Factorio Roadmap for 1.0.

[Hannu]

Yawn, real world. Gonna play a game instead.

Indeed. Game could take only interesting features from maintenance into account and leave nasty things, like mess, health hazards, inadequate documents, economic losses, bureaucratic rules, for sad and stupid real world.

[MageKing17]

Game could take only interesting features from maintenance into account

Yeah, like... uh...

...

Whelp, I guess the game already has all interesting features of real-world maintenance!

[mexmer]

why people in building games always want something to break, destroy stuff randomly?

we playing building/engineering game, not maintenance game.

Probably because in real world maintenance is essential part of almost all engineering work. Even if you develop new products you have to think maintenance, if it is not cheap expendable consumer stuff. And in that case, you may have to plan it so that it is impractical to maintain without special equipment and skills so that customers buy always a new product. Maintenance would be one way to extend interest in endgame where building is copying of existing structures until you get bored or your computer can not handle your base anymore. Also there are no building games which have well thought maintenance aspect and at least I would like to have one. That would be very interesting addition to Factorio which is already very good building game. I understand that such complexity would be interesting for only professional engineers or engineering students, but I am an engineer and maintenance have very significant role in my work. Even a good possibility to make such mod would be interesting.

Current mods are too simple and construction bots are practically free to build and use. I do not also want to have simple breaking models in current game because if some building is broken it is fixed in few seconds with no costs. But if there were need to manage risks and allocate some part of production to safety measures and automated repairing operations. Player could pursue to faster growth at expense of significant risk of lose of several hour's work or avoid risks and proceed more slowly. Currently Factorio is quite straightforward run to goal your have selected without any significant strategic decisions.

there is already enough games, that need/want you to do stuff to keep things running (eg. games that are more about maintance, maintaining resource equilibrium, and so on), so there is no real reason to introduce it into creative/engineering/building game, except some people just getting bored, then when they finally get this "breakdown" feature, first thing they ask, to have toggle to turn it off, because it's just hassle to have such thing ingame.

and i believe, there are already mods for factorio, that implement such principle as item/building wearability ... so there is no need to have such thing in base game anyways.

[Jap2.0]

Is anything in viewtopic.php?f=80&t=25229 (more specifically the multi-moniter stuff) being considered for 0.17? I feel that you could do some really cool stuff with the GUI if you made use of that.

[Avezo]

ugh... Fluid optimalisation last on the list for 0.17+ ? Really?

[Spyhawk]

Is anything in viewtopic.php?f=80&t=25229 (more specifically the multi-moniter stuff) being considered for 0.17? I feel that you could do some really cool stuff with the GUI if you made use of that.

SDL has quite good support for multiple screens, so this shouldn't be an issue.

[HammerPiano]

New graphics back-end, SDL, OpenGL, DX11, v-sync fix, texture streaming, VRAM usage optimizations, shaders.

Will anything change on the front end? Faster rendering? Different hardware support?

[Jap2.0]

New graphics back-end, SDL, OpenGL, DX11, v-sync fix, texture streaming, VRAM usage optimizations, shaders.

Will anything change on the front end? Faster rendering? Different hardware support?

Yes. See FFF 230

[Hannu]

and i believe, there are already mods for factorio, that implement such principle as item/building wearability ... so there is no need to have such thing in base game anyways.

I did not try to get maintenance aspects in the game. I know that most players would not like it and devs will never make it. However, I told some reasons why I and some players would like such things in the games.

Unfortunately there are no good and realistic mods and they would be practically impossible to program because core code does not support complex and realistic wearing, breaking and maintenance mechanics. As I told simple breaking models and trivial fixes with construction bots would not be very interesting.

[rldml]

Every time you launch a rocket, there is a 1% chance that an engine misfires and the rocket spins out of control and takes out half of your base. Because random.

Random events (disasters) could be interesting in the end game.

why people in building games always want something to break, destroy stuff randomly?

we playing building/engineering game, not maintenance game.

repairing/rebuilding stuff because some random thing happens is not fun, it's tedious, even if you have some automatization to do it for you (construction robots in factorio case)

Ok, but why are aliens in the game? Basically they are just a random maintenance source (attack and damage your base randomly) too and shouldn't be in the base-game if your opinion is correct.

It would make the game more interesting and become a more challenging puzzle game, if there are parts you have to spend time to create a better or more automated maintenance.

