Friday Facts #304 - Small bugs; Big changes

[Yijare]

[...]The issue is new players dealing with the fact that buildings stop when any one output is blocked. In my opinion delaying this lesson is a bad idea as the lesson will still have to be taught eventually and the simpler the factory is at the point the lesson is taught the better.

The bad Idea is simplification. I rather have a Problem I can't solve at first try than coasting along on something that doesnt even feel like a logical factory builder anymore.

For me the removal of the Pickaxe is an good example for this. Yes, it's in a way good you dont have to craft picks anymore but it takes out a cruicial point of the game: Micromanagement. And all of you who say Factorio isn't about micromanagement but macromanagement.
You clearly dont understand what balancing, thoughput limiting and ratios are. That are terms that perfectly describe the micromanagement.

In order to make it 'simpler' you sacrifice something that made factorio unique in its gameplay. And rather than simplifying the game i would expand on the content. Like something differnet than just 'infinite' researches because here comes in motivation. From the beginning I am keen to launch that big f***ing rocket to get myself off of Nauvis. (exept it doesnt do that but whatever) But then the game as challeing at it is already gets dull. There is nothing to work towards to. Mining prod 1000, yeah, sure, but what does that bring other than 'build outpost, rinse and repeat' ?

I know that the basegame isn't supposed to incoorporate mods (but did anyways) but how about content after teh rocket launch? So you have to work towards, maybe a uplink station for com's to work so you really can get off this planet, or you can find 'friendly' mobs who have also a problem with biters - and are willing to accept your polluting if you are ridding them off the biters in thier near visinnity - but turn hostile if you manage to build that oilrig right smal center of thier town (or whatever)

Simplification to attract new players is the wrong way. It will always be. Don't make it oh so easier to get into it. I have played 0.17 with Space Exploration installed and oh my did I like it. But not because 0.17 is a good version of the game. I personally find the new GUI ugly, the pickaxe change unessesary and some of the 'new' stuff abitary. So I reverted to 0.15 and probarly will stay there. I know I'll miss stuff like placing splitters on top of belts and vice versa. But that is just a QoL feature that was needed - but we worked without it for years. The bot restaint from your personal roboport is genius - but we also worked without it for quite some time and sometimes it even worked better than right now. the undo function of the blueprint... QoL that, in my opinion, does not improve the overall gameplay, but simplifies or rather gets rid of the punishment for doing something wrong in the first place.

Factorio had this nice niche place of being unique. Now it feels sometimes like 'just another' game.

[psihius]

I talked to my peers about this change, trying to see it from different angles and honestly for me, as an advanced player and into mega base stuff (as many of my peers are too from multiple communities), you just gave a UPS blessing.
Back of the napking on the fly math in my head just says: I do not need any cracking for my megabase any more except one small setup to crack light oil from coal liquefaction.

I do not need advanced oil processing receipe any more - it is gonna be way more ups efficient to scale my refineries by stamping some more than dealing with 2-3x amount of piping, chemical plants and complexity of dealing with 5 different fluids - I just need to care about oil and petroleum.
The amount of lubricant I need in the long run is small, so I just setup coal liquefaction that gives me lots and lots of heavy oil that I 100% convert to lubricant and just pipe excess petroleum into main system and that small amount of light oil just make into solid fuel. Everything else I just make from petroleum. Yes, it is not as efficient as it can be resource wise, but it will be more efficient from overall factory performance and significant reduction of complexity.

I don't think this was even though if, cause this argument light up the lightbulb on everyone I talked to and go "Yeah... you know, you might have a point there".

We are lazy. We will take the easy route. Time to build something is also a factor and oil is an absolute king on time spent dealing with it. This is just too good to pass up and sacrifice efficiency. Oil is unlimited and in the long run you always have more than you need.

[irbork]

In the end oil change will only take away options we have now. The oil progression will be linearyzed.

