For modding, are Quality tiers basically a new prototype definition, or is there only a specific set of attributes that can be varied by Quality? So if somebody wants high Quality beacons to be OP, that could be a mod?
Quality tiers are a new prototype definitions and their names, power, probabilities and tiers are part of the moddable definition.
But their effect on different entity types isn't moddable currently.
I have the impression that only a few items are going to be worth upgrading. Probably the devs decided that if quality is a property of any item, they might as well have fun and set the bonuses to whatever would make sense in-universe. From a cost/benefit perspective, I expect that just the personal items and the spaceship components (since it'll have space and energy constraints) would be worth it.
When it comes to priority, this is how I played it:
The first priority is the quality modules, as you want to improve the efficiency in which you make more quality modules, and other quality stuff.
Second most impactful are the productivity modules, as they greatly improve the production of everything.
Right after that we have the speed modules and assemblers (this includes any producing machine), as they improve the return of investment of the quality productivity modules.
Big priority is also inserters, since they are quite cheap, so making them in higher quality isn't that expensive, and with the beaconed super fast productions, inserters could become the bottleneck otherwise. This is generally very important factor, as quality is a multiplier on price, so making high quality labs, which are very cheap, might be much more sensible to do sooner compared to power armor 2, which is quite expensive on its own for example.
The personal armor/eq...
Read moreIs it not pretty common to have a remote factory that build something like plastic and bring them to another part of your factory via trains? If you add some quality modules to your plastic factory, you have to deal with the factory producing multiple quality types of plastic that have to get loaded into trains.
You could use quality modules in these specialised remote Factories, but in practice people (including me) just use the improved productivity modules in these to avoid having to deal with quality items on a big scale.
And if we need a plastic locally in higher quality, it is usually a smaller scale, and we do it locally, or just avoid it at all.
The point is, that using quality on a big scale remote setups is a probably a super late game strategy, which is hard to manage, and the motivation to do so is to squeeze the extra quality output for the sake of complications which could be a wanted challenge at this point.
Oh ok. I thought quality would come regardless, in which case managing malls would be a nightmare because you might limit a chest to one stack and then you get two different qualities and the assembler output is jammed even though you potentially only have one item in the stack.
If quality probabilities would be automatically applied everywhere it would be a horrible pain indeed.
Existing factories will work as before, the only change happens when you insert quality module somewhere, and then, you need to deal with the outcome.
I'm afraid that more people got confused about it.
Does that mean that until quality is researched, you only get normal quality items? Otherwise it sounds like stacks would break.
The start of quality is slightly unclear in the article.
"Not all of the quality tiers will be available from the beginning" sounds like some quality tiers are available (but invisible) from the beginning of the game. Even though the next phrase suggests that's the beginning of quality research.
You cant normally (without usage of cheats or editor) get the quality modules before activating the research, but yes, theoretically if you cheated the quality modules in before the technology would be researched, the modules wouldn't really do anything useful, as they couldn't go higher then normal quality.
Here, by the beginning, we mean the research of the first tier of quality modules.
I'm more worried about my trains. I know they've said there will be some updates to trains but right now everything would instantly break. The current (and common) way of handling trains is just a "wait until full" -> "wait until empty" but this doesn't work if you never get a full stack of whatever quality was inserted into the train.
I never saw a base where people would transport quality stuff by trains. It is something you rarely want or need.
I hope there is also a major overhaul of inventory planned because while vanilla is not a big deal my modded inventories are already a complete disaster to navigate. This is certainly only going to make that worse.
Nothing forces you to keep different qualities of the same item in your inventory at the same time. I rarely do it.
Well, there goes my smart train station system. This will be a big challenge to support "mixed" belts of items.
I never saw anyone putting quality stuff into trains so far, it would probably be useful if someone went the most extreme path, but for normal cases, there is no need for that.
Does this mean I'm going to need circuits to set up a basic mall with sensible limits? Will I be able to make blueprints that don't care about quality? In a lot of cases it sounds like quality would just break a lot of stuff we do presently.
No, why would you?
Why would quality break anything? I think you got confused about how this is planned to work. As long as you don't explictelly insert a quality module in the assembling machine, there will be no quality related mechanics.
Read moreI actually think that random element fits factorio. As others pointed out, the kovarex process and the uranium processing also has random in it and it shows how nicely it breaks the design monotony.
Kovarex doesn't have randomness though, does it? It's deterministic, 40 U235 + 5 U238 = 41 U235 + 2 U238. Which is kinda the problem with these, compared to uranium. With uranium processing, I have to deal with randomness during the initial bootstrap process, after which I have deterministic production of U235, and random U235 is just small additional bonus at that point.
