Friday Facts #405 - Whole belt reader, New logistics GUI

[J_nas]

could you put in a second rocket on your website too?

[Qon]

Lastly... can we not rename the logistic networks? I thought I recalled that you were going to offer that, but on seeing some of the latest posts from others here, it sounds like that *didn't* get added? Seeing a long list of "LOGISTICS NETWORK #X" is boring. Seeing "Smelter Array Train Loading" network is *chef's kiss*.

One additional suggestion for the (very nice) Logistics GUI is to allow the user to create meaningful alias names for "Network #55" and so forth. "Iron Smelters Unloading", "Production Mall", whatever.

I see a little pencil icon next to the network names, I assume that allows for renaming.

One additional suggestion for the (very nice) Logistics GUI is to allow the user to create meaningful alias names for "Network #55" and so forth. "Iron Smelters Unloading", "Production Mall", whatever.

Pro tip: read the FFF [Moderated by Koub : language].

[Qon]

That is different point of view.
I do not want reach a point, when my goal is shoot rockets like mini-gun. It is just wrong.
I want to keep the precious moment of release as a magic moment.
Therfore give me an endless space research for gigantic size of cargo space ship.

No, you are wrong.
You don't understand what the game and the expansion is about. Start over from the beginning. Your goals are the opposite of the developers.
You are also very needy and demanding.

[Ecconia]

Spot the mistake! Oh it is highlighted :P

Screenshot_2024-04-05_1838.png (1.26 MiB) Viewed 2294 times

From this image I imply, that inserters still do not stop inserting satellites, when the output of the rocket silo is full. And white science still gets deleted, if not extracted from the silo quick enough.
This might be common for many veteran players and probably some find arguments in favor of this. But this is against how every other machine works and it is very beginner unfriendly as it behaves unintuitively and inconsistent to the rest of the game. Why would this mechanic destroy hard-earned science (from a beginners pov).

As this is likely a breaking change for many veteran players. Now is the perfect time to make such a change, as the major version of the game increases.

If you still find reasons in favor of this objectively Wube-untypical quality mistake, find a better solution for it and make things right. While you are at it, add logic circuits to the silo, so that count of science pack can be read from it, or better a rocket start even controlled via logic.

[Nidan]

As far as I understand, correct if it is not so, all logistics networks are polled in turn.
For example, there are now 25 networks on my map: 1 is large in the main production, several in small-scale industries, and the rest of the networks are on the perimeter of defense and on resource extraction. The bottom line is that when I want to build something in any of the networks, the time between the installation of the blueprints and the start of drone construction can reach up to a minute, with UPS = 60.

Is there any way to display the approximate reaction time of drones to basic actions (construction, demolition) in the GUI?

It depends on the number of ghosts you have on the map, the number of logistics networks doesn't matter. If it takes a minute for the drones to get going, you have (at least) 3600 ghosts on the map.

[Pthigrivi]

A couple items in the logistics menu I don’t recognize: 9.6k of an orange pipe looking thing and vests without helmets shown in iteration 3. Do we know about these already?

The pipe-looking things are flamethrower fuel, but the vest is a good catch! Could be a new icon for modular armor maybe, or perhaps a new intermediate armor between modular and heavy.

Ahh flamethrowers that makes sense I never use them.

[Brathahn]

Can you think of any other improvements we can make to it?

Please add the ability to read missing material for construction from roboports via the circuit network

[Kadet123]

From the FFF.. "And of course, if we have the fluid filter, it makes sense to also make it part of the circuit network control. We are sure there will be some ingenious designs that will utilise the new power... Sushi pipes anyone?"

Does this mean that the game will no longer prevent different fluid pipes from connecting together? It would seem if you actually did want to make sushi pipes easily possible, then you'd have to relax those game rules. I'm not sure I like that.

[Qon]

The map/remote view not going to the very edge of the screen is very sad to me. Please revert that. The gray border is just wasting screen space and it doesn't look good. Having a nice zoomed out overview of your base without GUI clutter is one of the best parts about Factorio, once automation is achieved. I currently have to use a mod to get rid of bottom GUI toolbar though.

So please reconsider.

