Friday Facts #162 - Theme Art Again

[DeathMers]

Well... Everybody is very happy about getting rid of alien artifacts, but not me, i see it like a not used opportunity. Aliens remains after all and occasional necessary "clean up" in late game is inevitable too. But now, you will get shit instead of alien artifact reward.
I understand alien artifact as something special in game and you have opened a big door of opportunity. It could be a secondary resource for secondary products. Imagine combining AA with some kind of petroleum product to create a new type of fuel,maybe even less stable fuel damaging factory or train or boiler. Imagine combining AA with some kind of ore to create new type of alloy that could be used in new types of battery, creates, wires, new types of factories, or all other products, all of them... You could create diversity in game, shitload of new ways and opportunities,like instead of creating new and new outpost for fucking ore mining (its booring and still the same again and again) , player could decide to use AA with combination of some ore as temporary substitute, maybe even force to optimise factory design.
Dont get me wrong, but AAs were something that had use, and you should get the field of use wider, not narrower. Instead of getting rid of AAs, cause its hard to collect them, you should create a way to easily kill all that fucking bitters. Its not hard, but there is too much of them, and it takes too much time. We need something like artilery, long range missiles, ICBMs for the LOLz maybe. For picking up AAs, there are drones ffs... Please reconsider.

[Drury]

Making combat even more of an afterthought is well underway I see.

[Quickbowjob]

Well... Everybody is very happy about getting rid of alien artifacts, but not me, i see it like a not used opportunity. Aliens remains after all and occasional necessary "clean up" in late game is inevitable too. But now, you will get shit instead of alien artifact reward.
I understand alien artifact as something special in game and you have opened a big door of opportunity. It could be a secondary resource for secondary products. Imagine combining AA with some kind of petroleum product to create a new type of fuel,maybe even less stable fuel damaging factory or train or boiler. Imagine combining AA with some kind of ore to create new type of alloy that could be used in new types of battery, creates, wires, new types of factories, or all other products, all of them... You could create diversity in game, shitload of new ways and opportunities,like instead of creating new and new outpost for fucking ore mining (its booring and still the same again and again) , player could decide to use AA with combination of some ore as temporary substitute, maybe even force to optimise factory design.
Dont get me wrong, but AAs were something that had use, and you should get the field of use wider, not narrower. Instead of getting rid of AAs, cause its hard to collect them, you should create a way to easily kill all that fucking bitters. Its not hard, but there is too much of them, and it takes too much time. We need something like artilery, long range missiles, ICBMs for the LOLz maybe. For picking up AAs, there are drones ffs... Please reconsider.

Well not everybody is excited for this change but i understand why the developers come up with this,
but if you read my post or others we do seek for a different approach.

Points made that I've seen so far,

1) Option when you make game drop or don't.
2) Mods can already take care of it.
3) Keep RPG more RPG pls.
4) Speed up research.
5) Farm them like pigs farms in minecraft.

[ske]

I would like to see the Alien Artifacts come to use in some consumable items like powerful grenades or smth:
--> kill Aliens
--> get Alien Artifacts
--> build more powerful ammo/grenades

I like this idea. Make the alien artefacts really rare and enable some ridiculously overpowered weapons by using them occaisonally. This would enable having a whole range of different rare alien artefacts which can be used as kind of ammo for those fun weapons.

(BFG9000 from doom which makes an insane explosion clearing a large area. // Chain lightning electrifying biters. // Frost. // Death and decay (player emits poisonous gas while running around after consuming the artefact). // Sonic boom scattering enemies over a large area. // Infestation! (Aliens turn into zombies and attack and infect other aliens.) // Weed. (Aliens just don't care, too lazy to attack.) // Death Multiplication. (Killing a big biter spawns two smaller biters.) // only you can think of more)


Important with this is that those artefacts all have a low to very low chance of dropping and add to the fun factor.

[Mooncat]

I am not very excited by the removal of alien artifact either. It is a roadblock for the game, yet it can also be a milestone once you overcome it. I don't like the gameplay to be too smooth. It needs to have some challenges.

But yes, mods will take care of it. I expect there will be some mods enabling the artifact again. Just keep the loot related properties in the entity prototype and it should be fine.

[hoho]

I can understand why the artifacts got removed but as many others, I sort of liked them. If they're completely removed I would think people would like the currently relatively unrewarding combat part of the game even less as they will get nothing but extra land area out of dealing with biters. At least if they'd give us something useful, they would be somewhat more than just a nuisance.


In mods, they were often used for non-mandatory stuff like extra-powerful ammo. I also liked the idea someone posted here about them being usable as a "speed module" for science. Artifacts likely being something biological, why not make it possible to use them in e.g oil production (higher output in refining) or even as fuel?

[aubergine18]

Glad the artefacts are going, but hope the "loot" dropping ability of entities remains for mods to use. Would be great if loot drops could have a time-to-live to automatically remove it if not collected.

