FFF Speculations

[desert lake]

When it obviously desperately requires change because it’s crusty and old and completely broken and objectively unfun

But minecraft fans are brainless radioactive mutants that will riot in response to a single change to something old

So the developers simply keep old things as they are, and add simple self-contained shallow new content to appease the masses

[hybrid prism]

they did change villagers and make them better

[desert lake]

That change didn’t go through, it’s still in the feedback phase (unless I missed something)

And it is my prediction that it will stay there permanently

[hybrid prism]

??? it was in like 2015 or something

was a while ago

[desert lake]

Oh, 1.14?

[hybrid prism]

i think

[desert lake]

That didn’t make them better, that made them even worse

[hybrid prism]

they were horrible before 1.14

[deft mauve]

Maybe I'm too demanding, but if we currently have a diesel locomotive, why doesn't it support liquid fuels?

[desert lake]

Before, villagers were unviable because of the effort required to kill old villagers and wait for new ones to grow up just to see their trades. In 1.14, you can very easily reroll them over and over to get whatever you want

So we have the broken OP villager trading, that players abuse, but they abuse it because they desperately want to avoid the actual enchanting system, which in itself is a complete mess. There are just layers and layers and layers of horrible design that has piled up over the years, I really do not envy the developers of this game

But we should probably get back to factorio

[hybrid prism]

maybe hytale will be a good designed block game

[desert lake]

If… it ever comes out of development hell

Who knows, maybe one day

[hybrid prism]

yeah

[arctic wasp]

Wasn't hytale announced in 2014 or some shit?

[hybrid prism]

2018

[arctic wasp]

huh, I looked it up, I'm seeing Wikipedia cite it as being in development since 2015 - that's almost Star Citizen levels of bad

also this gem:

The idea for Hytale arose due to EULA changes by Mojang in 2014 which blocked servers from having microtransactions that affected gameplay, leading to an 85% drop in the Hypixel server's revenue.

and at any rate, if it takes you longer to develop a game than it took NASA to build a spacecraft capable of landing a man on the moon, then you've probably done something wrong

Star Citizen has been in development for ~13 years now, which is longer than the entirety of the Space Race

[raven bridge]

Speculation: Squadron 42 will come out 2025

[hybrid prism]

star citizen is pretty controversial

A lot of people do like it though

[primal nacelle]

I don't think the loco is diesel-electric. It can be stirling-electric, since it does not care at all about what the burnable fuel is

[desert lake]

Factorio relies on this strange ambiguous “burner” concept for many things, trains are only one example

[short roost]

Beaming power to orbit/other planets will be next

[arctic wasp]

tbh I doubt it, it'll trivialise power logistics we're seeing on Vulcanus (and Fulgora, to a degree)

[desert lake]

Right, I would prefer if each planet relied more on its native unique power generation

[short roost]

Not its only after you already did power production on vulcanus and fulgora

[desert lake]

And uranium importing will always remain an option

The planets are in any order

You could go to fulgora first

And then never build any proper power generation on other planets because you can just beam the energy there

Nuclear at least requires tons of water, which is not trivial on the two planets we've seen so far

[small bear]

seems to have lot of water, we may need to get nucler power here

or just solar and regular steam power

unless its not water in the ocean

will we do regular mining and smelting for iron/copper/stone on ?

[pale pumice]

My thoughts are 'I kinda doubt it'

[small bear]

I ran out of good ideas how to make those repetitive thing more interesting on

[pale pumice]

Me too!

That's why I am so excited for Bacchus

but remember, there's somehow Aquilo after that 🤯

[small bear]

mainly “how to reduce the number of different old ore patches but still gives everything”

and now it need to be different from both and

[raven bridge]

Trees.

Money doesn't grow on trees, but sulfur for some reason does on this planet

[small bear]

thematically maybe, but how it’s going to be different mechanically tho

[pale pumice]

We don't have anything seablock-esque yet.

Well.... I guess actually we do

Vulcanus is just lavablock

[small bear]

I think for chemicals it would be fine as there will be better chemplant(green machine) and probably alternative chemistry routes, but ores?

also power?

give foundry and alternative metal processing, just skip smelting by reverse crafting, but …?

can’t imagine having to find iron and copper ore patch again on

[pale pumice]

and then smelt it...

and then make a rocket

I mean, rocket fuel is barely the hard part of the rocket anyways

[small bear]

and smelt them in powered by nuclear plant

[pale pumice]

that said, I think we can at least agree probably lives here

[small bear]

exactly. Even with easier rocket fuel production it won’t be much easier than on already

It can’t be that u farm fruits and trade with local tribes to get metal products, right?
…right?

[pale pumice]

right

[small bear]

[pale pumice]

no idea where he? is

[small bear]

seems to be a habitable planet for such alien to exist

[pale pumice]

'new military targets'

actually

I just realized, the search space is not large.

• Has liquid water

[small bear]

u can either trade with them peacefully or choose to fight them

[pale pumice]

Can you think of a planet that fits?

It literally has to be bacchus

It has dripping water.

Fulgora is too cold. Aquilo is colder. Vulcanus is scorching hot.

That lives on Bacchus.

[small bear]

it would be crazy if they really add alien marketing

[rocky plover]

I think will have a "skip oil entirely" mechanic

[pale pumice]

I mean, Fulgora already has that.

That's why I'm so surprised.

[small bear]

I think it would be something like oil version of metal casting

[pale pumice]

Are you suggesting direct crafts for and ?

[rocky plover]

You get heavy oil on Fulgora? Which you then crack? That's not skipping oil

[small bear]

Fulgora skips so many things which makes alternative metal or oil processing not that attractive anymore lol

[pale pumice]

I'm going to fulgora first personally

Unless bacchus beats it somehow

[raven bridge]

is the planet so I wonder about skipping oil

[small bear]

if gives spidertrons I may consider going there first

[rocky plover]

I am in fact suggesting alternative recipes/sources for

[pale pumice]

Reminder that you don't have to go to the planet and then finish it

you can go, grab the fancy machine, and leave.

[small bear]

yeah alternative rather than skipping

[rocky plover]

I mean is the smelting planet which is the planet you skip furnaces and ore on

[pale pumice]

I may finish whichever planet gives spiders first, but I am 'hopping by' each planet for those machines first. They are busted

I think it's at least pretty clear we're not in a good place to predict it.

[rocky plover]

So skipping oil on the chemical planet would make sense

[small bear]

I see it as alternative metal processing and not skipping smelting

directly mining acid is something I would say skipping steps

[rocky plover]

Ok well I'm predicting alternative oil refining then. Semantics

[pale pumice]

chemical plants already spit out so much plastic

trying to get the output out of the biochemical facility will be crazy

Can you guys believe they were originally planning to ship without stacking?

[small bear]

I wonder that thing can benefit from the built in prod of biochemical facilities. Foundry has belts, EMP has modules

[pale pumice]

The game seems broken without it

Hmmm. Can you think of another set of relatively expensive, bulk crafts we do for nauvis bases?

[keen scaffold]

If you make the building pretty big, there will be enough space for more stack inserters

[pale pumice]

I mean, perhaps rockets and explosive rockets?

Seems kinda silly

but that might be one?

[small bear]

plastics is actually not that cheap if u consider the infrastructure

[keen scaffold]

You make a good point, whilst it makes the most sense we'll get an advanced chem plant, do we really have that much use for it?

[small bear]

I wonder if the biochem plant will be used for various military production

[keen scaffold]

Maybe we'll need to craft some kind of new and advanced material in bulk on bacchus

[pale pumice]

I mean, it can probably craft explosives.

[small bear]

well this is probably for sure

[keen scaffold]

Sulfur recipe might be changed so that we need more machines

Sulfur is barely used now that I think about it

[small bear]

for chemicals I can imagine planting trees for alternative crafting routes of lube, plastics, rocket fuels, batteries and explosives

I can’t really imagine how we get ores tho

[keen scaffold]

Bioleaching

You can use fungi and bacteria to leach trace amounts of metals from very poor metal deposits, then when you burn the remains you end up with metal ores

If bioleaching existed in factorio it would be hugely buffed

But the challenge could be expanding your base large enough to generate enough ores (there could be hostile enemies)

[small bear]

maybe u only get stone ore patches and u can use acid ore washing to get some iron and copper from stone

[keen scaffold]

But then you could do the same on other planets, doesn't really feel like the 'bacchus challenge' then

[small bear]

this process is relatively inefficient u probably only want to use it here where it’s necessary

or make it a special stone resource instead

[raven bridge]

Imagine of had explosive animals you could mine directly out of

[small bear]

[rocky plover]

This isn't minecraft

[small bear]

now I wonder if we will see vitamelange in SA

I cant tell if its green ocean or if its green land

it seems likely that we will have green lands (perhaps jungles) with various different lakes (more than one type of ocean resource)

[pale pumice]

pink is something else

I wonder what keeps us from Aquilo until we've been to the first 3

[raven bridge]

.
has large green and desert areas. And lakes.
has relatively similar areas close by.
has islands, but it's all similar.
Hopefully, will actually have several different biomes, relatively far apart with green, pink, and yellow

[raven bridge]

Research

[pale pumice]

Yes but how exactly?