[irbork]

I gave it some thought and there may be 2 good solutions to the oil problem:
1) have 3 different basic oil processing recipes, each with single output petroleum, light or heavy oil,
2) have basic oil processing as it is now but any excess of products that are not taken out will be burnt off; if you connect all exits to tanks you have same as you had without changes but if you connect only one or two you will have very inefficient but easy way to get everything running.

[conn11]

The basic question is, if basic proc. should replace a. proc. as main oil refining. Getting oil running is not a trivial task, especially if you don't know what you are doing. The usage of a. proc. would be much less common, if it would be optional for most practical purposes (I doubt that a complete newbe would start a marathon deathworld ). +25% of petrol means 50/sec output in basic proc. and only 55 petrol in advanced. Not a great start to really use cracking if you hadn't been used to more than one fluid upon now. So what aboat a basic (inefficent) cracking repice to early on balance fluid outputs? E.g. with a new "refined oil" fluid or getting only light oil and petrol from basic. With having light oil additionally you can start to make solid fuel from the beginning for blue science and will have to use advanced cracking for lubricant (coal liquifidation requires steams, with combines nicly with nuclear). Alternativly a flare stacker wich requires to use all liquids as punishment and a good oil tutorial could be viable.
I personally don't mind later construction bot, but I can unsterstand why it could be problematic for some, how about avery inefficent light oil lubricant cracking? More flexibility in oil processing also allows an easier balancing.
Lastly petrol to flamethrower ammo seems a bad compromise, as stated in FF. Chaning the repice to Steel plus crude Oil/ heavy/ light oil (exactly like the flamethrower turret) seems much more intuitive and would remove the inconsistency between flamethrower and turret. Maybe the current repice could be use as late game napalm, or not.
I find it great that the devs are thinking about optimising the game and are prepard to undergo even major changes. I defenitly will test the new oil processing next week, maybe it isn't that bad. Wube you're best!

[Loewchen]

I talked to my peers about this change, trying to see it from different angles and honestly for me, as an advanced player and into mega base stuff (as many of my peers are too from multiple communities), you just gave a UPS blessing.
Back of the napking on the fly math in my head just says: I do not need any cracking for my megabase any more except one small setup to crack light oil from coal liquefaction.

You really think that after you need to double oil refining and double oil extraction and logistic to compensate for the bad basic processing efficiency and the need to set up coal liquefaction you would still get a UPS advantage because you can omit cracking?

[wobbycarly]

Some discussions on the Discord server led to an idea for dealing with the new player issues with oil that I think would work a lot better here. Original credit for the idea goes to Hexicube.

The idea is based on the following assumptions:

* The fundamental problem is that it is difficult for players to discover how to deal with multiple outputs without clogging the system.
* The change as proposed only delays the problem.
* The change to the flamethrower ammo further limits the already limited utility of even having heavy and light oil.
* Locking construction bots behind blue science further increases the mid game "hump".

So, how can we introduce new players to the tools to handle the multiple outputs of advanced processing while not needing to make changes to bots or flamethrower ammo or over simplfying the first refinery?

Make basic only output heavy oil, and make cracking available with basic oil processing!

This makes access to plastic require cracking plants allowing players to familiarize themselves with the recipes used to balanced advanced oil processing before they are required to prevent complete blockages. It avoids simply delaying the problem by having the player use all of the tools required to solve the problem in a safer context with linear and simple progression before they must be used in a more complex scenario!

I hope that you agree!

This is a great idea, IMHO.

[Jan11]

nice

[bobingabout]

I like the idea of being able to specify what input and output an ingredient/result uses.

however, I am not keen on the change to oil processing. Part of what you've said in the past for not changing things is that they're a puzzle to be solved. By making this change (removing light and heavy oil) to oil processing, you're removing the puzzle, something you've previously said you would NOT do. If you're changing your stance on this rule, does this mean near handed inserters, and other such "removes from the puzzle" elements will be added to the game soon?

You touched on most of the things that use the oil products, PG, well, it's used for plastic and sulfur, so that's why you kept it on basic. Heavy oil is used for lubricant, so you locked robots behind science pack 3. Logistics 3 also uses lubricant, but again, science pack 3.
Honestly though, Robots have been nerfed in almost every major release, yet belts seem to get buff after buff. Pushing robot related items further back in the tech tree, this time an unlock for the robots themselves... I can see such a change triggering a bots vs belts war again.

