Friday Facts #275 - 0.17 Science changes

[Zavian]

Instead of the win condition being no satellite, putting one means the player will at least see Space Science, and may get intrigued by it, giving further reason to continue playing the game.

Maybe fix the rocket launched without satellite issue, by requiring the the rocket must have a payload before you can launch? (Could be any type of payload. IIRC you can launch yourself in a car, mods could add their own payloads etc).

[V453000]

Grenade stays as it’s a very useful weapon against large groups of enemies, like biters or trees.

Yeah, those fearsome trees, our worst enemy... I prefer Flamethrowers, nothing is as satisfying as seeing a giant forest burn to ashes.

The only thing I would disagree with here are the productivity modules for production packs: All the other things are going to be used sooner or later, but it is very well possible to never use prod modules, so this feels like you are trying to force us to use them(especially Level 1, which I never saw used anywhere).

The thing is, using a thing in a science pack isn't really forcing you to do anything, just hinting that it might be a good idea. If you play without productivity modules then you are deliberately restricting yourself.

[gmyx]

I like the changes overall, but I'm not a fan of the amount of rails needed for production science (just as I'm not with the copper cables right now for high-tech science). This is mainly for logistic reasons: With the other science packs, I can put in a few blue belts, perhaps some of them shared between resources, that are used roughly in roughly the same amount.

However, if one ingredient has a count of 30, I need almost a full blue belt of that ingredient alone, while the rest of the ingredients combined only need 15% of a yellow belt's throughput. It feels wrong, and in my opinion it doesn't look nice either. Sure, there is a number of ways that I can work around this in a megafactory (e.g. feed in 20 blue belts of rails, and one half belt each of furnaces and productivity modules, then split that up between 20 production lines), but I don't think that is a real challenge logistic-wise, and won't look nice either.

So the obvious solution would be to supply all of it with bots. And here we are at the bot vs belt discussion again, in which the bots win this time, simply because: they have no throughput limitation per se. I don't care if it's 8 bots delivering rails and 2 bots delivering furnaces and modules. I can build a nice-looking factory block and produce everything close by in the correct ratios.

Regards
Ferlonas

You can just use direct insertion and be fine with it, don't need bots.

I feel that all you are doing is forcing a play style by requiring so much of a single item. The whole game has many styles, except for this item. I feel to make any significant amount I would need multiple belts.

As a rule, I don't do direct insertion. I prefere main bus/rail world. And I try to limit bots to keep them to upgrades and cleanup. Logistic bots are useful to back feed during upgrades and with the crafting combinator mod.

[V453000]

I like the changes overall, but I'm not a fan of the amount of rails needed for production science (just as I'm not with the copper cables right now for high-tech science). This is mainly for logistic reasons: With the other science packs, I can put in a few blue belts, perhaps some of them shared between resources, that are used roughly in roughly the same amount.

However, if one ingredient has a count of 30, I need almost a full blue belt of that ingredient alone, while the rest of the ingredients combined only need 15% of a yellow belt's throughput. It feels wrong, and in my opinion it doesn't look nice either. Sure, there is a number of ways that I can work around this in a megafactory (e.g. feed in 20 blue belts of rails, and one half belt each of furnaces and productivity modules, then split that up between 20 production lines), but I don't think that is a real challenge logistic-wise, and won't look nice either.

So the obvious solution would be to supply all of it with bots. And here we are at the bot vs belt discussion again, in which the bots win this time, simply because: they have no throughput limitation per se. I don't care if it's 8 bots delivering rails and 2 bots delivering furnaces and modules. I can build a nice-looking factory block and produce everything close by in the correct ratios.

Regards
Ferlonas

You can just use direct insertion and be fine with it, don't need bots.

I feel that all you are doing is forcing a play style by requiring so much of a single item. The whole game has many styles, except for this item. I feel to make any significant amount I would need multiple belts.

As a rule, I don't do direct insertion. I prefere main bus/rail world. And I try to limit bots to keep them to upgrades and cleanup. Logistic bots are useful to back feed during upgrades and with the crafting combinator mod.

It's just one build for one science pack, and you don't absolutely have to do it. It's not changing your whole play style. And you already had the same-ish thing in High-tech science pack in 0.16.

[dog80]

what about the time it takes to produce blue packs - this is non linear - it just requires you to build a mass of assemblers etc which is just annoying - which adds to the "complexity" of the pack

[DaveMcW]

You should allow a player to be the rocket payload.

(The functionality already exists, just remove the car payload requirement.)

[Amarula]

<returns from doing a happy dance around the living room>
Reading today's update was like opening a Christmas present! Thank you!
I really like all the work polishing science, from rebalancing the science packs to adjusting the tech trees.
Hmmm... and being able to win the game without a satellite... I may, just may, be able to get the Spoon achievement!

