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i really wish factorio would have a few more options for z-level stuff. even if it was just a train bridge, short belt ramp, etc. i feel like my spaghetti could be so much more.
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Jun 13, 2018 06:39
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A sim city style sewer pipe system for fluids is what this game really should have added.
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Jun 13, 2018 10:03
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Underground long-distance power lines would also be a great addition, even if they needed some surface-connection building at either end.
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Jun 13, 2018 10:21
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Couldn't you use some code from Factorissimo to accomplish that? Iirc Factorissimo works by abusing some code for multiple surfaces, and essentially teleports the player and resources from one surface to another.
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Jun 13, 2018 11:55
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FnF posted:Underground long-distance power lines would also be a great addition, even if they needed some surface-connection building at either end. That would be a pretty cool mod, it could be balanced by requiring you to dig and fill the trench.
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Jun 13, 2018 23:44
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There was a WIP mod that created a subterranean layer like Factorissimo, and you had to dig through rock to create a passage. I remember there was an air quality mechanic that required ventilation structures or else you'd suffocate when going below. Can't find it now though.
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Jun 14, 2018 16:29
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A simple way to balance it is volume. If an above ground pipe can hold 100 fluid, make an underground hold 75 or something. Then you need to bury more pipes to get the same throughput, creating more spaghetti, generating that taming chaos play loop the game is built around. Or to be a real rear end in a top hat make it a 1/3 reduction so you can never get a perfect ratio.
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Jun 14, 2018 16:47
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xzzy posted:A simple way to balance it is volume. If an above ground pipe can hold 100 fluid, make an underground hold 75 or something. Then you need to bury more pipes to get the same throughput, creating more spaghetti, generating that taming chaos play loop the game is built around. Factorio fluid mechanics are dumb and changing pipe size doesn't effect flow in any sensible way. Even Bob gave up on multi sized pipes and he's willing to put all kinds of nonsense in his mods. And 2/3 flow is an easy ratio! To be an rear end you want something like 17/21 or 2/pi or something. TasogareNoKagi posted:There was a WIP mod that created a subterranean layer like Factorissimo, and you had to dig through rock to create a passage. I remember there was an air quality mechanic that required ventilation structures or else you'd suffocate when going below. I'm tempted to work on something like this but I'm not sure how to balance it. Being able to bypass spaghetti and biters is pretty powerful but I'm not sure what an interesting and reasonable cost/downside would be. Air quality doesn't really fit the game IMO.
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Jun 14, 2018 17:41
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LtSmash posted:Factorio fluid mechanics are dumb and changing pipe size doesn't effect flow in any sensible way. Even Bob gave up on multi sized pipes and he's willing to put all kinds of nonsense in his mods. And 2/3 flow is an easy ratio! To be an rear end you want something like 17/21 or 2/pi or something. Yup, old Bobs Logistics versions had iron pipes as the standard size of "10" while more advanced materials you could make pipes with a bigger "size" which should have meant more throughput, but thanks to the wonky rear end pipe math/code it actually made them slower/less efficient.
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Jun 14, 2018 17:57
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obviously you need subterranean biters
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Jun 14, 2018 18:02
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crabrock posted:obviously you need subterranean biters Graboids 
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Jun 14, 2018 23:05
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Alkydere posted:Yup, old Bobs Logistics versions had iron pipes as the standard size of "10" while more advanced materials you could make pipes with a bigger "size" which should have meant more throughput, but thanks to the wonky rear end pipe math/code it actually made them slower/less efficient. loving really? I always went for the bigger pipes because I thought they were the best. DarkHorse posted:Graboids Oh, hell yes.
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Jun 15, 2018 02:06
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Yeah, the way fluids work is most like a high viscosity gas, since pressure and (amount/available volume) are equivalent. So having a larger pipe means it takes more fluid to fill it up, which means it takes more to push the fluid to the next tile. It's still real fucky, though. Though with a gas, you can't really call the pipe loss friction loss, since friction on a sub-sonic gas speeds it up. Unreal_One fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Jun 15, 2018 |
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Jun 15, 2018 09:52
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Pipe code is one of those things the devs keep saying they'll fix, but I don't think even they understand it at this point. We probably have to wait for them to scrap it and start over.
