Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

[Saphira123456]

Spoilage without refrigeration? Curious. Haven't the devs heard of salt, or one of the countless chemical preservatives/anti oxidants/inert gases/raw radiation that serve to stifle bacteria and organic decay?

That would mean spoilage is just a problem with a straight forward solution, having item travel time as a new logistic challenge to optimize sounds way more fun.

Maybe? It seems like a system that won't play well with trains...

I could imagine the exact opposite: A factory that produces exactly enough for one single wagon train in a burst and then halts production until the next train arrives. Bots will still be faster for short distances, but for any span bots can't do without recharge trains will be very attractive.

I'm afraid I must agree with the people who dislike spoilage-without-refrigeration as it is a significant way to remove fun from the game. Even IRL the refrigerated railcar is essential to getting perishable goods from production site to market without it spoiling enroute, as before they were invented long-distance transport of perishable goods was impossible.

And having an entire factory that cuts off when there's not a train in the depot sounds like a complete waste of power production, time and energy on the players' part.

I like building self-contained outposts and mini-factories and outposts with their own power and such as much as the next person, but that's only because my factories all but depend on the ability to stockpile resources such as science packs, resources which already don't get produced in a reasonable amount of time in 1.1 unless you have massive factories behind them.

In other threads on this forum, I have complained about the speed of blue and green science pack production taking over 24 hours to make even half a box of science packs. Now, while this has been relieved somewhat thanks to tutoring I've received in my DMs, I still haven't gotten the hang of being able to get blue science in a reasonable amount of time.

Furthermore, prior to this point I've only barely ever used the circuit network, and I've never used robots, preferring to place down everything manually since no one outpost placement situation is identical to another. I still don't use any of the circuit network blocks, such as the combinators and probably won't in the upcoming expansion as I feel they are still far too complicated to dig into. (I don't handcraft anything in my inventory if I don't need to, so don't start with me there.) This is just more forcing me and others to use things we would much prefer not to utilize as they are a gigantic pain in the ass to get into.


Item travel time should not be a logistical challenge, because it isn't and will never be a logistical challenge. It's a logistical nightmare and source of nothing but frustration and agony.

You might as well have added this code to your game:
Fun level = reset to zero, proceed into negative numbers on an exponential scale
Frustration level = set to 100%, proceed into massive positive numbers on an exponential scale
Ragequit probability: Set to 100%

This FFF is bound to be a source of decisions for many people who either don't buy the expansion at all or turn off Space Exploration and stick with the new stuff that is actually fun. The first mod much of your more casual player base will be vying to create and download, is a mod that completely removes spoilage or adds refrigeration because an extreme minority of people will find your current setup fun, like around 0.000001% to 0.000002% of the population of people who play this game.

Spoilage smells of forcing the casual players out and the dedicated, hard-core players in, pandering to an extremely small portion of your playerbase. Way to remove the ability to bring in any fresh blood, too.

The best thing to do is to trash the entire spoilage mechanic or set it up in such a way that it can be switched off, much like biters and pollution in the base game.

With spoilage involved in gameplay, fun will go bad faster than unrefrigerated hummus left to rot in the hot sun, and the game will begin to stink more putridly than rotten fish left out on a hot summer's day.

[SirSmuggler]

This FFF is bound to be a source of decisions for many people who either don't buy the expansion at all or turn off Space Exploration and stick with the new stuff that is actually fun. The first mod much of your more casual player base will be vying to create and download, is a mod that completely removes spoilage or adds refrigeration because an extreme minority of people will find your current setup fun, like around 0.000001% to 0.000002% of the population of people who play this game.

While it is very clear that you are not amused by this spoilage mecahnic, please do tell where you found that statistics of the fraction of player who does look forward to it. I know forum activity is not a very reliable mirror of reality, but it should at least give a hint, and so far I see more posts in favor of this new idea the against. So the figure "0.000002%" of the players seems to be way of to say the least.

[SirSmuggler]

I absolutley love the look of Gleba.

The spoilage mechanic seems very interesting to me. I imagine the whol process will be kind of self regulating actualy.

Produce slightly "to much" Gleba science compared to the other packs.
What is back up on belts and in buffers.
As the backlogg grows, the science packs get more spolied and so are consumed faster in the labs.
As the cosumption rate grows, the buffers shrink and so the spoliage level goes down too and the consuption lowers again... Reminds me of the "fuzzy logic" class I took at university many many... many years ago.

