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14 Jun

Friday Facts #415 - Fix, Improve, Optimize

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13 Jun

Why do productivity modules only work on intermediates?

Comment

Ok, I remember the process with modules quite clearly. In the very old days, I just added modules as a pet project to add more variability to the game, and instantly started to play with that.

In this version, you had beacons and module slots, and all modules could go anywhere.

It very quickly got to the point, where the best and only setups was 12 beacons with productivity modules around an assambler, to maximize the productivity as much as possible (because of the exponential aspect of it with the length of production chain).

It was clear, that it would affect the game too much this way, so we made the first limitation of productivity modules not going into beacons.

We played again, it was better, but in some cases, it was just weird, for example, we had this recipe where you made rocket, and another recipe, which had rocket + some extra explosives as an input to make the explosive rocket. Basically an upgrade recipe. But suddenly, with the product...

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12 Jun

Pressing multiple arrow keys simultaneously shows confusing movement

Comment 
if (moveRightActive && moveUpActive)
  return Direction::NorthEast;
if (moveRightActive && moveDownActive)
  return Direction::SouthEast;
if (moveLeftActive && moveDownActive)
  return Direction::SouthWest;
if (moveLeftActive && moveUpActive)
  return Direction::NorthWest;
if (moveUpActive)
  return Direction::North;
if (moveRightActive)
  return Direction::East;
if (moveDownActive)
  return Direction::South;
if (moveLeftActive)
  return Direction::West;
return Direction::None;

07 Jun

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Full_War_4717

Hm. If item transformation is indeed evaluated lazily, this might result in an interesting corner case with mods:

  • item1 should be turned to item2, which is also spoilable. For consistency the "overflow" time should be applied to item2;
  • which might trigger it spoiling as well, turning it into (also spoilable) item3, etc.  

This can result in significant hiccup, especially with short spoilage time and a loop in transformations, unless such spoilage loops are detected at initialization time, so that process can use module over total loop time to save repeated iterations.

Item transformation is evaluated instantly, but it is cheap, as it is basically once per item stack.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by CzTd

What does happen when the inventory is full with non-spoiled items and a spoil event occurs?

Like I have a chest filled with coal, and 1 stack with apples.

What will happen with the spoils? Will they get deleted? Chest will have additional slot?

The stack of apples becomes a stack of spoilage, the chest being full or not seems to be irelevant to me.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Soul-Burn

What is the freshness value of a normal non-perishable item? Does it remember the freshness it was made with?

No, once it gets out of the spoilable area, it is all the same. And when you recycle it, it gets 100% freshness no matter you made it from.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Smoke_The_Vote

Cheap, even with the need to re-average a spoilable item stack every time an inserter/robot drops another item into the chest?

Or, I guess maybe a stack's new spoil rating only get calculated when it's needed?

It is a small extra operation in the process of merging two item stacks, it is completely negligable.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Soul-Burn

Which damaged items average in 1.1? 

In 1.1 buildings remember their damage, while ammo/science just merge, losing final item.

Is this a change for 2.0?

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You made me unsure, so I just double checked in 1.1, and damaged items average indeed. Try to make 75% damaged belt and 25% damaged belt, mine them into the inventory, viola, you have 50% damaged belts X 2

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by SuspiciousAd3803

In theory, is recycling a method of un-spoiling an item? In other words if product 1 has like 5% freshness and I recycle it and get component 2, will component 2 have 100% freshness or will the freshness be derived from product 1

Freshness is always derived from product.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Garagantua

Since we've seen new "infinite research" with just the Nauvis sciences, I assumed that there'll be _some_ infinite tech with pretty much every one (and maybe even combination of?) new science pack. Otherwise in my first solo playthrough, I might automate the first planet, go to the second - and my research either stops, or continues without the new pack I just managed to import.

If these "some but not all new planet science pack" infinite techs exist, then that's a really good reason to have *solid* production of the "usual" packs on your lab planet, and you just use whatever you can from the new ones.

...until you're at a point where you really want that shiny new infinite technoligy that uses _all the packs_.

More or less this. You can almost always research something infinite whatever route you do. There is the steel productivity research, which doesn't even use science production.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by 13ros27

Does that mean that gleba science only requires renewable resources (the trees and I guess water) and doesn't use anything mined somewhere in the recipe because if it did then it would surely still make sense to switch the factory off?

Only the materials to build the rockets take minable resources. But with all of the productivity researches and the super rich (and small) gleba resources paches, it seems to be completely negligable. (I didn't have to tap other than the 1st mine on gleba in my 300h playthrough)

Version 1.1.109

Post

Bugfixes

  • Fixed a crash when trying to hand-craft recipes that have fluid ingredients.

Use the automatic updater if you can (check experimental updates in other settings) or download full installation at https://www.factorio.com/download/experimental.