E.g. nuclear reactors: let the player control the temperature in some way, make it more complex and dangerous the more reactors you concatenate, and let nuclear reactors out of control damage their neighbourhood.

or water supply: let the seas dry out over time, like any other ressource in the game, you could make a minimum that a water source can spend like an oil field and then only get polluted water (mud) what you have to clean first in some way to use it.

This are just examples and they would become a nice enhancement of the base game - as a compromise there could be a way to deactivate this stuff in the options like we can do it with aliens right now.

[mexmer]

Every time you launch a rocket, there is a 1% chance that an engine misfires and the rocket spins out of control and takes out half of your base. Because random.

Random events (disasters) could be interesting in the end game.

why people in building games always want something to break, destroy stuff randomly?

we playing building/engineering game, not maintenance game.

repairing/rebuilding stuff because some random thing happens is not fun, it's tedious, even if you have some automatization to do it for you (construction robots in factorio case)

Ok, but why are aliens in the game? Basically they are just a random maintenance source (attack and damage your base randomly) too and shouldn't be in the base-game if your opinion is correct.

It would make the game more interesting and become a more challenging puzzle game, if there are parts you have to spend time to create a better or more automated maintenance.

E.g. nuclear reactors: let the player control the temperature in some way, make it more complex and dangerous the more reactors you concatenate, and let nuclear reactors out of control damage their neighbourhood.

or water supply: let the seas dry out over time, like any other ressource in the game, you could make a minimum that a water source can spend like an oil field and then only get polluted water (mud) what you have to clean first in some way to use it.

This are just examples and they would become a nice enhancement of the base game - as a compromise there could be a way to deactivate this stuff in the options.

aliens are part of engineering puzzle, you setup defense and logistic around it.
it's not a random event. and you have multiple ways how to deal with aliens, there is no single solution.

btw. if you setup your defense properly, it doesn't need maintenance just supplies, which is logistic problem.

[Deadlock989]

Ok, but why are aliens in the game? Basically they are just a random maintenance source (attack and damage your base randomly) too and shouldn't be in the base-game if your opinion is correct.

Good question. My suspicion is that they are in the game because Factorio got a lot of inspiration from Minecraft. The aliens were even referred to as "creepers" in the early days.

And they are completely optional. There was a time when you needed them for high level research. That was removed. Now you can play a game without them and add other kinds of difficulty instead, with mods.

Personally I find having to deal with the aliens boring, and turn them off completely in about 75% of my games. Please let's not add more of that kind of mechanic. Dice-throw misfortunes are fine for table-top RPGs but that is not Factorio's genre. If I want a sea of low-level irritants that are impossible to control, I can go outside, or read these forums.

[rldml]

Ok, but why are aliens in the game? Basically they are just a random maintenance source (attack and damage your base randomly) too and shouldn't be in the base-game if your opinion is correct.

it's not a random event.

btw. if you setup your defense properly, it doesn't need maintenance just supplies, which is logistic problem.

It is just a part of the problem: In default settings they place new hives - therefore you gain attacks on parts of your factory which you possibly didn't secured enough. They possibly attack your trains and less secured outposts. Of course you could build tons of turrets and walls at nearly every place of your factory, but that looks more like a dumb ressource and timesink than make your defense more individual, based on threats you know of.

At least: If you make your defense that strong, that you turn the aliens to a pure logistic problem, why do you activate them in general? Just increase the ressource multiplier, make everything else more expensive and concentrate on the stuff you like

aliens are part of engineering puzzle, you setup defense and logistic around it.

I cannot see the difference: The nuclear-suggestion would turn into an engineering puzzle even more than aliens do - it would be complete controllable through the player

and you have multiple ways how to deal with aliens, there is no single solution.

Not really. You can just kill them. The only choice left is too choose the weapons you'll use to accomplish that. This has nothing to do with a puzzle game.

[Serenity]

Map generator improvements and fixes

This should be the absolute top priority. Water generation is completely broken. On high frequency you get swaps. With high size you get snaking land bridges and no continents the further you go out. This makes any map with even moderately high water settings basically impossible to play

It's very disappointing that we'll have to wait months until such an essential thing may be fixed

[zingaya]

What about climate? If there isn't a mod already.
That should add a lot of dynamism; think of storms affecting your solar panels, or flooding (affected buildings wont work or less efficiency); dry seasons lowers your water pump; snow; etc...
Survival features, drink water (water purifier) and food (farm factory? to feed a clone army )

[Hannu]

What about climate? If there isn't a mod already.

