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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   2419 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 15, 2024

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Still playing factorio space age. I think we've had a thread about it every Friday since its release. It deserves it though, solidly awesome game.

We finally made it to Aquilo. Kept feeling like every other planet still had minor things we needed to fix. Aquilo feels like the seablock mod a bit. You need to build your own land.

The high power costs of drones, and the requirement to use heating pipes adds some new challenges. Builds tend to look pretty different.

I'm also trying to build a massive space platform for some forms of production. Its almost 4500 tons so far. I expanded it from a ~1000 ton ship that was producing its own space platform. I think I want to see how ridiculous the space platforms can get.

Quality has also been a fun mechanic. Feels like burning massive amounts of resources for slightly better stuff. But factorio is all about using up massive amounts of resources. And usually the resource sink is science, but sometimes science isn't enough.

We finally made it to Aquilo.

Are you playing in a group?

Yes, people from themotte, well just two of us really.

I have probably 80-90 hours into my Space Age world, though I'm not into space yet (I'm right at the point where I can launch rockets though). I've been enjoying it, though obviously I don't really have access to most of the new content yet.

My biggest complaint so far is that quality seems half baked and that it makes the game more inconvenient. Just unlocking it meant that every "select a recipe" type dialog takes two clicks (select the recipe and hit OK), even for the vast majority of cases where I don't care about quality yet. And the logistics get more complicated, because you can't tell machines "take this quality or higher, I don't care". So quality parts will jam up your logistics unless you plan carefully. I like quality in principle, but the implementation doesn't hold up to the very high standards Wube has met in the past for how smooth the gameplay should be.

You want high quality modules, but even then, if you're properly scaling production, for a 10% decline in output you can get higher quality components. Having an entire whole line of production is no big deal as you don't need for everything and you can simply feed that into bot-based malls.

As to jamming up logistics -nothing is as simple as putting in circuit that says "if component X >10k then have the extra put into this requester chest for recycling".

The big problems happen when you stop recycling. Fulgora has ample energy from the lightning so just scaled up battery storage. And that's how we ended up with 300k pieces of ice and solid fuel.

I recommend burning that crap and really recycling. Good batteries and solar panels are invaluable for ships.

Quality doesn't shine until Fulgora. I would almost advise avoiding it altogether on Nauvis.

Fulgora has you developing lots of sorting builds and figuring out how to avoid the jam ups that result. It's a good crash course in how to make safer quality builds, that don't gunk up your factories.

There are also only three use cases where I've found quality to be absolutely worth it: spaceships, personal items, and resource extraction devices (pump jacks and miners). Almost everything else is solvable more easily through the traditional factorio solution: make your factory bigger. The resource extraction devices preserve more resources at higher quality levels. Allowing you to tap mines and oil fields for longer. So they are sort of a convenience, but still ultimately ignorable with just "expand the factory more".

I'd recommend just trying to go to space, and maybe even Vulcanus before you feel fully ready. Just get Nauvis to a defensible position, or shut most of it down to minimize pollution while you are gone.

Just wanna say I'm really enjoying the commentary. I've been ignoring quality in my playthrough so far, but just started working on it last night thanks to the explanations here laying out how to think about it and why it's valuable.

A lot of what I've spent time on is fortifying Nauvis. I had the misfortune to get a desert world, so I set about building walls and turrets basically first thing. Then the biters were evolving to the point normal ammo wasn't enough, so I had to get red ammo, turret upgrades, etc. Then by that time my starter resources were low so I had to expand the walls to include new resources... you know how it goes. I would say I probably spent half of the time in my save either building defenses or researching defense upgrades.

But hey, I am going to go to space today unless things really go sideways. The defenses are solid, I have machines building rocket launch pads and fuel, I'm finally ready. It'll be nice to finally get to Vulcanus (my planned first planet)!

Vulcanus is a great first planet. It is most similar to Nauvis gameplay, but even lower maintenance. You can basically get infinite copper, iron, and sulfuric acid within the drop zone.

Meta is go big and build massive factories. Which is good cuz the enemies on the planet require an extensive expenditure of resources.

There is also some minor opportunity for space mining. Little asteroids will come at you above Nauvis. Early game that just means iron, carbon, and ice. But a free trickle of iron after an initial investment isn't bad.

I'd start quality right away. Zero downside to quality-ing module production (and you need infinite prod1s for purple science). Same with lots of finished products. Assem2s, split off qual+, combine with qual+ speed1s= guaranteed uncommon/rare assem3s for platforms or maximizing return on your first prod3s.