External link →

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Kasern77

Okay I get it now, thanks. Although I don't see why anyone would use recyclers to get rid of only some of the spoilage when a boiler can burn all of it. Especially when the former uses power while the latter provides power.

It is mostly a consistency thing, as you can use recycler to void other non-burnable items (iron plate for example), so it would be weird if it consumed everything BUT spoilable items.

Also, the recycle to itself can be used to try to increase quality of products which can't be broken into ingredients if you use quality modules for the process.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by RoastCabose

In the real world spoilage can be mitigated, but it can't be stopped in most cases. Remember this is a game of abstractions after all. The brute force method is to send it as fast as possible, which encourages things like direct insertion, circuit use, hyper compact production.

Also remember that the stuff you're shipping in space likely has the spoil time of hours, and the stuff that spoils in minutes shouldn't last more than a few minutes in your production.

I do think the keeping things hot could be an interesting new thing, but that would be different in the sense that you can work on keeping things hot for it's whole existence, where as spoilage definitely has an end point.

I bet they didn't do refrigeration to keep the complexity down. Because if you implement refrigeration and it stops spoilage, than it is completely necessary and just adds extra steps without much design consideration. If refrigeration simply slows down spoilage, then that ...

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Exactly. Generally speaking, the game with the expansion is big enough, and if something, we are looking for ways to simplify/shorten it a little because it was almost too much. This means, that at this point anything that adds to the amount of items/steps of things you should do to finish the game needs to have VERY good reason to exist. Refrigirators seems like just more steps, and the mechanics in the core would still be the same.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Mornar

Even if you can't base usefulness on specific spoilage progress, you can definitely have too-hot-metal spoiling into just-right-metal spoiling into too-cold-metal. Bit multiplicative in terms of different item types needed, but possible.

Yes, it is almost always better to make different types of items for these kind of mechanics. Mainly because all of the game tools you have are design and work based on item types (inserter/splitter filters, the whole logistic system, train interrupts etc)

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Kasern77

I'm confused about the part where you insert spoilage into the recycler. From the image it just looks like the same spoilage comes out. What exactly happens to it when it goes through the recycler?

The general mechanic of recycle says, that when you recycle something that can't be broken into smaller part, the recycler basically works as a "voider" returning only 25% of the incomming items.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by PM_ME_FETLOCKS

As someone who works with grocery logistics in RL, this is my time to shine

Fifo

Correct, fifo is the mantra :)

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by 0b0101011001001011

Can I have legendary spoiled stuff?

You can and you will have!

There isn't a big motivation to make spoilable items in a quality, but spoilable items are ingredients to some very important non-spoilable result items, once you make the final item in time, it is there forever.

The problem arises, when you decide to recycle the item as a way to get it in higher quality. In that moment, you introduce spoilable items into the equation again, and since the recycler results are also randomized (25% of ingredients means 25% of getting an item if there is exactly 1), you will end up in situation when you get only the spoilable part to be re-assembled but the other non-spoilable ingredients don't come in time.

It evens itself out in the long run, as you will eventually have enough of non-spoilabe ingredients accumulated only waiting for the last spoilable ingredient, so eventually it will always process the spoilable part immediatelly.

Long story short, yes I burned/removed a lot of legendary sp...

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Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by acockshott

Overall this looks really cool and unique, I like the emphasis this creates on speed and throughput. BUT the implication is that once you've automated production of the Agricultural science pack, you're incentivised to constantly be researching technologies which use it from that point onward, otherwise you risk spoiling 100s or 1000s of science packs in the time that you research anything else.

I suppose we could switch off large parts of the Gleba factory when its science packs aren't in demand (maybe through big circuit networks?) but that seems like a hassle and somewhat against the spirit of the game.

I have no doubt they've tested these features and thought all this through so sooner or later we'll find out what the solution is or if it's not really a big deal, either way I can't wait to see what's next!! :)

If you want a reliable factory (you do), you just have to make all the steps of the process to be able to handle things not being consumed and spoiling.

This means, that the lab area just has to be able to deal with agriculture packs spoiling and removing the spoilage automatically.

At this point you just think about the production as X per minute, and you either use it or not, but there is not a big loss of just not using ot for a while (letting it spoil), while you research something else.

I understand it might be psychologically hard to just "throw things away", but in the game, it is comparable to production being backed up, and mines not mining, because there is no more ore to being processed. When the factory gets backed up and stops, it is in practice the same loss as when it works all the time, and sometimes you just throw it away.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by wargodiv

The spoilage mechanic looks great! I have a question though: do half-spoiled items stack the way science packs/ammo do? It would be quite inefficient if they didn't, but combining items can mess with the spoilage rate (two half-spoiled fruits spoil faster than a fresh one)

Edit: I suppose a stack can be stored as an array of how many 1%-100% packs is in a stack, displaying the 'sum' as how many full items you have and 'count' is used for the spoilage rate and inserters will extract the 'true' items, but maybe that's not the route the devs went for

They just avarage the same way damaged items average.




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