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kovarex



15 Sep

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by Denuro

I'd love to see the productivity recipes requiring the item you're researching as a cost.

Wanna increase the productivity of the rocket control unit? Yeah you're gonna need some ammount of rocket control in that research.

I just have no idea how that would be implemented in the lab. Maybe a new building used just to pay the costs of productivity researches?

We were actually considering exactly this.
But the reason we declined this idea was, that having one central resource (the whole research) improving one specific thing is more strategical compared to just "sacrifising" some part of the production to make it better over time.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by SmartAlec105

I will say that I’ve come around on Quality for the most part but I do feel like it has a high chance of misleading new players into thinking they’re supposed to start using the highest quality options as soon as they are available. You can see this happen when they replace every inserter with fast inserters even though those are overkill most of the time.

I like these research unlock methods. I’ve seen Seablock do similar which was a great way to help guide the player at the start.

You can't have a good strategy, when there is no way to play a bad strategy. No pleasure without suffering. That is life I guess.

Factorio always had strategy aspect, but the expansion apmlifies it, which was the goal.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by Mnemonicly

Are the trigger technologies things that need to be queued in order to proc the research or if I craft 10 copper plates will I automatically unlock electronics?

It doesn't need to be queued. But when there is nothing else going on, the technology gets queued automatically to display the progress.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by OleschY

That comment about Catan is very confusing to me. We are talking about the law of big numbers but assume that only one game of catan is played, or what?

Well, if I wanted to play a match of 1000 games to decide who is better, it would be as you suggest. But it rarely is the case. And even if it is, it is quite a big investment to figure out which strategy is actually better. Imagine playing 1000 games and the realizing "Ok, so this strategy doesn't work, lets try something different for the next 1000" :)
This is why poker, for example, stands much better, because one round of poker is way faster compared to one game of catan.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by MrCatUa

Doesnt productivity research and it being capped at +300% mean that you can get net neutral (put 1 in, get 1 out) recycling to legendary loops? That makes the whole thing much simpler in end game.

Correct, we also noticed that and discussed it, and there are 2 ways to look at it:
1) It would be very expensive to get there, but maybe at that point it would be interesting to have something change so drastically, that you can have legendary stuff (just the few select recipes) in the highest quality wihout an extra cost. I like the idea of infinite research having some "turning point" in some extreme future where things change, instead of just gradually growing.
2) We would just nerf things around a little to not allow it, the numbers could be changed just a little bit to make this never happen. But it would still mean that the ratio of getting the legendary items would be much nicer for the player as the turning point would be getting closer anyway, and that is fine.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by Thenumberpi314

You can recycle spidertrons in a recycler that has quality modules.

Congratulations, as you might be the first person outside wube to realize this is the only way. We realized it a long time ago, and found it to be so hilarious, that we made a special achievement for consuming a legendary fish, it is probably one of the most hardcore achievements in the game :)

Today's fish is trout a la creme.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by pancakeQueue

I work at a semi conductor company. That company produces so many silicon wafers. The silicon wafers are checked for quality and those of lesser quality are reprocessed. I view this feature in factorio the same.

Thanks.
There are too many people out there, who think that automation in the real world is infinitelly precise and there are no better or worst products. Therefore, they assume that it doesn't factorio, but the reality is just the opposite.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by P0L1Z1STENS0HN

From my own experience, you can even build a 16k spm megabase without a single reactor. However, I definitely needed uranium to get the necessary train acceleration/speed. The trains are consuming about 10 nuclear fuel per minute.

Since all the multiplicative factors of quality stuff on production, speed and solar panels. The ratio between production and power generation tends to be way less extreme (less power generation) in megabases compared to vanilla, which is also a wanted effect.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by SmartAlec105

“I hate this mechanic” is perfectly fine as feedback. Not the most useful form but it’s still worth knowing that a lot of people dislike an idea.

If people really understand the mechanics and their implications and hate it, its valid stance. But this post was mainly addressed to people which hated it for all the wrong reasons.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by P0L1Z1STENS0HN

To put a price to that - according to the screenshot the 2nd level needs 2250 science packs. I think it's safe to assume the same exponential progression as with e.g. artillery range.

Then, if I put it into my spreadsheet correctly, the total needed to get to level 30, is 1,207,959,550,875.

Assuming that all the quality improvements allow us to reach 50k spm, that's just over 1100 years of playtime; and we would have to get to 1M spm to be able to live to see level 30. And then it takes just as long as all previous levels together, to research level 31...

