Friday Facts #279 - Train GUI & Modern Spitter

[Bauer]

With the rework of the train UI, there is a major addition I'd love to see: "skip conditions". The exact same setup as the wait conditions, but determines whether the station should be visited or the train should skip it and go to the next station in the schedule instead.

As a simple theoretical example, let's pretend we also have the train's remaining fuel exposed as a condition option and make a train with the following schedule:

1) Outpost: Wait until full
2) Base: Wait until empty
3) Refuel: Skip if FUEL > 10. Wait until FUEL>90

The train would load up at the outpost, drop off at the base, and then if it is low on fuel will go to the refueling station, otherwise if it has enough fuel it will completely skip going to the refuel station and only go between the outpost and the base.

Bam. Fairly small change (most of the work already done for wait conditions) that suddenly enables a lot of smart behavior, including the oft wanted smart refueling.

+1

If the skipping decision is made when (last tick before) leaving the station, we could setup a smart rail-network.
Ore outposts could "report" their demand via the circuit network and a smart train schedule could direct the trains to individual ore stations.

[<NO_NAME>]

With the rework of the train UI, there is a major addition I'd love to see: "skip conditions". The exact same setup as the wait conditions, but determines whether the station should be visited or the train should skip it and go to the next station in the schedule instead.

As a simple theoretical example, let's pretend we also have the train's remaining fuel exposed as a condition option and make a train with the following schedule:

1) Outpost: Wait until full
2) Base: Wait until empty
3) Refuel: Skip if FUEL > 10. Wait until FUEL>90

The train would load up at the outpost, drop off at the base, and then if it is low on fuel will go to the refueling station, otherwise if it has enough fuel it will completely skip going to the refuel station and only go between the outpost and the base.

Bam. Fairly small change (most of the work already done for wait conditions) that suddenly enables a lot of smart behavior, including the oft wanted smart refueling.

+1

If the skipping decision is made when (last tick before) leaving the station, we could setup a smart rail-network.
Ore outposts could "report" their demand via the circuit network and a smart train schedule could direct the trains to individual ore stations.

+1

Someone will probably point out that in a smart rail-network we can disable stations to make trains skip them. However, this works only in a case when a station handles only one type of train. When it comes to smart approaches to a train network this is often not the case.
I could even show very simple train networks which have more than one type of train per station. For example, uranium mine outpost which can have a single station for receiving sulfuric acid and sending uranium ore.

[Mike5000]

Someone will probably point out that in a smart rail-network we can disable stations to make trains skip them.

Disabling and enabling stations leads to thundering herds. It would be really helpful if Vanilla allowed limiting of thundering herds and/or the Mod API exposed a basic rail pathfinding pre hook to control thundering herds without having to rewrite train scheduling from scratch in a magnum opus like LTN.

[psychomuffin]

First, another AWESOME post! Love you guys Wube!
But my two cents, if you're still reading this thread (and maybe these were said already):
1) The green bar filling for the full cargo inventory is great, but I think the emptying condition should go from a full green bar down to an empty car. I think that would make more sense.
2) Nice spitter, but the bitter looks odd now. Its head look like a skull with empty eye sockets. You once said something about them looking kinda cute once, and that's important to you. I think you need to bring back those bulging colored bug eyes back.

But at this point I'm just nitpicking a game which is already so awesome, and which you guys are always making more awesome. =-)

[SuicideJunkie]

Huh.
The green bar being the entire bar was unexpected.
The grip area on the right side looks like an empty progress bar, and those dark bars lighting up would be a little more relaxed.

Nifty stuff all around tho. Looking forward to it!

[guy smiley]

Had a long spiel about train 'skipping stations' conditions. and trains fuel being a condition parameter we can use. forums logged me out before i could submit it, EVEN THOUGH I LOGGED IN JUST NOW SPECIFICALLY TO WRITE IT, so now my awesome reply is lost. thanks

I'm not bitter, clearly. I spent 5 minutes writing, then had it arbitrarily lost to the ether cos these forums are logout-happy. How is me typing in a reply here, counted as me being inactive? Long enough to log me out for? dammit. some warning that im about to be logged out, or am now logged out, would be nice, Before you erase my post and shunt me to the login screen when i click submit not after

[Zavian]

Had a long spiel about train 'skipping stations' conditions. and trains fuel being a condition parameter we can use. forums logged me out before i could submit it, EVEN THOUGH I LOGGED IN JUST NOW SPECIFICALLY TO WRITE IT, so now my awesome reply is lost. thanks

I'm not bitter, clearly. I spent 5 minutes writing, then had it arbitrarily lost to the ether cos these forums are logout-happy. How is me typing in a reply here, counted as me being inactive? Long enough to log me out for? dammit. some warning that im about to be logged out, or am now logged out, would be nice, Before you erase my post and shunt me to the login screen when i click submit not after

Generally, I only need to login once a month or so. (I am the only user of this computer, so I do check the keep me "logged in option", which might make a difference). I'm wondering if your browser (or maybe a browser plugin, or even a firewall that actively filters web pages) is deleting the cookie(s) that the forum software probably uses to track logged in users.

If something goes wrong when you hit submit you might be able to recover your post. First open a new tab, and login again. Then on the tab that failed to post hit the back button. With luck that will bring you back to where you were when you hit submit (hopefully with your post intact).

[RobertTerwilliger]

The problem with predictive aiming is target just has to zigzag a bit: say, moving right, you constantly press up-down-up-down-... and every single projectile will land lower or higher than your actual trajectory.

Spitters / worms (or just worms, to make them more dangerous) could save the player movement of the last second and calculate an estimated place on acid arrival from this. Maybe they could for 50% of shots use this place and for the other the "normal" predictive targeting is used. This would make the attack more random and harder to dodge.
The question is: how needed is that? The spawner constantly spawn new spitters and biters, other worms shoot at you, you have to be careful not to get stuck... only playtesting can show us how hard it is now to dodge these shots.
Another thing is: do we even want to make it harder to dodge? Fighting in Factorio is more or less some side activity. Maybe it should be fully dodgeable with some skill.

I feel it shouldn't be dodgeable, because it is indeed side activity. Combat should be balanced to make it reasonably hard, but not turning the game into 2d action/shooter. That's another kind of games, which not all Factorio players may like.

[Mash]

On heavy/dense alien deathworld, lag kills seem to be increasing when player is slightly pinned by spit and lag occur.
What used to be close call by lag(get luck at incidental non-lag moments to escape the heat as would be possible without any lag), is just a solid kill by lag pin down atm.