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Is there any mod in this game that replaces the train system entirely? Say with a drone shipping system a la Dyson sphere program? The only thing that stops me from playing this more is the complete brick wall I encounter whenever I try to wrap my head around the rail system.
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Oct 18, 2023 22:46
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There's Transport Drones, which basically makes little cars that need fuel and drive around on roadways, picking up cargo and dropping off cargo to depots you build. Trains are my favorite part of the game so I never really used it that much but it worked fine in a pre-train base for me.
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Oct 18, 2023 23:12
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There's https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Transport_Drones, which lets you build a road network and have a bunch of trucks delivering stuff everywhere. IIRC you're still on the honour system as far as "not building trains if you don't want to learn them" - it doesn't delete them from the game or anything, just gives you an alternative.
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Oct 18, 2023 23:15
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There's also the AAI vehicles and related mods, which include a completely inscrutable set of combinator logic you need to set up to do anything more complicated than "go to point A, then go to point B". For some reason I keep trying to bang my head against that wall.
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Oct 18, 2023 23:17
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Breetai posted:Is there any mod in this game that replaces the train system entirely? Say with a drone shipping system a la Dyson sphere program? The only thing that stops me from playing this more is the complete brick wall I encounter whenever I try to wrap my head around the rail system. I struggled to make sense of rails and signals in this game for ages - but once I took some time in an MP game to really wrap my head around it it became my favorite part of the game by far (I know, typical goon), I really recommend giving it a strong attempt before giving up. I ended up making a megabase project primarily to problem solve a huge and very crowded train network. It was a blast and I'm really itching to do it again, but I don't want to burn myself out too close to the release of an expansion 
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Oct 18, 2023 23:22
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Based on the wiki's description of DSP's drone logistics, I think they're looking for a mod that offers point-to-point logistics without having to lay down a rail network. I think Long Range Delivery Drones fulfills at least part of that: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Long_Range_Delivery_Drones For late game, possibly Lex's Aircraft: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/lex-aircraft (These are the mods that Freight Forwarding uses/recommends. I haven't gotten far enough to use Lex's stuff yet.) I don't know if these solve the logistics side of your request, however.
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Oct 18, 2023 23:31
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For a vanilla solution (even though mods were mentioned): increase resource frequency to max, lean heavy into logistics bots once you get there. Before the bots you will be totally fine and not need trains, and when you get the bots resources will be _everywhere_ and all close enough to make 100% bots for everything with zero trains viable.
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Oct 18, 2023 23:40
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Something I can really recommend to at least give a try is warptorio2. It doesn't change the vanilla recipes at all from what I've seen, but it's very much changes how you play the game. Basically you start off with a small platform, every so often that platform and everything on it will teleport to a new planet. You get all sorts of research to make things easier to set up like larger platforms and multiple other floors. The other big thing is that the platform by itself sends out a massive amount of pollution, you are constantly having to fight off bitter attacks. You can decide to warp away early and you often should as you'll be using more iron on ammo than you can harvest. I normally don't really like the combat in the game all that much, but I find it very enjoyable here as it is more part of the experience.
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Oct 19, 2023 02:02
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Freaksaus posted:Something I can really recommend to at least give a try is warptorio2. It doesn't change the vanilla recipes at all from what I've seen, but it's very much changes how you play the game. Basically you start off with a small platform, every so often that platform and everything on it will teleport to a new planet. You get all sorts of research to make things easier to set up like larger platforms and multiple other floors. Warptorio is a lot of fun, highly recommend trying it out.
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Oct 19, 2023 02:33
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Space Platforms are the subject of this week's FFF Ton of new info about how they work. They do both manufacturing and transport, with a bunch of unique mechanics and limitations. Can't wait to see these mechanics repurposed for Factorissimo-ish factory-trains. I feel like a train-base mod is inevitable at this point. e - also, can't wait to send my legendary uranium to space to make legendary space science. K8.0 fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Oct 20, 2023 |
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Oct 20, 2023 13:20
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I actually love the borderlands-esque high saturation cell shaded look of the placeholder graphics.
