Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

[Tricorius]

I think the reason grenades are so hard to make on Gleba is because there is no Coal there, at least I did not see Coal Ore to be confirmed at that Planet, and it makes sense for it to not exist there, because then people are more forced to use the local plants for making plastic.

You could still have a space platform deliver some grenades to you from Nauvis, or robotport and robots and solar pannels, in a nice ballet, dropping their load in the spaceport mere seconds after your personnal transport spaceplatform has arrived, maybe even send a spidertron first ? not sure when this will be unlocked, does it need agricultural science pack ?

Or do several trip back and forth to fetch them ...

Similar to how you could set up outpost in vanilla, but using a different system where platforms have limited quantity of storage.

Arent there coal asteroids ? maybe it is possible to have a grenade making platform to make up for the absence of coal on Gleba, you'd be dealing with plants for oil, and getting coal from space ?

Yup! I plan on setting up a “transport/builder” system with space platforms just like I have a “transport/builder” train. I usually keep them around even when I have Spidertrons because it’s just super useful. BUT, man. You now gave me a thought of having a Spidertron wagon in a builder train.

Imagine getting an almost immediately delivery of Spidertrons and combat / building loadouts dropped into your new base on a new planet. Regardless, you can still have a builder set of space platforms that bring you the player and a bunch of normal inventory you need to build. Like how I often ride my builder train out to a new outpost location then jut send it back and forth as needed.

[mmmPI]

Spidertron wagon in a builder train.

I imagine there could be the same asteroid-grabbing arms than on the spaceplatform but inside of a wagon, that would extend to pick up trees , rocks, and place rails or building in a radius around the train x).

I usually keep them around even when I have Spidertrons because it’s just super useful

Me too x) but the spidertrons may become (even) more useful, i think, as they will be able to path around lake, if i recall correctly from a previous FFF. And all those improvements abouts robots will also indirectly benefit the spidertons. That was my main complain about spidertron, but the RTS tool should adress it.

I think it's super satisfying to have such delivery system in a base, and hopefully it will be a satisfaction that players are taught to make thanks to the challenges from the new planets, even if it's not something they would have done in Nauvis, as a way to deepen the gameplay

[Tricorius]

Spidertron wagon in a builder train.

I imagine there could be the same asteroid-grabbing arms than on the spaceplatform but inside of a wagon, that would extend to pick up trees , rocks, and place rails or building in a radius around the train x).

I usually keep them around even when I have Spidertrons because it’s just super useful

Me too x) but the spidertrons may become (even) more useful, i think, as they will be able to path around lake, if i recall correctly from a previous FFF. And all those improvements abouts robots will also indirectly benefit the spidertons. That was my main complain about spidertron, but the RTS tool should adress it.

I think it's super satisfying to have such delivery system in a base, and hopefully it will be a satisfaction that players are taught to make thanks to the challenges from the new planets, even if it's not something they would have done in Nauvis, as a way to deepen the gameplay

Oh, I meant just a wagon in my builder train that is setup to deliver Spidertrons to outposts (and therefor a space platforms). Haha, but all the functions of a Spidertron in a train would be cool. I’d prefer a Spidertron locomotive though.

Spidies would be the ultimate “clear the landing zone” option though. Even if I didn’t build with them, having a steady supply in a landing party along with rockets would be wonderful. AND they are great for clearing and landfilling. I’m hoping we can make a blueprint of the Gleba soil like we can regular landfill.

[GregoriusT]

Oh, I meant just a wagon in my builder train that is setup to deliver Spidertrons to outposts (and therefor a space platforms). Haha, but all the functions of a Spidertron in a train would be cool. I’d prefer a Spidertron locomotive though.

Just so you know, a Spidertron with enough Exolegs can be set to follow a Locomotive, Wagon, Car, Tank or Player in vanilla right now, and it will keep up with the Locomotives speed just fine.

