Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Give floor tiles like concrete more utility, by reducing the pollution emitted by machines on top of floor tiles

What ?

My idea to make floor tiles more useful would be to reduce the pollution that is emitted by machines that are on floor tiles.
The pollution reduction also should scale with the quality of the floor tile (no floor < stone brick floor < concrete < reinforced concrete)

The lore explanation for this could be something like, the machines just run smoother because they are placed on stable ground, so vibrations are properly cared for and leaking oil doesnt soak into the ground.

Why ?

I personally find that floor tiles to not have enough utility to them. Most people seem only to use them for looks and to be able to walk just a bit faster.
Gameplay mechanics wise this would give you an additional (an imho much better) reason to actually put floor tiles underneath your factory.


What do you guys think?

#Edit: reformatted to use the proposed "Standard" Format

So, in a game where pollution of the environment matters, your suggestion is to make it so paving the environment under helps? :/

Pollution in this game is primarily air pollution, not “leaks” that can be solved through better stabilization of the machines (especially in the cases where their pollution is wholly from burning).

This can be easily modded. Just replace the tiles pollution reduction. I’m sure there are already some mods, that play around with that.

For vanilla I’m not sure this is a good idea, because it is obvious, that if you reduce the green grass with concrete, that it cannot reduce pollution as good as before. Otherwise it would be against the gameplay, which means the more you build the more pollution you produce.

ssilk wrote: ↑

Sun May 01, 2022 7:27 am

This can be easily modded. Just replace the tiles pollution reduction. I’m sure there are already some mods, that play around with that.

For vanilla I’m not sure this is a good idea, because it is obvious, that if you reduce the green grass with concrete, that it cannot reduce pollution as good as before. Otherwise it would be against the gameplay, which means the more you build the more pollution you produce.

I would not be so categorical. Right now concrete, especially refined, is almost useless - I almost never lay it, except when bored, since it is an absolute nightmare to lay anywhere except directly around the place where it ist produced. It has no measurable effect on trains, bots struggle with it and overload the network, you can not really easily lay tracks with concrete at the same time, purely because of absurd stacking and very long construction time with bots.
Not even spidertrons help solving this problem, since you can not really provide them with enough concrete for a laying of any meaningfull volume.

Concrete either needs a very significant buff to its characteristics - be it pollution reduction (gameplay > realism)(although I think not polluting the groundwater is a significant pollution reduction), or be it significant improvements in its usage - be it a train, which can lay concrete where it goes, or a special train unit, which slowly circles the whole network laying concrete.
I can totally imagine adding an additional wagon to all my trains, which similar to the artillery wagon has specific concrete-only storage and lays it in a configurable radius until it is used up everywhere it goes.

At the very base minimum the base game needs something similar to concreep mod, where you can instruct roboports to slowly lay concrete until the construction zone is lain. Even if your factory/factory block has access to concrete, and you are laying it via blueprint, it is still a nightmare comparable only to the pump shenanigans you have to do while building reactors on water with landfill.

I admit that concreteing every quadratmeter of your base is a challenge in itself. But this is then more of a balancing issue.

So I move this from suggestions to balancing board.

As far as bots struggling with it, I wonder if Con bots should benefit more from the carrying capacity research that will allow them to pick up and then lay multiple items for construction instead of continuing with 1 at a time?

But otherwise, no, I’m completely against giving them improved pollution absorption. This, to me, goes completely against realism, not just stretches it.

FuryoftheStars wrote: ↑

Sun May 01, 2022 2:01 pm

As far as bots struggling with it, I wonder if Con bots should benefit more from the carrying capacity research that will allow them to pick up and then lay multiple items for construction instead of continuing with 1 at a time?

Bots have been able to build multiple tiles at once since 0.17.75

Features
Construction robots will attempt to batch build tiles.

I really like the idea of another reason to place stone and concrete, especially under working machines. It's very visually appealing. Currently this is an entirely negative thing to do because you won't be walking over it and it reduces your pollution absorption.

What if floor tiles instead boosted machine production rate like a speed module? +10/20/30% bonus for having 100% of the machine ontop of brick/concrete/refined concrete. This would both reward players for producing and laying these tiles and give it a relevant tradeoff since faster production = more pollution.

Silari wrote: ↑

Sun May 01, 2022 3:29 pm

Bots have been able to build multiple tiles at once since 0.17.75
Features
Construction robots will attempt to batch build tiles.[/quote

It's better than before, but it has been a very marginal upgrade and still overloads the queue even in moderate laying tasks

Silari wrote: ↑

Sun May 01, 2022 3:29 pm

FuryoftheStars wrote: ↑

Sun May 01, 2022 2:01 pm

As far as bots struggling with it, I wonder if Con bots should benefit more from the carrying capacity research that will allow them to pick up and then lay multiple items for construction instead of continuing with 1 at a time?