[raven bridge]

Science packs in labs I guess

https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blog/fff-373-technology-graph-smaller.png

[pale pumice]

Well, I mean, how does it prevent us from going there?

you research it and you get the link?

That seems a bit anticlimactic

I wonder if that diagram is literal

[small bear]

seems so

[pale pumice]

Makes sense actually

you do have to setup a space science factory for it

which requires making science.. in space

where you'd notice such things

[raven bridge]

Personally I hope we get telescopes and stuff we need to put in places without pollution

Maybe green buildings from the FFF

[small bear]

I suspect green buildings are trees we bring from

green are used for trees on map afterall

[pale pumice]

that sounds silly to me

[raven bridge]

It could be the bioreactor, and far from the main structures because of pollution

Actually no. it's not connected to anything

[pale pumice]

I don't think this pollution mechanic you're trying to find is very interesting

[raven bridge]

Ah it's connected by roboport

It might be power thing

[deft mauve]

it wrote that there is a chance for ice on Fulgora

[pure siren]

I think that's the reason for exclusive recipes. A "pit stop" won't be enough to get reasonable amounts of the specialised crafters.

Need to set up a somewhat sustainable base before moving on.

[elder raptor]

You can't "hop by" on a planet; you'll still need to build the rocket and make a factory that makes the stuff for it

You can't leave the planet without a rocket

[raven bridge]

Or launch parts and rocket parts

[elder raptor]

I... guess that's a thing you can do?

Except now you're spending additional time on sending those

[small bear]

I believe u can even craft a silo on the platform before u leave Nauvis and drop it to the new planet

[small bear]

this tho

[elder raptor]

Don't forget you need to make the planet's own science pack to unlock their machines

Which means you still need to make at least some level of factory

[small bear]

but what’s good about it is that u don’t have to ensure your Nauvis base is error proof when u r on Nauvis

[elder raptor]

Yeah that's fair

[small bear]

foundry, recyclers and EMP are unlocked by trigger techs

[elder raptor]

Hmm

Right

[small bear]

also big miner is trigger tech

u need them for the science

[elder raptor]

It's probably still stuff like "mine enough stuff that automation is preferred"

[small bear]

perhaps T3 quality module need planetary science

[elder raptor]

Trigger tech doesn't mean easy

[small bear]

they usually are

u unlock recycler by mining scrap

[elder raptor]

For all we know, we need to process 1000 scrap to unlock the EMP

[pure siren]

they certainly need local resources

[small bear]

do we know this?

[elder raptor]

We don't

[small bear]

I know that u only need 5000 scrap to make one rocket (not including the silo)

[elder raptor]

My point being, I don't think cheesing it like that will be as straightforward

[small bear]

space platform travel probably won’t be straightforward

[elder raptor]

Yeah

[small bear]

oh, u actually need more than one rocket if u want to bring anything back, one for just yourself

EMP probably requires some basic holmium intermediate

like how foundry needs tungsten carbide

[pure siren]

Foundry is a Vulcanus exclusive recipe, it's safe to assume Pineapple Crafter and Bwuhuo Chemplant will be as well.

[small bear]

I’m 100% sure they are exclusive to their own planet

why it’s called pineapple crafter tho lol

[pure siren]

why are you posting the same picture twice?

[bold shard]

I think it was said somewhere that silo is too heavy to launch via rocket

so you'd have to send the ingredients if thats the route you want to take

[small bear]

u launch ingredients for silo and craft it on the platform

I said ‘craft a silo’ on the platform

[bold shard]

you're right, I misunderstood you

[small bear]

no worries

[bold shard]

hopefully they go into platform cargo capacity sooner than later

those modular cargo bays are huge, but they might just add 10-20 slots of space (or maybe even less), who knows

[raven bridge]

Launch the items that aren't easily available on the target planet

So for , launch only electric motors and maybe pipe

For you need more things, like .

[small bear]

my guess is they only add 1-2 inventory slots per tile they occupy

could be more but probably not more than 5 per tile

40 slots per cargo bay seems fine, as its also consistent with capacity of a train wagon

[raven bridge]

Do you think it will be by slots or by weight?

[bold shard]

it comes down to whether wube wants to incorporate cargo weight into the physics/speed of the platform or not

[pure siren]

Doubt it. Weight is already factored in with space platform size. Would be overly complex to incorporate cargo weight into it.

There's a loose relation between size and max cargo.

[small bear]

by slot makes more sense I think

either way a platform will be able to hold much more than a single rocket can launch

[desert lake]

I mean, you don't need the emp to make holmium the way you need the foundry to make tungsten

It's completely possible that you can just smelt the holmium ore into plates and be done with it

[small bear]

we don’t know

[small bear]

perhaps yeah

[desert lake]

Processing an ore doesn't seem very "electromagnetic" to me, I see no reason why that building should do it

[raven bridge]

Arc furnaces depend on electric currents

[desert lake]

Also we did see that the foundry can do it no problem

Well, it can make plates, but we don't know out of what

[raven bridge]

Plates and steels

[desert lake]

So technically there could be some SE-esque intermediate step we haven't seen yet, but I doubt that. Tungsten carbide only exist so that the buildings required to process tungsten can also use tungsten in their recipes

[raven bridge]

Though the steel might be tungsten steel

[desert lake]

I mean that's what I assumed

After the official reveal of holmium, I thought it was obvious that the plate and beam were different materials

[small bear]

u mean left is tungsten bean and right is holmium plate?

[raven bridge]

Yes. Left is darker, like tungsten. Right is pinker, like the holmium plates from the latest FFF.

[desert lake]

I felt such overwhelming relief when I realized this

[small bear]

it actually makes sense!

then it probably means on the new material is not metal?

[desert lake]

I never expected it to be one

[small bear]

how about on Aquilos

[desert lake]

I expect a) A crystal or b) A fluid, to be extra unique

[small bear]

u surely need foundry on the last planet for something

[desert lake]

Honestly Aquilo is still by far the most mysterious planet to me

If it was just an ice planet, it would be fine. If it was just "the big bad final planet", it would be fine

But both?

What an unprecedented combination

[small bear]

if there anything u do about winning the game on the furthest planet in the solar system, I guess is leaving the solar system

next expansion: Factorio interstellar

[desert lake]

The stellaris player in me does still crave the ability to dismantle a solar system and build a ring around its star...

Or to encase said star in a megastructure that sucks out energy and precious resources

But these activities are probably more fun viewed from a star map, rather than being there yourself

[bold shard]

to quote FFF 373: "you still are expected to build bigger in preparation of what is to come." that definitely sounds like some kind of mega expensive stuff end game

[raven bridge]

They said it's about 2x the size of vanilla. You're expected to build about double the size of vanilla.

But the endgame goes much further

[deft mauve]

I wonder if holmium will have a steel equivalent

[desert lake]

Why would it

[deft mauve]

From what I understood, holmium will probably be almost the basic resource on fulgor

[desert lake]

What makes you say that?

I don't see it that way at all

It seems like an exotic and powerful material, like tungsten

[deft mauve]

ok, so I thought wrong because I think they will replace iron in planets

[void sapphire]

I’m really interested to see speedruns of SA when it comes out. The space restrictions on planets like Fulgora should make things interesting.

[raven bridge]

The 100% is going to be absolutely bonkers

[desert lake]

How does one even 100% factorio? Achievments?

[pale pumice]

SA speedrunners using quantum mechanics to visit all 3 planets simultaneously

I wonder if the expansion will go quantum in any way/shape/form

[raven bridge]

Yes, 100% is all achievements on a single run. The WR is like 4:22 hours.

[pure siren]

I hope not. Adding the word quantum to anything instantly turns it into a scam.

[pale pumice]

lol true

Aquilo: the quest for the quatum cryptocurrency

[desert lake]

Same with "multiverse" recently, for some odd reason

And if things keep up the way they are going, "AI" may find itself in that pile as well

[pure siren]

most of "AI" always has been in that pile

[raven bridge]

Quantum Blockchain AI

[pale pumice]

AI was the OG in that pile

[little seal]

We have 400 predictions already???!?!?!?!?!

