Teleporting (Ringworld-Teleporters)

[ssilk]

Well, in my opinion something like a teleport (a character transport, not item transport!) is really needed in the end-phase of the game -- especially if you play with mods like RSO etc. which increase the distances or play with outposts. The reason is, that the travel-time in your base or between the outposts gets rather annoying with the time.

This article describes, how such a type of teleport should work in my opinion.

First of all the things I want to have:
- It should work a bit like the roboports. That is: It needs energy and has to be charged. If power fails the rest-energy should enable you to transport to the problem.
- It should be stupid simple. It should just work without configuration. Place a portal, place another portal and it is ready to travel between the two portals. See more below.
- It should take some resources to produce. Comparable with a roboport or more.
- Can be crafted. Like the roboport.
- Technology is early available (after logistics?) but needs really very much resources to be researched. Reason: This can be a strategy to rush for teleport.
- There are only one ore maximum two tiers of teleport. (it should be stupid simple)
- No extra tools needed.
- The maximum distance should be about 500 tiles for tier 0 and 3000 for tier 1.
- There is nothing like a cooldown after a teleportation. If there is enough energy you will be teleported.
- But of course it can cost some energy.

So this is, where I come from:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 93&t=13886 [MOD 0.12.x] SimpleTeleporters
and especially this post by me: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 60#p116674
It's not relevant to read any of that!

But this is important: I suggest a behavior I read in the book "Ringworld" from Larry Niven:

At the center of the intersection was a large blue rectangle. Four blue discs surrounded the rectangle, one at the mouth of each walk. "You may step on the rectangle if you wish," said Nessus, "but you may not step on inappropriate discs. Follow me." He circled the nearest disc, crossed the intersection, trotted onto the disc on the opposite side, and vanished.
...
The discs are arranged in a series of platforms, so you can readily "walk" one block at a time.

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=516
With my own words it is described like so: You have a planet, which is one big city. To move safely in this city you enter some kind of rectangle/platform which is placed at each street intersection. When you touch a "stepping disk" you are transportet to the next platform in the direction of this stepping disk. When you step back, you are at the start. When you step forward you will be moved to the next platform. So you can "walk" from platform to platform. Each step is one platform. Five steps and you are 1 or 2 kilometers away.
Now translated for Factorio: as player you need just to place platforms in about the directions (N, S, E, W) and you don't need to link them or do other complicated stuff.

This is how a teleporter might look from above:

Code: Select all

     ^
   < * >
     v

The >, <, v and ^ are the portals, from where you are teleported. The * is the platform where you will be teleported to.

The simplest situation looks like so:

Code: Select all

     ^                            ^
   < * >                        < * >
     v                            v

These are two teleporters that are linked together by the position you have placed them on the map. The left teleporter is linked to the right, the right to the left. If you hover the teleporters, you might be able to see the links. They will be shown in about the same style like the lines between the roboports (and because of the big distances should be visible on map, too).

You will also see that directly: when you look on the left roboport, you can see, that the right portal is activated (lights etc.). And for the right teleport you can see that the left portal is activated.

So when you enter the left teleport, stand on the platform in the center and then walk to the right you enter the portal and will be teleported to the platform on the right teleport.

Let's assume we have build this:

Code: Select all

     ^                            ^                                 ^
   < * >                        < * >                             < * >
     v                            v                                 v

You are at the left teleport and want to be on the rightmost. This is simple: Enter the left teleport, walk to the right, you will be teleported to the center teleport, still walk to the right, and will be teleported to the right teleport.

I think it is easy to understand, that this type of transport is very efficient and fast ... and I think also some kind of fun, cause you can also create situations like this:

Code: Select all

  1  ^                         2  ^
   < * >                        < * >
     v                            v
     
     
                               3  ^
                                < * >
                                  v

Again you stand on the left teleport #1 and enter the right portal. You will be transported to teleport #2. Now you walk down and will be transported to teleport #3. When you then enter the top portal you will be transported to #2 of course. But if you enter the left portal you will be transported back to teleport #1. This is because from the "sight" of teleport #3 teleport #1 is the "next to the left".