[spalladino]

Loving the changes for 0.15 so far. Is there an ETA for its release in the experimental channel?

[factoriouzr]

It seems to me that the best option is to do the following:
1) keep alien artifacts and maybe even expand on them to give some sort of non-essential reward for getting them, ideally some cool new technology
2) drop artifacts from biters instead of nests at a low percent chance
3) provide a way to farm all types of biters for their drops so that this can be automated (think automatic biter spawning buildings that keep the biters caged and then you can kill them by placing turrets or just keep them around as a sort of zoo)
4) allow for automated ways to pick up artifacts but also have them disappear after 10 minutes or so if not picked up to avoid save game bloat and artifacts everywhere
5) improve the biter variety, ai, and challenge and add a way to increase the threat of the biters at game creation
6) add new types of turrets and new offensive options, eg drone patrols, RTS style control and automated attack parties

This seems to satisfy all people and would give more depth and enjoyment to the game. The artifacts won't be part of the critical path, but for those that want to get everything and those that love automation, farming them can be automated. At the same time the biters would be more interesting and challenging and we would have a variety of cool new ways to deal with them.

[ssilk]

Hm.

The decision to remove the need for alien artifacts for research and remove then them completely from game came me also with my last big factory. Same reasons: After a while it is not longer fun. It's a right game-play-decision; especially when you think about that you should be able to win this game peaceful. So this is just consequence.

BUT

I have some concerns, some thoughts. I think they are important enough to take into account.

I mean: The moment when I found out, that I need to kill the natives I remembered as thrilling. I thought: "This is mean: I need to be mean to survive. But I don't want to be mean. I just want to play this game. Am I now mean, just cause I play this game!?" I think other players have similar thoughts. Well, if not I'm just wrong, but if...

I think the alien artifacts was a really good idea in one point: They forced the player to fight against the native, because he just wants something from them and there was not really another way to get it. That puts the player to the "bad side", because the player killed just, because he needed it to go away from a planet. Is killing ANYTHING a good enough reason?

That is, why I think the alien artifacts are interesting. And we should look, if they should be really removed completely. I think to games like Bioshock, where you could decide as player between good and evil. From one point upward you have two different tech-trees and cannot return. And in Factorio that could depends on, how much eggs you use.

And I have some ideas to achieve that:
- What is, if the artifacts are really, really rare. If you get one, if you killed hundreds of nests.
- Eventually you make them more rare: Alien artifacts are quite sensitive. They live only some game-minutes.
- As consequence: Industrializing the whole killing process and getting alien eggs in mass production.
- When no more nests are near: Industrializing egg-production: You need just the right conditions for a nest to produce more eggs.
- The eggs can be used for "evil" things (only?). One is enough to change you whole technology. Two gives you tech to kill faster...

I haven't thought deeper here to let space for fantasy. (*) But I think the basic idea is explained.


The point is: Now, with this change explained in this FFF, the direction of playing Factorio has moved into something, that I would call "clear play". The "right way" to play Factorio is more clear now.
But what I think is, that a good dose of uncertainty would be good for a game like Factorio. If it is not so clear, what is good and what it evil. If the player would be tempted by devils research, to get bigger and bigger... That would open the "open world game" into an "open open world game".


(*) The details can be found in the suggestions forum:
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=14710 Alien Juice / Handling of Corpses / Recycling Dead
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=14638 Producing food / Herbalism / Health

[hagfish]

Can I be ambivalent? On one hand, going out to do battle with the biters was a PITA. On the other hand; some kind of adversity is expected (unless you're playing Sudoku), and it's nice to have a 'reward' for killing spawners.

Purple Science felt a bit 'tacked-on' maybe, but it made sense, within the context of the 'story'. Removing purple science seems like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

You can't please everyone - you'll end up paralysed. You could concentrate on just pleasing me, but even I don't know what I want

[jcranmer]

The one nice thing about alien artifacts is that it is a resource that it is relatively rare compared to consumption, and so you have to plan to not leave a large stash where it's unusable (e.g., I designed a single-chest layout for artifacts for all the modules and purple science). The problem with it is that, well, before you finished out the tech tree, you always needed more of it, but after that, you had nothing to spend it on, and so it massively accumulates. And there's no way to automate collection.

Given that you're getting rid of purple science already, that eliminates the mandatory need for the resource. I'd suggest making the drop rate very low--instead of 25 per base, make it around 0.05 or so per base, and allow people to use it in automation by making some sort of breeder cycle to grow more alien artifacts for a seed. The idea I had was to make the cycle require productivity modules and include part of the military tech stuff because, well, most of the military items are rather useless (I don't think I've ever used the rocket launcher or tank cannon). The ability to scale automation arbitrarily is important for anything other than random one-offs (i.e., power armor modules).