No. It is impossible to implement through mods. Climate would need that buildings and processes would be sensitive to temperature, humidity and weather phenomena, resources would be dependent on biomes etc. to be interesting element in the game and just not futile eye candy. Programming such things with Lua on top of the game core is impossible or at least so ineffective that larger bases would probably not be playable. In my opinion it would be very interesting, but most players do not want complex and unpredictable elements in the game and devs do not certainly want to make such massive changes in game physics in final phase of development.

That would be very interesting DLC, but unfortunately not very realistic hope.

[Deadlock989]

What about climate? If there isn't a mod already.
That should add a lot of dynamism; think of storms affecting your solar panels, or flooding (affected buildings wont work or less efficiency); dry seasons lowers your water pump; snow; etc...
Survival features, drink water (water purifier) and food (farm factory? to feed a clone army )

You say "dynamism", I see "yet another suggestion to add annoying RNG misfortunes".

Having solar panels randomly malfunction would just be stressful. It would limit play styles, because you'd always have to have the same kind of power generation diversification and hope that your solars are never clouded at the same time your turbines are flooded. And over time, it all just averages out anyway. If it's cloudy 10% of the time, the longer you play, the closer you get to essentially getting 90% efficiency out of solar panels. It would be a thousand times easier to nerf solar panels. I honestly don't understand why anyone would want that, but it's an easily moddable thing to do, probably one line of code. Floods that knock out your assemblers? Again, in the end, it's just the same as nerfing assembler speed. Why? How is that fun?

I've said it before but it bears repeating - all this RNG calamity stuff is straight out of Rimworld, which is a good game, but has like 2% of the replayability of Factorio. If you want random apocalypses that force you to reload a save game every 15 minutes, go play Rimworld, and please let me keep my nice deterministic Factorio game the way it is.

[steinio]

What about climate? If there isn't a mod already.
That should add a lot of dynamism; think of storms affecting your solar panels, or flooding (affected buildings wont work or less efficiency); dry seasons lowers your water pump; snow; etc...
Survival features, drink water (water purifier) and food (farm factory? to feed a clone army )

You say "dynamism", I see "yet another suggestion to add annoying RNG misfortunes".

Having solar panels randomly malfunction would just be stressful. It would limit play styles, because you'd always have to have the same kind of power generation diversification and hope that your solars are never clouded at the same time your turbines are flooded. And over time, it all just averages out anyway. If it's cloudy 10% of the time, the longer you play, the closer you get to essentially getting 90% efficiency out of solar panels. It would be a thousand times easier to nerf solar panels. I honestly don't understand why anyone would want that, but it's an easily moddable thing to do, probably one line of code. Floods that knock out your assemblers? Again, in the end, it's just the same as nerfing assembler speed. Why? How is that fun?

I've said it before but it bears repeating - all this RNG calamity stuff is straight out of Rimworld, which is a good game, but has like 2% of the replayability of Factorio. If you want random apocalypses that force you to reload a save game every 15 minutes, go play Rimworld, and please let me keep my nice deterministic Factorio game the way it is.

Full ACK.
That's why i also quited RimWorld.

[Meddleman]

Actually, is there a reason there is no "start-game" content?
The story essentially follows an engineer that crashlands on an alien planet, and while the single-player story does explore this, there isn't a nice, short, eye-candy crashland sequence of one's ship. Having the debris lying around after said crash would better explain why we start off with a few iron plates in our inventory.

If people want an "ending", the player could be allowed to enter their rocket, launch, cue fade-to-black screen, roll credits (yaaay, kovarex & team!!!). Player is given an option to save their game, skip the credits and continue on their map, in which the game replays a similar crashland sequence of the formerly launched rocket in which the player miraculously survives said landing in an area very close to the outermost regions of the spread of their base,
Yes, this is very Rimworld-esque, the parallels are obvious, but it seems like the only canonical way to go about this.

[aklesey1]

When we can see the colonists for whom we are preparing this planet, I think it's worth raising the bar and giving a new impetus to go forward, show me the great goal that got us stuck here