Friday Facts #398 - Fulgora

[kulg]

Sooooo... does this mean that we can do this to Nauvis? I'd love to see a Mega factory cause a transition to this point.

[Syriusz]

WOW, just WOW. I just can't wait for release!
It gives me sort of Warwind feeling...

[forsaken75]

there are many factorio alternatives

Your entitled to your opinion, but if you talk about alternatives at least name some. I don't like these vague arguments, because if somebody responds with: "Well this alternative is pretty bad" the follow up is often: "Well true, but I was thinking of something else" again without naming that something.

I could name a few and why I would recommand Factorio more:

• Dyson Sphere Programm: This one is acutally nice, but I do not see much replay value especially as there are no mods for it. Also building things there is annoying due to the planets being actually spheres. It's also too simple in comparison, no fluids, no circuits, no trains, no complex nuclear setups.

• Satisfactory: Stuck in perpetual early access, not having a true end goal/purpose to the entire operation.

• Techtonica: More story focused, also quite early in development.

• Factory Town: More of a settlers/anno clone with factory elements.

• Learning Factory: Small Factorio clone imho.

If I really loosly define the genre there are also:

• Hydroneer: More of a physics simulation.

• Space Engineers: Very shallow production chains, more focus on designing ships and combat.

• OpenTTD: If you just look at trains.

• Sweet Transit: An mix between OpenTTD and Anno.

But thats acutally all the comes to my mind, you can roast me on that if you so desire.

they really needed to step up their game with 2.0 and i have yet to see anything at all innovative with 2.0 other than re-skinned rolled-in mods done better because they are the OG devs and have access to the newer engine others dont have access to.

What would stepping up their game look like then? I mean they are, amoung other things, expanding on the three things that make Factorio really stand out in the genre: Cicruit Networks, Trains and QoL.

i very purposefully did not name alternatives to specifically avoid arguments about the positives and negatives about said alternatives (precisely what you did) i also specifically said factorio is my #1 regardless. how about you tell me what has been announced is innovative and not already done ad nauseum and not by mods already? Everything announced so far is just lazy. Yes, polished. yes great QoL stuff, but nothing that isnt already available mostly via mods. i have yet to be impressed. what would impress me? i dont know - if i did id make a mod or my own game. but factorio paved the ground for most of what followed both in mods and other games. if you are referred to as "factorio-like" you have made your mark. i want them to succeed and push themselves as devs instead of relying on rolling mods into the existing game and calling it a DLC or whatever. i cant answer what would impress me but so far, space exploration 2.0 + existing mods rolled into one isnt it. sorry to not hop on the bandwagon and actually be critical.

[GregoriusT]

I also do not trust random people on the internet, be them teacher in combinators or mod expert, i did my own meta-research, about researchs other people made with real lightning bolt. I thought maybe you were comparing two different quantity, one being the energy of the bolt, the other, the electricity harvested from experimental setup. And the difference could be order of magnitude difference maybe and then i found this articled titled this way :

There's Way More Energy in a Bolt of Lightning Than We Thought which is a rewrite of the original Catching lightning in a fossil – and calculating how much energy a strike contains one emphasises that the knowledge is new, the other on the method used to acquire the new estimations.

That seem to agree with the wiki page about harvesting lighting energy. Which quote an expert saying : "the energy in a thunderstorm is comparable to that of an atomic bomb, but trying to harvest the energy of lightning from the ground is hopeless"

Yep I was referring to just grabbing it with a glorified metal stick on the ground, not the bolt itself. Lightning as is, is only capable of partially burning a human, leaving a tube of glass in sand, ignite a tree fast enough to explode its contained water, or stun some fish in the sea.

Now if you were to try make a rod long enough to pierce into the clouds, a cloud scraper so to say, you will get a lot more power by mere merit of not losing it all to heating air into a plasma.

So what I just remembered is, this Planet is full of dust, Sandstorms can cause Lightning Strikes just like Clouds can, and those are far closer to the ground so it might actually make sense to harness Lightning from the Desert especially if it storms constantly. There might be hope for it to be realistic enough for adding it to the planet!

[forsaken75]

Oh come on, you're really going to make us wait another week to see what's going on?! Earendel, you TEASE!