[restive pecan]

no its prediction for the next fff which is the 400th blog

[little seal]

Ohhhhhhh

||Waiting for 404th ||

[halcyon bolt]

nice

[little seal]

I have an idea about electric trains

Instead of putting up new tracks, the rails can be connected to a power pole, something similar to how it is done in real life
Stamp down a medium electric pole like rail signal & there we have setup the infrastructure for electric trains (which can transfer electricity from one island to another too)

As for train locomotive itself, those can have equipment slots, in which we can plug in electric motor and there we get electric trains

[sudden quest]

I doubt we'll see electric trains (at least before the endgame) because

1. It would bypass the logistic challenges of refueling. Given the changes they made to train scheduling to make this both easier and more interesting, it would be weird to give an option that no longer requires it
2. It would break the fulgora power challenge, since electric rails could presumably be used to transfer power between islands before we get the oil ocean landfill in endgame

[little seal]

It can be made into a late game item 🤔
But yea you do have point

Maybe I made this a mod idea instead 😂

[sudden quest]

yeah, def a cool mod idea. just not sure it fits well into the base game

[pure siren]

I don't see it in vanilla because it would require us to effectively build the entire rail network again. That's a major hassle. For it to be worth it in terms of game design, electric locos would have to be a lot better than the current ones. Current locos are really good already. So there's no need for electric trains in vanilla.

[sudden quest]

to be fair, the suggestion did mention just being able to plug in existing rails, not building new ones

[pure siren]

The creator of RimWorld, Tynan Sylvester, asks himself "what problem does it solve" when considering new features.

In the case of electric locos in Factorio, the answer is "none". Which makes it bad design to add them.

[keen scaffold]

it solves the problem of having to refuel trains that are outside of your roboport network.

the real answer as to why there isnt more than one type of train is because trains are impossible to upgrade or replace when in automatic mode

it would be like having mk2 bots, currently theres no easy way to get all of your bots in one place without having to chase them around your whole base

[pale pumice]

Trains can simply drive to a fueling depot now

that problem is not here anymore

it was solved in a better way

[pure siren]

According to Tynan, no feature can be free. What's the cost for the player to use a mechanic?
In the case of electric trains, we would have to rebuild our rail network for the benefit of not needing to refuel our trains.
This cost is way too high, even in 1.1.

You can rephrase that as factorios approach of "more complexity for better efficiency"

[desert lake]

Especially if they're found on another planet

Right now, the latest players can access a "previous thing but better" building is with electric furnaces, in blue science

Everything else due for mass replacement gets replaced very very quickly

[pure siren]

electric furnaces aren't straight up better though
on their own, they're bigger, more expensive, consume more "fuel" and produce more pollution than a steel smelter

that changes quickly if you add modules though, which adds a whole lot of complexity

[desert lake]

Of course

But at the start it's a simplification of logistics at the cost of some other things

And the power of modules will eventually outweigh those costs massively

[pure siren]

forgot about the logistics bit, that's better, yes

[hybrid prism]

electric trains can be battery powered

then no rail upgrades

[pure siren]

still doesn't solve any problem the player is facing

[little seal]

Electric trains with higher base speed!

[hybrid prism]

having to produce more power

in space age you only need a single refueling station so its not like that is a big logistics problem

[pure siren]

that would be the cost for that system, not the problem it's supposed to solve

the problem that trains solve is long-way transportation

adding electric trains needs to solve a train specific problem. what is that problem, how would electric trains solve it, what would the cost be. is it fun? is it worth the development effort? will it be different enough from the current steam/diesel locos so that it stands out?

adding electric trains needs to solve a train specific problem. what is that problem
it can't be fuel logistics, because that's the cost for trains. the next tier cannot just undo the cost that was added for that system

[slow swallow]

Perhaps it’s like a charger block, similar to a pump, that recharges the trains battery

Perhaps an electric train would be faster, but have a longer slow down speed

[pure siren]

higher max speed is already "solved" by different fuels. it's not much, but it's there.
You'd introduce the same feature again.

Not trying to shoot down any ideas here. (electric trains in this example)

[rocky plover]

Question: why are people even discussing electric trains? They seem completely pointless

[short patio]

It somewhat follows the theme of upgrading things from burner to electric versions of the same thing, and simplifies refueling logistics slightly. I'm with Thyme in that it's unlikely to happen

[pure siren]

If you scroll up a bit, you can find this:

The heart is by JG, which basically confirms that there won't be electric trains in factorio.

[short patio]

I'm still set on getting builder trains, trains with an equipment grid basically, because it would allow for better remote building, act as a mid-way thing for spidertrons since those were pushed further into the tech tree, and has some minor associated challenge in properly setting up to be useful. It incentivized making a mall before you leave Nauvis.
It incidentally also solves the problem of refueling stuck trains, wherever they happen to be.

The fact that Fulgora prevents building anything but rail related things on the oil sands makes me more hopeful, since you can't even do the janky thing of chaining roboports to build stuff remotely. Without a builder train, or having set a ton of stuff up beforehand, you can't expand at all without being physically there

Repairing or modifying is also extremely challenging

[pure siren]

Yeah, construction wagons (or whatever the implementation would be) actually solve a problem that we have.

And with filterable inventory slots, those should be doable without circuitry, which is a soft requirement imho.

[short patio]

Even late game I think they would be useful, because if you're building near a rail you can easily tell the train to go restock and then come back. With spiders you have to path for them, then path them back when they're refilled

[pure siren]

Fulgora expansion really is a problem we can't solve with 1.1 tools. I think it's safe to assume Wube has a proper solution for that.

[elder raptor]

elevated rails, obviously; I wonder if next week will reveal additional tools we can use

[short patio]

Imagine a train runs out of fuel on tracks of your Fulgora base. The base is locked until it refuels.

Or potentially the lightning technically solves this? A train stopped in the middle of nowhere will eventually be entirely destroyed

[short patio]

It's not possible to build those elevated rails away from your roboport range, and the distances between islands makes it look like you can't bridge them a lot of the time with roboports.

[pure siren]

yeah, that's what I meant with "Fulgora expansion problem". Without the player, and being limited to what we have in 1.1, we cannot settle on new islands.

[short patio]

It's not great on Nauvis either tbh. It's possible, certainly, but it's incredibly awkward to chain roboports a long range and then try to build something at the end. It doesn't encourage good base design

[pure siren]

The story missions mod had a map where you have to do that.

No advanced chests. Only Passive Provider and Storage.

[restive pecan]

electric train could use lightning as power source, but thats a tiny single use case and not worth it

[ashen herald]

Seems like that will encourage you to stay a while in person to expand your fulgora factory as much as you can before leaving

[short patio]

I don't think easier fueling is much of a concern when solid fuel is one of the outputs of scrap, and I have to imagine we'll be swimming in it when power is covered by lightning already

[bold shard]

don't forget rocket fuel for whatever you're exporting, that will consume a non-trivial amount

[ashen herald]

Yep, solid fuel will be a byproduct you have to pretty much dispose of

[short patio]

We also get heavy oil from pumps, which can immediately be turned into solid fuel

[ashen herald]

Yes, so you get more than you possibly could use, due to water bottleneck

[short patio]

So even if you use everything from scrap, you still have really easy access to fuel

Don't even need water to turn it into solid fuel

[bold shard]

you can always take the excess and do quality recycling loops on it

then you can take that and either use higher quality solid fuel or higher quality rocket fuel for whatever

[short patio]

It's unclear what quality fuel gives you

[ashen herald]

That's true but you can't really do much with it in solid fuel form without water, in that state it's just train fuel. You need water for cracking to light and combine into rocket fuel

[bold shard]

whether for trains or other crafting recipes

higher MJ value

[short patio]

Oh right, crafting stuff can use quality fuel

[bold shard]

and since fluid doesn't have quality, you can easily turn that into higher quality

[short patio]

Right, but the thing that started this line of convo was on the topic of train fuel, and how electric rails would be really really superfluous on Fulgora because of the abundance of easy train fuel

A pump and a chemical plant can make solid fuel as long as they have power

[ashen herald]

I agree, the concern will never be about train fuel, just that there's an overabundance of one unlimited thing that can't be fully utilized due to a bottleneck

Water on nauvis, lava on vulcanus, and heavy oil on fulgora. (I still see you nauvis oil, but that diminishes). If this pattern continues, each planet might have it's own unlimited primary fluid.

[short patio]

Vulcanus has sulfuric acid as well

Which might be more like oil on Nauvis, admittedly

[ashen herald]

Thanks for reminding me, that is very important too

[short patio]

Bwuhuo might be a bit more like Nauvis, given that it looks pretty green. At least on the water scarcity aspect

[ashen herald]

It does look pretty green, could be plants or polluted ocean

[rugged onyx]

Each environment has environmental hazards.... what if plants could grow through your building, essentially ruining it until fully repaired. Could be a constant fight against encroaching forest

Like that species of fast growing bamboo they used to torture people with.