I will point out that, since alien artifacts stack obscenely high, having too much of them isn't too bad of a problem. My base has somewhere around ~10-20K alien artifacts (I do produce level-3 modules like mad, though)... and 600K coal and 100K wood or so. And there's still plenty of large coal mines within my solar field that I have yet to tap. Once you move off of steam power, you use so little coal. It would be nice to have some process to convert wood and coal to oil, particularly since oil is so hard to produce in the quantities you need.

[catdog2]

Removing the artifacts at least the way they were used is a good idea, at the beginning (if needed for science) collecting them is a major distraction from building your factory, in late game they are very annoying because they constantly clutter your inventory.

I'm not in general against some kind reward for destroying enemy bases, an option would be to keep the artifacts but make them far less frequent but more valuable. They could maybe serve as a way to quickly regain health, like the raw fish which would also be helpful in late game when you have to clear a lot of enemy bases and don't want to wait after taking a hit (though I also would prefer to automate that at some point as it gets rather boring).

I'm also very much in favor of having the option to also play some sort of peaceful mode which replaces the fighting/defending with other challenges (either involving or not involving aliens in some way). Maybe there could also be a configurable mixture of challenges, a little bit of fighting, a little bit of trading, a little bit of something else (e.g. varying stability of energy sources, factories needing some sort of maintenance to perform at optimum, variations in the balancing where some things are unusually hard to produce, …). I think you don't need that much of such variables to create rather big variety of uniquely interesting maps, making the game more enjoyable in the long term because it's never the same.

[Zombo]

While part of me is slightly concerned about the further marginalization of the biters (i.e. more of an annoyance then a part of gameplay)

This!
Biters are an essential part of the game. I don't like the idea of making the biters less important. I'm glad they are there and I think they take a great part in automation concerning the defense. Without biters, you wouldn't need walls, you wouldn't need gates, you wouldn't need ammo, wouldn't need lasers. That's a BIG part the would become useless. Not to mention all the construction robots that keep on and on repairing every little bit of my factory and replacing everything that was destroyed. I would really miss this great part of defense automation.

On the other hand, I really appreciate that all the people, that would like to play on peaceful, now don't need artifacts anymore to play that game like they want. That's great for them!

I never would play peaceful, as I love the wall and laser automation, and the perfect job of the little construction bots that keep my base defended! And also, it's a foreign world, it would be strange if the natives vanished.

As many other people wrote, I would strongly suggest to KEEP the artifacts and give them some good meaning, that is not game essential (like purple science now is in 0.14). I like the idea of a temporary module-like boost for example (robots could distribute this temporary artifact modules into special flagged assemblers for example!) So you would distribute them automatically, but would have to hunt them, if you want them.

And also, perhaps it is time to give the biters a little development love. More biters, different types, different moving and attack styles. They are now a little too simple for the near final state of the game.
Ah I see, someone has exactly described what I mean: -->

I agree with the removal of the alien artifacts, but I definitely want the Biters to STAY around. KEEP THE BITERS. They add a sense of challenge and fun to the game.

I think the biters need to be improved with:
more types/variety
more progression (more levels of difficulty, might be somewhat related to types)
better AI and interesting behaviours
ability to increase the difficulty on map creation of the biters

For those that don't want to play with them, you can add an option to turn them off at the start of the game.

For me personally (and I heard this from others as well), we like the biters. They just need some love and improvement, but it's still better to have them even in their current state and without dropping artifacts then remove them completely.

I like the challenge and it adds to the story that you are stranded on this alien planet with natives (aliens) and you have to defend yourself. It also adds challenge in claiming new resource spots. I really like this mix in this game. This is not just a logistics game, it's a survival game as well.

I would really like to see this game have late game increase in challenge from biters and cool ways to deal with them like sending automated combat robots, having robot patrols etc. In a few Friday facts, it was mentioned about having a player command centre and having an RTS type aspect to the game. Personally I would love this.

Along side fixing some more bugs, improving the UI, implementing common requested features, improving the biters is a really important thing for me that would really make me love the game even more

I'll second all of this. Removing artifacts is perfectly fine, since it means that you can fully automate all of your production now. However, it makes biters even more of an irritant, since it removes a benefit for clearing out their nests.

I would really like to see a combat pass some time soon, since it's by far the weakest aspect of the game. It doesn't need to be brilliant, since combat isn't the focus of this game. But I'd like to see it made less tedious to deal with.

I second this! Make the biters a much more important part of the game, keep the artifacts and make them an optional bost or ingredient, thats NOT needed the finish the game peaceful. This would help everybody.