Bots have been able to build multiple tiles at once since 0.17.75

Features
Construction robots will attempt to batch build tiles.

Ah, thanks for the reminder. Last time I actually blanketed my factories in concrete was prior to that change, so I still have the image in my head of them doing it one painstaking tile at a time….

With a stack of 5 or so, the building of tiles goes much, much faster.

Seen like so, building muchos tiles is a task more for the endgame, not in the growth phase.

ssilk wrote: ↑

Fri May 06, 2022 5:43 am

With a stack of 5 or so, the building of tiles goes much, much faster.

Seen like so, building muchos tiles is a task more for the endgame, not in the growth phase.

It does not matter, that it goes faster - the tiles still get queued each one separately. Plop down a lot of flooring - watch repairs on the outside walls being ignored.

That sounds like maybe there should be some priority shifts? It seems like deconstruction has priority over building. Maybe a suggestion should be made to make repairs have priority over both?

HadesSupreme wrote: ↑

Sun May 01, 2022 5:19 pm

I really like the idea of another reason to place stone and concrete, especially under working machines. It's very visually appealing. Currently this is an entirely negative thing to do because you won't be walking over it and it reduces your pollution absorption.

What if floor tiles instead boosted machine production rate like a speed module? +10/20/30% bonus for having 100% of the machine ontop of brick/concrete/refined concrete. This would both reward players for producing and laying these tiles and give it a relevant tradeoff since faster production = more pollution.

I agree. Increasing speed on proper base is more consistent than decreasing pollution.

In my opinion best way to pave large areas is to use concrete train. I have service train which brings locomotive fuel and some other (usually modded) low very volume stuff to all factories and later I add concrete wagon. I blueprint the floor, forget it and after few hours and trainloads of concrete the floor is ready. It need just a little work to organize train and patience. But I agree that there could be really effective way to lay large concrete floors automatically. For example one bot could lay 10x10 or even larger area.

Other aesthetic problem is grass on concrete. It may be good idea for primitive stone brick floors but late game factories with high tier concrete floor should be like real high tech factories. You rarely find processor or satellite manufacturers which build their products on tents over bare ground. Usually they are made in sophisticated cleanrooms without growing grass on floor. That would be hard to explain for inspectors of planetary protection regulations.

aka13 wrote: ↑

Fri May 06, 2022 7:41 am

ssilk wrote: ↑

Fri May 06, 2022 5:43 am

With a stack of 5 or so, the building of tiles goes much, much faster.

Seen like so, building muchos tiles is a task more for the endgame, not in the growth phase.

It does not matter, that it goes faster - the tiles still get queued each one separately. Plop down a lot of flooring - watch repairs on the outside walls being ignored.

Tiles have a different queue from construction, which AFAIK are where repair orders go, specifically to avoid issues like that.

Terrain covered with concrete does not consume pollution, why should placement of machines on concrete make them pollute less? They should pollute more!

Concrete won't affect air pollution, no. If we're also taking about groundwater pollution, concrete only helps if you have extra filtration infrastructure.

Concrete causing a loss in pollution absorption is probably a fair trade for granting movement speed, however I'd say it's excessive that it loses 100%. Something like 80% would be enough, and you'd still maintain some natural absorption that way even with crazy plays like covering every tile with concrete. I'm guessing it's just thematic choice that it's 100%.

boskid wrote: ↑

Fri May 06, 2022 1:54 pm

Terrain covered with concrete does not consume pollution, why should placement of machines on concrete make them pollute less? They should pollute more!

Because Gameplay>Realism, and right now concrete is hell to construct, hell to deliver, and does not provide any meaningful value except being a stone sink.
In fact most of the time the speedboost simply is annoying, because I am too fast in my "fast" base-movement exoskeleton, and for long movements along train tracks concrete is too complicated to lay, so I just don't.

If it boosted train speed by the same % it does boost the player, that would be a whole different thing.

HadesSupreme wrote: ↑

Sun May 01, 2022 5:19 pm

I really like the idea of another reason to place stone and concrete, especially under working machines. It's very visually appealing. Currently this is an entirely negative thing to do because you won't be walking over it and it reduces your pollution absorption.

What if floor tiles instead boosted machine production rate like a speed module? +10/20/30% bonus for having 100% of the machine ontop of brick/concrete/refined concrete. This would both reward players for producing and laying these tiles and give it a relevant tradeoff since faster production = more pollution.

I like this idea. Why not make machines a bit faster, which are on top of paving? f.e. 5% for stone bricks, 10% for concrete and 15% for refined concrete. Maybe some values, which are easy to calculate. I would assume, that it's also not very hard on performance.