Friday Facts #304 - Small bugs; Big changes

[Ghorda]

I'm not a fan of the changes to basic oil, it's too simple, instead it should just be heavy oil and petroleum, the main thing that backs up is the light oil, turning heavy oil into solid fuel/lube on the other hand will stop it from backing up too soon and will still teach a lesson in dealing with byproducts.

[bhaktivedanta]

I am not too sure about the oil changes: Having to balance the output and buffer with storage tanks gave a nice incentive for automation (switching oil conversion on/off switching advanced vs basic processing plants on/off). Maybe there is still enough incetive to do this now, however, we will see.

[Adamo]

my vote is to leave basic oil as it is.

I think you make good points. What we have now isn't perfect, but it has what feels like the right amount of complexity, and changing it needs to be done very carefully, if at all. I like the idea of trying to fix the problem by introducing a flare stack or vent stack rather than changing the recipe.

[FuryoftheStars]

To all the folks that are arguing how "just add more pumpjacks!" will make using more efficient recipes pointless, maybe it's time to consider turning biters back on? You're perspective is _way_ out of whack. Just "adding more pumpjacks" is a big deal in most game modes.

I do play with biters. And marathon deathworld is an extreme setting.

[Orum]

I like the idea of trying to fix the problem by introducing a flare stack or vent stack rather than changing the recipe.

No, please no more pollution early game. Since the assembler pollution changes in 0.17.0, things are already hard enough for the player early on, and if basic oil pollutes more earlier, I shudder to think of the consequences.

The irony of Factorio is that things pollute less and less (at least per-building) as you get up in tech, yet at the same time you're better equipped to fight more and more enemies. This leads to deliberately clamping your factory's performance early on just to avoid getting swarmed when you're ill prepared to fight. Then when you're buff enough to run roughshod around the entire infinite map, pollution becomes irrelevant, as most enemies can't even get close to your base.

Personally I think oil should just be kept the way it was, or at least give us heavy oil in addition to petroleum gas.

[Pestery]

The changes to the rail planner and laser turret light show both look really good. Also, blocking the water input for the refinery should be very useful.

Not so fond of the changes to the basic oil refining and the flame thrower ammo. I understand the reasoning, but thematically the old way made more sense IMHO. Maybe a third oil recipe could be added, for a total of basic-only-gas-out, basic-all-out, advanced-all-out. Other people have made better arguments and suggestions.

Personally I like PacifyerGrey's suggestion of adding a "Flare Stack" structure, which could burn off excess light and heavy oil. Allowing it to burn petroleum gas as well would also be nice in certain rare situations. Adding an extra structure would be more work for the artist team, but the end result should look pretty cool (for example). It should also make sense for new players who ask "What do I do with all the light and heavy oil that I don't need? Burn it!" They'd eventually figure out there are better things to do with the excess, but it would be there for a quick fix. Veteran players may also use them in some situations, particularly if there were other effects such as repelling the biters or what not.

Just a side note. Rails are rotated by pressing R or Shift+R. When placing ghost rails you hold Shift. However this means that when placing ghost rails you can only rotate in one direction, because your already holding Shift. Just something I noticed.

[Monochrome]

As others have already said, Basic Oil as it currently is is bad because two lessons are suddenly thrust upon players - multiple fluid outputs AND production-halting if one output is full. Those lessons still need to be taught. The proposed change postpones BOTH lessons, which isn't ideal (as others have also pointed out). So why not split the two lessons up? Change it to the following :

Basic Oil :
* (recipe) Heavy Oil -> Solid Fuel (and deliberately not the other Solid Fuel recipes)
* (recipe) Crude in -> Heavy Oil and petroleum out
** These outputs should be in the exact proportion needed for Blue science (Heavy Oil -> Solid Fuel and petro -> plastic)
** This therefore teaches the "multiple outputs" lesson, but the refinery shouldn't block itself
** This recipe should be made substantially less efficient than the advanced one, probably in both quantity and processing time

Advanced Oil :
* (recipe) The current advanced oil recipe
* (recipe) Light Oil -> Solid Fuel
** This recipe is already much more efficient than Heavy Oil -> Solid Fuel, which is incentive enough

Keep Cracking research separate. I'm not sure whether it should be before or after Advanced Oil.
I'm also not sure about what to do with Petroleum -> Solid Fuel. Maybe get rid of it entirely?