[Saphira123456]

This means everything on Gleba suffers from the same "overpopulation of trees" problem, ores, oil and fruit all suffer from it. Finding or making space to build anything without a fast way to clear-cut or slash-and-burn an entire section of forest, is a huge problem.

What are you basing this “trees all over Gleba” assumption on? They showed us a preview in the previous FFF. It looks pretty sparse to me:

IMG_3377.png

IMG_3376.png

I don’t feel like setting up a few small and large outposts is going to be terrible here. And you’ll probably want some rails to bring ores and such over anyway.

Bring a few stacks of ammo, or make them on planet. And blaze down a few copses of trees. Might need some wood anyway. Chop a couple.

It just doesn’t feel that hard to me.

I was basing it on this FFF's visual previews which showed a much higher tree density.

[mmmPI]

Oh, I meant just a wagon in my builder train that is setup to deliver Spidertrons to outposts (and therefor a space platforms). Haha, but all the functions of a Spidertron in a train would be cool. I’d prefer a Spidertron locomotive though.

The problem i see with this is that it won't be a "live" spidertron as the player action would still be required to turn the "item-spidertron" into the walking spider.

You could have the walking spider go on a wagon like with this mod https://mods.factorio.com/mod/VehicleWagon2 or have the AAI suite to deploy the spidertron automatically upon arrival ... but there may be also a space age feature for something similar who knows ^^

I used the mod FARL some time ago ,and thought it could be similar to it but with visual arm justifying the construction radius, that could work on the locomotive too, instead of the wagon .

Just so you know, a Spidertron with enough Exolegs can be set to follow a Locomotive, Wagon, Car, Tank or Player in vanilla right now, and it will keep up with the Locomotives speed just fine.

I have attempted such things some thing ago : viewtopic.php?t=100577

Spidertron's max speed seem to not exceed 100 km/h with vanilla exoskeletons and grid size, which is slower than trains in most cases, unless you purposedly slow it down or stop it regularly.

It works much better with aircrafts when they are spidertron in disguise, they can be faster, like the aircraft mod, i used some to act as extra inventory space when i task a few to follow me around

[Gemma]

You probably don't need me to tell you this, but gardening (in real life) involves a lot of intentionally getting things to "spoil" (compost) because it greatly enhances the fertility/viability/nutrition of plant life. Of course, this is Factorio, not real life, but I think it makes sense to take inspiration from that and have spoilage interact in some similar way, at least under certain conditions, rather than just creating inferior products.

I'm not 100% on this but I think the "pile of white powder" item is a fertilizer made from organic sources, and converting Spoilage into that stuff is one of the Spoilage disposal loops mentioned at the end of the post. Not terribly like real gardening but close enough for Factorio purposes.

That's why spoilage exists, and we have multiple methods to get rid of it - you can burn it, waste it in a recycler, or create nutrients that are already half-spoilt.

I could see a factory that uses that as its main source of nutrients.

Yeah, it's just fertilizer that is already half-spoiled.

[Artarise]

The Headache

The concept of basically adding agriculture fo factorio is indeed interesting and new. Howewer the new spoilage mechanic in my opinion is about to become the biggest headache of the entire game.

If the products spoil on the conveyor belts and in machines (they must to avoid cheesing), creating a small factory won't be an issue. The issue lies in the possibility of mass-scale production. Creating a megabase-sized processing plant without any possibility of preventing spoilage will prove immensly irritating. The entire process would need to be fitted into small production modules, containing as little space (belts) as possible, between the fastest possible mashines.

That goes for every step in the production chain. That is - for the very best result, every item requiring spoilable products would need to be crafted in small compact blocks, containing the source of the resource. Like building a red circuit production module, but from a drill up. And building it in this way only for the circuit to last a bit longer, so it could be used more efficiently or transported for a bit further away... Ah, and lets not forget that the design would need to be more complex, to accout for brakes in production, as when the production module halts - its contentts still do spoil, clogging the mashine as the time passes. Of course designing the solution for that problem is entirely possible, but incrisingly harder with greater scale.