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Jun 15, 2018 13:16
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I have to imagine by fix they just mean optimize. There's nothing wrong with it from a gameplay perspective and it's a bit obtuse physically but there's only so many computationally efficient ones to choose from. Bob's pipes are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
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Jun 15, 2018 13:25
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Unreal_One posted:So having a larger pipe means it takes more fluid to fill it up, which means it takes more to push the fluid to the next tile. It's still real fucky, though. Unreal_One posted:friction on a sub-sonic gas speeds it up
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Jun 16, 2018 12:08
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my whole first big base was barrel based and while i liked certain aspects of it a lot, managing barrels was a pain in the rear end. I'm currently working in a new extension of my base that's about a minute train ride West that uses all closed-loop train systems, i.e. only pickups and drop offs for one type of resource so there's no train traffic. super simple but boy does it use a lot of track and trains
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Jun 16, 2018 20:16
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So far Father's day I gave my dad, a retired engineer, a copy of Factorio. My dad who has not played a game since the DOS days besides the CIV series. He's picked up "get stuff from point A to point B" and "automate everything" incredibly well. The hangup is "Use WASD to move" and "no you can't drag click your man over there" and "hold right click to rip up tree/mine ore/pick up building" (he would tap right click until the bar filled/the building would return to his inventory). Now that I've gotten him to the point where he's automated belts I think he's figuring it out, but when he booted it up for the first time a couple of hours ago he had to come get me because the tutorial on how to use shortcuts to put items in/take items out of chests was stumping him. High level stuff he gets instantly (it took him all of three seconds to understand blueprints once I made a demo) the controls are a mystery he's having to work through. I suspect he's going to get on-board the automation train not because it's how to play the game, but because it's far, far easier to have the inserter automatically put the item in the right slot than it is for him to figure out to put the coal on the item slot that has a gas pump on it. I will never, ever, ever mock a game for having a "Now this is how you move. Now this is how you look up or down." type tutorial ever again because while we've all long ago internalized those controls, not everyone has. Also I'd like to say that if someone made an inch-thick instruction book for Factorio, my as a guy who was an engineer in the 70's dad would be the type to read it all the way through. It's literally how he got into the Civ series: I asked for Civ III for Christmas and while I was playing it my dad took the inch-thick manual and started reading it until he came up to ask "...hey could I try it?" So final thoughts: 11/10 father's day gift, had me spending an afternoon working over my dad's shoulder teaching him how to walk while he could immediately figure out how to use an unused channel on a belt to get coal where he needed it in order to avoid making more belt. Edit: and he's doing a lot better now that I showed him the command to change character color so his old eyes could actually see his little dude. Yellow engineering armor on top of sandy, yellow dirt/grass wasn't helping. Alkydere fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Jun 19, 2018 |
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Jun 19, 2018 23:10
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Alkydere posted:So far Father's day I gave my dad, a retired engineer, a copy of Factorio. My dad who has not played a game since the DOS days besides the CIV series. Ahh! That's so lovely  I wish I could have opportunities like that...Do update us about his progress please!
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Jun 19, 2018 23:22
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Sininu posted:Ahh! That's so lovely He's still in the stage of using 1-2 stone furnaces for everything, most of his "base" proper, all four assemblers (2 for gear->belts and 2 for gear->fruit punch) is on his iron patch. I'm trying to let him figure out stuff on his own as I sit here and he goes "Ah, I see I'm not building bottles fast enough" and I suggest maybe he builds a second assembler for red science (followed by building more production of iron plates because he needs to make more to have underground belts). It's kind of odd in that most people I introduce the game to are all "Well this is boring" or "I'm building beakers to build more beakers to do...wot exactly? Wot's the point?" but I'd never have to explain WASD to and he gets that stuff immediately (you build stuff for the joy of building) but didn't understand how to move. Also an inch-thick instruction book/binder be awesome just to have an a nerd thing. Just this engineering manual on how to play the game/"use your Hazardous Environmental Engineering Suit in hostile alien environments."
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Jun 19, 2018 23:34
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I would  a Let's Play with commentary about your dad learning Factorio. You're a good kid.
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Jun 20, 2018 00:59
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Royal W posted:I would Well it's been 5 or so hours and he's finally trying to move onto green science. His base is tiny, partly because he likes to just leave it running and researching something slowly while taking a break to talk to mom...or come downstairs and ask for more help (once he looked like he could move around on his own I told him I was going to give him space because I didn't want to be constantly over his shoulder telling him ideal setups and such, which he appreciated). Since I gave him room he came down to ask me: -"How do I set the assembler to make a product again?" -"What am I doing wrong with these underground belts": He didn't realize he just needed to set a start and endpoint, he was trying to place a line of underground belts to make a tunnel And just now: -"How do I make green science?" He had an assembler with a line of belts fed to it, but didn't have any inserters. I had to guide him on using a level 2 assembler to make the inserters, which needed green chips which needed copper wire. Part of this was, again, he just doesn't get the UI and it confuses him...and I wasn't the best guide until he told me "No, don't do it for me again, even with you showing me it doesn't click. Tell me what to do and I'll do it". Part of it is that he's partly in denial about how bad his eyesight is. He can tell if a belt is horizontally aligned for example but has trouble telling if it's heading left or right. He also probably couldn't see where the mouse cursor was when I was showing him things  I thiiiiiink (desperately hope) I have managed to explain the UI/how to figure things out to him a bit better now. Seriously, I'm sure the Factorio devs would find him an *amazing* case study.