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Some sort of flare stack should be added anyway.

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Sulphur :

I really like the "sulphur byproduct from crude-oil refining" idea - much more realistic! Maybe this could be an additional recipe unlocked by Advanced Oil (made more efficient than the current sulphur recipe). Regardless, I'd really like the current sulphur recipe to change to something that makes more intuitive sense.

[Light]

Does vanilla really need more dumbing down than it already has? Was there suddenly an influx of people complaining about this? Because it's odd how it didn't seem to be a problem years or even months ago.

At this point I'm glad the modding community provides content that gives this game some depth, since vanilla keeps losing what initially brought me to it in the first place. I'm trying to recall when the last time something meaningful was added and not removed since it certainly feels like it was a while ago. (Nuclear perhaps?)

As many others have already said, tutorials are preferable to overly-simplifying everything. Circuits are a nightmare to master, but I certainly wouldn't want those affected because they're harder than most other things. Tutorials exist to provide knowledge and understanding of them, so there's no need to gimp them on the basis of being too difficult to figure out right away.

I'd probably complain if mods weren't keeping the game afloat, but I just had to ask why now of all times this was seen as necessary outside of "difficulty" which is poor reasoning given how pipes can't even mix fluids anymore to cause the frustrations oil used to have. It's pretty idiot proof at this point.

[steinio]

Controverse:

Oil changes are easier to make as a proper oil tutorial so the devs decide this way...

[morsk]

There is no way to get blue science quickly. Either we can have construction bots before it, or we can't. I fear Wube isn't getting enough feedback on this, because it's happening in the same FFF as far more controversial changes to Basic Oil.

Of course they don't get feedback about it anymore. Only a fraction of the players know about construction bots because most seem to quit before getting their refinery right. Most players also do not give feedback at all.
The players that do know how to get their refineries right and care enough to give feedback, also are really into handplacing things, speedrun to bots, or just use the Nanobots mod.

Imaginary reasons like these are no substitute for what real people would have said as feedback, if the construction bot nerf weren't overshadowed by other changes in the same FFF.

And getting to bots before blue science does not enhance the game on the first playthrough - so it will probably never happen in vanilla...

Never? It's been vanilla for 6 years, since 0.8.0.

Xzc2ToU.png (54.69 KiB) Viewed 5597 times

[irbork]

I'm not sure if it was communicated correctly.
Advanced oil processing is going to be used not only because the need of lubricant in later stages (not so much later if you want robots), but mainly because of it being vastly more efficient. Without productivity modules it is 100% more efficient, with productivity modules, it is even more. This will be a motivation especially when oil shortage tends to be quite pressing problem in the mid game.
Having the option of having simplistic but very unefficient solution compared to something more complex and efficient sounds like very factorio-like gameplay mechanics.

Based on it, the only real change for veteran players this will make is the phase between basic processing and advanced processing, which is usually quite short.

The problem is not that advanced oil processing will be not useful. The real problem will be that basic oil processing will be useful for about 10 min and then it will have no further uses unlike current basic oil processing.

[bNarFProfCrazy]

TLDR: I dont like the oil change. Cracking without blue. Highlight the slots if they are full/blocking production.

In the current game I mainly use basic oil processing to get heavy oil for my insane lube consumption (for belts).
Most of the light oil is turned into solid fuel and then rocket fuel to power my trains or research.
Petroleum gas is turnrd into plastic.

Any excess is cracked, but only if it is above a certain threshold.

Trivializing the oil recipe is really a fun killer. Do you remember the fun you had in completing wow dungeon raids? Then they simplified it, now everyone can get their top gear easily but both the fun and the achievement value is gone.

For the comments it looks like its complex for many so it should be improved.

Currently the main issue is that if dont immideately research cracking after turning on your refineries you will get stuck. And since you need plastic to research that you are really stuck.