That's the trick. They release some vague information, and have us speculate about the implications, and then they scoop up the good ideas and implement them.

all of 2.0 has just been a refined/simplified Space Exploration with the top 10 mods rolled in. Factorio is and always will be my #1 but to newcomers, there are many factorio alternatives and they really needed to step up their game with 2.0 and i have yet to see anything at all innovative with 2.0 other than re-skinned rolled-in mods done better because they are the OG devs and have access to the newer engine others dont have access to. Of course this is an unpopular opinion and i expect to get flamed, just tired of all the OMFG THIS IS AWESOME when it all already exists.

people like you will never be happy, you only focus on the most negative outcome and your cynicism prevents you from ever seeing anything positive.
why should the devs try to win the battle against people like you, when there is no way to please you in the first place?

i trust these devs to do a great job and to always give 100% effort and dedication in anything they do, i dont need anything else from them.
i dont need them to revolutionize the factory-genre or to come up with something that thousands of modders could not think of.
afterall, it is factually these devs that basically invented the modern factory-genre as it exists today. all of these "alternatives", as you call them, made their game with factorios foundations in mind.

so please go discrespect some random tiktoker who copy & pastes other peoples content, but dont you dare to insult dedicated "no-bullshit"- gamedevs like these, who create genuine OC games.
there are way too few of them nowadays, and most devs just want you to buy their hundreds of skins and lootboxes while mismanaging what their playerbase actually wants from the game.

are you absolutely sure about your assertion? i can promise you ive been on-board with factorio far longer than you, and i absolutely love the devs of this game. Guess what? Despite what you think, its actually ok to be critical of things and still love them. you have been taught that you either have to love or hate something. thats not the case. i love my wife but that doesn't mean she is god's chosen 100% perfect angel on earth. its okay to have criticism. its okay to not be impressed with something. its okay to say so. Is this forum an echo chamber where you only want to hear how great something is? How positive are you that i am only looking for the negative? because i have a critique? i have thousands of hours in the game. i mean i literally got a pulmonary embolism from a thrombus i got playing the game. it almost killed me. i love this game more than you will ever know so back off.

[Svip]

There is still at least 20 weeks left till a potential August release, plenty of Fridays left to release information. It's too soon to make a judgement call on the entirety of 2.0/Space Age. And given the FFFs so far, it feels like they are leaving the best for last.

[AileTheAlien]

Can we research any of the tech from the ancient aliens? Is it for super-lategame stuff?

[Marvin01]

Knowing that one of them is the foundry fom Vulcanus, this will probably be related to the blue enegy thing from https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-372

[Svip]

Knowing that one of them is the foundry fom Vulcanus, this will probably be related to the blue enegy thing from https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-372

Probably means a building where you can craft certain items only through harnessing the power of the lightning on the planet.

The last building and the image from #373 tells me it's a toxic jungle world, and the green building is a deep pump of sorts, that permits a kind of liquid not available elsewhere.

[porcupine]

Absolutely love the ruins. I remember there used to be a Factorio mod that added strewn ruins to discover, but IIRC it wasn't kept updated/compatible?

Does anyone else get Kenshi vibes from the structures? The rounded-ness, the desolate sand, the audio track?

Absolutely one of my favourite games for the "feels" of wandering that just suck you in, so this is very much in the right direction IMHO.

[autogyro]

Loved this presentation style. So much revealed but so little explained and so much to explore!! I'm looking forward to this so much, now.

[Xuerian]

Loving the presentation of this FFF. The atmosphere is great for Fulgora, and really interested to see how lore might play into the future of the game!

[Leviticus_24]

Anyone notice the Ore-like debris within the ruins of the city? Maybe a new way to mine alien tech or scrap?

[SkerrittT]

I really enjoyed the descriptive text. Some of it reminded me of the teletype adventure games. Take a look at Colossal Cave Adventure on Wikipedia for example. I worked for a Computer Bureau in the early 1980's (before companies had their own computers... providing payroll and inventory control systems) and we had it on our Honeywell Mainframes. I could access it using an acoustic coupler from home ! Memories.
The new Factorio update is really looking great. Thank your for sharing on Friday Facts. I have over 5000 hours in Factorio according to Steam. I am certainly looking forward to the new version.

[FuryoftheStars]

Oh, this is awesome! So much potential and so much to say... it's overwhelming! Lightning, potential sand storms that might make it hard to see? (Please?) And something to actually explore and find other than more ore and biters! And the potential for really new and cool things with these discoveries. (And from some of the comments, oh jeeze, yeah, the idea of being able to have tailing ponds or other open storage like that for liquids, etc? Lightning rods? Wind turbines (although they might not work well here...)? Yes, please!!)

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how about you tell me what has been announced is innovative and not already done ad nauseum and not by mods already? Everything announced so far is just lazy. Yes, polished. yes great QoL stuff, but nothing that isnt already available mostly via mods.