With these, if I need longer range power poles for some reason, or the fabled 25% productivity modules, I have no choice but to engage with RNG. And considering how many modules I'd need, and how slow are they to make, it's going to be just a nightmare. Oh, and you added quality penalty for speed, so we'd have to build absolutely enormous factories that just craft modules ove...
I don't understand the confusion. Yes, it would be annoying if you had to do it manually, but the point of Factorio is to automate everything, even the taming the process of the randomness.
With the uranium processing, even if you get the kovarex process, you still have an imput that is result of a randomised ratio, and you have to deal with it.
Is quality moddable? Can you add more quality types with modding?
Yes, they are prototypes like everything else, you can change their bonuses, "hardness" (the probability to get the next tier), names and count of them.
I don't think the random element fits factorio well. Surely the quality module should charge a bar like the productivity module does?
I feel like a predictable system would allow for more depth of design, such as integrating well with the circuit network
I actually think that random element fits factorio. As others pointed out, the kovarex process and the uranium processing also has random in it and it shows how nicely it breaks the design monotony.
There is another random element on the space platform, where you can catch different kind of asteroids, process them, and deal with the fact, that it is not the perfect ratio you want.
The point is, that perfect ratio setups might be fun, and still will be in the game (although I almost never do perfect ratios personally, I just put things down and look for bottlenecks). But it is boring to have everything the same and exact, having a system which fluctuates and you have to deal with all the possible ways it can break is just additonal design challenge.
Having these changes in the way you build and think about the game, to avoid doing the typical belt->inserter->assembler->inserter->belt template everywhere was one of the goals in the expansions, and there will...
Read moreThe names in particular feel rather out of place. "Epic" and "Legendary" are evocative of your usual fantasy setting which is very much at odds with Factorio's smoggy quasi-dieselpunk aesthetic.
I just found it amusing to have legendary iron plate.
I'm a bit torn on quality. On one hand it could be a fun way to design around absurdly powerful items, on the other it doesn't feel like Factorio. The quality indicator seems out of place too, but maybe it's just a place holder.
How do stacks work now? One stack for each quality?
Yes, quality stacks are independent.
Hello,
Today we are going to talk a little bit about a big feature in the expansion, Quality!
Quality is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
What truth?
That you are a noob, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into normal quality. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your factory.
You take the blue module, the story ends, you wake up in your factory and believe whatever you want to believe.
You take the white module, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Since I just got used to plan and execute these kind of changes. I learned to imagine any ideas like that and think about how it would work etc. So far so good, but the problem is, that something you learn to do almost automatically can't be so easily turned off. So whenever I use any software (or system), I can't stop thinking of ways how to improve it, how greatly it would work and the approach to just not accept the state in which things are kicks in. And then I get more and more annoyed by the lack of that feature anytime I use the software which I can't simply change. I'm sure it is not that uncommon, but still, it can get pretty annoying.
On the the last gif (the lake one)
> always charge at a roboport that is closer to the destination than the robot is
Wouldn't that actually make them perform much worse in the much more common scenario of a perfect grid?
The perception of bots flying over available roboports but continuing on low energy might actually be worse than simply looping back and forth.
Example:
Given a fully covered 5x5 grid and a bot that travels diagonally from 1,1 to 5,5.
If it turns out mid flight at say 3,3 that it doesn't have enough juice it will try to recharge at 5,5 instead of the closer roboport at 3,3 and continue.
The robots always keep some reserve (10% I think), before they try to go for charging, which should probably be enough to make it work in a grid.
Will a mod be able to adapt to whether or not the expansion is installed w/o requiring it as a hard dependency?
I assume the dependency will be the same as adding the expansion to the mod’s dependency list, so it’ll support optional and hard dependencies? Kinda like how all of the base game’s content is in __base__?
Currently this is not possible.
It is quite clear, that there were things in the inventory which Scott just didn't want to show yet, so he just pasted the icon over.
You fool! Their location still tells us where they go in the tabs! Assuming one of the ones between roboports and combinators is the "Real" redwire, there's something there (Another colour? Or maybe coloured lamps or a new combinator. Leaning toward coloured or other variant lamps honestly.)
The other 5 after nuclear fuel are a bit harder. From memory of the inventory/tabs, the only thing after intermediates would be more science packs, then you're into the combat tab, so I'd probably guess new weapons/armor/toys
Wow, I didn't expect this kind of deduction!
There is bunch of things between the science packs and the military stuff indeed, and it is the "Space" tab. I guess that the information that we moved space related stuff (including existing rocket silo and satellite) into its own tab for easier navigation isn't that surprising after all.
Will it be possible to buy the expansion DRM-free on factorio.com then register it on Steam, like we did back in 2016?
Yes, as long as steam supports it for DLC (I hope so).
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