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Oct 20, 2023 13:40
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Those rocket silo logistics are a lot easier than the combinator nonsense you had to do with Space Exploration. And you can't even accidentally set up up the wrong way, where a lost signal means your ground base will be rushing to send the maximum of every single item up to space ( )
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Oct 20, 2023 13:59
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I like the restrictions they laid out. A weight system means you get efficiency losses for not building compactly, and encourages using high quality buildings. No bots or chests or power poles means building on space platform feels different from the ground. And, no holes in the platform means that dumping out junk is not a trivial problem and gets harder as you expand, assuming underground belts can't cross space. My one issue is more of a technical one. It's similar to my want for a nuclear bomb recipe that requires spent nuclear fuel, which would represent how plutonium is made. Just a little bit of real world physics. When the engines are turned off, the platform instantly appears to stop. It actually makes total sense physically that in terms of progress to the next planet, you require so much delta-V, and time spent with engines off isn't productive. The abstraction being that, irl, the delta-V needs to be spent at particular times, while in factorio, you can spend it whenever you like. My actual problem is with the way items drift away from the platform. Look at what happens when the platform stops and starts up again. When the engine stops, items that were previously released instantly stop moving backwards, when they should continue to drift away. Then, when the platform starts up again, items that were released before the engines started up don't move backwards and appear to accelerate with the platform. I get that this is a very dumb nit to pick. It's just that they're very close to a physically real but simplified space travel system, but instead the visuals make it look like a space car. As a counter to this, it would make a mechanical difference if asteroids behaved like that. Since, it seems like the intended mechanics are to make you need more firepower while moving, and less while staying still. The previously released items accelerating with the platform does seem like purely a bug though. M_Gargantua posted:I actually love the borderlands-esque high saturation cell shaded look of the placeholder graphics. It does look dope. I wish they kept the bright whites of the concept drawing in the 3d render. The whole game is very dominated by midtones. It makes the game look washed out, like an overcast day. Nearly blown out whites are a very spacey aesthetic that would give a more distinct look to the platform, though I guess that would clash with the aesthetic of existing buildings. The difference between the render and the concept art also makes me realize how soft self-shadows are compared to the stark cast shadows. In particular, it makes the tower on the render look a lot flatter than in the hand drawn art.
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Oct 20, 2023 15:16
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I actually want anything "in space" to be more vibrant and washed out, since things in space really do look unnaturally crisp due to the lack of atmosphere.
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Oct 20, 2023 15:50
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Space Platforms look great. Love the no bots and incentive to keep the platform as small as possible. Space restrictions are actually really great in the game because they force you to think differently. It's one of the reasons that I loved Warptorio. Only expansion thing I've seen so far that hasn't been an immediate HELL YEAH is the quality stuff. Maybe it'll be fine, and it does fit in with "the factory must grow" churning out a billion widgets but it just kinda looks like... I guess it's the RNG that bugs me - everything else is so deterministic. In the base game is the only thing that isn't 100% getting Uranium-235 from Uranium Processing? I'm sure it'll be fine.
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Oct 21, 2023 17:31
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Fortunately it’s a mechanic you can choose to entirely ignore (at least, so far). It does seem like something that will be useful for space platforms at a minimum, but not required much like current modules can be entirely ignored.
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Oct 21, 2023 17:39
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At the scale Factorio operates it's going to average out anyway, it's not like you are dependent on a couple of dicerolls going your way, it's going to be thousands.
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Oct 21, 2023 17:48
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One thing I've thought about regarding the space platforms- with no robots, there doesn't seem a way to automatically repair/replaced damaged or destroyed objects. Unless asteroid-destroyed platform leaves a ghost blueprint that the central structure will try to replace, as well as any buildings on them, this could be a serious pain! To an extent I can see this being 100% intended though- you HAVE to have enough guns and ammo production in place to keep everything safe, or it will eventually grind down to nothing, but that's going to take some experimentation to know for sure. Some example things to test- does the number of dangerous asteroids scale with how fast your platform is moving (higher quality boosters could hurt you if you're not prepared!)? Will the different planets have different quantities of dangerous asteroids? Will some extra research damage upgrades let you eek out fewer turrets/handle more asteroids? Theoretically, these are mostly good/interesting questions the player will need to test themselves, so long as there isn't a serious RNG element on something like a ton of asteroids showing up at once in a small area, overwhelming defenses in that one spot. Also, the blog didn't explicitly say flamethrower turrets don't work  but they probably filed that under "burner entities", and it would probably impractical to keep it fueled anyway.
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Oct 21, 2023 17:53
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Kafouille posted:At the scale Factorio operates it's going to average out anyway, it's not like you are dependent on a couple of dicerolls going your way, it's going to be thousands. For those that dip into the larger scale sure. Tons of people hardly even touch nuclear.