Imagine all of that, while also having a freezer in your own house! You mean to tell me that our engineer, capable of interstellar travel cannot build himself an industrial one? Or that by some magical, biological property those fruits and products cannot be coolded down to prevent spoilage without them losing their physical and chemical properties entirely? Atrocious! More on freezers 2 paragraphs down.

What a headache.. A headache, that our own reality and modern food-processing plants do solve, but with a catch - quality. (about quality later)
In my opinion, adding a freezing mechanic would be really interesting, especially if it could involve bioms. Imagine this.. Harvesters harvesting the plants, only for them to be as quickly as possible transported to freezer-carriages on a train, that transports them to a processing facility located in a freezing-cold biome , where the products can be crafted with less penalty in spoilage..
Them being then loaded into those carriages to be transported in the trains on platforms off-world...
(I know that any cold biome was not present on previous entries and is probably not planned, but in my opinion it could be added, if proven interesting and fun to play with)


If that would be possible, imagine to have to create a factory that would need to accout for its environment! For example - In "hotter", humid biomes, such as "jungles", that could be most common - the plants could grow much faster, but the products spoil even faster! On more arid terrains - much slower, and spoil on a normal rate; and in (maybe really uncommon) snowy biomes (for example - on tops of mountains, requiring a lot of dynamite to excavate)- not grow at all, but spoil much, maybe even 10 times slower, allowing for bigger production modules and more transport, with the prize of quality drop during transit to the facility. It would require necessary conditions, like jungle biomes and snow biomes not generating next to one another (cold biomes surrounded by arid terrain, water or other difficulties - like impossible to destroy but slow or constantly regenerrating wildlife, etc), but in my opinion would be incredibly fun to play with, while having access to freezer-trains and the possibility of relatively safe way to transport the item (spoiling time when frozen in transit could be reduced to something much less significant, maybe 1/30, but with the quality of the goods reduced instatnly on freezing.

Easy cheesing? r.. Freezer-chest and trains would make it easy to avoid the entire spoilage problem almost entirely, event if the spoilage wasn't prevented, but merely delayed. By simply treating them like chests or belts where items spoil slower it would be possible to build a machine that spells out perfectly fresh products without much effort. But! What, if the sheer act of putting a product in a freezer would bring down it's quality logarithmicly with every iteration?

This way, using it in processing would make it more harmful than the spoilage itself, while making one-time transport an viable option. Imagine, mass-production being more viable and easy thanks to mass freezing, but producing goods of poorer quality (I think I've seen that idea today at my superkarket).
You have to freeze it to get it to the factory in cold environment and then later to freeze it for transport to nauvis. Quality drop would be at least noticible, not accounting for the time in transit itself - but the production process would be much more simplified, easy and pleasant (products would not rot on your belts and in your machines so much, as you wouldn't need to stress about them deteriorating on site, but rather in transit)


But imagine also the possibility of producing the freshest, unrefrigerated, eco friendly products of the highest quality on site, using small, compact and incredibely complex production modules withous freezers, requiring much more effort and headache than the refrigerated ones, transported to facilities in cold biomes...

Alright, but then will it be possible to make use of the highest quality goods? If you have to freeze it to get it to Nauvis, whats the point in such quality?

Well.. imagine having to bring all of your other reaserch to Gleba via automated space platforms to make use of those fresh, shining, perfect green flasks that had just came off the factory line without any of their ingridients being frozen once, to use their full potential... Something for perfectionosts, but not for anyone who values one's time. As it should be in my opinion.. (2000h in SE + Krastorio make you like solutions like that)

At the very least, I think all of that is interesting to consider, thanks for the read.

Ah, and sorry for any grammatical errors, english is my second language xD

[bobucles]

The quality loop for normal items is to build them, shred them up, and try again. Compost is pretty much the same loop, isn't it? You grow thing, it was bad, let it rot, then fertilize the next crop to try something better.

