Friday Facts #298 - Demo upgrade for Stable

[abregado]

One thing I truly hate about Destroyer capsules and despite them being awesome even pre-balance is the fact that by the time you deploy your max follower count of them - you literally have about a minute before they start exploding.

I agree, even Defenders are loads of fun once you auto deploy them. I made a mod until this gets added to the base game.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/auto-deploy-robots

[Zaflis]

I feel like the new beams look off - specifically the way they light up the pixels underneath them. Particularly visible in this area:

It doesn't make sense for the ground features to be so distinct without the surrounding areas also being illuminated. I feel like the beam needs to either illuminate the surroundings as well, which might be impractical, or it shouldn't light up the ground beneath, instead overblowing the ground and being closer to the color of the beam itself.

They are actually lighting the flying spits from spitters, it's not green ground you are seeing.

[meganothing]

Wouldn't it be more intuitive to insert directly into the broken structure the same one would insert into a working structure?

Not really. Then you would have the confusion from the one structure that changes its state from "you cant open it" to "you can open it".

Practically all games with builtable or destructible structures/buildings/thingies "confuse" the player with the fact that the working thingie allows interactions while the unfinished or broken thingie does not. Actually players are conditioned to click on anything that changes its looks and see what is different.

To me the problem seems more about the confusion that it would teach repairing by using an inserter is possible.

[Philip017]

I would like to suggest removing the belt here, or making it mine-able, that way i can place a chest there and not have to unload from my chest, onto the belt, then into yours. Also for this mission the inserters ran out of fuel and I had to refuel them, not really a big deal, but maybe use solid instead of coal to the default?

suggestion.jpg (52.85 KiB) Viewed 8448 times

[eradicator]

Wouldn't it be more intuitive to insert directly into the broken structure the same one would insert into a working structure?

Not really. Then you would have the confusion from the one structure that changes its state from "you cant open it" to "you can open it". We want to have a single entity that operates the same way every time (you can use inserters/belts to load it, but not by hand), and I thought that I could repurpose the loaders for that.

The thing that i found most irritating about the "loaders" in the NPE was that they vanish after each quest

It was never intended to stay like that. Have a go with the new Compilatron chest. I think it is pretty neat, and after the quest is over you get a free belt, inserter and iron chest. You are right, it is a nice little reward. I will need to update it before stable so that Compilatron actually looks like it is doing the swapping.

Thanks for the answer :). After writing 2 bug reports i finally got to try the new chest. It's neat but it does kinda lose the "mental connection" to the broken assembler when compared to the loader.

Here's some notes:

The "automatic" mining drills placed by compi run out of fuel after less than 30 seconds?
The chest should be "Compilatron's chest" not "Compilatron chest"?
The chest unhelpfully tells me it's "not operable" when clicked (internal terminology leak).
The chest's entity description says it's "an unopenable chest", but that part is quite obvious. Maybe "locked" would be a better term?

Neither the inserter not the chest are filtered. Looks like i can just stuff iron ore in there until no space left? (This is not a hidden request for filterable chests :p)

The next step says "connect assembling machine"...got confused, connected the broken one (because it's closer) and wondered why that didn't work :p.

[MrGrim]

One thing I truly hate about Destroyer capsules and despite them being awesome even pre-balance is the fact that by the time you deploy your max follower count of them - you literally have about a minute before they start exploding. Also, constant deployment with big pauses between the deploy take a significant amount of time (30-35%) and interrupt combat a lot. It just breaks the flow horribly.
I can say the same about destroyer deployment, but they seemed to last (at least that's the perception I have) longer. It also is not as much of an issue because they take away biter aggression from you, so you basically run around focusing on their deployment as the primary damage dealer and maybe shoot your gun, but I usually just focus on running and deploying.
The same thing does not work with destroyers - because they follow you, you have to deploy a swarm first and it takes a long time, then you need to focus on their control - where they need to go, especially when you have skeleton equipment stacked high for speed. So you end up constantly every minute or so breaking the flow and re-deploying them. Buy the time you deploy all your 144 or so destroyers, first deployed capsules are about half-way in their life cycle.

I feel one of these need to happen:
1. Lifetime balancing
2. Deployment speedup
3. Introduce togglable auto-deploy equipment (actually I think this would be interesting).

There is a mod called "Auto Deploy Destroyers" that does option 3. It adds a 1x1 armor grid module that automatically deploys destroyer bots when biters are nearby. It really helps make destroyer bots useful and far less aggravating to use. So, I vote for automating bot deployment in this fine automation game.

[raiguard]

This is all well and good, but I am still DROOLING over the new character GUI that was introduced nine weeks ago. Is it still possible to include that in an upcoming experimental release?

[abregado]

The "automatic" mining drills placed by compi run out of fuel after less than 30 seconds?

Yes, the amount of items that can be moved by the inserters is specifically chosen so that the player needs to reload both the iron drills and the furnaces before they produce 50 plates. This is so we can be sure that we never have to mention refuelling again.

The chest unhelpfully tells me it's "not operable" when clicked (internal terminology leak).

