FFF 381 Predictions

[vale gull]

Are we ever going to guess correctly? Let's see how we do for 381!

yes, I know I'm early but this post got stolen from me 2 weeks in a row. The biter shall have their revenge!

[loud pond]

I don't think it's worth racing here. You already started the tradition of these predictions, I'd already be happy with that. Besides, we can just make a bot which will create such topic each time FFF is released. Or still make it manually, but after the FFF.

[crystal thorn]

FFF 420 Predictions: EXPANSION RELEASED!

[tulip depot]

That would be July, given what devs said in August, quite possible

[tardy current]

I'll put in a guess for some new enemies

[tulip depot]

Train Wizard Money Gang predicts more trains

[covert jackal]

I respect the hustle, but now I can't snipe it the moment it comes out 😔

[vale gull]

I hope we get some inserter optimizations at some point

Perhaps loaders

[covert jackal]

I hope loaders never get introduced to vanilla

[pastel plover]

Loaders need some tweaking before vanilla and even then there is no use. Vanilla only needs like 2 stack inserters max for anything.

[covert jackal]

Precisely. Keep those far away from my unmodded game

[loud pond]

Inserters capable of big stacks can be useful for train loading/unloading. Just to make less interactions with wagons.

[pastel plover]

Well we will get quality inserters 😄

[long quarry]

Legendary inserters seem like they would do most of the job of a loader

[rapid ocean]

One thing I don’t think we will ever be getting are loaders/adjustable inserters. Half the challenge is just setting up an inserter monstrosity

[long quarry]

Adjustable inserters definitely seem like a no go. Too powerful and too much time in a gui to set up

[ruby burrow]

This remote stuff seems like a build-up to allow talking about space stuff, otherwise there would be questions about how to control certain things back on nauvis that you currently can't do remotely

my guess is space platform stuff

we already got a hint about having to send up the materials to build the platform itself via rocket

[vale gull]

The only real issue with inserters is that it swings fully extended, has to shrink in to pick up items on the closer side and then stretch back out before swinging to drop it off. Just clean up the animation and make it not need the few frames of shrinking to grab items to make it flow better

[zenith delta]

considering production everywhere is getting amped up and top tier blue belts would then become the bottleneck for a lot of setups, I suspect we'll either get an extra tier for belts, and or new logistics alternative(s) entirely for higher throughput

[vale gull]

There's an issue with faster belts. Currently items are set at an 8 pixel spacing because 2^n numbers are fun and easy. Yellow moves things 1 pixel per update, red moves 2 and blue moves 3. For animation purposes you can see items moving forward but if you get a belt that can move 4 pixels, it would look like items are oscillating back and forth between starting point to 4 pixels over, then back to starting point.

The problem gets worse for a 5 pixel speed as items at an 8 pixel spacing would appear to be moving BACKWARD 3 pixels per update. The player might understand that the belt is simply moving faster than the animation, but visually it wouldn't look good on how belts are currently animated.

So if we get a belt upgrade, it might not be speed. I think we could craft canisters or pallets of items and then unload them further down. Why are we moving plates one at a time when we can send a pallet of 10 at a time and increase belt throughout?

[zenith delta]

absolutely, increasing density is another way to solve this

[covert jackal]

It's like barrels but for plates

[tulip depot]

Another big no for adjustable inserters is readability. The game is designed to have clearly understandable behavior from simply looking at it. You have an inserter, it obviously moves things from one tile to another.
Adjustable inserters drastically break that

[zenith delta]

when using mods that implement that, you need to use alt-view with inserter arrows enabled to see exactly whats going on

it'll probably be that kind of thing, along with looking closely to see where the items are dropping

[shut mica]

I don't understand why it isn't enabled by default. Like seriously it's super helpful even without adjustable inserters.

[rapid ocean]

I find it funny how he sent me a message when I posted mine saying how he doesn’t post early to give people time to think, and then proceeded to post before it even came out.

[timber nymph]

train wizard monkey gang

[halcyon current]

possibly circuit network or trains?