This works like so, until you create a 4th teleport like so:

Code: Select all

  1  ^                         2  ^
   < * >                        < * >
     v                            v
     
     
  4  ^                         3  ^
   < * >                        < * >
     v                            v

Now when you are at teleport #3 and enter the left portal you will be transported to teleport #4, not #1. But this is not a problem, cause you can now enter the upper portal and will be back again at #1.

Advanced functionaliy
Well. This is the very basic function of that teleport and I'm sure this brings much more fun into the game.

With the time it might be useful to have "abbreviations". Or routes. Routes are an item, like a blueprint. But what it stores are only endpoints. You might have a route like "Main Base": Enter a teleport (that is connected to other teleports) and use the route to the "Main Base" on it. You will be transported to that teleport, you don't need to navigate yourself, that is "automatic".

There might be also a possibility for limited transport of items. Let's say: One item per second or so and not all items can be transported. But I don't want to go that deep into off-topic here.

[Hakusho]

I really like this concept.
It makes sure you can still work on the important logstic and automisation stuff and be still flexible in travelling.

I like that it should be limited through energy that could make you think about your energy consumtion, given the fact that it would not be too cheap to travel.
With this idea there might see "teleport outposts" to link places.

Nice detailed post, enjoyed the read

[ssilk]

Thanks.

A yes, energy. What I forgot was that the teleport might behave like an accumulator. So if you don't have power left, the teleport is not loaded.

This is an important tweak: Accumulator energy cannot load teleporters! The energy-priority doesn't allow it.

Normally this is no problem; players normally built only with solar energy/accumulators. That will still work as before. But it might be possible, that the player needs to teleport in the night. That is then a risk for the player! If he teleports one or two times, a teleporter accumulator will be empty and will not reloaded until the day comes.

That is the moment, when the native life comes. Who likes adrenaline?

And much more: The teleporter should need of course MUCH energy. Very much. I think about 500 MJ per transport. That is more, than you normally create with solar.

And that two things (no energy taken from accumulators and extensive usage of energy) will lead automatically to the need of more advanced power generation. And here it begins to get off-topic. But what I like till here is, that the player still can choose: no teleport at all, teleport, but only one time emergency teleport or extensive usage of teleports but then with the need for better power generation.

[Ranakastrasz]

Something like having teleporters that are like underground tunnels, with 50-200 distance, and if you step on one it teleports you to the linked on in said direction. That sounds sane. A significant power cost would make sense. I would suggest ensuring they hold enough power for at least 2 teleports, ideally 5, and be able to recharge quickly, so as to support multiple players.

[Quazar]

This may be the first mod I code

I'm thinking the center square acts like powered armor, put things like batteries in the grid to store power as you like?

Also use productivity modules to affect the levels as described.

[zytukin]

What if teleports just having a settable name like train stations and accessing a teleport gives you a listing of all the teleports in range that you can go to?

That way they wont have to be 'linked' in any way.
Having them omnidirectional would be far more flexible and useful then making them only follow compass directions.

[Neotix]

I have 3 questions:

1. What if you are in the center of teleport grid (there is teleport in each direction). How to step off teleport if we don't want to be accidentally teleported by touching portal.

2. How it will work, if portals will not be placed in grid but chaotically? How player will know where he will be teleported without checking connection every time.

3. If I have entire teleportation system, and I place teleport somewhere in the middle, it will automatically reconfigure connections? What if I don't want some connections to be reconfigure?

[Ranakastrasz]

What if teleports just having a settable name like train stations and accessing a teleport gives you a listing of all the teleports in range that you can go to?

That way they wont have to be 'linked' in any way.
Having them omnidirectional would be far more flexible and useful then making them only follow compass directions.

Yes, that would be more flexable, but far more complex and would require someone to code an interface. The proposed setup requires you to place tiles and a power source, then walk.

This may be the first mod I code

I'm thinking the center square acts like powered armor, put things like batteries in the grid to store power as you like?