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Jun 20, 2018 02:19
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I like that you dad has an extremely Dad approach to the game, obviously understanding why you would want to do everything in it, but stumbling with basic computer use. Quite fitting for an engineer That does sound like a pretty good father's day present.
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Jun 20, 2018 02:27
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Alkydere posted:Also an inch-thick instruction book/binder be awesome just to have an a nerd thing. Just this engineering manual on how to play the game/"use your Hazardous Environmental Engineering Suit in hostile alien environments." Now I want a technical manual for Factorio in the style of the Mechwarrior 4 Mercs strategy guide / Blizzard's half inch thick manuals to warcraft III / etc. Full lore immersion, as if you were an actual engineer in Factorio, no fourth wall breaking, etc. I can just see the explanation for how you can carry hundreds of buildings in your inventory as that they're stored in a dimensional fold and auto expanded into place...
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Jun 20, 2018 06:47
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Just print and bind the Wiki as a book, add a table of contents and an index, done. (Not for immersion manual, but for actual play manual)
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Jun 20, 2018 16:26
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Alkydere posted:Well it's been 5 or so hours and he's finally trying to move onto green science. His base is tiny, partly because he likes to just leave it running and researching something slowly while taking a break to talk to mom...or come downstairs and ask for more help (once he looked like he could move around on his own I told him I was going to give him space because I didn't want to be constantly over his shoulder telling him ideal setups and such, which he appreciated). If I were you, I'd look up zoom commands and binding them to a macro. See if you can make a setup where he can click a button to zoom in super close so that he can only see a few tiles at a time, and that'll help him with his vision.
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Jun 20, 2018 16:46
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Is there any lore the devs have put out or is it all fan fiction?
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Jun 20, 2018 17:23
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Outside of the basic "you've crash landed on an alien planet!" and the world name (Nauvis, never exposed) I don't think the devs have done any lore.
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Jun 20, 2018 19:29
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And what little lore there is has changed a bit over time. I have the feeling they're ignoring it until gameplay is complete.
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Jun 20, 2018 19:48
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Originally I think you were supposed to be setting up the planet so a colony ship could land. Which really makes the "cover the world in concrete and smog" play style kind of hilarious.
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Jun 20, 2018 19:58
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Solumin posted:Originally I think you were supposed to be setting up the planet so a colony ship could land. Idea: a mod where incoming colony ships are observing your activities and send occasional messages based on what you're doing to the planet. Maybe some colonists are unhappy with all the pollution, or want you to get more/less aggressive in dealing with the Biters, or whatever. I don't know what the gameplay effect would be; intermittent care packages or something?
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Jun 20, 2018 20:18
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Toast Museum posted:Idea: a mod where incoming colony ships are observing your activities and send occasional messages based on what you're doing to the planet. Maybe some colonists are unhappy with all the pollution, or want you to get more/less aggressive in dealing with the Biters, or whatever. I don't know what the gameplay effect would be; intermittent care packages or something? The last thing Factorio needs is the Chirper feed.
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Jun 20, 2018 21:06
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Yeah, in early versions of Factorio the end goal was to build a Missile Defense System to protect a colony ship from... something as it lands. I don't think it was ever elaborated on what exactly you were trying to protect it from because it's not like biters can fly.
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Jun 20, 2018 21:46
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Sydin posted:The last thing Factorio needs is the Chirper feed.
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Jun 21, 2018 02:04
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This dad story totally made my day . Thank you for posting it.
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Jun 21, 2018 02:57
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Sydin posted:The last thing Factorio needs is the Chirper feed. You can't cut funding! You will regret this!
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Jun 21, 2018 06:13
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Toast Museum posted:Idea: a mod where incoming colony ships are observing your activities and send occasional messages based on what you're doing to the planet. Maybe some colonists are unhappy with all the pollution, or want you to get more/less aggressive in dealing with the Biters, or whatever. I don't know what the gameplay effect would be; intermittent care packages or something? So ... dwarf fortress nobles?
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Jun 21, 2018 06:14
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Alkydere posted:Part of it is that he's partly in denial about how bad his eyesight is. He can tell if a belt is horizontally aligned for example but has trouble telling if it's heading left or right. He also probably couldn't see where the mouse cursor was when I was showing him things Use the built in magnifier in Windows. Either on another screen, or resize the windows to make room. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/11542/windows-use-magnifier
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Jun 21, 2018 09:26
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Has anyone had issues with generating maps with zero loving oil? I'm about 3 hours into a railworld map and there is a single 85% yeild oil patch within 5 solid minutes walk of my base. I may need to restart as a result. 
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Jun 21, 2018 16:16
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RNG gonna RNG. Oil is out there somewhere, guess the game wants you to power everything with coal until you find it. And not make red circuits.
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Jun 21, 2018 16:25
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