The compost system gives a reason to deliberately rot things as part of a larger production chain. That sounds neat. It's also a reason I think that a singular doom timer is less than ideal. There would be reasons to stretch the timer, and reasons to drain the timer. A bit more control in that area would be nice.

[mmmPI]

Random consequence of having those Refrigerated Chests that are so very "demanded":

People will just build a Chest Inserter Chain to transport their Spoilers from Machine to Machine, which is NOT what the Devs want at all whatsoever. Belts are what is supposed to be used in the Game, not Chest Chains.

I think that's the best answer for freezer, the gameplay logic

But! What, if the sheer act of putting a product in a freezer would bring down it's quality logarithmicly with every iteration?

That kinda make sense too, as it prevent somehow the previous cheese. But we do not have all information yet ^^ If there are only 4 or 5 "steps" of transformation in "vanilla space age". Then you could end up "allowed" to freeze and unfreeze the product at every step. Which would ruin gameplay.

And become a headache to me ^^

This way, using it in processing would make it more harmful than the spoilage itself, while making one-time transport an viable option. Imagine, mass-production being more viable and easy thanks to mass freezing, but producing goods of poorer quality (I think I've seen that idea today at my superkarket).

But we are not producing food in factorio x), plant are not always food ! you do not eat cotton nor does it need refrigeration, nor can it be find in supermarket , rather in Factory ...

There would be reasons to stretch the timer, and reasons to drain the timer. A bit more control in that area would be nice.

To me those would be things like marathon, to tweak what is the larger designs if need be a little larger than regular vanilla, or large rail worlds that are similar in mind, or mods adding a lot of difficulty in processing steps and byproducts, which would require like 20 or 30 steps of refining and thus need longer timer somehow to allow those.

[Artarise]

That kinda make sense too, as it prevent somehow the previous cheese. But we do not have all information yet ^^ If there are only 4 or 5 "steps" of transformation in "vanilla space age". Then you could end up "allowed" to freeze and unfreeze the product at every step. Which would ruin gameplay.

I though of the problem in a more statistical sense, where the drop in quality during freezing is not a singular instance that always happens, but a chance. If you put x things in a freezer once, there would be a chance for some of them to lose 1 or 2 levels of quality, but the more times you put them in, the bigger the chance for drop in quality, on a logarythmical basis. I hope something like that would be possible to implement, though we don't really know how anything works yet. If the 2.0 has the possibility to keep track of every item's assigned properties in a way I ithink it can, and the creators can add another statistic to an item on a whim, then maybe it would be possible. If not overly complicated of course.

But we are not producing food in factorio x), plant are not always food ! you do not eat cotton nor does it need refrigeration, nor can it be find in supermarket , rather in Factory ...

Well.. but the case is that all biological products in our factory will rot evetually, unlike cotton, co why not treat them as food and freeze? Food for the machine god.

[GregoriusT]

To summarize why Freezers are a bad Idea from a Game Dev Standpoint:


- The Dev Intended Gameplay requires no buffers whatsoever, and people are supposed to change up their Game on each Planet.

- Suddenly there is two types of Chests, two types of Cargo Wagons, two types of Cars, two types of everything that acts like a Buffer. This is quite ugly design, which is why the Quality System was invented in the first place, do you basically want High Quality Chests/Wagons to be better Freezers then?

- The only way Space Platforms store Items is through their central Storage, which is just one giant NORMAL Chest. Should a Freezer mechanic exist, those Space Platforms will be inadvertently nerfed to hell or be guaranteed to have Freezer properties, which does not make sense.

- You would end up being incentivized to just spam Freezers everywhere, and if there is Freezers everywhere, then its the same Gameplay as having regular Chests everywhere, which in turn means you cant use Belts anymore because Belts are not optimal, which is what the Devs want to avoid with this mechanic.

- There is no reason to transport Spoilers from anywhere on Gleba to anywhere else on Gleba at long distance, the only Spoilers you will need to transport are the Bio Science Packs, which likely have the whole 2 hour timer on them, and that is plenty for transport.