[mmmPI]

Waow ! The next level sushi belt look so much cleaner ! It was indeed difficult to see which belt was or wasn't connected with wire, looking messy, error prone and hard to debug, all of this solved is pleasant news The yellow 'railings' look great i find and i will be using it for sure ! It is so subtle it goes almost unoticed in the picture of the silo that most belts are being monitored by circuits. The attention being always attracted to the rockets helps distracting

Maybe it could be made more visible, with some sort of individual boxes per belts connected, do you ever make iteration that goes in cycle and never know when to stop ? ahh i can't see which belts are connected let's make it more visible, ahhh now i can't see item on connected belts let's make it less visible. That's all i can think of when ask for "improvements".

"Sushi pipes" sound like a great name for a factorio horror movie if there was such thing. And the pump would be seen luring the innocent engineer at the beginning of the movie.

The logistic network GUI rework is impressive.To me it shows you want a pleasant thing for player to use and test it a lot, not in the wording saying there is "this" feature and at leaving it at that

I don't know if there is a rule or something against this but the research icon maybe could be duplicated when in the map view, there is one on the top right only and it's not quite clear if we are going to research a tag, a logistic network, an item a train station when clicking on it. I think it is the way to avoid icons changing too fast for readability, but it is on the other side of the screen whereas in the first iteration it was just next to the drop down list of names, making it more obvious what the search was about. The "pen" icon to indicate ability to rename networks works really well to me, a similar "search" icon next to the list of names would be more obvious to me, in order to search for either a network in the long list of networks, or search an item in the long list of items (that can change fast) inside a network.

I think having it glued in the map view is great, seeing robots flying at the same time as watching the networks quantities allows for most of what i could think of needs to remote control.

[Justderpingalong]

With this new logistic network UI, could we get something similar for circuit network UI's? Anyone who plays SE will know the pain of trying to read all the signals from your first rockets that're sending stuff into nauvis orbit. Being able to see those in a UI would be glorious.

[warlordship]

Lastly... can we not rename the logistic networks? I thought I recalled that you were going to offer that, but on seeing some of the latest posts from others here, it sounds like that *didn't* get added? Seeing a long list of "LOGISTICS NETWORK #X" is boring. Seeing "Smelter Array Train Loading" network is *chef's kiss*.

Pro tip: read the FFF [Moderated by Koub : language].

[Moderated by Koub : response to a now moderated comment]

[Agamemnon]

Can you think of any other improvements we can make to it?

Yes. Please make the list of items available in both descending and ascending order. (it is also still too big and looking for something specific in a sea of icons is no bueno)
While you implement that - Please also find a better solution to list resorting, because it's making it hard to eyetrack item icons whose count wildly fluctuate around zero.
Please show robot counts and robots busy
Please show open item requests of that cell with the functionality of iterating through all objects with that item requested for the purpose of altering or deleting that specific request in all targets in bulk.
Please highlight the storage locations of an item when mousing over it.

But good stuff so far. I approve.

[Philip017]

it would be nice to be able to name the logistics network.

perhaps we can add some additional details like show what planet/ship/surface that network is a member of.

[_Shin_]

But the biggest problem is still identifying the networks. My conclusion was that basically the only way to identify a network is by looking at it.

Why can't we just name them like a train stop?

[MEOWMI]

Part of me wonders if the logistic network browser won't be in the way sometimes, if it's forced to be visible on the remote view screen. Or perhaps you already did add a way to hide it.

I like what you did with the belt graphics for the whole belt reader, as well as the change to the rocket silo animation. Such great details.

[JohnyDarecek]

What about also possibility to set different icon for each network, not just renaming them? And some filtering/sorting/searching of networks?

// new whole belt reader is awsome!

[corsairmarks]

Being able to rename networks is very helpful. It's interesting to me that it was tacked on at the end, almost as an afterthought. In any case, I'm looking forward to "South Wall Defense" and "Production Hub" networks to help me review network contents more quickly.

[Koub]

On the contrary of some others, I really love the concept of being able to skip part of the animation of the rocket silo, and launch rockets in shorter succession. I think the new balance is spot on : it's still not a machine gun, but one doens't die of old age waiting for the animation to finish before the next rocket can take off.

[Twisted_Code]

A new input mode for circuit network is pretty sweet (more data for the automation god), and the new GUI cleaned up beautifully. I'm glad you thought to make the map interaction work, that was the one thing I was going to suggest if you hadn't.
Other than what you already caught, I can't think of any way to improve from what I'm seeing here, and I can't wait to be able to play with all this good stuff in the release!