Friday Facts #331 - 0.18.0 release & Train pathfinder changes

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-331

[Koub]

I reckon the 0.18 update was quite a surprise. I'm longing to test that as soon as I have some time (too much work atm ).

[CrushedIce]

We made 0.18 a major version because it will break mods with all the changes we are making, and while initially it hasn't broken that much, many things to come will have a bigger impact, such as the Character GUI.

Does this mean that later 0.18.x releases will break mods again? I think you should try to break mods only with major versions otherwise there will be a huge mess

[5thHorseman]

I see no mention of fluid dynamics. So has that redesign been axed officially?

[Klonan]

We made 0.18 a major version because it will break mods with all the changes we are making, and while initially it hasn't broken that much, many things to come will have a bigger impact, such as the Character GUI.

Does this mean that later 0.18.x releases will break mods again? I think you should try to break mods only with major versions otherwise there will be a huge mess

Its still in experimental, so it is possible, things like Character GUI will definitely change some base game technologies and API features.

While we will try to avoid it, we aren't going to handicap ourselves right now in experimental by promising not to break anything.

[Klonan]

I see no mention of fluid dynamics. So has that redesign been axed officially?

Right now it isn't included in our plans for 1.0.

Things in this regard could change, especially if things go smoothly and one of the team has some spare time.

[Molay]

I'm really bummed out to see the campaign cancelled. While freeplay may always be the main mode, campaign promises to be a new experience. In particular for veterans with thousands of hours, a fresh new mode seems like a great change of pace to the well known, long mastered freeplay mode.

I was REALLY looking forward to it. But if you don't think you can do it on time I guess that's fine. Release is nearing and I prefer none over a disaster like "They are billions" made with their campaign due to time constraint and feeling forced to push out the campaign for release. But please seriously think about adding it down the line.

One way I'd have liked it to go would be a bit like spacechem. Some option to revisit older parts of the map and increase their production, modify it (optional/not required). Setting up trains to export resources. On newer maps, trains would periodically appear and unload, before leaving the map again. A continuous flow where previous part matter, while remaining off-map. I'd imagine the different playable areas to not be adjacent, but some distance apart. The ores to not be finite, but infinite; or _better yet_ some alternative that achieves the same effect: abandoned megastructures from millennia past, once refurbished, providing a continuous flow of ressources _or_ setting up something yourself that produces continuous flow of resources (critical for continuous sending of supply trains up the chain). Each maps objective being

A) refurbish infinite resources structure
B) set up import and export of resources by laying rail.
C) gathering resources (into chest or similar) for the off-map connection to a new area. This can include rail, power poles, turrets ammo and whatnot.
D) some map-specific challenge to overcome. Fast expanding biters. Periodic attacks from off-map. Underground setting (no sun and solar, having to dig/use bots for space), crumbling infrastructure requiring maintenance (a dam requiring steel and concrete continually, or else), oil fields (like oceans) instead of water making oil be pumped offshore but disabling the use of boilers as a consequence (could be shipping in water with trains from previous map with the dam, for petro recipes requiring water and whatnot), irradiated territory where the engineer takes damage, prompting to expand by using radars for vision and robots for building, a frozen arctic zone free of biters but requiring(slightly modified) beacons to keep buildings around it functional, etc, etc. There's SO much to explore, each segment could be quite unique, if the premise were that the planet is not a virgin planet, but merely long abandoned. Even if virgin planet theres so much to do.

But KEY would be that each "map" be unique. If it's just recreating the existing freeplay parcelled up into smaller chunks it might not be worthwhile.

P.S. Am unemployed. If you somehow found any of this interesting, I will work for food

Edit: think I found all my phones weird autocorrects now.

[MrBuisson]

Is ist just my interpretation or did Dominik just did a rage quit ?

[factoriouzr]

Please add support in the next patch release for updating existing bluepints without having to reset all the checkboxes, icons and name of the blueprint.

[GottZ]

it would still be neat to be able to configure the maximum amount of trains that are allowed to target a train station at once.

this way only one loaded iron ore train would leave the depod if a station signalizes that it can take more iron ore.

it could also allow two trains to target if the amount of storage (thrown through some circuit logic) would require more than one train to fill back up.

scenario:
you have 5 iron ore mines with chests and loaders attached.

0 ore in the chests: train station outputs a request value of 0 cause it is unreasonable to send a train to a empty station

1 - amout of circuit calculated train cargo: train station outputs a request value of 1

n train cargo + 1 ore available: n+1 output signal until the number exceeds the maximum number of trains the station can keep off the main rail (waiting station with signals) (comparator ftw)

if you use signals / toggle train stations, you will send out all available trains that have this station set as next target.

to counter that, you'd have to create individualized train depot stations with separate logic to only let trains move when a circuit logic signal is present.
problem:
two trains leave.. great.
but they arrive at the same station even though two separately positioned stations are available.


additionally it would be awesome if circuit logic could tell a train to skip the next N stations with one tick so it would be possible to use multiple cargo trains for different items and balance them through circuit logic.
even better: make it so configured stations can be targeted with a circuit logic expression that was send by the current train station.

[Raphaello]

I love Factorio, I love Wube and your FFs but I find it not appropriate to describe Dominik's departure in the way you did it. I trust your decisions, we all sometimes have to make hard choices but revealing too much detail is not always good.

Regardless, good luck with the progress, can't wait to see the game finished (even though I certainly spent 2500h on a game that feels fully finished to me).