[Saphira123456]

This FFF is bound to be a source of decisions for many people who either don't buy the expansion at all or turn off Space Exploration and stick with the new stuff that is actually fun. The first mod much of your more casual player base will be vying to create and download, is a mod that completely removes spoilage or adds refrigeration because an extreme minority of people will find your current setup fun, like around 0.000001% to 0.000002% of the population of people who play this game.

While it is very clear that you are not amused by this spoilage mecahnic, please do tell where you found that statistics of the fraction of player who does look forward to it. I know forum activity is not a very reliable mirror of reality, but it should at least give a hint, and so far I see more posts in favor of this new idea the against. So the figure "0.000002%" of the players seems to be way of to say the least.

As a casual player who doesn't find much interest in off-screen, out-of-game math, and knowing that (as you stated) social media activity (whether forum, Steam, Discord, Facebook/X/Instagram etcetera) is not a very reliable mirror of reality, this is my best estimate of the number of players who will enjoy this new fun-removal mechanism.

Regardless of whether my statement is totally accurate or not, the fact remains: With spoilage involved in gameplay, and no way to counter it, fun will go bad faster than unrefrigerated hummus left to rot in the sun, and the game will begin to stink more putridly than rotten fish left out on a hot summer's day.

[mmmPI]

As a casual player who doesn't find much interest in off-screen, out-of-game math,

We can see that easily lol, because you said "0.000001% to 0.000002% of the population of people who play this game." That is 1 over a million, so that would mean only 3 or 4 people for Factorio like the new mechanic according to your best estimate x).

That is really not a good estimate

[Saphira123456]

As a casual player who doesn't find much interest in off-screen, out-of-game math,

We can see that easily lol, because you said "0.000001% to 0.000002% of the population of people who play this game." That is 1 over a million, so that would mean only 3 or 4 people for Factorio like the new mechanic according to your best estimate x).

That is really not a good estimate

I did fudge the numbers a bit to increase chances of getting my point across to the developers. However, there's other factors that may significantly reduce the fudge factor in the end, such as people who think they like it right now but will end up hating it in the final release.

[mmmPI]

I did fudge the numbers a bit to increase chances of getting my point across. However, there's other factors that may significantly reduce the fudge factor in the end, such as people who think they like it right now but will end up hating it in the final release.

I thought it was some trolling like when you posted your factory with only 1 of every single building and said you beat a space exploration game with that x).

[Saphira123456]

I did fudge the numbers a bit to increase chances of getting my point across. However, there's other factors that may significantly reduce the fudge factor in the end, such as people who think they like it right now but will end up hating it in the final release.

I thought it was some trolling like when you posted your factory with only 1 of every single building and said you beat a space exploration game with that x).

For one, I never troll. That was real, and I was being honest. It took years of work and multiple attempts to beat the game like that. Don't denigrate my effort, it's extremely rude.

For two, that was only a portion of my factory. Not the whole thing.

[gnutrino]

The spoilable science packs actually make me wonder whether building labs is going to only be possible on Nauvis in the expansion - otherwise it doesn't seem like it would be viable to build them anywhere other than Gleba to minimize spoilage. It would also give your Nauvis base a reason to still exist once you unlock the other planets - from what we've seen so far it seems like everything you can build on Nauvis can be built on the other planets so Nauvis will be the only planet without a unique exportable so it needs some reason to be used in the mid to late game.

For the "spoilage will make the game literally unplayable and also killed my family" people I'd suggest relaxing a little, given that we already have the option to turn off major features like biters and pollution I've no doubt they'll also add the option to completely disable spoilage so you can be as unchallenged as you like by it while the rest of us are off having fun.

I mean more in terms of permanent benefits. What I consider a permanent benefit is for example, Vulcanus' infinite supply of stone, iron ore and copper ore. The utility of that is that if you were to run out of iron, copper, or stone on Nauvis, and somehow couldn't get to a nearby patch right now, you could use Vulcanus as a permanent supply of the stuff.
Same for Fulgora having an infinite source of oil. Oil is already technically infinite in Factorio, but not at a steady rate. While I presume Fulgora's supply wont be "as good" as the supply on Nauvis (as in, transport logistics from planet to planet is gonna be painful), but you could theorically use it to supply Nauvis.