Also use productivity modules to affect the levels as described.

Probably you mean efficiency modules.
I would expect the center tile to be a dummy laser turret which absorbs massive amounts of power to supply the network. I would use an accumulator instead, but a patch a while ago broke dummy accumulators.

I have 3 questions:

1. What if you are in the center of teleport grid (there is teleport in each direction). How to step off teleport if we don't want to be accidentally teleported by touching portal.

2. How it will work, if portals will not be placed in grid but chaotically? How player will know where he will be teleported without checking connection every time.

3. If I have entire teleportation system, and I place teleport somewhere in the middle, it will automatically reconfigure connections? What if I don't want some connections to be reconfigure?

1: Have a single tile space, so you can move diagonal to get out of it.

2: It will not work, specifically. If not in a grid, no connection. Ideally, base the pads off of conveyer belt tunnels or liquid tunnels so as to ensure that you have a visual indicator when it lines up.

3: Yes. It should transport you to the closest pad in line.

[Neotix]

1. One square gap is small, you can still accidentally teleport especially while running with exoskeleton.

2. That would be against that part of proposition but logical for me.

part of proposition

[quote="ssilk"]

Code: Select all

  1  ^                         2  ^
   < * >                        < * >
     v                            v
     
     
                               3  ^
                                < * >
                                  v

Again you stand on the left teleport #1 and enter the right portal. You will be transported to teleport #2. Now you walk down and will be transported to teleport #3. When you then enter the top portal you will be transported to #2 of course. But if you enter the left portal you will be transported back to teleport #1. This is because from the "sight" of teleport #3 teleport #1 is the "next to the left".
[/quote]

3. Same as 2.

So it could be useful but not very flexible with that strict (but logical) rules.

[Khaylain]

What if it was a teleporter with the same size as an assembler, and it would try to teleport you the same way you ran into it?

Like if you ran into the right/east side of this "teleporter"
[ ] <--
the teleporter would try to send you west. You'd come out of the teleporter on the west side, so that if you'd want to go further west you'd have to run around the teleporter and enter from the east, going west.

If it doesn't find another teleporter to the west of it you'll just come out on the west side of the same teleporter with a message telling you that it couldn't find another exit further in that direction.
Or there could be different colours depending on if there are connected teleporters in each direction. Green would mean that there is a connection in a straight line, Blue would mean that there is a connection, but it's not in the same line, and Red would mean that there aren't any teleporters within range in that direction at all.

There would of course need to be a range to these, so that they wouldn't have to check too far to make a connection (programming wise). Also based on how far, the energy requirements should go up exponentially. I think that would make sense. Which would make the range limit on each of these make sense as well. Or something like that.

[Snowf4ll]

1. What if you are in the center of teleport grid (there is teleport in each direction). How to step off teleport if we don't want to be accidentally teleported by touching portal.

One solution could be that it takes a small time (like 0.5 to 1 second?) to charge up the teleport (with some cool looking animation of course), thus preventing accidental teleports?

[Adil]

I'm completely adverse to the idea of teleporters.

There's no thing more disimmersive than a crunchy guy with pickaxe bending the very space and time continuum to shoo away a couple of slightly oversized shrimps from his coal mines and hack down a few logs for his steam engines.

The remoteness is the very idea of RSO, so that you have lonely outposts out there in the scary wild wilderness, all by themselves. What's the point of doing that if you wish to simply hop around like them the same way as on vanilla settings of "all the stuff you'll ever need in a single radar span"?

There are so many possible ways of extending player's reach without resorting to most blatant disregart of common sense:
1) Higher speed conventional transportaition:
- faster trains
- faster cars
- PLANES
2) Unconventional transports, that are not "hurr, hurr, science did it":
- passenger rockets
- orbital drops
- underground high speed transportation systems
3) Manifestation of player without superluminal transportation of character:
- robots and command centre to order them around like RTS
- avatars of player, mechanical characters remotely controlled by player
- limited avatars, for example there are currently mods that allow you to connect to trains or radars and do stuff around them.
- outright building from orbit
4) Autonomous agents, that you prepare and then send away with a pat on the back.