[pleegwat]

Additionally science packs take a long time to craft so you don't need 30/s for a long time.

That's not the point.

Creating 4 production science per second requires 1.3/s electric furnace, 1.3/s productivity modules, and a full blue belt, 40/s, of rails.

[Mike5000]

Some interesting ideas but several of the science names are problematic.

• Red Science is all about Manufacturing, not Automation. It does not include circuits and combinators.
• Green Science is closer to Transport than Logistics. And of course it doesn't include Logistics research! However it also includes so many new technologies that I'd just call it Engineering.
• Blue Science actually comes after most Chemical technologies. The only chemistry it brings is Advanced Oil Processing. With the current tech tree there is no good name for Blue Science as it is mostly upgrades to earlier technologies. Logistics and Personal Roboport technology should be moved to Blue Science and then you can call it Logistics Science. Requiring Yellow Science for Personal Roboport is INSANE. If you don't like bots don't use them.
• Utility Science needs a different name as it suggests early science or Lo Tech. Hi Tech Science was much better.

[Zavian]

As a rule, I don't do direct insertion. I prefere main bus/rail world. And I try to limit bots to keep them to upgrades and cleanup. Logistic bots are useful to back feed during upgrades and with the crafting combinator mod.

Then you are choosing to limit your choices, which is off course your right. But regardless, with that craft time, it is only about 1 rail per second per assemblers. So one red or blue belt of rails can still feed a lot of assemblers.

[V453000]

Additionally science packs take a long time to craft so you don't need 30/s for a long time.

That's not the point.

Creating 4 production science per second requires 1.3/s electric furnace, 1.3/s productivity modules, and a full blue belt, 40/s, of rails.

Variety is generally interesting I believe. For example the Chemical science pack also has x3 x2 x1 so yes it won't be 1-1-1 belts for input, if you're consuming the whole belt. 4 science per second is 240 per minute, that's still quite a lot.

[Mike5000]

If you play without productivity modules then you are deliberately restricting yourself.

If we play without modules and beacons it's because we want to play an engineering sim rather than a magic game.

Beacons especially should be relegated to mods and the sim rebalanced without them.

[gmyx]

I like the changes overall, but I'm not a fan of the amount of rails needed for production science (just as I'm not with the copper cables right now for high-tech science). This is mainly for logistic reasons: With the other science packs, I can put in a few blue belts, perhaps some of them shared between resources, that are used roughly in roughly the same amount.

However, if one ingredient has a count of 30, I need almost a full blue belt of that ingredient alone, while the rest of the ingredients combined only need 15% of a yellow belt's throughput. It feels wrong, and in my opinion it doesn't look nice either. Sure, there is a number of ways that I can work around this in a megafactory (e.g. feed in 20 blue belts of rails, and one half belt each of furnaces and productivity modules, then split that up between 20 production lines), but I don't think that is a real challenge logistic-wise, and won't look nice either.

So the obvious solution would be to supply all of it with bots. And here we are at the bot vs belt discussion again, in which the bots win this time, simply because: they have no throughput limitation per se. I don't care if it's 8 bots delivering rails and 2 bots delivering furnaces and modules. I can build a nice-looking factory block and produce everything close by in the correct ratios.

Regards
Ferlonas

You can just use direct insertion and be fine with it, don't need bots.

I feel that all you are doing is forcing a play style by requiring so much of a single item. The whole game has many styles, except for this item. I feel to make any significant amount I would need multiple belts.

As a rule, I don't do direct insertion. I prefere main bus/rail world. And I try to limit bots to keep them to upgrades and cleanup. Logistic bots are useful to back feed during upgrades and with the crafting combinator mod.

It's just one build for one science pack, and you don't absolutely have to do it. It's not changing your whole play style. And you already had the same-ish thing in High-tech science pack in 0.16.

It's one of the first mods I installed, to tone down that requirement. In my opinion, it way out of line with the rest of the game. Almost no other item need so many of a raw material, except rockets and nuclear power plants. I can't think of anything else that needs so much of a single raw requirement.

[gmyx]

As a rule, I don't do direct insertion. I prefere main bus/rail world. And I try to limit bots to keep them to upgrades and cleanup. Logistic bots are useful to back feed during upgrades and with the crafting combinator mod.

Then you are choosing to limit your choices, which is off course your right. But regardless, with that craft time, it is only about 1 rail per second per assemblers. So one red or blue belt of rails can still feed a lot of assemblers.

It's a game about choices. That is a great thing about Factorio, there is no single choice. In the end, there likely will be a mod like ScienceCostTweaker that will reduce that need. If not, well it's not a hard mod to for me to build. The devs can choose what they want, to me it feel like it's forcing a method rather than providing viable options.