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Oct 21, 2023 17:57
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necrotic posted:For those that dip into the larger scale sure. Tons of people hardly even touch nuclear. Although I can see why with space platforms you're really going to get the itch for quality ploppables. There are going to be people playing ploppables scratch off in their inventory because there's always someone who misses all the implications of stuff. But overall quality is looking like modules+: extremely optional but incredibly useful to dip in. E. Lmao autocorrect zedprime fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Oct 21, 2023 |
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Oct 21, 2023 18:15
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At first I didn’t want quality, but if I download a mod that makes them have glow or sparkle effects like disco science I think i’ll be OK with it.
Bhodi fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Oct 21, 2023 |
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Oct 21, 2023 19:47
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Some other thoughts on the space platforms: You're only getting iron from those asteroids- your gun turrets are NOT going to be using the good poo poo, assuming it would be impractical to resupply it with enough ammo/copper/uranium to make a trip between planets. That's going to make laser turrets more enticing, with all the problems supplying them with power would bring. We see in the FFF that the platform is disposing of iron. This is unthinkable in vanilla, but obviously understandable with the limits of the platform. A big question is, how do you get stuff off the platform, back down to the planet? There will have to be some way in order to be able to bring things between planets and start factories on the new planets, which I assume will come in a later FFF. Will bringing things down be prohibitively expensive enough to not be worth sending regular iron back? (probably) Maybe a late game research will allow you to make a space elevator of some sort, which would essentially just be a space platform that can't leave orbit, but can easily bring items down and up from the surface. This could allow platforms to be a slow, but infinite source of extra iron. It also might make help make it practical to stock moving platforms with the good ammo between their trips, tying back into the first point. Also, I just realized this will make turret upgrades and related tech desirable even in runs with biters turned off, a good side-effect of the asteroid hazard.
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Oct 21, 2023 20:32
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Realistically, it should be a lot easier to send stuff from the platform back down to the planet. The platform is at the top of the gravity well, just shove the stuff into a container and drop it. That's not to say they can't make it expensive, such as by making the containers require certain materials, or even just a lot of iron/steel.
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Oct 21, 2023 22:02
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MerrMan posted:Space Platforms look great. Love the no bots and incentive to keep the platform as small as possible. Space restrictions are actually really great in the game because they force you to think differently. It's one of the reasons that I loved Warptorio. I get the feeling there's going to be multiple platforms. So the ones you have just sitting in orbit building Better Space ScienceTM and anything else in orbit can get fat as heck since they're not going anywhere. Meanwhile the ones acting as Space Trucks between planets you'll probably want to work on keeping those lean.
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Oct 21, 2023 22:45
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They have said you can build multiple platforms, yes.
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Oct 21, 2023 23:09
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Remember: there are no chests on platforms. You're not going to be storing up large quantities of asteroid material to offload once you get to a planet.
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Oct 21, 2023 23:23
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There are no small chests, but you can expand the storage of the main building.
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Oct 21, 2023 23:40
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And in fact you have to store stuff, such as space science. There are probably other things made in space, or perhaps best made in space. That said, since storage space costs physical space which is at a premium, I doubt you are going to be storing space resources for return, at least the basic ones they have shown us. I doubt lasers will be common on platforms for the energy cost. If you go nuclear I'm sure you can do it, but that's going to be a very large platform, maybe large late game transports. We know you need to launch rockets to send things to a platform, and maybe in the expansion there is something like a rocket landing pad where it returns to with any cargo set to be returned. Remember, one of the purposes of platforms is transporting unique or limited resources between planets.
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Oct 22, 2023 00:21
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The space platform looks like it has a silo to launch rockets back to the planet it's orbiting.
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Oct 22, 2023 00:34
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MerrMan posted:Only expansion thing I've seen so far that hasn't been an immediate HELL YEAH is the quality stuff. Maybe it'll be fine, and it does fit in with "the factory must grow" churning out a billion widgets but it just kinda looks like... I guess it's the RNG that bugs me - everything else is so deterministic. In the base game is the only thing that isn't 100% getting Uranium-235 from Uranium Processing? I'm sure it'll be fine. There's a few things where my gut instinct is telling me this sucks, mostly in the form of taking away my toys to be given back at a later time, but I'm willing to see how it pans out in the overall game flow. It's hard to see how these little pieces of information will add up and since the original un-modded (outside of QoL) game is still what I prefer I'm willing to bet they'll make it fun. Quality just looks bad no matter how I think about it. Turning production of all items into a kovarex process where the production cost is time just doesn't feel right. I'd be fine with progression into Assembler 5 or whatever since it's a tech research target with a permanent outcome. Like, yes, it's technically optional but I know drat well I'm going to have to set up a mini factory to recycle every single item indefinitely while I leave the computer on overnight like it's Satisfactory.