Yeah, that is an issue that is being worked on. Operable is more than just being openable currently.

Neither the inserter not the chest are filtered. Looks like i can just stuff iron ore in there until no space left? (This is not a hidden request for filterable chests :p)

Just try it and see what happens

I would like to suggest removing the belt here...

I recommend just inserting from another side of the Compilatron chest, if you insist on not automating it with belts. Then you can unload from one box directly into the Compilatron chest. But, you know... belts? Ack, whatever, new players seem to get it...

Wow, my FFF post is really badly written... I should have mentioned that the previous FFF's I wrote are required reading.

[Shingen]

In the Introduction, both of these special tasks are what Compilatron would do for you (take items from the special chest and use them for something, like build or repair structures).

That is precisely what seems to happens in the new verson. You load a "locked chest" with items and Compilatron comes and takes the items it needs for the quest.

regarding using chests now: that's good to hear.
regarding compilatron building/repaining stuff for you: is it really needed? it wouldn't be the first structure the player has created, so he should know what to do. why take this simple task away from him?
also a locked chest may give a bad first impression of chests' usage.

Have a go of the new version and let me know what you think.

i sure will. the last version i tried the tutorial in, it bugged out and did not progress past the first zone.

[eradicator]

Neither the inserter not the chest are filtered. Looks like i can just stuff iron ore in there until no space left? (This is not a hidden request for filterable chests :p)

Just try it and see what happens :wink:

I did actually. And when the chest was "full" with iron ore i noticed that i had accidentially put one of each type of the target items, so the test was in vain. But due to this bug i don't want to try again just now. I'll just interpret that smiley as "it's been taken care of". ;)

[GlorifiedToaster]

Still waiting until I can put combat robots in Roboports.

[AK90]

Im confused. What are you trying to do with loaders? Remove? Integrate? Change?

They will be removed from the introduction campaign

Aha! Thanks for clearing that up

[AK90]

This is all well and good, but I am still DROOLING over the new character GUI that was introduced nine weeks ago. Is it still possible to include that in an upcoming experimental release?

You are not the only one

[Deadlock989]

This is all well and good, but I am still DROOLING over the new character GUI that was introduced nine weeks ago. Is it still possible to include that in an upcoming experimental release?

You are not the only one

+3

[kenmras]

A few weeks ago I asked my wife to give me feedback on the demo and she was very confused why the items just disappeared. She also got very frustrated about the quantity of biter attacks. I was also surprised by the frequency of attacks. Perhaps you could make a "pacifist" mode for the demo or at least an easy mode. She began to get really frustrated at the demo so I started her a peaceful map and she's loving it.

[RobertTerwilliger]

Target being hit should also get some glow. (At least tiny bit.) When you focus light beam on object - it usually (if not completely black AND matt) reflects some light onto surroundings.

[nuhll]

I like the tank changes and the new graphic effects for lasers, good job.

Please consider looking at my small improvements: (atleast write why you dont like it, dont want to implement it)
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=71395 (shift + scroll)
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=71387 (Train ghosts in both directions of train)


and maybe if that is possible:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=71637 (new hook *on filter remove* for inserters, to let them "swing back")

[kleopi]

Concerning the consumer.
You want to avoid the player using his inventory and dump it into a chest, so chest->inserter->machine is probably a bad idea.
However it would show the player how the inserter works nicely.

Id have two machines, one being prebuild with chest and inserter (so the player understands that inserters can pick stuff from chests), it is good if that is a recipe with 2 input materials, so the player also figures that the inserter wont get stuck and understands which items to pick

The second machine id change into a setup with two machines taking from the same belt from both sides. The player learns how belt sides work, and that you can take from belts...from both sides, he also should figure that finishing off the belt may direct-feed those machines and he also gets the idea that a belt does not have to end in a machine, but can feed multiple machines in a row.

Essentially those are kind of the biggest struggles i saw with the people i "trained" to play this game.

~kleopi

[factoriouzr]

This is all good, but when can we have a proper working blueprint library. It's so buggy and inconsistent now. I have been waiting for this for many major versions and especially since the promises to improve this for the release of this 0.17. This sadly has still not come. It's a bit of a chore to use blueprints now.

Where is the ability to re-take an existing blueprint without overwriting all of it's settings (checkboxes for what to blueprint and the name of the blueprint should not be overwritten when re-taking blueprints)?

Also will spidertron even make it into the game?

Will proper train management ever make it into the game?

[T-A-R]

Thanks alot for buffing the tank back, that might make it useful again:D
Thanks for removing those loader placeholders.
I agree on above robot-suggestions. Bots are (were) not powerful enough to pay up for their "convenience".

What bugs me most about the tutorial, that things are so different then vanilla play: red assemblers, loaders, all those gray tiles. In vanilla the only way to physically void stuff is by using science packs, shooting ammo and burning fuel. That are Nauvis nature laws.
When you are talking about a 1x1 consumer entity, it feels like it is becoming way too complex. I might biased by already knowing the mechanics, but therefore i don't see any need for those strange entities/setups.

In which tread do you want us to place our play-trough screenshots?