[Zavian]

It's a game about choices. That is a great thing about Factorio, there is no single choice. In the end, there likely will be a mod like ScienceCostTweaker that will reduce that need. If not, well it's not a hard mod to for me to build. The devs can choose what they want, to me it feel like it's forcing a method rather than providing viable options.

To me it feels like it is providing more variety to recipes, which is always good. Mining drills in 0.16 use lots of iron, especially if you make the gears on site (I often use direct insertion of gears there) and processing use units use lots of green circuits. (Another candidate for direct insertion. One green circuit assembler can feed one processing unit assembler). Low density in 0.16 and electric furnaces also need lots of resources per assembler, so this is hardly a unique situation.

[neuromaster]

I'm pleased that coal and stone will be more relevant for end-game production.

I'd like to suggest that uranium also be made relevant. As it stands, it's a cool resource that frequently serves little purpose - especially if you're megabasing with solar + biters off.

You've mentioned how some changes are intended to "encourage" the player to try certain things.
Perhaps adding a uranium fuel cell as a prerequisite for High-Tech/Utility or Space Science would encourage players to explore the wonderful world of uranium mining, Kovarex enrichment, and maybe even nuclear power?

[pleegwat]

Additionally science packs take a long time to craft so you don't need 30/s for a long time.

That's not the point.

Creating 4 production science per second requires 1.3/s electric furnace, 1.3/s productivity modules, and a full blue belt, 40/s, of rails.

Variety is generally interesting I believe. For example the Chemical science pack also has x3 x2 x1 so yes it won't be 1-1-1 belts for input, if you're consuming the whole belt. 4 science per second is 240 per minute, that's still quite a lot.

Actually, whether you use direct insertion doesn't really matter volume-wise. Direct-inserting the rails means that for that one belt of rails you'll instead feed a half belt each of steel, stone, and iron rods into the build. Or a half belt each of steel and stone and a quarter belt of iron plates. And indeed, that's not necessarily a problem - these are pretty large production numbers anyway.

[burisk]

I like it! As a new names, then even new recipes. Btw. little-offtopic I think that this is something that must be in 0.17 or at least in final release: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21276&p=391303#p391303

[MAup]

I really like how this is turning out, awesome.

Now on top of this, i think satelites should make radars semi obsolete after a few of them in space.
What i think, the satelites should not reveal new black area, but ocationally remove the fog of war of the whole map.
The more satelites in orbit, the longer the fog is gone, untill eventually it will be completely gone.
I believe this will be a really good reward for keep sending rockets out there with satelites.

[Serenity]

Oh those are some nice changes

I generally agree that I never felt that production vs high-tech vs a choice in practice. It does feel less like a progression, but production as of now it still easier to do

I can see trying to get people to automate items so they can use them, but with science I only ever did that with low volume stuff like gun turrets, grenades or electric engines. With walls or rails I will still set up dedicated production close to where my building train is parked (in a mall/make everything factory)

Green Science
Logistics Science makes sense, and fits with some of the other tech names, but may also be confused with the logistics network which is much more advanced.

Military Science

Definitely agreed on gun turrets being a far too large resource drain so early on. Replacing these with walls is a great idea. It gets you to invest more into a proper stone smelter, which could be easily neglected at this stage.

Blue Science
Great choice with the solid fuel! Solid fuel is a bit of an afterthought in the mid game right now. You may make some for trains, but they don't need a lot at all. Otherwise you can ignore it. Now it gets you to work more with your oil industry. I also like there being a resource sink for oil in general. With the oil well rework the oil wells last extremely long now. As far as I'm concerned the increase in oil consumption could be higher than 10%

It will be interesting to see how how solid fuel consumption is balanced against plastic. SF is best made from light oil. But if you don't consume enough petroleum your production will back up.

For the old recipe, I agree that the mining drill was boring, but it's much better than the pump jack was where you didn't have a use of it if you tore up a belt. And getting the masses of ingredients to the assemblers was a bit of a puzzle

Purple Science

As noted above, I will still produce rails separately elsewhere. Especially when using direct insertion, you need to.

I like that this gives another resource sink for stone, which you don't need a lot of right now

Yellow Science

Copper cables may have been boring, but I really did like the puzzle the throughput posed. Like using direct insertion from 2 to 1 and using faster assemblers or a speed module to keep up.
However using low density structures is great here. I really love the greater use of low densities in recipes. Now this is a neglected item until the end game and can be ignored for too long. This forces you to handle it earlier.


Military rebalance
I like the simplified science. That was indeed spread around too much

Nerfing the tank machine gun! Noooo! But it really was too good compared to the main gun. Just driving over spawners and using the machine gun + flame thrower is all you need right now

Will be interesting to see if the personal laser defense is really usable with solar panels. That would be nice