Friday Facts #388 - Smaller things for 2.0

[greenyaptec]

Could we have a mode on lamps that would allow us to select three signals to use as R, G and B values?

Basically:
Use signal "inserter" for red value (clamped to 0-255)
Use signal "pipe" for blue value (clamped to 0-255)
etc.

That way we can automate all the colors (it would be a different mode than current "use colors")

[Shuisman]

…is allow the option to lay pipes like power lines. That is, when a powerline is dragged to its maximum range, it places and keeps going, and if there's something in the way it'll build a space short to avoid it…

Seconded

[mrvn]

Please don't just add constants for "k" and "M" but also for stacksize. chest size and tank size would also be useful but that would require picking the chest/tank item as I don't think a character would suffice to cover all the different chests and tanks the game has, especially with mods.

[Tooster]

I wonder why you didn't go one step further with visualizing the max belt range. While hovering in the range of the matched underground belt, display BOTH max range (blue or could be yellow) and selected range (green) if the belt was placed where hovering (green). See the image. With what you have now you still have the problem that you don't immediately see what range is maximal until you drag to that range.

With this it would be immediately obvious and it could also hint the exact tile you have to click on to place it at max range.



There is more to that — you could even visualize the first (non-matching) belt's range and what tiles it can reach.




Also, highly agreed with the above - add a constant for stack size "S" of the current item

[SerhiiS]

Cliff explosives are not unlocked from the start of the game, and with the expansion they are even more delayed. To avoid nonsensical marking of cliffs for deconstruction when you force build on top of them, we changed it so that the cliffs are only marked for deconstruction once the cliff explosives have been researched.

I don't think this is a QOL improvement (same for the landfill change). Hear me out: I want to blueprint stuff and have construction bots blow up cliffs and paste landfill when those cliff explosives and landfill become available to construction bots. Force blueprinting should mean force blueprinting; get that crap outta the way and let me put down what I want to put down and let me worry about the cliff explosives and landfill later.

Agree,
Add pls to checkbox `Trees/rocks only` Cliff -> `Trees/rocks/cliff only`. I don't understand why didn't add cliff here right away.

[mrvn]

When you drag a belt it would be nice if underground belts would be created with maximum length instead of minimum length you get now. Ideally with equal gaps on both sides of the obstacle.

[EvilCooky]

I wonder why you didn't go one step further with visualizing the max belt range. While hovering in the range of the matched underground belt, display BOTH max range (blue) and selected range if the belt was placed where hovering (green). See the image. With what you have now you still have the problem that you don't immediately see what range is maximal until you drag to that range.

With this it would be immediately obvious and it could also hint the exact tile you have to click on to place it at max range. There is more to that — you could even visualize the first (non-matching) belt's range and what tiles it can reach.


Also, highly agreed with the above - add a constant for stack size "S" of the current item

I would even go another step further and display the max range while placing the underground entrance.
A bit like the "Show Max Underground Distance" Mod

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/show-max- ... d-distance

Maybe even add a shortcut to automatically build the exit at max range, too.

[trad_emark]

How much is

Code: Select all

10/2k

?

[FuryoftheStars]

Excited to hear about the increased map tick time and the manual lamp colors. The rest are nice/good, too (with perhaps the exception of the cliff decon), but they don't impact me as much.

As for the cliff decon, I agree with this person here:

Cliff explosives are not unlocked from the start of the game, and with the expansion they are even more delayed. To avoid nonsensical marking of cliffs for deconstruction when you force build on top of them, we changed it so that the cliffs are only marked for deconstruction once the cliff explosives have been researched.

I don't think this is a QOL improvement (same for the landfill change). Hear me out: I want to blueprint stuff and have construction bots blow up cliffs and paste landfill when those cliff explosives and landfill become available to construction bots. Force blueprinting should mean force blueprinting; get that crap outta the way and let me put down what I want to put down and let me worry about the cliff explosives and landfill later.

The times where I don't want cliffs marked for decon are more so related to specific build circumtances, so would rather something like this:

I feel like cliff removal should be super force building only, and no longer in regular force building. It is quite annoying to have to unmark cliffs from decon when building defenses that incorporate cliffs. Not to mention you need to be mindful enough to disable your roboport or remove Cliff Explosives from your Inventory BEFORE building, or the Cliffs are gone forever.

Or this:

Add pls to checkbox `Trees/rocks only` Cliff -> `Trees/rocks/cliff only`.