I didn't see mention of flammables in that list, flamethrower fuel is made from light and heavy oil, where is flamethrowers in the tech tree? they only require SP2 and Military. this change is going to push them WAY back.

Also, the idea that basic gives lots of heavy and light oil, and little PG, but advanced gives lots of PG and much less light and heavy oil would say to me that the low tech end of oil is heavy and light oil, and the higher end tech level would be PG, so you making such a change is backwards to the expectation.
If you insist that oil only gives a single product, I'd go with heavy oil only, and lower the entry cost of cracking, forcing the player to crack down to the desired oil products.

The previous expectation for the oil management system was that you'd start out by just turning the excess into fuel blocks to burn as fuel (or now, in science packs), however, part of the difficulty of management, and why many people would opt to not update their factory to advanced oil processing is... that heavy oil can't be created, yet the others can through cracking. Making the basic processing heavy on the heavy side means you can set up a balancing system with cracking plants. PG only completely deletes this element of the game, and unless you make advanced oil processing really heavy on the heavy oil side, is going to completely destroy the playstyle of many players, and the flow of many mods.

Also, my mods are fairly dependant on the heavy oils being a low tech ingredient, I'm afraid this is one of those changes that my mods will have to revert, it's just too breaking to the flow not to, and I imagine that many other modders will have a similar feel about this change.
I personally do not like the (overall) change and will be reverting it in my mods, but that's mostly because of 2 things. My mods use heavy (and light) oil a fair deal in lower tech recipes, and locking more technologies behind SP3 messes with my tiering system.

[meganothing]

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.

Even though there is some pressure to advance, it is far from perfect:
1) Beginners who have a problem even storing excess oil in tanks or finding the problem will have a hard time finding out that advanced is 100% more efficient. Unless you tell them explicitly. (But if you tell them that, then you could alternatively tell them about the blocking problem and leave everything as is)
2) As you say the pressure is only there if oil has a shortage. IF a beginner has an oil shortage it is already to late. What he probably does is first look for new oil deposits. With a new deposit and the shortage solved for the time being and new problems showing up it is at best a 50/50 chance that he also thinks about optimizing oil.

And then there are all the other problems mentioned in this thread. The proposed change has a lot of disadvantages. Sure, no solution is perfect, but I really don't see much achieved with this change, even for the new players. The complexity is just moved a little farther into the game, those players that stop playing at oil processing now will either never use advanced oil or simply stop then.

Both the flare stack and the cracking into heavy oil solutions fullfill the same objective in making basic oil easier. But they break much less porcelaine in the rest of the game. And with "break" I mean especially the fact that the proposed solution makes petro-gas even more the only stuff that matters. Where is the balance if the whole chemical industry in Factorio IS one single product and all the rest seems like an "iron pick" artifact in the game.

[5thHorseman]

If you're changing your stance on this rule, does this mean near handed inserters, and other such "removes from the puzzle" elements will be added to the game soon?

One can only hope.

[_Attila_]

Make basic only output heavy oil, and make cracking available with basic oil processing!

This makes access to plastic require cracking plants allowing players to familiarize themselves with the recipes used to balanced advanced oil processing before they are required to prevent complete blockages. It avoids simply delaying the problem by having the player use all of the tools required to solve the problem in a safer context with linear and simple progression before they must be used in a more complex scenario!

I hope that you agree!

This is a great idea, IMHO.

The problem with this idea is that you MUST set up cracking at the same time as you set up oil production. The way it is now, you don't have to worry about oil until an output is blocked. Provide a warning for this, just like a turret being out of ammo, done.

On flare stacks: Bad idea. Wasteful. Creates pollution. New item.
On boilers burning oils: Can already make solid fuel and burn that. That's what I do until I have better uses for it.

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

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.

I proposed cracking research with just red and green science a few pages back, so I agree with this 100%. Making cracking a research item would highlight its importance and gives the opportunity to explain why it is a useful technology.