Beacons are amazing too. All this stuff is basically free and goes right back into boosting the high end of the value chain that multiplies everything else.
Having your prod2 era science running at 1.28x1.14 (46%) vs 1.24x1.12 (39%) productivity while you're handling off-world science is a big speed boost for zero time or resource cost, unlike trying to scale your mining before getting artillery.

The big problem is that you want a madzuri/mojod style automall so that everything you request is being done by one assembler with your highest quality quality modules. And the 2.0 version of that is bleeding edge combinator tech I dont have time to learn.

I haven't had time to play much. Took 6 hours just to get space science up, and I'm not organized enough to take the next step yet.

I love how flexible the game is. It does feel like they designed things with certain play styles and strategies in mind. But you can usually just overwhelm the "optimal" path with enough resources.

We did not optimize on Nauvis. I went after it with three players initially which is almost overkill for the early gameplay. Someone working on core factory, someone working on resource gathering and extraction, and then someone killing bugs.

I feel like if you are naming build strategies and talking about complex circuit network setups then you are at the top of the play curve.

Sorry for being unavailable, by the way. My excuses are kid's joining Kindergarten and I started at a new time-consuming job.

..yeah it's definitely not a game for people with both kids and time-consuming jobs. Unless they know it there and back and can just speed run it - something like 75% of the time is just tweaking stuff.

I joined up the game after seeing the ad. I've been meaning to use use it to finally build up my vanilla megabase using circuit-logic based crude train logistic network I never finished.

It's really simple, based on I think Nilaus's video for inspiration and I'm not sure if it'll scale to the skies but we'll see.

There's 3 kinds of stations: intake (train gets unloaded, source where it gets loaded, and depot where it is if nothing is needed to get done).

Intake station is open if all is true:

  1. it's missing enough of a resource
  2. there's enough of a supply (green wires)

Source station is open if all is true:

  1. there's enough demand (red wires)
  2. it has enough to fully load 1 train

It's not that efficient, but it does work. The big problem was first time around I never really settled on a single design for the circuits so I had a whole mess and couldn't keep track of which actually worked. Solved that problem...

Looking at Factorio blog that came up since, it seems you can just now get away with 2 types of trains: liquid and item ones. https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-389

The train logistics rework has changed things massively, and the new systems are going to be radically different and much fancier.

It's unfortunate the space logistics came out so half baked. I think that's going to get reworked, because a lot of high profile players have been complaining at talking to the devs about it.

It seems perfectly adequate... ? Within the simplified framework of the game. Obviously you'd try to use reusable vehicles if possible etc, but .. operations-wise it seems okay.

You can just add some circuit logic to it and it's golden. Doesn't ask for more stuff than there is etc.

The only downside is only one cargo pad per surface and that IMO there's no materials requirement for getting stuff down.

Unless they've fixed it, a space platform asking for 2 inserters, 1 blue inserter and a combinator will get a full rocket load of each. And there's not a way to set the load with combinators.

You mean you can't custom-load rockets with multiple things using circuit combinators because.. there's no way of accessing Space Platform demands ?

near as I can tell, the best way to handle things at the moment is to go to your platform, make a note of all the things you need, then place a requester chest on the ground one space away from the rocket, set requests for the items and amounts, wait for them to be delivered, replace the requester with a steel chest, add an inserter, and then launch the rockets until the chest is empty. There's probably a way to do it better with circuit networks, but getting the correct amounts into the rocket is a pain to do manually, and you need to switch to the platform and open the hub to get a summary of what is actually needed. It definitely could use some serious improvement.

There might be a way to do it better with combinator witchcraft, but I do not worship Satan.

Seems like a small matter.

Honestly with how generous the game is and the benefits to scaling, this doesn't seem like a big deal. If you're exporting stuff, it's single commodities. If you're exporting components for ship, you're probably wanting to get enough for spares and all that so..

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The combinator witches have been complaining because the system doesn't expose a way for them to do it either, which is encouraging because those are the people with a direct line to the devs. Plus the spedrunners who are just as frustrated by it.

It's not the only half baked thing about the rocket logistics either. They had to quickly fix a frequent double launch bug, where stuff would get requested again after delivery.
You get the feeling from this and the dev log that a lot of stuff was being worked on (and fought over) right up until release day, like the last minute "better to ask forgiveness" change to the entire fluid system.

Typical "team expands, collaborative consensus management style fails to adapt" stuff.

No worries someone else from themotte has been super available, they also like trains a bunch. So you'll be happy to know we aren't neglecting the trains like I would.

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