- Freezers also give some extra complex Maths to worry about, since now there is TWO things that can influence Spoiler Products, one is Quality and another is how long it was in a Freezer. It is far easier on the mind to only have to worry about ONE factor instead of two. Juggling around too many numbers games at once makes the game seem unclean and convoluted, and also harder to balance for people who just randomly decide to not use Freezers.

- Freezers in general and their effect would seem almost mandatory for everything Spoilerable, impacting gameplay to the point of absolutely destroying the "no buffers" challenge aspect the Devs intended.


All of these reasons are why Freezers are NOT going to be a thing in 2.0. They are horrible Game Design and the Devs realized it long before the Players even touched the Game to test and realize it by themselves. The Devs spared you from a really bad game mechanic, at the cost of "realism".

[Saphira123456]

To summarize why Freezers are a bad Idea from a Game Dev Standpoint:

- Suddenly there is two types of Chests, two types of Cargo Wagons, two types of Cars, two types of everything that acts like a Buffer. This is quite ugly design, which is why the Quality System was invented in the first place, do you basically want High Quality Chests/Wagons to be better Freezers then?

With respect to you, GregoriusT, there are already two types of storages in the vanilla game, fluid and solid. I think you mean three here.

[Artarise]

- Suddenly there is two types of Chests, two types of Cargo Wagons, two types of Cars, two types of everything that acts like a Buffer. This is quite ugly design, which is why the Quality System was invented in the first place, do you basically want High Quality Chests/Wagons to be better Freezers then?

Thats an interesting qustion, but for the sake of the argument let's say that better chest/freezers just have more space, and there are only carriages and chests serving as freezers. As you said - changing freezer properties would be too complicated.

- The only way Space Platforms store Items is through their central Storage, which is just one giant NORMAL Chest. Should a Freezer mechanic exist, those Space Platforms will be inadvertently nerfed to hell or be guaranteed to have Freezer properties, which does not make sense.

Forgot about the cental storage, though why would changing the fact that chest could store spoilable items for a bit longer nerf the platforms to hell? Any why doesn't it make sense for them to be able to do that?

- You would end up being incentivized to just spam Freezers everywhere, and if there is Freezers everywhere, then its the same Gameplay as having regular Chests everywhere, which in turn means you cant use Belts anymore because Belts are not optimal, which is what the Devs want to avoid with this mechanic.

That's where the mentioned drop in quality kicks in, if you spam freezers everywhere - your products are there, not spoiled, but with garbage quality. Usage of buffers still will be possible anyway, as all you have to do is remove rot from them, as a form of maintenance - on the same pace as your input into the buffer. You just need more input to create a bigger buffer for spikes in production.

- There is no reason to transport Spoilers from anywhere on Gleba to anywhere else on Gleba at long distance, the only Spoilers you will need to transport are the Bio Science Packs, which likely have the whole 2 hour timer on them, and that is plenty for transport.

On an truly massive, industiral scale, in mega-bases for example, the distance will make the difference, as the bigger the producion site, the more space between it's elements. If the argument is to not create such bases, but instead to focus on small scale production modules that themselves create bigger bases, then so be it. Though from my experience I know how tedious and simply not fun such approach is... Ah, and I made up a reason for long distance transport earlier, that I belive could prove to be interesting. If not that, there could be other ones.

- Freezers also give some extra complex Maths to worry about, since now there is TWO things that can influence Spoiler Products, one is Quality and another is how long it was in a Freezer. It is far easier on the mind to only have to worry about ONE factor instead of two. Juggling around too many numbers games at once makes the game seem unclean and convoluted, and also harder to balance for people who just randomly decide to not use Freezers.

How many times it was in a freezer* - for one, as we already have "how long ago was this item created" bar; for the second point - I though of that mechanic to be hidden, like the ammout of arcospheres collected from deep space fields in SE. The only thing players would see would be a sudden drop in quality in items in freezers. With a warning blended in somewhere in the manual.[/quote]

- Freezers in general and their effect would seem almost mandatory for everything Spoilerable, impacting gameplay to the point of absolutely destroying the "no buffers" challenge aspect the Devs intended.