And you could also supply to other planets. Imagine Gleba has no iron, copper, and stone deposits. I don't think they'd do that because I'm fairly certain they intend for you to not get softlocked should something bad happen on a planet and you probably can't transport ressources until you reach rockets again, but imagine they did something like that. But already Vulcanus to Fulgora basic ressource transportation is a good idea given Fulgora works by recyling trash. Having a space platform do trips from Vulcanus to Fulgora with infinite resources would eventually solve most of Fulgora's problems so you can keep farming the rest of the stuff in peace.

Anyway, my point remains, aside from expanding your resources, I do wonder if Gleba will bring something else than just the bioflux and carbon fiber (Which are going to be this planet's main export, just like Vulcanus gets Tungsten, and Fulgora gets Holmium) in the same sense that the other two planets get a bonus addition of a resource being farmable to infinity.

Actually given that they mention that the agriculture stuff will be used to replace oil processing I wonder whether Gleba will end up being the best place to scale oil products (plastic in particular) rather than Fulgora due to the limited processing space on Fulgora's islands and the fact that we don't actually know how extraction and processing will work on Fulgora (I'd bet it's not going to be as simple as an offshore pump giving you pure crude). I'd expect Fulgora to actually be mostly exporting red and blue circuits (or their downstream products) as the ability to get them in one step from something you dig up seems pretty powerful...

I wonder if the first step should be so uniform. If a tree is sits there with big juicy fruit, it's eventually going to rot, right? Instead of getting fresh perfect fruit off the vine every time, start with a mix of over ripe, under ripe, and nearly decayed fruit. The trees have been sitting there for a while, so rot management becomes part of the factory design from the very start. As players build bigger and faster they get rewarded, by cycling through their tree farms faster. Fresh trees end up with healthier and higher quality fruit, but the factory was already hardened against the worst.

The more I think about it, the more I keep coming back to this. If spoilage is fully deterministic from start to finish then the optimal design will just have no spoilage (and therefore no need to deal with spoilage) unless/until something goes wrong. I think I'd actually prefer there to always be a possibility of an item fully spoiling before it gets through the processing chain so that the player is "taught" to deal with spoilage while things are actually working rather than leaving and coming back to a deadlocked planet with spoilage everywhere once something backs up.

[mmmPI]

[Moderated by Koub: No starting fights, personal attacks, or adding fuel to the fire please]

[GregoriusT]

I did fudge the numbers a bit to increase chances of getting my point across. However, there's other factors that may significantly reduce the fudge factor in the end, such as people who think they like it right now but will end up hating it in the final release.

I thought it was some trolling like when you posted your factory with only 1 of every single building and said you beat a space exploration game with that x).

Space Exploration is a bad benchmark for this because the majority of its Machines most people only build one of anyways. Only the Ore Processing people build quite a bit of.

[MeduSalem]

Well, I am on the fence.

Too early to say anything concrete about it really. We have no numbers, we know nothing about the recipes and items, nothing about what science will need it.

That said, it will be interesting to know whether the "farming" stuff can be recreated on other planets and how much might have to be shipped around with space platforms, if anything at all.

At least I would not like it if the meta became "ship everything non-spoilable to Gleba because shipping spoilable items sucks". Kinda would take out most of choice which planets to focus on later. ^^

[FuryoftheStars]

As a casual player who doesn't find much interest in off-screen, out-of-game math,

Same, yet I don't really have an issue with it as is. A part of me would like a fridge mechanic, sure, but I don't think I'm not going to enjoy it without.

As such, I find your numbers a wee bit more than a little biased.

[mmmPI]

The more I think about it, the more I keep coming back to this. If spoilage is fully deterministic from start to finish then the optimal design will just have no spoilage (and therefore no need to deal with spoilage) unless/until something goes wrong. I think I'd actually prefer there to always be a possibility of an item fully spoiling before it gets through the processing chain so that the player is "taught" to deal with spoilage while things are actually working rather than leaving and coming back to a deadlocked planet with spoilage everywhere once something backs up.

RNG + spoilage ! yes !!!! i can already imagine a mod like this, with a range of time for the spoilage instead of a single value.