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Oct 22, 2023 04:26
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Quality gives me pause too, I am fine with uranium being RNG because it’s one thing and a massive milestone.
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Oct 22, 2023 04:28
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Also you don’t actually need Kovarex in order to run a basic nuclear setup, it just feels a whole lot better.
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Oct 22, 2023 04:38
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Low-key; all of this so far sounds like it justifies being an paid expansion... and we haven't even started learning about the other planets yet. Very much excited.
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Oct 22, 2023 10:26
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Trains are easy once you realize train signals aren't 'traffic lights' for the trains themselves, but mearly indicate what is on the blocks or sections (colored lines) of the tracks ahead of them. Chain signals 'look ahead' to the next signal(s) to determine a choice of path or not to stop where the train would block another's path.
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Oct 22, 2023 12:57
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LonsomeSon posted:Also you don’t actually need Kovarex in order to run a basic nuclear setup, it just feels a whole lot better. 4 centrifuges without Kovarex is enough to run a 2x2 reactor block forever* So there really is no need to wait with building nuclear until you have Kovarex, just start using it immediately and switch over when you have an extra 40 U235 lying around. *until you run out of space to store the U238 Tamba fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Oct 22, 2023 |
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Oct 22, 2023 13:15
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Or more practically speaking, kovarex is required only for nuclear fuel and atomic bombs. The fun part of building a kovarex set up isn't maximizing your U235, it's making sure you still have enough U238 to supply the turrets.
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Oct 22, 2023 13:43
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Finished my Freight Forwarding run. Great mod! It felt like they did a really great job of focusing on the logistical challenge. There were a few new recipe lines (Cobalt, in particular, was cool) but the big challenge was figuring out how to move stuff around and handle all the crates. I ended up finding a mega-continent pretty far away that had all the resources on it so I relied mostly on trains and only used the boats where I had to with Cobalt dredging. I didn't super care for boats, they were just reskinned trains that didn't do a ton for me. I also appreciated that it didn't overextend its end game: you need to launch ~10 rockets to unlock the game winning item, so just like 11 rockets to get the 'victory' screen. I thought about staying around to launch a few more but my chip production area was hosed and I couldn't be bothered to fix it. There was an annoying interaction with unpacking a box of goods and how that interacted with the stack size. The boxes held 10x stack size, so when you unpack one then the machine would stop because the output was full. But then it wouldn't start again until you'd removed all but one stack of that item so it had room for the next process to run. But the unpack time was so long that you'd end up with a downtime where you finished unloading the previous pack but the next one isn't ready yet so your belts run dry. Not terrible but just meant you needed to overbuild unpacking infrastructure compared to packing. A 1:1 would leave you with empty belts some amount of the time. Riding high off that victory I immediately fired up Exotic Industries. Regret? A little regret. Going from a fully automated rail network back to the dark ages is quite a surprise. I underestimated how much the research requirements would grow within a tech tier and am really slogging my way through the Steam age. It's been a while since I played a mod with a Steam age (I think maybe Industrial Revolution a long time ago?) and it's actually kind of interesting, so that's good. Piping the steam around and trying to build assembly lines with all these fuckin pipes everywhere is a different challenge. But I thought I could just hand feed some smaller builds and tech through to electricity before setting up a more 'real' bus focused build. Well, I'm on like hour 4 of handfeeding my Steam Age science pack setup and am crawling towards a (also hand fed) Electricity Age science setup. I think I should be over the hump in another hour or so but daaaamn is it slow. I did research rail early so I'd like to switch to that right away but I think power transfer will be a problem and I'm not sure where Large power poles are.
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Oct 24, 2023 17:47
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Imagined a rail network with medium poles as the power transfer method and parts of my brain fled my body in response
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Oct 24, 2023 18:22
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Me in vanilla: why do anything but medium power poles exist Me in Nullius (or most conversion mods that make small/medium power poles just as complicated): ugh where are the big poles? Like I know I should be using big poles and substations in vanilla but you can't make me.
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Oct 24, 2023 18:33
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I've started the upgrade process from yellow belts and iron furnaces to blue belts, electric furnaces and assembly machine 3s. Bit stressful figuring out where to fit my newer and much larger smelter arrays but i was able to move some stuff and reorient the smelters and now I think it's all gonna fit. Blue belts take forever to build with the amount of iron and gears they suck down but slowly working along the base upgrades and should be on track for 60spm once this is all done.
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Oct 24, 2023 20:35
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