The suggestion to produce only petrolium gas is not a solution for me as it only delays the problem.
Also it has thr side effect that you might not save enough space for the additional pipes.

The simplest solution would be removing blue since from cracking. That way you will notice oh my refineries are stuck I need to research cracking. Maybe add a hint like "can be cracked to x" to the fluid description.

Flaring the excess is also a solution, but it feels like a cheat to me.

IMO another big part of the problem comes from detecting why the refineries are stuck.
If you have 81.6 / 100 liquid in the output you dont immideately see oh it is full. Maybe add a color to the inputs and output slots that indicate the factory is not working due to this slot.

[MiniHerc]

We got the awesome (and optional) Rail-Building tutorials--why not make an equally awesome (and equally optional) Refineries Tutorial instead?

Changing the inputs/outputs like this feels really heavy-handed and short-sighted. I do not support these proposed changes!

Agreed.

Does vanilla really need more dumbing down than it already has? Was there suddenly an influx of people complaining about this? Because it's odd how it didn't seem to be a problem years or even months ago.

At this point I'm glad the modding community provides content that gives this game some depth, since vanilla keeps losing what initially brought me to it in the first place. I'm trying to recall when the last time something meaningful was added and not removed since it certainly feels like it was a while ago. (Nuclear perhaps?)

As many others have already said, tutorials are preferable to overly-simplifying everything. Circuits are a nightmare to master, but I certainly wouldn't want those affected because they're harder than most other things. Tutorials exist to provide knowledge and understanding of them, so there's no need to gimp them on the basis of being too difficult to figure out right away.

I'd probably complain if mods weren't keeping the game afloat, but I just had to ask why now of all times this was seen as necessary outside of "difficulty" which is poor reasoning given how pipes can't even mix fluids anymore to cause the frustrations oil used to have. It's pretty idiot proof at this point.

Yeah, I'm thinking they decided to have another what-if artificial stupidity change to see the reactions rather than an actual change. Dumbing down oil like this goes against what they've seemed to be working towards for Factorio.

[agmike]

Why do you keep repeating the same "dumbing down oil" thing, when players still need to setup proper advanced oil build to get the heavy fraction?

[CremionisD]

I usually have no complaints on any changes in the game, but this oil recipe change and the other changes that it causes don't feel right to me. A lot of people here have already suggested alternate ideas on how to reduce the oil difficulty spike, so I guess my message is mostly: "+1 please reconsider this change!"

[Oktokolo]

And getting to bots before blue science does not enhance the game on the first playthrough - so it will probably never happen in vanilla...

Never? It's been vanilla for 6 years, since 0.8.0.Xzc2ToU.png

I literally lost that bots are indeed pre-blue-sience somehow. Don't really know why i switched to Nanobots some years ago...

[BlueTemplar]

Because of what the FFF says : requirements for bots are pretty close to requirements for blue science...
EDIT : Also, while Roboports are in Green science, Personal Roboports are in Blue.

[BlueTemplar]

I've almost never used flamethrower ammo because it's a pain to produce and lasers are so much better. Maybe the early nerf of lasers will make it more worth it. I also think moving lasers behind blue science is a good idea.

Flame Turrets do *not* consume flamethrower ammo (but liquid hydrocarbons directly), and are arguably better than laser turrets.

Pushing the laser turrets so far can lead to the fact that on most standard maps it will be impossible to skip the stage with the massive building up of bullet turrets, which will lead to much worse results in the arms race, which will lead to significant time costs for building even simple bases.

I'd rather say that it will require that the players use Flame Turrets instead of just skipping them ?

At first glance, this does not help much. Fire turrets cannot even be used as a temporary substitute for laser over long distances due to the use of fuel (and because of the forest fires), so they will be used to protect the base. So, during the transition to the chemical research packages, the bitters will have time to build quite a lot of bases on nearest resources, which will have to be cleaned into the cost of evolution factor. Which leads to the complication of the arms race. (Compared to the current state of the technology tree). However, I repeat, it's just my fears. Perhaps after the update I will find a solution during the game. I hope it will be enough to optimize the construction of the base for the rapid production of chemical packages.