Not all exponentials have 2 as a base :)
Basically, the lower the base is, the more likely it is, that it have a meaning to choose between the recipes strategically, instead of making everything at the same level.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by Kano96

Most of these seem like low output volume recipes, is that on purpose? It makes sense to me, you are unlikely to fill a full belt of steel, so the extra productivity won't cause any issues in most cases. (and it's not a big deal to design these factories with some extra output belt capacity in mind)

Plastic seems like the odd one out in that aspect tho. I like the inclusion of an oil product, but I feel like a combined oil processing/liquefaction or just rocket fuel would make more sense.

Yea, low output volume recipes are the good choise because of the reasons you provided.

Also I like that we have one infinite research that doesn't even need space science, so you have more choises of what you want to do at each stage of the game.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by lee1026

If the cost is exponential like the current ones, even very large factories won’t be touching level 30. Two to the power of 30 is a lot.

It depends on the base of exponent. There are interesting differences when the exponent is for example 2 versus 1.8 or 1.5 etc.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by sonaxaton

Do technologies that require a trigger work even if you trigger it while the technology is locked behind other technologies? Like does it "remember" that you triggered it in the past, so you would instantly research it once it becomes available?

That is a good question. I think that it currently unlocks no matter what, but I can imagine it being configurable. Or maybe there should be another state of the technology which would mean something like "triggered, but waiting for prerequisities to be unlocked", basically what you suggest.
It would probably make the most sense.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by Choice_Percentage_26

I would like to have the option to show a message in chat when a research is completed, like in the "Improved Resarch Queue" mod by sonaxaton. With the queue like it is now it is easy to miss what research was completed.

We somehow forgot to include it in the FFF, even when I implemented it yesterday just to make the topic a whole. (Implemented sounds little bit too much for the 6 lines of changes, including the localisation and changelog entry)

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by StarryGlobe089

Triggered research sounds great! Perhaps they should be color coded differently in the research tree so that you can identify what needs manual action.

Will research always be unlocked by either science packs or trigger, or can a research require both?

You can distinquish them by not having science pack icons in the bottom. If both trigger and research is desired, it can be easily just two technologies one depending on another.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by Radoslawy

1 - if quality probability isn't a problem because with a big factory it will turn into ratios why not have it as a ratio from the start, instead of having 25% probability to make a better tier why not have every fourth item better (still dislike it tho, it will make blueprints worse and putting same recycler loop for every building in mall seems boring) 2 - productivity research will make ratios impossible
:(

We actually spent some time in the office discussing the alternative, to change the quality to work as progress bar, basically, you would have to go through, lets say, 4 cycles of production, to produce one result, but of higher quality. It has some pros and cons.
The main con is, that some of the more intricate theory-crafting setups wouldn't exist anymore. Also as it was mentioned, it would probably mean loosing the progress towards legendary when you relocate the building or just change a recipe, which could be quite a huge loss with some of the legendary stuff.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by Asddsa76

I don't like gating refineries and chemplant research behind setting up an oil pumpjack.

Currently, I automate tens of pumpjacks, refineries, and chemplants, along with necessary railway, then set up a refinery outpost somewhere with oil + coal + water in one go.

The new system would require going there once to set up pumpjacks to unlock the research, going back to your main base to automate refineries/chemplants, and then finally going back to set up the rest of the outpost.

We are aware of this. The gameplay changes, so you have to first acquire oil before being able to even start researching the infrastructure to eventually craft and build it. The concesus was, that it basically just adds a new constraint on the way you progress through the middle game, which can be part of the strategy.

For example, if you want to be efficient, you need to prepare a time when your factory can build what you need, while you find the oil in advance.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by Nazeir

What happens to the infinity research when your base prod bonus is 300%? It wouldn't provide any more bonuses right? So what's the point of continuing to research it?

30 levels will probably be too expensive to make it reachable in a normal way. Or we can just change from unlimited to 30 levels, but virtually infinite anyway.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by Learwin

What was the determining factor for which recipes have been chosen? From the post it seems like high cost intermediates.

We chose several important/influental recipes. There are things like steel (Something you can do before you go to space), blue chips, plastic, low density structure and few other things. But these things can change easily, so the list might change on a whim.

Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

Comment

Originally posted by DanmakuGrazer

Infinite crafting productivity research will make it impossible to have lasting perfect assembler ratios for endgame items, which sounds pretty exciting. Transporting materials by train to a dedicated production site will probably be a lot more effective, and you might even oversaturate your output belts eventually. Interesting stuff to think about during the most monotonous part of the game.

Also love the changes to early game research, I felt overwhelmed when I started even in the tutorial. They won't make a difference to someone who already knows what they're doing, but they'll help get new players used to all their starting tools.

Keep in mind that just few selected recipes have this research, not all.