Freezers would be an alternative, not a requirement. Fair point with the no-buffer challenge though. If that is what the devs went for, then freezers would not make sense. But! Thats not the only challenge the rot provides. Another one - is garbage. In particular, how to deal with it on a massive scale on every step of produrction chain, while also shortening the supply chain as much as possible. I think that shortening it is the real challenge of that planet. But besides that, another question is, whether challenge of having no buffers is fun, or simply tedious. I may be a bit biased in that regard, as I regard the vitamelange from space exploration as absolutely tedious to work with, and see the new mechanics as something similar to it, now with added spoiling process that complicates it even further.

In my idea I suggested shifting the challenge from using no buffers at all, to using some while also limiting their applications, and taking environment much more into account - and it being entirely optional. You could skip freezers altogether, for better quality with the price of more work to do - as with freezers - the best quality you could wish for would be mediocre at best.


If the devs really wanted do create such an obstacle, then there's no discussing it. I wanted to point out some aspects of that challenge that in my opinion would be more tedious and irritating than fun, and to suggest shifting them a little bit.

[Saphira123456]

If the devs really wanted do create such an obstacle, then there's no discussing it. I wanted to point out some aspects of that challenge that in my opinion would be more tedious and irritating than fun, and to suggest shifting them a little bit.

I am in full agreement with you here Artarise. In fact, I think it would be so tedious and irritating that I would simply not purchase the entire expansion.

If the game is intended to become super-frustrating, then there is no reason for me to spend my money on frustration. Especially since there are already mods that do most of what the expansion is offering as far as new things to build, without the tedium and irritation.

In fact, the only thing that's coming to the game that isn't already a mod, is the elevated rails, and somehow, I doubt the expansion will remain a requirement to have them once they are in the base game. They will probably end up backported as a mod.

If I wanted another chore and not a game, I'd do more chores IRL.

[Tricorius]

If the game is intended to become super-frustrating, then there is no reason for me to spend my money on frustration. Especially since there are already mods that do most of what the expansion is offering as far as new things to build, without the tedium and irritation.

Again. We have no idea how the systems will interact and there is STILL a metric crapton of stuff to come in FFFs; including another entire planet (if my calculations are correct).

I’ve seen a few playthroughs of SE. IMO the overhaul mods are what add tedium. They add dozens (or hundreds) of new items to the game that are simply whatever 1, 2, 3…10, 11, 12 … x.

That isn’t fun to me, it’s just making more of the things. This is at least a new mechanism to discover and learn the interactions of. It *may* end up tedious but we just don’t know yet. It may be the least fun part for some, or many, but I’m skeptical that their play testing hasn’t further focused them into a good loop for this.

[FuryoftheStars]

Fair point with the no-buffer challenge though. If that is what the devs went for, then freezers would not make sense.

They could, still, if you greatly limited their storage capacity in comparison.

[Bi0nicM4n]

First of all, the spoiling mechanic of organic products looks credible to me, but at the same time it's the kind of stuff I'd prefer to be forced to deal with only on Gleba. I can't see spoilable science packs as anything but a nuisance, a detriment even, to a perfect game. I mean it's bad enough that in Factorio 2.0 we get what, ten? eleven science packs? which already puts belts out of the question, but having to pull spoilage out of the labs? Count me out on that one.

If you wanna keep organic research packs spoiling while keeping the annoyance tolerable, just let them disappear! That's the only way.

[Maddhawk]

Will it be possible to regrow trees on Nauvis?

As cool as such a mechanic would be and as nice to have baseline, there is a mod that can handle that for now.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Blueprint ... able-Trees

[brunzenstein]

You should provide for Factories 2.0 a written and video tutorial for new as well as experienced players in a quality as it's offered in the upcoming version of Frostpunk 2
https://youtu.be/D3bjWDlN6QQ?si=SBCvCUwgz3u7ipEl