[TomyTheBest]

Dear Dev Team,

I'm a very happy player of Factorio since the ~0.11.22 version of the game. I'm that type of person who love the endless optimalisation process. Sometimes it feels a bit like a 'job' but in a really enjoyable meanings.
I have a couple of ideas which are definitely not represent all the other Factorio fans but maybe you will get a couple of ideas from it for the future.
Years - years ago in a galaxy far far away, I played incredibly lot with EVE online. I still belive that game most appealing part is the way how to try to serve all the different type of players. (It has many different opportunity to enjoy that you like to do. Industry/exploring/pew-pew/politics/co-op/mining/stc)
I think factorio is the best for everybody who love the endless 'just 20 more steam engines, and I promise I'll sleep.Really! Just one more extension for the green circuit assemblies and.... crap... I run out of coal?!", but ..... and here are a few ideas:
- make more deep, dense, varied, the other aspects of the game.
- the bitter killing would be more like playing Diablo With dungeons, some epic Boss like Duriel, dropping rare equipments, (maybe quests)
- make more more variability into the militray. Tha basics would be craftable from the curent used sources but it would be fun to discover the map for rare dropps, guns, armors, bows, helmets, amulets, rings, soul stones
- the most of the buildings would have an alien tech version. The bitter nests would drop unique sources or receipts for a more efficiency ....steam for example.
- The map would contain lost factories where the bitters are win before. Like in the Jurassic park It would be fun to discover a woodchest with some stack of red circuit.

Please let me know your thoughts about those.

cheers
Chucky

[catdog2]

- The map would contain lost factories where the bitters are win before. Like in the Jurassic park It would be fun to discover a woodchest with some stack of red circuit.

Sounds like a really nice idea. Would make exploration a lot more exciting than only searching for the next resource field.

[aubergine18]

I think the biters should stay. Ditch the alien artefacts, but keep the biters. They make expansion more challenging especially in the early-mid game. Also, pollution would be somewhat meaningless without them. Some conflict with biters is inevitable, but shouldn't be a major part of the gameplay.

Occasional asteroid impacts might be a nice addition to the game, with a rare chance of hitting the factory or starting a forest fire, etc. It would give added incentive for player to build the rocket to escape the planet. Those asteroids could leave behind loot - extremely rare, but otherwise unobtainable resources for example. This to me would make far more sense than alien eggs that we currently have, because it just doesn't make any sense that alien eggs would help make better modules and so on. Unique resources from asteroid impacts, on the other hand, make far more sense. And then the player might be thinking "well, I need more of these resources, maybe I should mine some asteroids that are floating around in space near Nauvis"... In fact, it could be one of those asteroids that caused the player to crash on Nauvis in the first place, so it could turn in to a nice link in the game story.

[SeigneurAo]

Hello.

I have not intervened thus far, but after feeling uncomfortable with the science overhaul (and keeping my big mouth shut, considering it was very well received overall), I feel like speaking out about the idea of artifacts going bye bye.
I receive this news as a kind a dismissal from a dev team who has otherwise always amazed me in the purpose they put in all their decisions, most of the time a direct response to concerns expressed by the community, or even better concerns which arose after them playing their own game (a behaviour most game devs should mimic, really...).
It kinda sounds like "ok we don't find much to do with artifacts now their science pack is gone, so let's get rid of them".
Why not find other, better, newer uses ? Very interesting ones, such as military. It takes combat to win those, let them improve combat, dammit. Or else.

I mean, I find science more of a distraction than anything in the late game, when you could focus on your outposts and building big. Aliens are nice, in the way they threaten your expansion, sometimes slow it, sometimes set it back when they destroy your most remote base. Science, meh, it's just throwing more and more stuff at it. Even worse with the new science packs, where you use actual useful products to fund it. I could reason it out of the intermediate products thing (inserters, metal, electronic circuits, whatever), but I mean final buildings like furnaces or such, that's quite ridiculous.
Aside from the sheer amount of resources it takes to produce them, it's pointless and counter-productive to shove them up some laboratories. I'm not even talking about a remote "roleplay" explaination for that, it's not like the game's logic is the most prominent factor to my enjoyment, but well, there's not much incentive other than "let's make this all more expensive, just for the sake of making the game artificially longer".

Same goes for artifacts. I'm a bit disappointed that you just let it go like that.
Maybe (probably) because you've spoiled us so much, and we got used to an outstanding decision making process, very very good features, all in all I feel like Factorio's community matter MUCH to you guys in the dev team. But this one time (science, artifacts), I must say I'm not so thrilled.

I do agree with the people saying "you're landing on an unknown planet, probably a hostile one, you should

Thanks for an amazing game, an exceptionnal value (I mean, $20, or even the 15€ I paid back when you weren't on Steam yet, it's an awesome bargain for the number of hours I spent playing), keep up the good work, and try to listen to those who don't necessarily agree with ALL your choices, if it isn't too hard (I know you can't please everyone).

[sekanz]

I think these changes are for the better. Carry on.

[BenSeidel]

Am I the only one that finds it disturbing that they are storing currencies as floating points?