[little seal]

I wanna see some machine which can consume combustible fuels & output electricity (+pollution ofcourse)

Like there's burner generator in SE

[ashen herald]

I was thinking that earlier, some sort of thermoelectric generator that is fuel inefficient but gets the job done in areas where water is scarce

that burner generator in SE is actually not that inefficient, could be worse

[short patio]

Seems like each planet will have its own power generation gimmick. Vulcanus has really potent solar and an easy ability to make accumulators, Fulgora has the lightning rods. I don't think they'll go for a pure burner generator, it seems a bit too simple unless they really change how you get fuel

[candid pawn]

whats nauvis's gimmick?

[bold shard]

abundant vanilla resources? lol

its not flashy or exciting, but it certainly has its place

[sweet wind]

Currently Nauvis's gimmick is nuclear

[keen scaffold]

Nauvis gimmick is that you mine ore and smelt it into plates

That's just normal factorio because we're all used to that by now

[small bear]

Nauvis’s gimmick is u unlock automation here

[small bear]

maybe Bwhhuo has green grass fields, blue ocean, pink and yellow jungles?

it seemd like the pink only goes with blue, so it might be like swamps?

or pink coral in blue ocean

yellow is alien forest where fruits contains sulfuric acid as juice and other parts can be processed into lube and plastics

we will get various ores from coral

and grow fishes

[brave wharf]

in terms of how you get resources on I am guessing we will farm resources with trees/plants/fungi/something

[small bear]

Now I’m suspecting that we will get both forest and ocean life related productions on

[keen scaffold]

Pink desert sounds interesting

Spice harvesting

[brave wharf]

like IRL there are some plants that can take in extra metals from the ground, and store them inside themselves as a defense mechanism. They could totally take some artistic license and make trees whose fruits have iron in them, or giant mushrooms which are rich in copper

or whatever

[small bear]

tbh ores from ocean lifes feels making more sense

[brave wharf]

but we already have a planet where you get ores from the oceans (vulcanus)

[small bear]

not ocean lifes

[brave wharf]

i mean lava oceans, but still if they're going for uniqueness land life would be more interesting, where you farm it in greenhouses or whatever

[keen scaffold]

I still think bioleaching will be a thing

[small bear]

My bet is the green machines is a bioplant where u can grow local life

[keen scaffold]

Because it's the only other form of gathering raw metal that's actually used in an industrial setting

[small bear]

isn’t that u still need ores to get metal using bioleaching

[keen scaffold]

Nah bioleaching pulls metal ores out of otherwise useless soil

It's most often used for electronic waste

But it could be used in iron rich river water for example

[primal nacelle]

This is how endgame resource collection works in Riftbreaker. You plant and grow and harvest plants that are rich in resources

[keen scaffold]

That's what bioleaching is

[small bear]

[keen scaffold]

Oh okay, it can be used for both then

[small bear]

so its green land, yellow forest and blue/pink ocean

I predict chemicals from forests and ores from oceans

[raven bridge]

I predict nuclear apocalypse like Chernobyl, with radiation causing things to grow bigger and more wild

[primal nacelle]

I think that is more Fallout or Stalker than Chernobyl

[small bear]

game progression speculation:
u unlock space platform on Nauvis, and u unlock new space platform equipments from to aid space platform travel, and u need all of them to be able to travel to the last planet. And on the last planet u unlock techs to install endgame equipments on the space platform to escape the solar system to win the game. The end game is on the space platform and there’s a huge part of gameplay in space they didn’t reveal yet!

[raven bridge]

They talked about "more processing" in space. So that does line up.

[small bear]

unlocking all the advanced asteroid processing from to sustain your journey to Aquilo!

[raven bridge]

Or from Aquilo to the victory condition

[small bear]

I highly suspect that the endgame science is made in space

deep space science!

or interstellar science

fits better for the next expansion: Factorio Interstellar

[candid pawn]

i also suspect this

[elfin zenith]

Day, or, er... week? 2 of predicting pet biters.

[ashen herald]

Pet biters are just a novelty

[small bear]

Pet

[candid pawn]

what happens to fish when you landfill over them?

[small bear]

[candid pawn]

a-are they okay?

[bold shard]

depends on what your definition of "okay" is

[candid pawn]

happy and thriving?

[lilac arrow]

…yeah well they should be happy to be granted so much stone for free, thriving idk

[small bear]

hum… I just realized that I can’t search within this thread

am I missing anything?

[candid pawn]

no, discord is garbage

[small bear]

[sweet wind]

You can search the entire #1104200321087066173 channel but not a specific thread

[candid pawn]

same issue with threads

[hoary timber]

So you can search all threads but not in a single thread huh. nice job discord.

[candid pawn]

astonishingly terrible implementation

[keen scaffold]

Such are monopolies

It's the reason why Skype died to discord, and why a few years in the future discord will die to another voip provider

[desert lake]

It should hurry up with that

It really gets worse and worse with every update

[small bear]

wait what? Then what is the weight of a

1000/300

or u r counting the 50 to make the rocket?

so it’s actually 250 in the cargo

each processor is 4kg

[quasi crest]

can carry like 3000
that equals 12.000 kg or 12 tonnes

[small bear]

itself is 1 tonne

[quasi crest]

how

why

[primal nacelle]

I suppose it is because when you want to go up, you need to be just as yourself with nothing extra

Although you could explain it away by saying that when you want to go up, the cargo hold is dedicated to keeping you alive for the duration of the trip

[small bear]

u can just ctrl click to launch your inventory gradually into the orbit before u hop in tho

gameplay wise its okay I guess

[brave wharf]

with like life support systems or whatever

which is actually pretty light, as those go

[grave crag]

You may hold filled armor

[small bear]

speculation: in-interrpt only makes sense if u have an interrupt longer than one target station for the in-int to interrupt

why would u need an interrupt with more than one target stations?

[raven bridge]

Speculation: FFF-400 is a recap/project statue

[sweet wind]

Gotta be something special for 400 surely

300 was a special edition dev interview

[desert lake]

Wait, since when does the engineer entering a rocket fill its cargo?

I thought you could just hop into any rocket regardless of if it's full or not

[raven bridge]

It's all the "life support systems"

[sweet wind]

Yeah I'm pretty sure you can just hitch a ride with the rocket, with cargo. You just can't have anything in your inventory.

[raven bridge]

You can't.

[sweet wind]

Now you've got me curious

[raven bridge]

I don't see it in the FFF, but IIRC devs confirmed it

[sweet wind]

Time to go deal with discord search

[small bear]

u probably spill out inventory into silo or ground

[sweet wind]

whelp 60+ pages of discord search results turns up nothing. I give up.
Will ask the next time a dev is in #friday-facts

But personally I don't see why you wouldn't be able to get into a rocket just because it has items in it

I would assume whatever mechanism you use to get into the rocket won't let you if you have items/weapons in your inventory

[desert lake]

Right, I think it would be useful to be able to catch a ride on one of your cargo rockets

I mean, building a whole rocket just to travel and nothing else seems overkill

Not sure if the devs would want to make players do that

[primal nacelle]

I think it was said in one of the FFFs. Because I also remember the statement that you can't travel in a rocket with cargo

[desert lake]

You can't travel in a rocket with cargo on your person

Like, your inventory

You can only take your guns and armor

[primal nacelle]

Yea, it was 382 which said that

[sweet wind]

However the weight system implies that the player can potentially hold tons of rockets worth of items in their inventory, so for traveling to space, you can only carry your armor and your guns, nothing else (not even ammo).
It doesn't say anything about it affecting the capacity of the rocket

https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/blog-sync/fff-382-rocket-silo-gui.png

And the 'Travel to space' button is still available with cargo in the rocket

[pale pumice]

I wonder what this will say

"You are too heavy for the rocket!"

[desert lake]

"Next time eat a salad"

[sweet wind]

Probably something very direct and to the point "cannot travel to space when carrying items"

"Unable to launch, items in inventory"

[raven bridge]

Imagine if it just drops all the items on the ground, like when removing armor.

