Klonan

When the current release is deemed stable (probably this Monday), it will be pushed to all players. We are calling this 'Stable 2', since it is the 2nd stable version.

The 'Stable 3' (with the tooltips etc.) will be released as experimental (in a few weeks or so), so you will need to opt-in to get the update, as with all experimentals. Then once we fix all the bugs, we will mark it stable, and it will be pushed to all players.

We wanted to get this fix out before the weekend, so we can (hopefully) mark the release stable next week.

0.18 won't be coming for a long time still, 6 months minimum.

Right now we are doing further releases of 0.17, with new GUIs, optimizations (such as the pathfinding), and other things.

We are only just at the start of this process, and I expect it to last several months.

So saying all this, if you want to play, I would suggest playing on 0.17 stable.

Putting work across more threads isn't really an optimization, and comes with its own massive constraints and difficulties.

We always prefer to look at single thread optimizations and solutions before considering multi-threading, just like we have done with the pathfinding in this case.

The advantage has a few aspects:

1. It is a much more flexible domain to work within, we can implement novel and effective solutions that wouldn't be easily possible with a threaded solution.

2. It benefits not only those with lots of spare cores, but all players. This is also a big benefit to budget server runners, where they may only be allocated 1 or 2 cores of a VPS.

3. If we ever do end up threading the solution, then the single-thread optimizations are then multiplied.

The grey-blue ordering was almost in the release, but we realized there is a problem with just changing the order.

If we just change the order, any labs with science packs already will basically break, as the slots will not be filtered correctly, so for instance, inserters would try to insert more blue, but there is already grey in the blue slot (from before the change).

So we need to write a migration, and something generic I guess, as any mods could come along at any time and change the ordering on us. Its on our TODO list.

I'm sorry we let you down

The biters are typically put into unit groups, and the group pathfinds while the biters just follow the group

Its not really a bug, just the way the engine works.

The blood particles are entities, and the dying animation creates a lot of them: https://gfycat.com/DeficientSadChimpanzee

In the engine, any entity search needs to iterated through all entities on the 'Advanced tile', which is 2x2 tiles.

The fire needs to check each tick (or every few ticks) to see what to damage... so it iterated through all the entities (including thousands of particles).

The biter pathing/collisions needs to iterate through all the entities as they walk through the fire.

So the result is the iteration takes a very long time, because there a bajilions of them: ...

We are aware of the problem with flamethrower turrets and UPS drops, it is to do with the blood particles (which are entities).

We have a plan, and the results are already very promising.

This mod will do you: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DeleteEmptyChunks

Its still in experimental, so unless you opt-in you won't get the update.

Saying that, we will probably mark it stable relatively soon, so nothing to worry about.

Ah right, in-game changelog! We don't currently have link support in-game

The game wasn't finished at the beginning, still working on a way to traverse LQG spin foam in just the right way to send a USB drive with the full game back to 2013.

Characters that don't have any player attached to them.

The links in the changelog are clickable, and you can middle-click the links to open them in a new tab.

Something like that: https://gfycat.com/RichForthrightHyena

Yes, it increases performance.

We will release it as experimental, but we don't anticipate taking a long time to mark the release as stable.

Your graphics card is no problem, but your CPU is pretty old.

If you want better UPS performance, I would recommend upgrading to a modern Ryzen or Intel chip, with some high performance DDR4 RAM

Nice catch, I will fix it for the next release