It would get both complains from people complaining because of RNG and spoilage, minus the people who complained against both, but it sound fun.

There may be a way to "learn" or "get taught" as you say to deal with spoilage while things are actually working, you got me thinking if you can't achieve a perfect ratio to achieve 0 spoilage, maybe you need 99.5 fruit, will produce 100 and sometimes some WILL spoil ,on purpose a tiny bit, in a controlled fashion. The picture where the waste is transformed into nutrient seem to indicate that there may bea use for "waste" in the regular order of operation. Maybe it gets "better" with more tech in the game.

I think the RNG + spoilage combined would mean 1) produce only on demand and 2) filter out "bad product" ( rotten things) but also 3) adjust (1) based on 2). Because all the randomly spoiled product would be missing in the count. Or produce extra in 1) to make up for the % of items that will spoil despite an "optimal" system.

[GregoriusT]

I just realized a random thing, if Gleba is similar to Nauvis when it comes to acquiring Iron and Copper, then building your Factory for all the Science Packs THERE would make sense.

HOWEVER there MIGHT be downsides like

- The Farm having requirements of low Pollution.
- Pollution Mobs being far more dangerous to you than Biters on Nauvis.
- Initial spoilage of freshly harvested Fruits depending on local Pollution.

Either of these factors could strongly influence the way you see your Farming Planet, dissuading you from actually building anything there that you dont absolutely need.

(I will still try to go there first of the initial Planets and build an actual Base there though, what is the worst that could possibly happen! XD )

[Saphira123456]

I did fudge the numbers a bit to increase chances of getting my point across. However, there's other factors that may significantly reduce the fudge factor in the end, such as people who think they like it right now but will end up hating it in the final release.

I thought it was some trolling like when you posted your factory with only 1 of every single building and said you beat a space exploration game with that x).

Space Exploration is a bad benchmark for this because the majority of its Machines most people only build one of anyways. Only the Ore Processing people build quite a bit of.

Thanks for the backup, sir.

And thanks AGAIN for the help in DMs! I keep coming back to your aid whenever I need help in Factorio.

"This guy knows what he's talking about."

[Saphira123456]

As a casual player who doesn't find much interest in off-screen, out-of-game math,

Same, yet I don't really have an issue with it as is. A part of me would like a fridge mechanic, sure, but I don't think I'm not going to enjoy it without.

As such, I find your numbers a wee bit more than a little biased.

Biased, yes - but a lot of that bias is coming from in-game experience of how long certain things take to make in 1.1, like science packs.

Green and especially blue science takes a god-awful amount of time to produce, especially at a small scale. And modules don't help much.

[FuryoftheStars]

As a casual player who doesn't find much interest in off-screen, out-of-game math,

Same, yet I don't really have an issue with it as is. A part of me would like a fridge mechanic, sure, but I don't think I'm not going to enjoy it without.

As such, I find your numbers a wee bit more than a little biased.

Biased, yes - but a lot of that bias is coming from in-game experience of how long certain things take to make in 1.1, like science packs.

Green and especially blue science takes a god-awful amount of time to produce, especially at a small scale. And modules don't help much.

What does that have anything to do with the percentage of people that won't like the mechanic?

[Lizzy]

Green and especially blue science takes a god-awful amount of time to produce, especially at a small scale. And modules don't help much.

Then increase the scale. That's the core challenge of this game

Also judging by the screenshots (fix:) purple and yellow science (as we know them today) are gone.

Also excuse me, green science is really easy even at small scales? You can get 40 SPM with 13 first level assemblers working from iron and copper plates?

[mmmPI]

I did fudge the numbers a bit to increase chances of getting my point across. However, there's other factors that may significantly reduce the fudge factor in the end, such as people who think they like it right now but will end up hating it in the final release.

I thought it was some trolling like when you posted your factory with only 1 of every single building and said you beat a space exploration game with that x).

Space Exploration is a bad benchmark for this because the majority of its Machines most people only build one of anyways. Only the Ore Processing people build quite a bit of.

Thanks for the backup, sir.

And thanks AGAIN for the help in DMs! I keep coming back to your aid whenever I need help in Factorio.

"This guy knows what he's talking about."

You're welcome, always happy to help you improve your gameplay, sorry if my previous answer was moderated, it was not saying anything more really that what you quoted again here.