[small bear]

one possibility is that all your inventory is left inside the silo cargo

[desert lake]

Wait, how did I only just realize

The SA planets are named the same way as IRL solar system planets

Roman gods, just different ones

So it feels almost like some parallel universe scenario

But this might put a dent in my "Nauvis is Venus and Bacchus is Earth" theory because Nauvis and Earth are the ones who deviate from the others

A sacrifice I am willing to make

[small bear]

[keen scaffold]

aerostatic gas harvester

[small bear]

enemies and hives that float in air

balloon enemies

air pressure so high that almost feels like underwater

perhaps on

[raven bridge]

Py are adding gas giants in their space expansion

[rugged onyx]

Neat idea

[short roost]

gas giants would function similarly as space, except asteroids being replaced by atmospheric harvesting and the threat asteroids by biters. not a fun idea, very repetetive

[small bear]

or it would be just a fluid resource outpost

[elder raptor]

Probably why it won't be in SA. Sounds perfect for mods like Py or SE

[bold shard]

if not this, I suspect it'll be something special for 400

[candid pawn]

its the one where they announce the release date is delayed and the price has gone up

[pale pumice]

I would support ¯_(ツ)_/¯

release date delayed for wube means more stuff

they don't seem to be on track for significant delays unless scope increase

[small bear]

‘we just played KSP recently and realized that the space part in Factorio makes no sense at all, so we decided to remake the space part from scratch and it will take another 3 years’

[slender glen]

Factorio: orbital mechanics age

[small bear]

Orb Age

[pale pumice]

The only time before I was this hyped was for KSP2. I'm really happy about Factorio: Space Age because I know it will actually happen, and it will be as good or better than I imagine it.

[ashen herald]

next step is probably interstellar mechanics, not a huge jump from interplanetary as it is in SA

I would prefer a deep down update though, where you can dig into subsurface layers

[small bear]

Factorio: Into the core

[deft mauve]

Underground production i like it

[short patio]

With the extra grid space afforded by higher quality power armor, I hope we get equipment that increases our reach. Extendo-arms or something. Just a nice QoL thing to spend some space on

[small bear]

just use remote view to access unlimited reach

[short patio]

Cant manually construct stuff in remote view

[small bear]

u can if u have personal bots

also with remote views, bots and the ability to open ghost UI I see no need to manually construct things

u can open and interact with ghost entities in 2.0

[ashen herald]

grabby arm pack sounds like a nice pre-bot tech to have

[short patio]

Even when you have bots, they're not very fast for a while

[small bear]

why do u need them to be fast when u can interact with ghosts

[ashen herald]

spooky action at a distance

[candid pawn]

I want under water stuff

cool aesthetics

[deft mauve]

I wonder if on some planet there will be a reverse process with water, i.e. steam is extracted and to get water it has to be condensed

[sweet wind]

Yeah that's what's been said for how you get water on Vulcanus

You get steam from sulfuric acid and need to condense it into water

[deft mauve]

ok, so I missed something

I still belive combustion generators and more useful liquid fuels

Like diesel generators

[soft sparrow]

is FFF where the devs leak a bit of the new update?

[sweet wind]

Yeah, "A bit"

[soft sparrow]

Oh cool

What‘s the next update?

[sweet wind]

+faq expansion

[magic crest]

Expansion

Factorio: Space Age continues the player's journey after launching rockets into space. Discover new worlds with unique challenges, exploit their novel resources for advanced technological gains, and manage your fleet of interplanetary space platforms.
The expansion will come in 3 components:
FFF 373: Space Age
FFF 375: Quality
FFF 378: Elevated Rails

We can start to approximate the date of releasing the expansion, which is planned to be about one year from now.
- kovarex, 25 August 2023

[sweet wind]

well, DLC not just update

The DLC will be released alongside the Factorio 2.0 update, which will have a heap of QoL updates and adjustments

[bold shard]

I recommend reading the FFFs starting at 373, and working your way to the present

many big changes coming

[soft sparrow]

Is the space thingy a dlc?

[sweet wind]

Yes

Factorio: Space Age

[pale pumice]

That said, more than half of the stuff they’ve shown is new 2.0 stuff that everyone will get

[soft sparrow]

Will it cost

[sweet wind]

The DLC? yes.

[pale pumice]

read:

[sweet wind]

New machines, space stuff, platforms, planets, etc. elevated rail and quality are all paid dlc.
Update will come with free QoL stuff like super force building, mineable landfill, blueprint parameters, better train management, logistics groups, circuit improvements, updated sounds, factoriopedia, fluid machine/assembler flipping, better remote view, new rail shapes, smarter robots, etc.

[ashen herald]

Very excited

More qol to come hopefully

[elder raptor]

I'd love to see more info about train scheduling and handling

Since, presumably, will need interrupt in interrupt

Maybe train shelters

[sweet wind]

Personally I'd like to see a train damaged interrupt condition

[elder raptor]

Ooooh

[sweet wind]

But a time of day condition seems likely as well

[elder raptor]

Yeah

[sweet wind]

Automated trainsaws

[elder raptor]

Wait we don't need train shelters, we have lightning poles

[sweet wind]

we will because of the tracks between lightning poles

in between islands

[elder raptor]

Yeah but I mean

We send the trains to islands if it's night

[sweet wind]

Oh that's what you meant, I thought you were talking about using the islands as shelters

[hoary timber]

Most excited for the robot qol but they are all cool

In terms of qol

Obviously excited most for the dlc

[candid pawn]

we talk about FFF's in #friday-facts . the channel description has a countdown until the next one!

but they happen every friday!

[desert lake]

I see people concerned about the recycler prohibiting alternate recipes, due to many mods making many people really used to alternate recipes as a core element of gameplay progression

But, unless I'm missing something (I absolutely could be, I have literally never played modded in my life ), those alternate recipes are, in a very vast majority of cases, chemistry related

And chemical recipes are actually one of the things specifically exempt from recycling

And the exact same can be said for smelting/ore processing

I mean the devs have already, straight up, revealed a later-game method to get more plates from ore with a new process

And I expect similar things from the Bacchus building

Except it could potentially get even more extreme, with full on new recipes with different ingredients for plastic, sulfur, explosives, fluids...

But that's a little unlikely for a different reason

[soft sparrow]

How much?

[sweet wind]

Not announced, probably around $30usd

[soft sparrow]

:(

[topaz wing]

It will probably cost more if you account for the ruined sleep schedule

[soft sparrow]

I mean it‘s good that it costs so much but i wont be able to buy it ☹️

[sweet wind]

You still get all the QoL stuff, alongside any new mods that come along (not requiring the dlc)

[soft sparrow]

but i want space lmao

thanks tho

[topaz wing]

Factorio is still the best price i paid for anything considering i got a 1000 hours out of it and still going

I expect the dlc and 2.0 to do this too

[soft sparrow]

I dont know how i got factorio i think i got it in 2021

[slender glen]

assuming you ever played a free game, zero / any-amount-of-time is going to be a better price per playtime then factorio

[topaz wing]

Factorio will never exceed the price/hour value of doodle jump

[raven bridge]

"time" is part of the price.

[vagrant pumice]

I mean we have to wait half a year still, 30/35$ is doable

[raven bridge]

enjoyment / (time + price)

[hybrid prism]

factorio is one of my top price to hour games it falls below terraria and btd 6 for me

[raven bridge]

I got btd6 for free, so even a minute of playing it would put it there. Then again, price/time isn't the full picture.

[maiden magnet]

[hybrid prism]

I agree my favorite game isnt in my top 5 in price to time

[rocky plover]

By this equation, Portal (first one) is the best game ever. Massive enjoyment, 3 hour playtime. Probably got it for free.

Or actually, any game demo probably wins. Low time. Free. Very enjoyable to try and convince people to buy the full game.

[elder raptor]

FFF #400: actually we release now

[iron venture]

actually, nows a decent time to announce the release date, assuming it's about 6 months away

we could get the date tomorrow 👀

[sweet wind]

If they have a decent read on their development pace and scope they might

I wouldn't hold my breath though

[sweet wind]

FFF 400 - Bad Request(s)
Bad or otherwise out-of-scope/rejected ideas that won't be in the expansion

We know a lot about what is coming, but not what isn't

[elder raptor]

doesn't feel right

i dont think there'll be much meming this time

more train stuff, probably

[candid pawn]

trains now dont need rails and work with requestor and provider chests

oh, and they can fly

[last maple]

Leaked concept art for the flying trains:

[candid pawn]

people herald wube as genius, they cant wait to work with the new trains

[sudden quest]

I'll guess 400 is gonna be:

• a bit of a retro where they are in the design process
• more specifics on launch date
• some more details on space platforms, specifically how cross-planet logistics requests and transit between planets works
• a teaser for the new win condition/endgame, which has to do with the space platforms

[uncut moon]

My guess is it will be on enemies and new combat

[vagrant pumice]

my guess is some tease at the technology tree of vulcanus

[small bear]

my FFF prediction list:

• space platform (space travel, advanced asteroid processing)
• reveal
• new enemies reveal
• Aquilo reveal
• endgame mechanics reveal
• more tech reveal
• more tech reveal
• more tech reveal
• new trailer reveal

smaller FFF predictions:

• biter graphics and behavior improvements
• new musics
• how quality works with signals and circuits
• state of dev review
• space platform construction animation

• and more circuit network FFF (new iteration of combinators)

[raven bridge]

You can't just give a list of everything... I can say "new stuff relating to Factorio" and will (almost) always be correct.