[vale gull]

Eh I'm petty, I will be patient for 382

[rapid ocean]

I will make #382

even if it has to be made today

[tall salmon]

Circuit network upgrades is my guess

[main mural]

im guessing flying biters

[vale gull]

I think we're going to get more QoL improvements to the base game and sometime in the Spring we'll get SA new stuff

[ionic flame]

please, please let us set chest requests using a blueprint

[vale gull]

they basically said we can do that in the remote view now from anywhere, so odds are if we get blueprint upgrades, they'll let us do chest requests and circuit conditions in blueprints

[ionic flame]

I'd love to just drag a blueprint on a chest for it to request everything that is needed to build that bluerint

[vestal oasis]

3-lanes belts
whos with me

[timber nymph]

impossible

would, again, shatter the game

[vestal oasis]

shhh 3-lane belt is the one and only way

fr tho my prediction is probably space ui or something

since they've shown how remote is done, hopefully we'll get a more general view

[zenith delta]

hopefully 🙂

[vale gull]

so far most of the FFF's have been laying groundwork and rebuilding the foundation for what's to come. Better bot behavior, a complete rework of rails, and most likely some blueprint functionality (and hopefully train behavior) after reworking ghost functionality. I believe that the Quality update was about getting us hungnry for the future and now we are going through the foundation reworks before getting into the fun stuff.

Personally I want to see how interplanetary logistics is going to work.

[loud pond]

Quality thing makes me really hungry about SA. I can't stop imagining how will I play with it (old-school korean-MMO-lover here :D)

[loud pond]

I'm pretty sure you'll be able to copy-paste the settings remotely as you can now when standing close.

[tulip depot]

I think biter stuff will in later FFFs. If they're working on ai improvements along with planet-specific enemies, it would make sense to showcase them in one FFF

[covert jackal]

I'm very excited about a train rework

But biters are always fun

[tulip depot]

I play on peaceful, so biter stuff won't do much for me, but every part of the game deserves attention

[ionic flame]

But not we cant set requests using blueprints. I mean, we can copy a chest with already set up requests, but thats sth different than id like

[nova condor]

Something something fluid system.

[cold spear]

i think the next few FFF's until the actual space platforms one will just be these small tweaks for gameplay purposes and any other engine changes that will be required for the platforms

[cold spear]

i think this would play into the "verticality" they talked about as well. many mods add faster belts, having this extra logistics step of packing and unpacking and choosing where to place it would be more interesting than just upgrading belts to a higher tier

[cold spear]

i think that would probably be talked about just before the space platform's FFF

[trim magnet]

Seems like wube is revealing qol before anything else, last few fffs have been much requested features

We should expect more qol and requested features until they have mentioned them all

Then we can expect some new content, but idk when that will be

[pallid sun]

Another nice QOL feature would be a built-in blueprint editor.

[vale gull]

I'm hoping that is this week's

[crystal thorn]

I can't see blueprint improvements being in any way foundational to covering the new Space Age content, and depending on the improvements, it's something they may not want to dangle in front of us for almost a year, so I think they will save that for a later FFF

[fathom barn]

random guess: it’s going to be about new power generation and transmission in space and across planets

[vale gull]

I mean power poles wasnt that big for SA, these QoL improvements is all about building a good foundation

[crystal thorn]

yeah, and neither was the robots QoL, but both of those are kinda minor, while the blueprint improvements could be huge and numerous (I hope). so it's kinda like saving the best for the later FFFs which I'm sure they'll do for space content stuff as well

[zenith delta]

in the grand scheme of the expansion perhaps, but I thought bots were pretty substantial

they will move a lot more efficiently, plus the control for where you want to allocate them

[loud pond]

I think this week's FFF will be more focused on revealing some new SA-specific content. I mean not just an overhaul of some base mechanics, but something really new. For two reasons: firstly, there is a bit of hunger to know more. Secondly, because of (highly likely) decoded planet names. Which by itself already somewhat teased a bit. So would be just logical to give more info about the planets and their peculiarities.

[covert jackal]

I'm gonna say discussion of changed rocket recipes and getting to (but not making) the first space platform

[main mural]

You gave me an idea, the difference between rockets and cargo rockets/if there will even be cargo rockets.

[lavish magnet]

I think it depends what they're going for but I'm not sure they'll make the rocket cheaper to build, just buildable earlier

If you can use a couple of rockets to build a space platform that constantly sends back space science you won't need to launch dozens of them, so they could keep it expensive imo

[vale gull]

I'm guessing we will still have space logistics to move items back and forth

[main mural]

Also it would make sense to not have to use rockets to de-orbit. Maybe you can send some monopropellant up with rockets and use that to get your resources to the ground, but way cheaper. Maybe rockets wouldnt need as many parts/fuel if constructed from other planets with less g

And if planets have more g you need more rocket parts

So maybe they present alternative rockets

[covert jackal]

I'm pretty sure there'll be new types of rockets

[lavish magnet]

My bet would be on more rocket payloads than more rocket types, but I'd love to be proven wrong

[tall salmon]

Dbrock wins

[tulip depot]

how come still no #382 predictions channel

its been half an hour