Having the bots move once every 20 ticks looks interesting, but how does that work with robot-biter interaction? If a worm tries to kill a bot that flies overhead, it needs its current position updated at the speed of combat.
The construction robots (only kind of robots relevant to this), upate every single tick whenever enemies are around. This keeps the behaviour around enemies consistent, but keeps the performance boost when enemies are not around (which is usually almost always).
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Since you have capped Productivity to 300% and implemented all the other restrictions, have you ever considered allowing them back in beacons in certain scenarios? Maybe set a cap on how much you get from them if they are broadcast? Could be interesting as it would allow for more variety in builds.
Not really. The 300% productivity is only achiavable in the very late end game with limited number of recipes. The overall boost from all of the bonuses available combined is enough. We don't need to break the game by semi-forcing productivity beacons everywhere.
You might be right. Because you are generally expected to build bigger in the expansion. But definetly not so much bigger, if you just want to progress.
I tried to steer the game design into a direction where if you compare the end state you had (all (nauvis) research finished), things should be ok because:
1) You finish all nauvis only research faster compared to vanilla
2) The rocket is cheaper and simplier compared to vanilla
3) The planets are effectivelly an alternative to progress compared to the infinite research, which should be more fun.
4) You can build "relatively" small if you want to just finish the game, there is one tester who finished in 37 hours by trying to go as minimalistic as possible (some semi/exploits were used, which we want to patch, so it will be more), but it still wouldn't be crazily more. We finished our MP playtrhough with very seldom use of quality, so we kind of proved it is far from necessary.
Obvious...
Read moreYeah I agree. Quality is useful for things that will be built and exist permanently, not for things that get consumed for science.
quality science packs doesn't make sense indeed (one if the reason is, that there still will be normal production all these quality ingredients are supposed to support). But quality ammo or fuel has bonuses. I didn't try it with ammo, but quality fuel allows train acceleration and max speed to be increased a bit. And since trains generally don't eat that much, and fuel isn't that expensive, it is a reasonable thing to do in the end game stage of the game.
Could you please describe how landing pads work? Orbital platform inventory is instantly available for extraction from landing pad? Or some kind of delivery cannon required?
What if there are multiple platforms in orbit? How to select which one is "connected"?
Is it possible to transfer items between platforms?
It works similarly as with logistic network. Landing pack has logistic requets which can be satisfied by the set of platforms (working as passive provider chests) currently on orbit. It is not teleported, but transported by a capsule with a delay
Can you also disable building function if it is not on full health? If yes then you could emulate how it is in many RTS games, where buildings are low health when you plop them down and you have to actually build them before they start to function (or wait untill they are built).
There is a mod for that: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Building_Time
100% productivity bonus does wonderful things. For example - 5spm needs 1 belt of iron and copper ore. If you add 100% productivity to everything, you get 200spm out of the same amount of resources.
Productivity boost calculated with warptorio2 modules, as the mod adds that while barely changing existing recipes. Of course the comparison does not match what will happen in the expansion (warp modules apply productivity to every recipe, but also we don't take into account buildings with builtin prod bonus or prod researches, we don't know recipes for the new science packs, etc...). But you can see what could happen if you take just base game + quality mod, without space age.
Don't forget about the productivity researches (only available for specific set of items, but still important)
we have just one expandable landing pad per planet.
It's nice to know that throughput isn't capped by the landing pad. When they first announced there could only be one, a lot of people had concerns about max SPM.
It kind of is capped by it, but the cap is huge, nothing to worry about.
Except that corporate profit margins surged during the pandemic, not nominal profits. That means profits became larger than they should have been proportional to revenue, which doesn't happen with inflation caused purely by an increase in the supply of money.
The articles I linked, which you clearly didn't read, explain this.
Also, no, that has nothing to do with anything I'm saying. You're the only one with a vested interest in pushing a "capitalists did nothing wrong, it was all the government's fault" narrative. You're the one that brought this up.
Edit: I can't anymore with this, this is such a waste of time.
Yes, I know the articles stated that profits went higher, and if the wages didn't go up appropriatelly, than yes, people working for these corporations had wages effectivelly shrinked. But it is a different subject, which doesn't actually explain that corporate greed would cause inflation. It would just affect that these corporations take advantage of it to improve margins.
Getting tired, that is a good sign. We are revealing the errors in the assimuptions you have. These assumptions are creating your worldview, and you are getting tired, because your brain defensive mechanism is kicking on, trying to avoid changing the worldview as much as possible.
“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
So, if I demanipulate a single person it would be worth it.
Read moreAre you trolling? I would say we are more consumer friendly than about 99.9% of other companies.
But your pricing model isn't. The entire rest of the industry allows their games to depreciate with inflation, and you're saying you won't do that. That is a less consumer-friendly pricing strategy.
And you're deluding yourself if you think you're the only consumer friendly studio out there, especially among projects of this caliber. I can think of several other projects off the top of my head that have no microtransactions, have put out years of large, free updates, and have never increased their prices. Two of which are your largest competitors, Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program.