What will be revealed today though?

[pale pumice]

I do like the list though, it's everything we expect, we just don't know in what order

it is still a fallible list

[rocky plover]

I predict there will be a FFF today

[vagrant pumice]

how much technical and/or small QoL FFF we have left actually?

maybe the last month or two would be full of content after content

[raven bridge]

fillable list you mean?

Space platform item landing animation too

[pale pumice]

No, I mean fallibe. Those things could be not present

[raven bridge]

Well they won't be present in the current FFF, but they are all likely to appear in FFFs

[pale pumice]

yes, a likely list

but not certain

It gets less credit when it's right, but some credit is still given for being able to predict tons of future FFFs

predict enough, and there isn't room for other ones, too

there are a finite number of FFFs haha

[raven bridge]

There might be a technical FFF for modders/modding API changes

[small bear]

[unborn lintel]

I predict we have to share our ideas and opinions in the usual places

[pale pumice]

usually meaning, let's be fair #friday-facts

[small bear]

I think they meant this

[uncut moon]

Anyone think they will make the official release announcement on FFF 420

[small bear]

I feel like another circuit network FFF

—>

[raven bridge]

Recap + project status. Small-ish FFF.

[small bear]

likely I think

will we ever have FFF 404?

[raven bridge]

We'll jump directly to 405. Also the reddit will be filled with people who think they are smart and will spam this in the 2 weeks around it

[small bear]

FFF 404 confirming that we will not find certain contents in the expansion

[quasi crest]

that makes sense with the 404

[unborn lintel]

they will just skip 404 and the joke is every time someone asks where it is we (not the devs) have to make up what it was before it got deleted

[unborn lintel]

that legit makes sense, for the features some players might expect to not get angry when its not in the expansion

[raven bridge]

OK no one predicted this haha

[pale pumice]

still such a welcome set of changes

[lament rampart]

I am surprised #400 wasn't about the team / development status

[raven bridge]

Wube aren't sentimental about numbers

[pale pumice]

FFF 300 and 200 and 100 (I think) were all special

[slender glen]

[small bear]

not all of them were special

[last maple]

investors shaken by fff news not matching rumored development progress update, blue chips temporarily drop 1% before recovering pre-market

[elfin zenith]

FFF Week 3(???) Of predicting pet biters!
FFF Week 4? 2? AAAAA-
Of predicting steam/electric trains!

[raven bridge]

Stacking inserters when

[pure siren]

Same time we get burning inserters.

[pale pumice]

yeah..

[pure siren]

I just realised, any inserter can be a burning inserter

[slender glen]

When you mod it

[raven bridge]

😦

[small bear]

I wonder if the lightning alerts means there are structures that are not protected by lightning rods (and could be damaged by lightning)

[iron venture]

yellow would imply non-urgent, damaged buildings are currently red

[bold shard]

might not be a bad idea for it to be a persistent warning if the buildings will guaranteed get damaged/eventually destroyed

[slender glen]

Correct

[small bear]

[desert lake]

Prediction: "various tesla items" will be used for ultra long range power transfer. A tesla tower or something will intake power, and this power will be received by lightning collectors elsewhere in the factory

There just has to be a reason for the lightning collector to exist locked behind pink science

It just has to have some use on other planets

[pure siren]

Remotely powering mining outposts would be nice (aka OP).

[desert lake]

It would probably have some tricks to it, like requiring some buffer accumulators at the destination

[pale pumice]

I love how this comment is technically completely off-topic for this channel, as it is not a speculation at all 😆

[small bear]

perhaps power transmission between orbit and ground. Could be interesting if we also get high capacity accumulators. Useful for electricity fueled platforms or stationary science stations

[raven bridge]

Next FFF speculation........ more goodies. Maybe new spidertron remotes

Or larger chests

[tired fossil]

Larger chests would be really great

The 4x4 of the magnetic is also really new, no other manufacturing buildings with an even size there

[small bear]

good for direct train insertion setups

tbh larger chests sounds like larger splitters which they wouldn’t add to the game but mods will.

[tired fossil]

Yes allows to insert direct from one side and putting it out on the other, so copper->copper wires would fit really good

[small bear]

I predict new spidertron remote reveal before they reveal

[raven bridge]

I mean... Kiddo-san answered that these are used as large filtered circuitable chests.

And that this base is very old.

[tired fossil]

The dark blue ones?

[raven bridge]

No. The yellow ones with the red outlines, next to the pointed part on the right that sits next to a white circle

[tired fossil]

Just trains? Without rails a bit strange

[raven bridge]

They have rails under them

The train is waiting in the station set to "read train contents"

The wagon is filtered, and logic can work with the contents of the train

This could be a combinator'd assembler system or not.

Actually

I bet it's

[pale pumice]

It is next to a reactor

[raven bridge]

The belt there may be for , to make fuel cells

[short roost]

Is this in the game/was this talked about already

[small bear]

already

[short roost]

oh alr mb

[raven bridge]

I completely forgot generic interrupts exist

[small bear]

they works so well with parameterised station BP!

[ashen herald]

What about in-transit interrupts lol

[pale pumice]

bad business

[small bear]

they removed disabling stations to prevent that, I don’t think they’ll add a feature back to do that

[ashen herald]

Yeah that's understandable

Anything to help prevent deadlock

[bold mirage]

what kind of building could aquilo have?

i'm thinking either a lab with more module slots or rocket silo mkii

[raven bridge]

I want new prototypes 😦

[primal nacelle]

I suspect the Aquilo-thing to be related to the endgoal of SA. Whatever it ends up being

[pure siren]

Hopefully we'll only find out after release.

[bold mirage]

any chance they'll integrate a rate calculator into vanilla for 2.0?

[raven bridge]

They were against it. I am too.

[primal nacelle]

iirc, that was not going to be integrated. I think Raiguard said it?

[raven bridge]

Wube generally don't want to add confusing/misleading features to their game

[small bear]

I think rate calculator should remain as a mod

even tho they are handy

[raven bridge]

It's such a misleading mod when you have less than perfect ratios, and Wube don't like perfect ratios

[small bear]

I find that the more calculators u have, the more u r unsatisfied by imperfect machine ratio. This can lead to slower progression by spending too much time to optimize blueprint designs

[raven bridge]

Agreed

That said, I like FP because it has a matrix solver

[pure siren]

This can lead to slower progression
I have a solution for that: Design BPs outside of your run in a throwaway save. This will avoid you the embarrasment of taking 15h to design a nuclear reactor.

[small bear]

slower progression in IRL time

[short roost]

isnt it possible that we find more alien remains on aquilo, that could be functional robots that act as biters but cooler

[pale pumice]

anything is possible

[short roost]

less difficult than rampant but more different than vanilla biters

[small bear]

tbh they said there will be ‘alternative military targets’. Those doesn’t have to be enemies. Asteroids is a good example

[bold mirage]

I was thinking more like a mindustry esque enemy base that the player has to conquer (presumably guarding the rarest resources)

We still dont know what the green thingies in the map are do we?

[deft mauve]

I think new planet add new generators or new machine , alternate new mechanic

[iron venture]

I'm feeling an updated timeline, including release date, for the next fff

[uncut moon]

How many FFFs do you think they plan in advance?

[iron venture]

2

[pure siren]

Klonan mentioned a while ago "1 or 2" iirc, but then again Klonan said that.

[bold shard]

he trolls too much to be taken completely seriously lol

[candid pawn]

i seem to remember that they decide on monday what the FFF should be about

[pure siren]

Yeah, that's from Klonan as well.

#friday-facts message

Klonan — 27/01/2024 21:30
Usually we plan 1 or 2 ahead
On Monday we decide what to write about for that week

Discord uses cursed timestamps

[primal nacelle]

How so?

[pure siren]

27/01/2024 21:30
that's not an ISO timestamp

actual issue I have is using slash as separator, reminds me too much of the wrangled mm/dd/yyyy timestamp

ah, it's a localisation thing. changing to german it uses proper dd.mm.yyyy

[primal nacelle]

It appears that UK english has slash-separators. I don't see why that is a problem.

[pure siren]

reminds me too much of the wrangled mm/dd/yyyy timestamp

[rugged onyx]

That's why I love it after the 12th of the month because 03/13/24 everyone can figure out you're doing mm/dd/yy, but when it's 03/05/2024 you have to wonder which convention is used

[elfin zenith]

FFF Week 4(????) Of predicting pet biters!
FFF Week 5? 6? 99999999-
Of predicting steam/electric trains!

