Friday Facts #256 - The little things 3

[BlueTemplar]

Belt Immunity Equipment :

Is that an icon from Diablo 2 made by Blizzard?

check the URL

[Kalamel]

All good!

Only thing I don't like on this FFF is the name, 'Belt immunity'. Can we make better name for it? Like 'Smart boots', 'Hover shoes', etc,? Well I don't really serious about it anyway.

Hover Belt

LOL

Not that I didn't think about that, but it will be complicated to explain why we can't use that to move on water.
But I really not expect that design, hahahaha. Nice job.

[vyktor]

Why not adding couple of other 1x1 enhancements items?

• Enhanced walk control - allow you to temporary disable exoskeletos (precision work, say while holding shift)
• Enhanced bot control - temporary disable personal roboports (for a train ride) and/or logistic bots (put manually items to outpost network without them being instantly delivered back)
• Xterm train - when player is on rail track signal surrounding signals as red

[mrvn]

Why not adding couple of other 1x1 enhancements items?

• Enhanced walk control - allow you to temporary disable exoskeletos (precision work, say while holding shift)
• Enhanced bot control - temporary disable personal roboports (for a train ride) and/or logistic bots (put manually items to outpost network without them being instantly delivered back)
• Xterm train - when player is on rail track signal surrounding signals as red

yes, yes and yes.

The last could also stop the player if the rail segment the player is about to enter can not be reserved for the player.

[adam_bise]

Can't say I agree with the belt immunity thing. Belts move, if you stand on them you will move.. I don't know how an armor module is supposed to change that.

I would have just left it as is. If it's that big of an issue, do something like grated belt covers or a hovercraft.

Also, what manner of black magic would change the trajectory of falling objects to the outside of a belt? If you don't want to clean up a mess on your belts then don't drop your items on them

Both of these could be solved with grated belt covers. But then it wouldn't look pretty, which is why I would have left both issues as is.

[BlueTemplar]

All good!

Only thing I don't like on this FFF is the name, 'Belt immunity'. Can we make better name for it? Like 'Smart boots', 'Hover shoes', etc,? Well I don't really serious about it anyway.

Hover Belt

LOL

Not that I didn't think about that, but it will be complicated to explain why we can't use that to move on water.
But I really not expect that design, hahahaha. Nice job.

Thanks ! It even has 2 lane(yard)s, as you can see...

[Engimage]

I'm not clear on enrichment, this is only reporting, correct? It's not going to start caching the good stuff internally as a "catalyst," so we still have to do the weird tricks to reinsert the catalyst and output that single nice chunk of uranium?

Yes, It will still output all the ingredients and catalysts when the crafting finishes

If you do separate input into catalysts and materials, why even output catalysts? I do understand that there should be an additional puzzle but it really makes no sense.

[exi2163]

I'm not clear on enrichment, this is only reporting, correct? It's not going to start caching the good stuff internally as a "catalyst," so we still have to do the weird tricks to reinsert the catalyst and output that single nice chunk of uranium?

Yes, It will still output all the ingredients and catalysts when the crafting finishes

If you do separate input into catalysts and materials, why even output catalysts? I do understand that there should be an additional puzzle but it really makes no sense.

It does make sense if you think about impurity enrichment. For example a nuclear power plant uses water from a river to condense the steam back down. In most power plants this is achieved by evaporation cooling. The water is a "catalyst" in this scenario and you should not have to extract any of that water back out of the plant right? Wrong. All current designs take water from the river in and also put water back into the stream (*). It is used to dilute the water in the cooling tower. Without that dilution all the impurities that are solved in the water would increase in concentration and lead to catastrophic failures when the dissolved substances would crystallize out of solution. For water that is mainly calcium, magnesium and some salts.

So to prevent breakdowns of the assemblers in Factorio security protocol requires complete emptying of the structure prior to processing of a new batch

(*) This is one of the main reasons power plants have to reduce their power level if the river water is too hot or has a low water level - they are not allowed to put the hot (like 30-40°C) water from the evaporation unit back into the stream if that would result in a temperature increase above the allowed threshold.

[Zyrconia]

Great little changes!

But I got a few more suggestions:

1. Bots. It can be very annoying when building an outpost an you get attacked halfway across the map and you run there with 20 robolegs, clear up the biters and you need to rebuild with bots. Some of the bots are left behind, but you still have a good stack in your inventory. Yet nothing happens. The bots don't leave your inventory. The game feels downright broken at this point because you do not understand why the 50 bots in your inventory do not fix the damage in 2 seconds. What actually happens is that some of the returning bots are scheduled to do your task. And they won't do it until they return. But they are out of power and take 5 minutes to reach you. It would be great if when a personal roboport bot runs out of power power, his orders are cleared and set to a return task. Then new bots can be assigned for those tasks that are around you. This happens about once every 1-2 hours.

2. One rarely used feature is the ability to disconnect wires from electricity poles. I have personally never used it, but I have seen bases with 1 or 2 builds that use this feature. Yet the shortcut for this is apparently shift and clicking? I'm not sure, but I end up disconnecting poles about twice an hour when I shift drag. We need a different default shortcut for this.

3. Blueprints with turrets. You can't see the turret range when the bleuprint is in hand and you are about to set it down. Green on green.

Thanks!

[H8UL]

All good!

Only thing I don't like on this FFF is the name, 'Belt immunity'. Can we make better name for it? Like 'Smart boots', 'Hover shoes', etc,? Well I don't really serious about it anyway.

I also don't like the name. "Belt immunity" sounds gamey and immersion breaking. I also had no idea what it meant, when I saw it, until the concept was explained.