After we put more than year of work working 14 hours a day 7 days a week for free.
It wasn't "for free," it was for the product you were planning to sell, which you did end up selling many year...
Let me focus on the most fact based thing to debunk, because somehow I smell this motivates you towards all of this:
Just search "money printing in the us during pandemic". So they apparently printed 27% extra money. And soon after that, there was a surge inflation, what a conicidence.
Yes, I understand there is a big motivation to blame the corporations, and coin terms like greedflation, to somehow achieve that so many people get confused and blame anyone but the real villain.
Read moreI have no idea how you can say "greedy" is a subjective term, acknowledge that you're adopting a less consumer-friendly pricing strategy than everyone else for no other reason than that you feel you can, and then turn around and say people are "generally incorrect" for seeing that pricing strategy as greedy.
Beyond that, a lot of what you're saying is simply wrong.
You have the investment cost, the risk of the investment (the bigger risk the bigger rewards often)
Factorio was crowdfunded, and you sold early access through almost the entire development process. Compared to the vast majority of game projects your investment and risk were both extremely low.
The labor wasn't done, the game is being worked on.
The vast majority of your work since 1.1 (which as I've pointed out was two full years before the price increase) has gone toward Space Age, which is a new product you plan to sell. So n...
"Acknowledge that you're adopting a less consumer-friendly pricing strategy than everyone else"
Are you trolling? I would say we are more consumer friendly than about 99.9% of other companies.
"Factorio was crowdfunded, and you sold early access through almost the entire development process. Compared to the vast majority of game projects your investment and risk were both extremely low."
Wrong. After we put more than year of work working 14 hours a day 7 days a week for free. This, lets say a million dollars worth invested. It is many times more than the money we got in the campaign and could go all into nothing. So the risk was already there. And after the campaign, we invested all of the money to keep going while barely getting along for another year at least, so even more risk, extremly big risk, when you think about how many games are released, and how many don't make anything.
"The vast majority of your work since 1.1 (which as I've pointed out ...
Read moreRead moreNo, I'm not confused about what inflation is. That's a fairly condescending suggestion.
Increasing game prices to match inflation simply isn't done, not even by reasonably priced, high-quality games with no microtransactions and free ongoing updates, and you're saying you feel you should be entitled to do it despite your studio not having any need to.
I don't know what you call that if not greedy. And Valve already adjusts their regional pricing recommendations every year based on consumer price indices and purchasing power, so you ended up hitting a bunch of regions twice for the same inflation.
I don't see any reason why games should automatically get cheaper with time
I do: you paid for the labor to make the game when inflation was lower, and distributing it to new consumers costs you next to nothing. So why should the price track with inflation?
If you'd waited until Space Age's release, which will actually add ...
"Increasing game prices to match inflation simply isn't done."
And what? Do you think that only things that are done already should be done? You should learn to stop using this kind of argument, because it is invalid. Regarding the adjustment, I think that everyone should do it because it makes sense, I hope that other game studios will follow.
"you paid for the labor to make the game when inflation was lower, and distributing it to new consumers costs you next to nothing. So why should the price track with inflation?"
There are 4 errors in this statement, let me explain:
1) The cost of labor has very little to do with cost of the product. You have the investment cost, the risk of the investment (the bigger risk the bigger rewards often), and also the the demand for the product.
2) The labor wasn't done, the game is being worked on. Which, by your logic, should mean it gets more and more expensive every year, even without the inflation.
... Read moreRead moreWhat's baffling to me is the idea that you guys should be exempt from the very predictable blowback from increasing the price of your game for no other reason than to keep with inflation while:
- The game had not had a major update in more than two years
- Your sales figures remained strong, and you'd just launched on a new platform
- You were actively working on an expansion with the same price point as the base game
I'm sorry, but this is something lots of people would see as greedy, and they're welcome to that opinion.
It's also baffling to me that most of the comments are defending you as pro-consumer while you're in here trying to paint "rent goes up every year, we should be able to do that too" as a noble cause, as if people are totally cool with getting gouged by their landlord every year.
I don't even have a problem with the price increase, but come on. In no un...
Based on the way you comment, I believe you are confused about the inflation.
We didn't increase the real price, we just adjusted for inflation, the price in real value was kept more or less the same. As inflation is still strong, I believe that in some time increase from 35 to 40 dollars will be necesary, again not our fault.
We are not in any way responsible for the fact that the goverments are printing a lot of money and decreasing the value of the existing money by that. If you have problem with that, talk to your goverment and try to change it. If your country, whatever it is, didn't have any inflation, the price could be kept the same in that country, and rents and price of everything wouldn't have to go up. Inflation is basically a multiplier to all prices, and it is a norm that it is automatically included in long term contracts.
I don't see any reason why games should automatically get cheaper with time, and even if someone decides to make their gam...
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