[candid pawn]

its believable. you have to remember that people at wube have actual jobs to do, they cant spend all their factorio time obsessing over FFF's like we do. probably an hour long meeting to decide what the next FFF is would be too much time

[rugged onyx]

I kind of want on of those old fashioned pump action cars where two people worth together to pull the lever to move the cart. Could be a fun way to drive around on a cart that doesn't use fuel

[candid pawn]

now i want that

[pure siren]

a date format that's ambiguous 144 days of the year is clearly not a good date format

[elder raptor]

this is why I always go yyyy-mm-dd

[pure siren]

also has the advantage that it's easily sortable

[short roost]

I kind of hope well get electric trains+powered rails, although having special rails doesnt seem like a good idea, and we have good enough fuels together with more efficient refueling. I dont think its happening even though i want it o

[ashen herald]

I hope for some automatons we can build ourselves, to be put on defence mode or attack mode to go and attack nests. (Aware of mod)

Another thing that would make robot followers 10 times more useful is a robot remote to command them to fly to an area within X of you, where X can be upgraded to increase maximum follower distance.

[slow swallow]

I’d like to see the flying combat robots you can deploy (has anybody actually used them) and let us add them to the robot network

[slow swallow]

Imagine a spitertron walking into battle with a swarm of tiny robots next to it

[hybrid prism]

I had the same thoughts but I assume wube would never since they dont want bots to be the solution to everything

[half mountain]

Just give me some armor equipment that will auto deploy them when I get attacked.

[subtle temple]

have combat roboports that deploy the bots automatically

[small bear]

let us put combat bots in regular roboport and deploy automatically when detecting enemies in bot network

[desert lake]

I brainstormed up a whole system for this, inspired by a fairly old mod I saw

Sort of my take on its concept

1. Defenders stay completely the same, they're excluded from this rework, they remain as a disposable capsule
2. A single distractor is crafted with a roboframe, steel and a battery (not 100% happy with this recipe tbh), it can be inserted into the roboport network, and it operates by attacking anything that enters construction range
3. Destroyers have more or less the same recipe. Distractor + speed 1 module crafts a destroyer. Destroyers operate by targeting any discovered biters or nests the moment they are deployed into the network. They will calculate the necessary size of an attack group based on the nearest target, wait for it to group up, and then set out. They have an extremely large battery capacity to help them reach their targets, but they need to fully charge it from your power grid, so expect some energy spikes like with laser turrets
4. Distractors and destroyers in personal roboports automatically deploy in the presence of enemies, letting players (and spidertrons!) with roboports use them in combat just like now
5. I'm saying this at the end so I could explain the concept without it being confusing, but "distractor" and "defender" swap names. It's just much more fitting

[bold shard]

hmmm.... #friday-facts message

[arctic wasp]

tbh what I do want is for assemblers to give you the recipe item production/consumption rate, similar to how Sastifactory does it

[raven bridge]

Yes please! Give me x per second!

[arctic wasp]

I've actually been thinking about writing a mod for it

one of these days...

it'd simplify some of the ratio math without straight up giving players the answer, especially doing it mentally

it's a lot easier to mentally math copper wire:green circuit machines as being a 3:2 ratio if one was told that copper wire machines produce 2 wire/s and green circuit machines consume 3/s

[ashen herald]

Yeah, that is a great idea, when you hover over the recipe set in the machine, it should be the crafting rate at the very least, like if it's automation science in a t1 assembler it should say 10 seconds instead of 5 seconds.

[desert lake]

I don’t care much about that

What really gets to me is productivity calculations

It’s easy to work with just crafting times

When productivity gets added to the mix, especially through technologies, built in bonuses and quality productivity modules in 2.0, it will be even more of a nightmare than it is now

Past a certain point direct insertion and “perfect ratio” builds become totally unviable in favour of just “playing it by ear”

The only thing still worth calculating is… something like smelting, I guess

[raven bridge]

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Actual_Craft_Time

[raven bridge]

Speculation: Considering unexpected QoL mods... pipe/belt visualizer, vehicle physics, better logistic network screen (L) with names/map locations

[elder raptor]

a pipe viz would work great with something else... not sure what, though

also isn't that a raiguard mod lol

would be fitting

[bold shard]

FYI, new channel to follow: #space-age

and another thread https://discord.com/channels/139677590393716737/1215078107334057984

[quasi crest]

fairly certain it's codegreen
nvm thats belt visualizer

[near tree]

that's me

[raven bridge]

Sounds like the main FFF channel fits speculations too? We'll have to see how much traffic it gets

[winged jolt]

This thread should just be a channel

[raven bridge]

I think it could be a thread in friday facts

I'll see what I can do about it

[near tree]

I mean why move honestly

[raven bridge]

Because it's not really discoverable in the main "questions" page

[near tree]

threads aren't really discoverable either

[raven bridge]

Threads are a button at the top, related to the specific "main subject"

[near tree]

and literally nobody clicks on it

[raven bridge]

People who are subbed will have it located under # friday-facts rather than under "questions"

It's only a minor gripe. You have the more experience here as a moderator 🙂

Like "quality" thread is there under #space-age

[near tree]

yeah, that's because it didn't exist yet and there was a lot of quality discussion I felt could be centralized

this post already exists, and I don't see how it's helpful to relocate

I agree that it fits better under #friday-facts, but since it's already here, /shrug

[raven bridge]

Adding a link here to there (so people can join there too), and link there to here (for history) is a small hump I think.

[near tree]

there's also the fact that splitting it makes the history kinda jank

you have a thread, and a post here, and searching in threads is ass because discord moment, it's a little messy

[raven bridge]

Is searching in questions easier?

Anyways, lets let it cook for a bit. it's no biggie 🙂

[near tree]

yeah I don't hate it, though I question the usefulness

[raven bridge]

Mostly a personal one, to have my favorites more compact 😛

Also, when someone wants to talk about speculations, it's easier to point them to the thread in the same channel, rather than a random question

[unborn lintel]

Belt visualiser, pipe visualiser, circuit visualiser and maybe logistic bots visualiser (arrows from provider to same item requester). This is all the visualisers I can think of that might be usefull

[small bear]

I hope we get some space platforms tomorrow

or it could be the first enemy FFF

or more planetary tech reveal

[pale pumice]

Either way, I'm excited.

Anything but technical, and I say that as a developer

[raven bridge]

Tmrw I speculate technical

[pale pumice]

I do too tbh

[primal nacelle]

I like the technicals as well. I like to know how things work, and technical FFFs kind of give glances on how the dev process or some system works

[pale pumice]

They used to be my favorites, but https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-379 was just not that enjoyable to me.

However, I did enjoy the FFF

[ashen herald]

The engineer is secretly Spiderman

[pale pumice]

Arguably he's much closer to doc oc

[ashen herald]

He could also be, I agree

[pale pumice]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-385

[ashen herald]

That's what makes me want grabby arm backpack

[rugged onyx]

That would be interesting, instead of a roboport you just have doc-oc arms

[violet willow]

i really loved the terrain generation deep dive fff because they gave it some incredible visuals

[raven bridge]

Speculation: More heat based buildings. Especially on Aquilo, the frozen planet.

[desert lake]

I think the heat system is seriously underused

Would be cool if we had something like a building that builds up heat as it works, so you have to make a heat pipe network to cool it off

[pale pumice]

Before we had confirmation that the chemical plant was what you used to cool steam to water, I suspected you could use a heat exchanger, and it would only function when the heat pipe was cold

[desert lake]

That sounds really cool until you remember how expensive heat exchangers are to make 😭

[pale pumice]

Not really?

100 copper, 60 iron

[hybrid prism]

thats pretty expensive per tile

[fluid crow]

FFF IS OUT 401!

[raven bridge]

We have E.

[little seal]

🚨 <t:1709899200:R> 🚨

[short roost]

very very cool fff

More planets means more content, for the good or for the worse. But with the things ive seen atm it seems like itll be for the good.