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We have already been shown so many changes in Factorio 2.0 that I doubt the compatibility of the new version with saves 1.1 and other older ones

By the way, can 1.1 saves be migrated to 2.0?

This. vv

Pretty sure a previous FFF did state you can have your old Saves, was the Rails one as far as I know.

Would be pretty useless to add backwards compat for old Rails if Savegame compat wasn't a given. XD

-----------------------------------------

Often times you want to set some constant number, like "I want 7.5 stacks here",

Can I actually do this? Instead of just doing math (10*100), or typing 10k, can I do like "10s" and get 10 stacks? S for Stacks?

The impression I had was that, knowing the stack size is say 50, you could just type "7.5*50" and it'd calculate it for you instead of having to break out a separate calculator. But having a constant of "s" or "S" for stacks would be good, too!

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It's funny how in your comparison between the old and new underground building, the annotation proclaims you have to take a step back with the old system, and then you also have to take a step back in the new pipe example

Wouldn't it be better if it showed the full possible length of the underground at all times? That way you'd actually know without having to ratchet it up one by one. Kinda like how Transport Tycoon does it with tunnels.

+1 to this. I think that'd be much better.

[FritzHugo3]

"Chart tags improvements"

For me more important - the Icons should be scale with the zoomfactor. I cant see the Icons and Text if i zoomed out at the map - maybe an option for how big or smooth scale with zoom. This woukd be verry helpfull to find things in a base.

Rest looks verry nice.

[scarhoof]

Would it be possible to define an S for stacks when calculating item requests?

[Epb7304]

I really like the changes to the underground belts and pipes, but one thing that bothers me about it is that it only changes color for one block, i.e.

Yellow.
Yellow.
Yellow.
Green!
TOO LONG

I think it would work slightly better if it changed color on a gradient depending on how extended it is

Yellow
Lime
Light Lime
Green!
TOO LONG

[Kadet123]

When you drag a belt it would be nice if underground belts would be created with maximum length instead of minimum length you get now. Ideally with equal gaps on both sides of the obstacle.

This wasting of belt segments has annoyed me too.

[mmmPI]

How much 10/2k ?

0 because circuits truncate things is my guess and it is interpreted as 10/2000 or 0.005 and 0 is all what's left after truncation

I don't think it could be 5000 for 10/2 * k as 0.5*1000

edit : 10/2k => 5*1000 as i saw the other people do math properly sounds better but i still think it will say 0

[dtoxic]

"Newer versions of Lua contain a dedicated integer type that would allow for full precision, but upgrading Factorio's Lua version is not feasible due to numerous modifications and bugfixes we have made to the language internally. This means that Lua scripts can only specify exact tick values up to 2^52, and can specify "maximum possible tick" using math.huge.

More than 2 million years seems to be enough for us to not be around any more when the bug reports start appearing"

I guarantee that someone,somewhere in some far far away future is going to curse you once that limit is reached and their map is ruined!

[Kadet123]

How much is

Code: Select all

10/2k

?

I'm betting it will be 0. But some might expect it to be 5000. I'd wager the expression evaluation does letter replacements in a first pass (so 2k becomes 2000 internally) and then does the math on the numeric-only expression (10/2000).
I'm hoping it supports parentheses, so you could do "(10/2)k".

Or like others have suggested, using "s" as a stack size macro would be amazing. Except the problem with that is then the expression evaluation would have to somehow become context aware, to know that in one case stack size might mean x50 (ores), but in another case it means wires (x200), or in another satellites (x1). I'm doubting this is feasible.

Edit: spelling typo

Re-Edit: Just watched it again, and noticed they do show it supporting parentheses. I thought I watched the whole animation cycle before, but I guess I didn't.

[deer_buster]

How much is

Code: Select all

10/2k

?

could be interpreted as (10/2)k, so 5k is my guess.

[PaszaVonPomiot]

pump-the-lube - you got me interested and martincitopants as well
all the upgrades are well appreciated
my wish? multithreading

[melind]

Additional suggestion for lights to allow RGB to be set via circuit:
I send a signal of 50 Red, 205 Green, 50 Blue I can wire up some nice lime green lights.

[_Attila_]

I don't understand the aversion to using the universally accepted format for dates. Many of us asked to sort save files by date for years and now the solution is to list 10 saves as "1 week ago" ?!

What's wrong with an actual date, so we can tell if a save was made before or after a particular update or some other reason?

While having the list sorted on date is nice, this is not a perfect solution.