I have no interest in getting into a long drawn out debate, especially seems it'd cause the Mods to get mad at us ( ), but I did want to point out a couple things.

First, the whole idea of space was actually already on the drawing board before the Space Exploration mod was even started. In fact, I'm fairly sure it was the devs mentioning it in a very early FFF that inspired Earendel to even make the SE mod. As such, I absolutely disagree with the notion of abandoning a planned development path simply because someone else modded it in first.

Second, and last thing I really want to say on this, is you kind of hit the paradoxical nail on the head with your own comment: with so many mods (or other games) out there doing so many things, it becomes harder to find something that hasn't already been done and remain interesting and innovative without deviating from the intended play style/lore. So, again, just because someone else has already done it, doesn't mean they shouldn't. If it's not interesting to you for some reason, then so be it. But it's not necessary to post a on them about it. (Edit: I realize you're not going full turd on them here. But you are at least a little, for reasons I happen to disagree with.)

[hojava]

It looks awesome, I was quite surprised by remnants of an ancient civilisation, but in a very good way. And the lightning is beautiful.

I'm really surprised by limited speculations here, so I'll try to jump start it.
Lightning was expected, sort of including its use for power generation. The blue apparatus from the teaser image will almost certainly used here for some new crafting.
As for other resources, I can see the scattered white ore, reminiscent of calcite, but I think that is supposed to only be on Vulcanus, so probably something new. Maybe some hydrated mineral like gypsum, from which we can produce water?
The oil might contain not just crude oil, but some processed oil products or even lubricant. It may require a new way of mining, but if it already is a mix, maybe we might be able to spill some of our liquid side products back.
Then there are the remnants that could contain just about anything. Perhaps even some alien artefacts, that would be very funny
But to me, the most intriguing is the last, colourful mixed non-ore patch. Since it's in the city, could it be remains of technological civilisation? Based on colours, it looks like we might be mining red and blue chips and possibly some metals and plastic. That would definitely count as a shortcut for production of everything needed that was deemed necessary.

If you remember last FFF about factorio-pedia, there were connections from Vulkanus to two different plannets. First one was Nauvis, but seconds... The second does not look like Fulgora!

Or you could go back to #373 when this graphic was posted:


Clearly the graphics for planets have changed since then.

Well, yes, those were just planets of our solar system, just with colours changed for Earth. So yes:

Vulcanus is Venus, Fulgora is Mars.

Or at least they were

If you remember last FFF about factorio-pedia, there were connections from Vulkanus to two different plannets. First one was Nauvis, but seconds... The second does not look like Fulgora!

So we have to expect 4th planet blogpost some time soon (I hope )

Yes, based on previously shown graphics, that is indeed the third planet reachable directly from Nauvis,

Bacchus, the probably jungle world

.
I didn't realise before that this world is one of the three, although it kind of makes sense due to its position in the star system. Now I'm REALLY looking forward to the last planet,

Aquilo, the probably ice world

. What did the devs come up with that it's so awesome to be a grand finale on a planet like this in the distant reaches of the system?

[sex-having]

i thought "no way, are they adding electricity to factorio???" then realized how dumb i am

[QGamer]

This FFF was amazing, the new planet looks exciting, & you've done a great job setting a dreary mood for the planet.

Questions about the alien architecture--is it possible for the character to harvest the tiles of ruined alien pavement (similarly to how you can pick up stone bricks/concrete to place elsewhere)?
Is it possible to reverse-engineer the alien technology & repair their damaged machines or modify them to suit our needs, rather than just deconstructing them for materials?

Also, hearing about lightning is super cool. I'm 100% on board with having new environmental hazards on each planet that force you to adapt in different ways.

But will there also be a need to handle the sand/dust in the air? Like having to keep machines covered or cleaned regularly so the sand doesn't clog them up? Or maybe having to be careful to discharge static electricity so flammable things don't catch fire?

[wizcreations]

I wish I would not have read this Friday Factorio Fact. It would have been much more fun to discover the planet while playing the game than to spoil the surprise!

But this looks really cool.

[Roxor128]

Possible lightning for power?

Only other game I've seen that does that is Planetbase, so that would be a welcome addition.

For those who haven't played Planetbase, it's a colony sim with four planet types to colonise: desert, ice, moon, and storm. The fourth one is where you get lightning rods to protect your colony against lightning strikes. The small rods add 3000 energy to storage when they get hit and the large ones add 5000. The rest of your power generation comes from solar and wind, but both are quite unreliable on the storm planet.