[netmand]

Is ist just my interpretation or did Dominik ...

I shudder to think that any of that laundry will ever see air... and am against discussing how those interactions actually went. (Reminds me of this book)
We should be wishing Dominik well in his future endeavors.

[Klonan]

I find it not appropriate to describe Dominik's departure in the way you did it.

How else should we handle it? I want to be as transparent and honest with you as I can be.

[ratchetfreak]

I find it not appropriate to describe Dominik's departure in the way you did it.

How else should we handle it? I want to be as transparent and honest with you as I can be.

You very much implied that the decision to release without the character gui is the main reason why he left. This could be rephrase to make him seem less like a petulant child not getting his way.

[Hanse00]

We made 0.18 a major version because it will break mods with all the changes we are making, and while initially it hasn't broken that much, many things to come will have a bigger impact, such as the Character GUI.

Does this mean that later 0.18.x releases will break mods again? I think you should try to break mods only with major versions otherwise there will be a huge mess

Its still in experimental, so it is possible, things like Character GUI will definitely change some base game technologies and API features.

While we will try to avoid it, we aren't going to handicap ourselves right now in experimental by promising not to break anything.

What is the advantage of making breaking changes in 0.18.x, rather than calling any breaking change 0.19, 0.20 and so on?
That would make it more clear to mod developers, that your changes are backwards-incompatible.

[Klonan]

What is the advantage of making breaking changes in 0.18.x, rather than calling any breaking change 0.19, 0.20 and so on?
That would make it more clear to mod developers, that your changes are backwards-incompatible.

It is a massive hassle for the mod developers to manually update the mods from 0.18 -> 0.19 -> 0.20
Rather than just a few mod developers have a fix a few things from say 0.18.10 -> 0.18.11

For now 0.18 is in experimental, it isn't 'Stable'.
That really means, things will change, things will break, nothing lasts forever,
And we will try to avoid breaking things, as it isn't great

[Freddie Chopin]

I see no mention of fluid dynamics. So has that redesign been axed officially?

Right now it isn't included in our plans for 1.0.

Things in this regard could change, especially if things go smoothly and one of the team has some spare time.

It's a sad news. I'm not the only one to think that this part of Factorio is far from being complete. It's pretty easy to push belts to max possible throughput. It's possible to use trains running around like ants on steroids to move tremendous amounts of stuff between stations. Bots allow you to scale even further. However with fluid system I must honestly say that my only help is the sandbox, `/editor`, trial & error and 64x time speed to check long-term behavior of what I built. Even something as typical as building a multi-reactor setup requires it, as long as you are not into trying some crazy layouts like "landfill with holes for pumps in just the exact spots" (BTW this approach would be much better if you could just revert placing some landfill tiles, however I understand that generally removing them could be easily abused). If you want to be sure that it really gives you 800 MW instead of like 80% because some parts are water/steam-starved for some unknown reason - for example the turbine at the _front_ (what?) of the pipeline is not getting enough steam, even though 20 turbines behind it are full of it. When I was building a "bigger" beaconed/moduled refinery this week the experience was really frustrating - setup A works (barely), setup B - intuitively a better one (pumps forcing direction of flow at splits/merges) - gives worse production levels, back to setup A and now it doesn't work anymore (what?), do some random changes and it works again (what??), and so on, and so on, ...

Current system behaves almost randomly and debugging the problems seems like an impossible task, so the only option is to start doing random edits or throwing around pumps in strange places. Or using a line of pumps instead of pipes, which seems completely ridiculous.

I must say that I could live happily without each and every of the visual and GUI changes you have planned if that would be the cost of having a sane fluid system in the game. I'm also very afraid that the longer this waits the lower chance for the change we have - new fluid system has a potential to break people's existing bases... On the other hand all the visual / GUI changes seem to me like a low-risk changes, which can be implemented long after 1.0 is released.

Hopefully you can reconsider the idea of the fluid system if you see how many people care about it.

[raiguard]

The more I think about it, the more I agree with scrapping the campaign entirely. The campaign was not representative of the "actual" game, and players would probably have been confused when they went to go to freeplay.

The thing I do suggest is to flesh out the mini-tutorials. This seems like it's already part of the plan, but the mini-tutorials should be able to adequately explain all the major concepts of the game. For example, right now we have tutorials for basic and advanced train networks. But there is no tutorial on how to use train stations properly or set up train schedules. Many people will find it intuitive, but some may not.

Making so many mini-tutorials would be a ton of work, and I'm sure that you have more important things to do before 1.0. So perhaps the workload could be somewhat offloaded to the community? I like the idea of the community working together to come up with mini-tutorials that both adequately and concisely explain various topics.

Thoughts?

[dtoxic]

"in 0.17 and prior, the pathfinder used classic Dijkstra to find the path with the smallest penalty"

hmmmm..... so having Witcher 3 installed is a must for the path finding to work or?

https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Sigismund_Dijkstra

[Raphaello]

I find it not appropriate to describe Dominik's departure in the way you did it.

How else should we handle it? I want to be as transparent and honest with you as I can be.

I'd make Dominik's departure a separate point in FF with simple "Dominik, who was working on the Character GUI and new fluid system, decided to leave the Factorio team. We wish him ..." or something similar. If he achieved something for Factorio, it would be prudent to mention it too.

The difference is subtle: Now, you blame him for failure of Character GUI directly, IMO. After the proposed change it will still be transparent and honest while avoiding direct fingerpointing.