Something like "Belt Compensator" or if not too long "Belt Motion Compensator" would sound more appropriate to Factorio and hint at it's purpose better.

[Szpak]

Awesome news, as always!

I agree with all comments about belt immunity. It MUST be put into exoskeleton (MK 2 maybe?).. otherwise it is no go at least for me (massive OCD here .

Now about bots queue, why not go further? Maybe all structures could have different priorities? Like 1-5 when 1 always land on top of queue and so on. So 1 would be power grid items, 2 defensive structures, and 5 would be reserved for any tiles. And one more thing.. if giving your bots any task creates a queue for them, why not make this queue visible for the player? it is in the memory somewhere so it wouldn't be hard to code it as a list that could be printed. And then maybe, we could also alternate this list by dragging items or sorting it using specified order...

[TheRaph]

1. Bots. It can be very annoying when building an outpost an you get attacked halfway across the map and you run there with 20 robolegs, clear up the biters and you need to rebuild with bots. Some of the bots are left behind, but you still have a good stack in your inventory. Yet nothing happens. The bots don't leave your inventory. The game feels downright broken at this point because you do not understand why the 50 bots in your inventory do not fix the damage in 2 seconds. What actually happens is that some of the returning bots are scheduled to do your task. And they won't do it until they return. But they are out of power and take 5 minutes to reach you. It would be great if when a personal roboport bot runs out of power power, his orders are cleared and set to a return task. Then new bots can be assigned for those tasks that are around you. This happens about once every 1-2 hours.

+1 for clearing the order for bots without power. (And also not to assign orders to powerless bots.)

This is a point which hurts me too.

[Roxor128]

One little thing that's been bugging me for a few versions: The portable fusion reactor seems out of place with no predecessors. It was fine back when we needed alien artefacts to make it, as it could be justified as alien technology. Since they were removed (and good riddance!), it doesn't really fit into the tech tree.

Add a couple of predecessors to the tech tree.

Something similar to the nuclear reactor but runs on deuterium extracted from water (has already been done in mods) as a first entry for fusion would be enough.

I would prefer a self-contained unit which can run on barrels of deuterium and power a small outpost as an intermediate stage before the portable reactor as well (to give a feeling of The Engineer getting better with the technology), but just the fusion reactor above would do for not making it seem out-of-nowhere.

One other little thing: Space science packs appearing in the rocket silo is just weird. Add a landing pad for stuff you get back from space at the very least! That could be accompanied by an animation of a little parachuting pod which uses rockets for the last 20 metres.

[Wackerstamfer]

How about make the make the belt immunity part of the exosceleton. When you've reached that tech the belt speed bonus is not that relevant anymore.

And maybe while you're at it, instead of stacking multiple exosceletons it might be more logical to update the exosceleton to a better version for more speed.

[BlueTemplar]

How about make the make the belt immunity part of the exosceleton. When you've reached that tech the belt speed bonus is not that relevant anymore.

Really?
Red (or maybe even blue) belt vs (partially!) solar-powered exoskeleton?

[Omnifarious]

One little thing that's been bugging me for a few versions: The portable fusion reactor seems out of place with no predecessors. It was fine back when we needed alien artefacts to make it, as it could be justified as alien technology. Since they were removed (and good riddance!), it doesn't really fit into the tech tree.

Personally, I'm fond of the RTG mod for this. It requires that you research atomic energy before you get it, and it requires uranium to build.

[Wackerstamfer]

How about make the make the belt immunity part of the exosceleton. When you've reached that tech the belt speed bonus is not that relevant anymore.

Really?
Red (or maybe even blue) belt vs (partially!) solar-powered exoskeleton?

best armor + fusion reactors + some exosceletons == fast

could make it a best armor thing...

[Roxor128]

One little thing that's been bugging me for a few versions: The portable fusion reactor seems out of place with no predecessors. It was fine back when we needed alien artefacts to make it, as it could be justified as alien technology. Since they were removed (and good riddance!), it doesn't really fit into the tech tree.

Personally, I'm fond of the RTG mod for this. It requires that you research atomic energy before you get it, and it requires uranium to build.

Seems like a reasonable alternative. There's a mod called "Fission and Fusion" which also does RTGs, though via making uranium reprocessing produce Radioisotopes as an occasional by-product and using that in the construction of RTGs.

[Kirbykirby56]

I'm excited for belt spaghetti immunity!

[Bizz Keryear]

I know I am late to the party but I HAVE to comment on this.
This

Belt Immunity Equipment
In the later game there is often an annoyance when trying to work around your overgrown belt jungle. It especially just leads to misclicks and a lot of hassle for something that doesn't really add much value to the gameplay at that stage. So the simple solution, in 0.17, there is a piece of armor equipment you can equip, that will make your character immune to belts.

is great. Though I rather would like if it is not using up precious space in your armor and would be available sooner (as soon as you place down belts) and could be disabled on a button press.
One more thing: I am also annoyed by being pushed around by foliage. You know you are running over the map placing down belts (/power lines /whatever) and run into a tree / existing building / stone / whatever and get nudged over ever so slightly but it still messes up your placement.
Would be great if that also could be fixed.
My idea was to make the position of the player a bit more flexible (never suggested it since I figured it won't work out with belts). Instead of being exactly fixed in center of the screen while you are moving and holding the placing button down whenever you a nudged around your character moves, but the screen doesn't. (I am speaking only of the involuntary movement, tho) moving your character ever so slightly of center on the screen, only to return (to the center of the screen) as soon as you let go of the placing button.