Nerf the Portable Fusion Reactor?

[adamwong246]

I've made a poll which I think captures much of the ideas of this thread. It's got a lot more options than this threads poll, so please hop over there and vote.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=95560

[epr]

Dunning-Kruger

Is this an insult or am I misreading you?

Not an insult, just stating a fact here.
All your "brilliant" ideas have already been considered by the devs and deemed to be boring/ tedious and/ or terrible for performance.

[adamwong246]

I don't suppose you have any evidence that would support this claim? If these ideas have been considered, I'd be happy to look at that.

[bormand]

I would wager that almost every single factorio player has an un-nerfed PFR in their pack.

Sure! It would be strange to ignore them. But you still have many options how to use them. And nothing in the game forces you to focus on the power armor and forget about everything else.

For example, I like to use balanced loadout: good speed, a bit of protection and some construction bots. So, I still "forced" to use vehicles, weapons and stationary ports. PFR doesn't make my experience less fun.

As another example, try to build max-exo build for a spidertron. Would you use PFR there?

[epr]

I don't suppose you have any evidence that would support this claim? If these ideas have been considered, I'd be happy to look at that.

Want me to link you a peer reviewed study or something. They talked about it in the FFF and in comments over the years.
I'm sure you can find them if you look hard enough.
Or just tell me your favourite idea and I will tell you why it's stupid.

[adamwong246]

You make provable claims, quite uncivilly I might add, then neglect to to provide ANY sort of backup? I'm open to almost any dialogue but this isn't dialogue- it's trolling.

Ok, whatever. I guess I'll pray for you or something?

[Kyralessa]

But I'm not a dev and the devs are clear- mods are 2nd class citizens to vanilla.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

[adamwong246]

I mean that "vanilla always has priority over mods" and "The devs are not going to change Factorio to suit your mod, unless it proves VERY popular."

Wube does, and should, prioritize vanilla over modding. It's not to imply mods are not awesome, simply lower on the totem pole of Wube priorities.

[Koub]

[Koub] I'd like not to have and actively moderate things in here, so please, don't get in the personal attack realm : my scissors are always ready.

[pichutarius]

Can you elaborate on this?

He has elaborate enough. Tldr pfr is weak and clumsy. we already had to make decision what equipment we wanna put into the left over space.

If u make pfr feed on fuel but keep the same output, people will be pissed. Old pfr would be modded back for sure. So thats not gonna happen.

Keep pfr and add fuel-dependent generator, higher output, doesnt need to be smaller size. Everyone likes new stuff, u can ignore pfr pretend it doesnt exist and use the new one. Everyone happy.

[NotRexButCaesar]

I'm really not sure how to convince players that "more fun == more challenging". Perhaps the argument from "consistency" or "realism" is unconvincing. Can I argue that the challenge is simply more fun?

Fun is not the same as challenge. If you want to do the most challenging thing, go try to be God. I assure you with a high level of certainty that futility is not a fun thing to experience.
Perfect ease is also not fun: it is boring. For this reason, the game has been balanced for a certain level of challenge on default settings. If you personally think these defaults are too easy, there is very little constraining you from changing them.

It seems that there is a majority of players who like the defaults or most of the defaults the way they are.



There is some level of challenge in the game. This challenge is not primarily an inventory or power management challenge. Most people like that part the way it is: they prefer to focus on the main logistical challenge of the game rather than a small side constraint.

[foamy]

Honestly, I think there's a place in Factorio for a 2x2 fuel-powered generator with a per-slot output somewhere between solar and PFR levels, so that your armour scales better in the midgame, the PA1 sort of era. That's the point at which getting additional juice out of your armour can be quite useful and waiting for PFRs to come online is a drag. It would smooth out that curve.

The existing PFR not consuming fuel of any sort I don't mind as it kills the busywork of fuelling them. Consider: A PFR has an output of 750kW. If you made it powered by nuclear cells, a single stack of 50 would last you ~150hours. At that point it's just an inventory tax, not a serious consideration. Nuclear fuel would be closer to a half an hour, which is a significant inventory commitment and/or endurance limit, but it's pure busy-work, it doesn't add any interesting complexity to the game systems.

[ptx0]

The existing PFR not consuming fuel of any sort I don't mind as it kills the busywork of fuelling them. Consider: A PFR has an output of 750kW. If you made it powered by nuclear cells, a single stack of 50 would last you ~150hours. At that point it's just an inventory tax, not a serious consideration. Nuclear fuel would be closer to a half an hour, which is a significant inventory commitment and/or endurance limit, but it's pure busy-work, it doesn't add any interesting complexity to the game systems.

well obviously the radiation should harm you! then you only get 154 minutes of PFR use.

[foamy]

well obviously the radiation should harm you! then you only get 154 minutes of PFR use.

Krastorio does that, and it sucks. Some weasel installed it mid-flow on a MP server I was on and caused me a bunch of deaths :v

[bormand]

Nuclear fuel would be closer to a half an hour, which is a significant inventory commitment and/or endurance limit, but it's pure busy-work, it doesn't add any interesting complexity to the game systems.

It can be fun if generator is significantly more powerful than PFR, so you can trade some inventory space and become unstoppable killing and building machine.

As for busy work, in IR it was solved with auto-refuel from inventory. So it's more inventory tax and a bit of logistics, just like ammo.

[foamy]

As for busy work, in IR it was solved with auto-refuel from inventory. So it's more inventory tax and a bit of logistics, just like ammo.

That's the point, though: It's nothing new, it presents no challenge you've not already solved w.r.t. ammo or building supplies. It's just another thing to add to a log screen.

[aka13]

I don't think it should be nerfed... PFR already has a lot of downsides: it's very large and gives just twice more power than 16 solar panels.

I think it would be better to add another alternative generator. It will be smaller and way more powerful, but will require fuel. So, you will have a choice between "set and forget" or "keep refueling and have max power". Choices are fun.

P.S. As for realism, PFR it's just like RTG that works for years without refueling.

+1
I am content with any generator that can chew through nuclear fuel and give me more energy than the pfr. PFR is not overpoered, it is ridiculously underpowered for endgame purposes, especially with marathon.

[bormand]

PFR is not overpoered, it is ridiculously underpowered for endgame purposes, especially with marathon.

It's intentionally underpowered, I think. Otherwise power armor will overshadow everything else.

[aka13]

PFR is not overpoered, it is ridiculously underpowered for endgame purposes, especially with marathon.

It's intentionally underpowered, I think. Otherwise power armor will overshadow everything else.

I know, I think it is well in its place ingame. Gives you comfort, but does not let you be a universal death/construction machine.

[Hannu]

PFR is not overpoered, it is ridiculously underpowered for endgame purposes, especially with marathon.

It's intentionally underpowered, I think. Otherwise power armor will overshadow everything else.

It seems to be balanced for combat purposes but clearly underpowered for endgame building. I usually make a simple mod to increase power output by factor of 10 to get several hundreds of bots running .
I would increase personal building capacity at least by an order of magnitude. I could remove that no brainer laser defense and increase energy consumption of shields to keep combat balanced. There could be automatic combat robot launcher instead. Defense should need resources, both material and logistic, in my opinion.