[Engimage]

As opposed to my flare stack idea here is another one

You can introduce basic cracking recipes alongside basic refining. These basic cracking recipes would not require water and would be less efficient compared to advanced processing

Advanced oil processing would require water input for both refineries and cracking chems and would be more efficient

That’s it, problem solved in a Factorio way

Just have to make sure ratios are so that you can just connect a chem directly to a refineries heavy output and it will process it all. Same with light.

Another needed change
When you open any machine and it is output blocked it should display blinking icon on top of a resource that is blocked. Upon hovering your mouse over such you should get a hint what is the issue. Or you will get a visible warning in other form but the player should be clearly notified of the problem. But not in an abusive way like icons on the main screen as output blocking is a common thing most of time.

And yes, integrate damn Bottleneck guys. Even pros are using it almost always, imagine how newbies would benefit from it

[Avezo]

I still think that main difficulty spike reason at chemical science pack are red circuits, not refineries.

[FuryoftheStars]

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.

"Why isn't my refinery working ?!?" (=>Because you don't have any space left for output.) is, like, in the top 5 of new player questions !
(Though I wonder how well the proposed flare stack would deal with this issue? Would having it unlocked at the same time, with relevant text, be a good enough tip?)

refinery stops becouse of one product overflow

What have assemblers and miners been teaching people all this time when their outputs back up?

Highlight the slots if they are full/blocking production.

I did want to point out, they already do. Open the GUI to the refinery and if one of the outputs is blocked, it highlights it red.

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?

Changing from three outputs (and the complexities it brings) to one and moving the three outputs to later is dumbing down.

[astroshak]

While I understand the need for simplification on the Basic Oil Processing, I’m not sure that outputting only Petroleum is the way to go.

Sorry if this has been suggested in the 10 (?) pages of the thread before this post, but ... what about outputting only Heavy Oil? And having Cracking (a less efficient ratio than is available with Advanced Oil Processing) available right then and there so you can downgrade the Heavy into Light into Petroleum as you need it?

This would allow Heavy Oil products to be available with Oil Processing, as it is currently, rather than having to wait (what might only be one tech, since most people aim at Advanced Oil Processing as soon as they hit Blue Science).

With the current HO/LO/PG ratios from BOP and AOP, there are many times I want the HO from BOP more than the additional products that AOP gives. Its not really until I start to develop specialized sub factories, outposted factories really, that I start to want LO or PG more than I want the HO. I can only see the proposed change to BOP and AOP as a nerf to the availability of HO within a given blueprint footprint.

[Nefrums]

I think the changes are good!
It'll make the game slightly slower for us speedrunners, sub 1h bots will be a real challenge now.

I think it would make more sense to move sulfur and batteries to after chemical sci too. Only affects accumulatiors.

[conn11]

While I understand the need for simplification on the Basic Oil Processing, I’m not sure that outputting only Petroleum is the way to go.

Sorry if this has been suggested in the 10 (?) pages of the thread before this post, but ... what about outputting only Heavy Oil? And having Cracking (a less efficient ratio than is available with Advanced Oil Processing) available right then and there so you can downgrade the Heavy into Light into Petroleum as you need it?

This would allow Heavy Oil products to be available with Oil Processing, as it is currently, rather than having to wait (what might only be one tech, since most people aim at Advanced Oil Processing as soon as they hit Blue Science).

With the current HO/LO/PG ratios from BOP and AOP, there are many times I want the HO from BOP more than the additional products that AOP gives. Its not really until I start to develop specialized sub factories, outposted factories really, that I start to want LO or PG more than I want the HO. I can only see the proposed change to BOP and AOP as a nerf to the availability of HO within a given blueprint footprint.

very elegant!

[BlueTemplar]

I didn't see mention of flammables in that list, flamethrower fuel is made from light and heavy oil, where is flamethrowers in the tech tree? they only require SP2 and Military. this change is going to push them WAY back.

We prefer to keep flamethrower as it is, but flamethrower ammo now requires petroleum gas instead of light and heavy oil.