[topaz wing]

You know they meant Nauvis as the fifth planet right? Not an additional planet

[short roost]

Oh wait

I read this to the 5 that we already knew about

Like 5 currently and 5 more

💀

mb

[raven bridge]

No lol

[bold mirage]

lmao imagine 17 science packs

[raven bridge]

We knew about 4 new planets, and now the FFF says even the old planet is new

[topaz wing]

Damn imagine that "oh and btw we added 5 more planets"

[short roost]

yeah lmao

[short roost]

infinite procedual planets

[rocky plover]

Endgame technology will be manufacturing your own fleet of deathstars, each of which counts as a planet

They can also delete planets

[violet willow]

speculation: Pollution system, but it's tracking a heat value instead, this can be used to determine stuff like snow regions and coverage for cold places or it can boost the dynamics of Vulcanus by allowing geothermal energy to be harvested in a unique way by consumig the heat

[raven bridge]

Next week: Technical, leading up to a big FFF a week later

[primal nacelle]

I feel like one upcoming FFF is all about pollution

[raven bridge]

Or the fluid overhaul

[pure siren]

or another inserter rename

[raven bridge]

I know they won't, but I'm keeping the username

[candid pawn]

have you played with a mod that changes the name to bulk inseter? its pretty confusing

[raven bridge]

No. I'm still hoping for Stacking inserters

[candid pawn]

well, the mods that do it only change the bulk inserter to the correct name

becaus ethere's no stack inserter

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/bulk-inserter-rename

[sick pond]

zoom in on bottom left corner

Has anyone seen this in one of the pictures of the latest FFF?

[lime wadi]

yip, its on redit. these are some of the people speculation on this. the last one looks more like a new armour suit than a building
Uranium centrifuge: Nauvis

Foundry: Vulcanus

[Final planet thing?]

Electromagnetic plant: Fulgora

[Vegetation planet thing?]

[sick pond]

Ye I figured that

[hybrid prism]

why did they put those icons in the screenshot

[sick pond]

Just wanted to bring attention to it

[sick pond]

To hint somthing probably

[pure siren]

to tease us

[lime wadi]

like a teaser for what is comming

[sick pond]

that too

[lime wadi]

can someone build a time machine so we can jump forward a few months. want to play it

[sick pond]

Hasent come yet, on its way tho

[pale pumice]

I'm working on it. I should have an MVP in about 8 months.

[hybrid prism]

unfortunately time machine r impossible

[sick pond]

thats what they say.....

[desert lake]

I've seen people say this even at the original Christmas teaser... it looks nothing like an armour suit 😭😭😭

[sick pond]

Im with U there

[lime wadi]

in the christmas teaser it looked like one of those underwater suite people wear but a bit more steampunkish

[sick pond]

although I can see a welding mask

but thats it

[desert lake]

The window looks vaguely like a visor, but the shape of it is very clearly a building

[sick pond]

Yes

Just looked at it

[lime wadi]

if not a suit. maybe a air or liquid something

[sick pond]

Yeah

Although maybe armour will be part of somthing water related

[lime wadi]

maybe the windows is where we will see what is processing. like gasses or liquid processing

[sick pond]

Yeah'

somthing

I know factorio likes theyre flashy working animations

[lime wadi]

going through Space exploration roadmap. we could maybe get like helium 3 that you harvest on Aquillo for fusion. and this building/suit could process it

[pure siren]

It's a Pressure Cooker.

[lime wadi]

wonder if the dev look and wonder "oh so close..." at the above or maybe they laugh with all the "ideas"

[sly meadow]

I get compelled to start changing things… (like the fluid mechanics)
teaser maybe?

[elder raptor]

I believe

[sudden quest]

I'll be shocked if 402 isn't about fluid mechanics

[elder raptor]

I wouldn't

I believe, but that doesn't mean it'll happen

[sudden quest]

They can't just bait me like that, I have to believe

[sly meadow]

402 is too soon. You sow the seeds of a teaser, then you let them grow...

maybe after the fourth planet

[elder raptor]

yeah, it's probably not ready yet

[sly meadow]

fluid overhaul means fluidic power overhaul ❤️

[elder raptor]

it means I get to claim my prize for my unwavering belief

[bold mirage]

None of the new planets seem to be using pollution as a mechanic, like some people have speculated that vulcanus will have vibration based attacks (also pollution doesen't make sense in a venus atmosphere) and fulgora seems barren so no sense in implementing it there either

Good for ups if true

[pale pumice]

taking money bets?

[wanton swift]

I don't care what number it is, I just want a fluid mechanic rework please

[pale pumice]

It's a bit of an easier said than done thing. As a project it's eaten up a lot of development time for almost no yield.

[pure siren]

Is there anything indicating that it's necessary?

[pale pumice]

relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/356/

xkcd: Nerd Sniping

I first saw this problem on the Google Labs Aptitude Test. A professor and I filled a blackboard without getting anywhere. Have fun.

[elder raptor]

you and me both. heck, I'd be willing to write out a paper about how to do it

I am a programmer, but not that good of one compared to a behemoth like Factorio

I wrote maybe 600kloc? which actually sounds pretty impressive ig

[pale pumice]

sloc is not really a good measurement of experience

I only write about 1-2k sloc a day

[raven bridge]

The average programmer writes 15 sloc per day on average, so if you have a constant 1-2k, then it's mad

[pale pumice]

Really?

to be fair, this is lua code, and a lot of it is boilerplate

[raven bridge]

Yes. This includes the lifetime of a project. A lot of time is debugging, testing, and investigating bugs in production.

When working on development, yea you get 500-1000 lines per day, but it averages out

[pale pumice]

I don't think I spend much time debugging at all tbh

I do when working on other things, but most of what I do is working with a reactive state library, which makes a lot of bugs hard to write

looking at my actual averages here, it looks like ti comes out to more like average of 500, because many days I'm doing adjustments/testing, so you seem to be right on the money

[pale pumice]

But yeah, what did you do with these 600k lines?

[raven bridge]

Well I mostly write Python and I DRY a lot, so I don't write a lot of code 🙂

[elder raptor]

mostly bots. 2 IRC bots, 3 discord bots (1 of which is a hybrid twitch/discord), some stuff in the CPython language, and random scripts

[pale pumice]

and this was 600k lines?!

[raven bridge]

I don't think I have 600k lines written and I've been programming for 20 years

[pale pumice]

I'm not even sure if I have 60k.

No, I totally have 60k. one of my projects is 6k lines alone, but I still don't think I have 600k lol

[pure siren]

I'm curious about your idea.

[pale pumice]

What exactly are we wanting out of a fluid overhaul

everyone asks for it, but nobody has explained to me what that actually means

[raven bridge]

Better performance, more predictable behavior, consistent behavior between overground and underground pipes, better visibility when there's mixing.

[bold shard]

I guess much more performant. a common gripe is how nuclear doesn't scale well for gigantic bases. and this would certainly be a problem with SA as well- you could potentially have hundreds of platforms, each piping liquid for rocket engines

[pale pumice]

I have an idea for how to write it, but it's probably slower than the current code without enough cores

[pale pumice]

more predictable behavior,
I think this is probably the big kicker, because currently the issue is that there's update order reliance.

You would need to use some auxilary data to first find out how much fluid can move for every step, then do all of these movements after

underground pipe behavior is problematic though... it requires a different model

Perhaps the current model of 'pipes with fluid in them' is the issue. Perhaps a graph of only the junctions would be a better design, with a more static flow handler?

[raven bridge]

My main idea is combining pipes that don't have splits into a more compact structure, defined by only a couple of values e.g. height at 2 sides, and 2 floating points in the middle.

[pale pumice]

Not just current fluids, faster, but a whole new system

[raven bridge]

Obviously, only in lengths that longer than e.g. 5 or 10 pipe tiles

You could work out the simulation as a function of those values

[pure siren]

isn't that already done currently?

[raven bridge]

So you would still have fluid travel time and sloshing, but lower processing power

I don't think so. IIRC every pipe segment has its height, and averaged with its neighbors

[pure siren]

straight pipes (i.e. no splits) are merged into a single pipe for processing iirc

[pale pumice]

I don't think so

[raven bridge]

I think they wanted to do that, but didn't

[pale pumice]

that's barely even possible with the current model

[pure siren]

been a few weeks since I've read the FFF of the latest fluid overhaul

[pale pumice]

that never got merged anyways

[raven bridge]

The latest fluid overhaul was just an idea which they dismissed because the dev left

[pale pumice]

it had some 'weird ripply behavior'

that said I think that behavior is maybe expected

perhaps I should give a fluid system a try

[raven bridge]

Just solve the Navier-Stokes equations and have a closed solution for every system

[pale pumice]

I wonder if it would be possible to compute with simply a graph of producers/consumers and their distances

problem is cycles...

[raven bridge]

The idea is you want to have the cool fluid physics, with oil moving a bit slower etc

[pale pumice]

I'm not so interested in viscosity myself

[pure siren]

The thing from FFF-260 and FFF-274 has not been implemented?

[raven bridge]

They had an idea to consider the whole system as one linked system, but that's a bit lame

Yea those weren't implemented

[pale pumice]

one of the big issues with alternate pipe flow ideas is that each pipe should 'ideally' have fluid in it

this means you have to make up these values later, or actually store them

[raven bridge]

You only need to calculate the "actual" value when hovering over it