You'd be surprised what you can achieve with some crude barrels in a car !
Yeah, forest fires can be a pain, but can also be often dealt with by using deforestation control lines.
Also, you seem to assume that building a huge wall protected by turrets is necessarily the best way to go, evolution-wise... (this is going to depend a lot on the game settings of course.)

[BlueTemplar]

my recommendation would be (After typing: This is actually very similar to Adamo's proposal above; i approached it only from gameplay perspective without chemistry knowledge):
add natural gas a a resource, collected by pump jacks
add a chemical-plant (or refinery?) recipe: natural gas -> petroleum gas
delete recipe petroleum gas -> solid fuel
(optional: think if cracking light to gas is needed now)
(optional: think if refining raw oil still needs to produce gas at all)
(leave everything else as is)

With this, the player can get familiar with fluids when building up for plastic and batteries with gas, without getting stuck
once the player feels ready to tackle lubricant or solid fuel for the chemical science, or wants a flamethrower, they can approach oil
at first they can convert both light and heavy to solid fuel. later they can crack excess heavy to light.
in general this keeps a need to learn the basics of the circuit network, but it reduces the puzzle complexity
- crack heavy to light in case that light is empty and heavy is full
- treat gas from raw oil purely as an output and setup a priority over the natural gas processing
(Before there was a need to balance 3/4 things, now there are only 2 things to balance against each other)

the suggestion of having natural gas wells that would allow direct natural to petrol is an interesting theory.

I believe that Adamo never actually suggested adding natural gas as a resource :

I propose eliminating the need to use the refinery at all to create petroleum by instead harvesting "crude petroleum" (note the lack of "gas") straight from the ground in pumpjacks. This crude petroleum would be suitable to produce sulfur and fuel, directly in the chemical plant, without a need for intermediate fractional distillation. Note that crude petroleum has a yellow-black-with-some-purple color, not far from the current color for petroleum gas.

Petroleum is just another name for Crude Oil...

[SpiffyTriffid]

In campaign, there are all sorts of changes being done to bring something to the attention of the player, to help explain why an action must be taken, as opposed to removing the confusing puzzle. Why not take the same path here, and guide the player through the maze with hints and "look-over-here"'s instead of bulldozing a straight line to the center?
The oil "difficulty spike" may be something players complain about a lot, but there has to be a better way to fix this. The root issue is that new players don't understand that the refineries are backed up, or that they don't understand how to ratio out the oil cracking. A fix could be displaying a flashy "spray" coming from the seam in the pipes between outputs and the first pipe (bonus: logic could be reused for all other fluid outputs and would make a super handy visual indication of what's causing the issue), to indicate that the reason it's not operating is that the other products need to be removed. Making an attention-getting indicator like fluid spewing out of the pipe would help draw a player's attention to the two pipes. We can already deduce from real-world experience that "if a pipe is spraying out, it has a lot of pressure inside, which lets us draw a conclusion about the state of the game world: this pipe has lots of fluid! This then prompts the player to ask "why is it spraying from this (set of) pipe and not anything else" which will prompt them to discover one of the outputs is backed up. Perhaps a flashing indicator on the GUI for the refinery and other fluid-producing machines would help as well, saying "OUTPUT TOO FULL - CANNOT CONTINUE PRODUCTION" or similar to guide the player to the idea that all outputs need to have a place to go.
The challenge of mapping multiple fluids from multiple copies of a machine to a single set of destinations was such a perfect puzzle because it meshed so well with the next challenge: moving water along with the oil input. The output had already allowed players a chance to experiment with the concept of handling multiple types of fluid, and provided just enough development for a "eureka" moment later when the player realizes they can simply use the hard thinking they've already done to understand how to feed the refineries: just run it in reverse. This felt like a very, very slickly designed "aha" moment, and it was a rush to experience it for the first time. It's very hard to find a better example of a well-designed "eureka" moment in factorio that makes you feel like you're a genius for having already solved the problem before in a slightly different way, and realizing the solution just needs to be reapplied from a slightly different angle, and the removal of this moment reduces the game experience, full stop.
I really wish the devs would stop removing complex behavior for what feels like the sake of making changes.