I'm personally more interested in the latter ones, since while they provide the impression of how much power was obtained by player, they also remind of how the world around is not simply bent to his wishes.

[ssilk]

Throwing in some arguments:

• The ringworld-teleporter can be used or not. It's on the player. Sometimes you will be in situations, where such a thing is really, really helpful. Sometimes not. Think to a starting place, where the big resources are on the other side of a really big lake.
• The ringworld-teleporter could be really useful for coop-multiplayer. Think to situations, where the other player needs help, but you are 1000 tiles away. You can also exchange much items like so (character inventory is big).
• The ringworld-teleporter is very expensive. It will take you some time to built the first and second. If you don't do so, you will be faster.
• The ringworld-teleporter is a comfort feature for the current game. But a MUST HAVE for big bases!!
• The ringworld-teleporter is simple. No complex rules. Just logical simple, so that he needs no explanation, how it works.
• The ringworld-teleporter has no limitations in the first implementation, cause if it sucks it still can be downgraded.
• If the concept of the ringworld-teleporter is be found as useful (first implemention of course as mod, looking at Quazar), it can be upgraded to transport cars/tanks. There could be also the possibility to teleport whole trains. Instead of bridges.

[Adil]

Well, I'd probably rather call those more of advertising.
They might be equally applied to most of the alternatives listed above or, if desirable, reversed to be cons.

Anyways, they don't address the first objection in the post: the "teleport" is a silly concept which spits on the nature laws that define the engineering which inspired the game. You see everything in game is designed in the quasi-modern style, surely, robotic manipulators here take a much less gears and processors and diesel locomotive eats not as much coal as they would in reality but they follow Newton's testaments and principles of modern world functioning.
The teleportation on the other hand imminently raises questions of why a being that has transcended our current understanding of nature would waste time squabbling with giant cockroaches over rocks and ore.

Thus, I'm mostly in disagreement with the name of "teleportation" and hence provided a few other names under which even the same game mechanic could be implemented.
You, on the other hand, seem to be quite obsessed exactly with the phrase "ringworld-teleporter".
Which puts us on a deadlock here.

[Neotix]

There is a mod on forum with teleporters and I even installed it. But after few uses I abandoned it and it'a not because of costs or complexity. Just prefer Taxi Train over teleporters. I can request TT on nearest station, jump in, go to destined station and send TT on parking. I don't have to jump from teleporter to teleporter to reach destination. It'a just more natural for me.

[The Phoenixian]

As much as I like the Ringworld reference, I must disagree with this idea: It's not that fast transport isn't useful or possible to balance, it's just that the teleporting specifically doesn't really mesh with Factorio. It's a bit too far future, as opposed to Factorio's diesel-future aesthetic. Likewise it hits the same problems that a lot of people complain about with Solar and Laser turrets: There's little in the way of infrastrucutre costs.

Instead, if the destination is so far that trains are out, I'd recommend a different type of ultra high speed/high expense/low capacity movement type, perhaps planes or the transport rockets that have been discussed in the past. Given that rockets lend themselves far better to being one way, one use objects, I'd recommend a rocket powered robotic plane specifically as they have more conceptual possibilities.

From a game design perspective,it's easier to justify giving a plane both significant resource and infrastructure investments. The need to apportion a long, uninterrupted landing zone, say between 50 x 5 to 100 x 9 tiles of concrete and whatever else is needed, (one quarter to one half the length of a small real life runway) and produce copious amounts of rocket fuel creates a significant investment and makes it a choice whether you quickly deploy via parachute and come back on a slower transport, or if you instead decide that the distant region warrants the investment of a large runway and refueling center.

If airdrops are in, it also distinguishes itself in that it's a transport type with a very large infrastructure footprint at the loading zone, and nearly none at the drop off point.

From a visceral perspective, I think that airdropping out of something like a Factoriopunk SR-71 moving at ten times the speed of a train (speed 2000) seems like a very fun way to get around. And of course, with a slower cargo variant you also get the potential of half the speed, but the joy of dropping out into a nest of biters while in a tank.

