just one more interesting problem for players to solve.

It's like chain crafting. It's automatic when the player does crafting from inventory. But requires more complex logistics when done with assemblers. Manually changing recipe is easy, you just change it and any leftover items are returned to player inventory. But automated changing recipe will have extra complexities.

Setting assembler recipes will simply trade complex logistics by complex circuits.

The only point against this is that perhaps it would be too complex of a problem for players to solve. But are we going to back out of anything that seems complex? I though Factorio players are supposed to like complexity.

I wonder how many of the people posting their opinions here have actually tried doing it by themselves. There's a mod for it:
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/theRusty ... combinator

It's easy to sit back and just say "it's too complex" or even "it's too easy" if you never tried it.

Here's the one I built:
https://youtu.be/cGfAFxHplnE

Maybe there could be simpler solutions. Maybe something with bots. Who knows what someone else can come up with. But if no one even tries...

[Deadly-Bagel]

That is pretty cool, but why does this need to be in vanilla? The very few players who want to mess about with something like that already have a mod for it.