[BlueTemplar]

[...]
And rather than simplifying the game i would expand on the content. Like something differnet than just 'infinite' researches because here comes in motivation. From the beginning I am keen to launch that big f***ing rocket to get myself off of Nauvis. (exept it doesnt do that but whatever) But then the game as challeing at it is already gets dull. There is nothing to work towards to. Mining prod 1000, yeah, sure, but what does that bring other than 'build outpost, rinse and repeat' ?

I know that the basegame isn't supposed to incoorporate mods (but did anyways) but how about content after teh rocket launch?
[...]

Devs have to stop the game *somewhere*. Would you rather them never have had added space science and infinite techs in the first place?

I talked to my peers about this change, trying to see it from different angles and honestly for me, as an advanced player and into mega base stuff (as many of my peers are too from multiple communities), you just gave a UPS blessing.
Back of the napking on the fly math in my head just says: I do not need any cracking for my megabase any more except one small setup to crack light oil from coal liquefaction.

You really think that after you need to double oil refining and double oil extraction and logistic to compensate for the bad basic processing efficiency and the need to set up coal liquefaction you would still get a UPS advantage because you can omit cracking?

There's also quite a bit of a gap between new player and player-that-tries-to-make-a-base-so-huge-that-his-PC-struggles-with-it. Where a lot of players are located. See nuclear for instance : late game, hard for newbies, not viable for the-biggest-base-one-can-make.

What have assemblers and miners been teaching people all this time when their outputs back up?

IIRC, the only multi-output vanilla non-petrochem recipe is centrifugation of uranium ore ?

(coal liquifidation requires steams, with combines nicly with nuclear)

Eh, only because uranium is so abundant...
Otherwise, since Coal Liquefaction doesn't care about the temperature of input steam, you're better off using lower temperature, Boiler steam for it...

Even though there is some pressure to advance, it is far from perfect:
1) Beginners who have a problem even storing excess oil in tanks or finding the problem will have a hard time finding out that advanced is 100% more efficient. Unless you tell them explicitly. (But if you tell them that, then you could alternatively tell them about the blocking problem and leave everything as is)

As already mentioned, this issue is even worse now, with advanced outputting the same 3 products as basic, but also requiring water.

Sorry if this has been suggested in the 10 (?) pages of the thread before this post, but ... what about outputting only Heavy Oil? And having Cracking (a less efficient ratio than is available with Advanced Oil Processing) available right then and there so you can downgrade the Heavy into Light into Petroleum as you need it?

It was, please at least use search if you don't want to read all the posts...

Make basic only output heavy oil, and make cracking available with basic oil processing!

This makes access to plastic require cracking plants allowing players to familiarize themselves with the recipes used to balanced advanced oil processing before they are required to prevent complete blockages. It avoids simply delaying the problem by having the player use all of the tools required to solve the problem in a safer context with linear and simple progression before they must be used in a more complex scenario!

The problem with this idea is that you MUST set up cracking at the same time as you set up oil production.

Not if what you want is sulfur, and sulfur is now made from heavy oil !
(But then, laser turrets should probably NOT be moved to Blue Science ?)

I think it would make more sense to move sulfur and batteries to after chemical sci too. Only affects accumulatiors.

Uh, why? The only reason would be to force players to start using solar panels without accumulators a bit more ?

Oh, and I realized :

I am sure that adding a flare stack with a proper description would be much better.

Flare stack besides burning excess heavy and light oil would also add extra pollution which would actually help players drive towards advanced oil processing while still not being a game stopper.

Flare stack would just burn oil and pollute while not actually requiring power or anything else. Description should say it is designed to burn excess oil products such as light and heavy oil if you have no means to handle them otherwise.
[...]

As already hinted at by RockDeicide,
well, guess what, the current Refinery already includes a flare stack !

So it's not really an issue with "realism".
For the "pollution" part, this can be achieved by either giving the basic processing recipe a pollution malus,
or just make it take a really long time, which automatically raises pollution (and energy consumed) per product.