[bobucles]

The ringworld-teleporter can be used or not. It's on the player.

This is never a real argument. All items in the game should be conducive to making a good game. If the teleporter doesn't do that, then so be it. Instantaneous travel is not meant for every game.

That being said, I do think that there is a very important distinction between teleporting the avatar player, and teleporting cargo based goods. The former is a convenience that removes tedious travel time so the player can spend more time doing factorio stuff (It's not railroad tycoon after all). The latter completely changes how players view long distance logistics and may very well end up ruining the purpose of other transit systems.

Either way I think instantaneous transit should have an expensive raw resource cost per use. Energy is not a real expense thanks to solar panels, but a raw resource expense can keep players from getting too greedy with their teleport spam.

[ssilk]

As said - I think a teleporter should be nerfed later. Because it is easier.
We can talk long about right balancing, but it's a difference between talking and really implementing.

I also want to say, that a transport by train is in bigger maps no alternative: The game value becomes zero or below, if it takes 5 minutes to travel by train from one side of your map to the other.

Also - what will play a role - there is a planned feature called "throne room". See viewtopic.php?f=80&t=191 Throne room / Command center, camera and bots remote control

The teleporter is just something, which introduces that feature a bit earlier and it is also a difference if you can go there as a real character or just flying around without inventory. It's also a difference in how much that travel will cost you, but - as said - I think this detail is balancing and should not discussed now.

[bobucles]

The main reason for a teleporter is to cut down on player travel times, right? You can do the same thing with a remote control droid:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23273&p=146008

A remote droid allows a lot more pivot points for balance than a teleporter ever could.

[Ghoulish]

I think there is a need in the game to be able to move around a large map quickly, for me sitting in a train whilst it slowly meanders across the map, is just plain boring. I want to arrive at my destination as soon as possible, sort out whatever and move on. That's how I like to play Factorio. I realise others don't! The point with RSO above in how it forces distance into the equation, and yet this system is just a case of snap your fingers and you're there, is very valid.

The Ops way of implementing teleportation is neat, it seems simple and intuitive and allows for expansion too. I do like it.

1. What if you are in the center of teleport grid (there is teleport in each direction). How to step off teleport if we don't want to be accidentally teleported by touching portal.

A power switch located within reach from the center of the teleporter, they're adding these in .13 (I think, maybe .14)

I do have a problem with the teleporter idea though. And Adil hit the nail on the head; There's nothing more dis-immersive than a crunchy guy with pickaxe bending the very space and time continuum to shoo away a couple of slightly oversized shrimps from his coal mines and hack down a few logs for his steam engines. And that's the thing for me, would this really be Factorio? Which is very steampunky to me, teleportation just doesn't seem to fit in well within the style of the game.

- It should work a bit like the roboports. That is: It needs energy and has to be charged. If power fails the rest-energy should enable you to transport to the problem.

I don't agree here. There should be a penalty or consequence for allowing an outpost to lose power for example. You shouldn't just be able to snap fingers and boom, problem solved imho - not when things are going wrong anyway.

I do like the idea, it's well fleshed out too, I just don't know if it's Factorio.

Off topic - the teleport is a silly concept which spits on the nature laws that define the engineering which inspired the game

the "teleport" is a silly concept which spits on the nature laws that define the engineering which inspired the game. You see everything in game is designed in the quasi-modern style, surely, robotic manipulators here take a much less gears and processors and diesel locomotive eats not as much coal as they would in reality but they follow Newton's testaments and principles of modern world functioning.

Believe it or not this isn't the case. They managed quantum teleportation 4 years ago.http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 72_F1.html However that was about as close to true teleportation (in a Star Trek sense)As a neanderthals rock hammer is to a jack hammer.. It's about something called spooky action at a distance. Which also has potential use for instantaneous communication over light year distances, subspace communication anyone? 100 years, 1000 years, 100,000 years from now? Who knows, the building blocks have already been laid.