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Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer

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Re: Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer

#91

Post by temp0826 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #87
temp0826 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't like fulgora for a long time...I think I started having fun with it when I got fusion power there and deleted the accumulator farms. Gleba was a thorn in my side for a long time but finally got it to a place of stable (over)production. It's begging for a rebuild (massively abusing robots there currently).

I can imagine that getting different power would help. My biggest problem with Fulgora is that even on the largest islands, it's so cramped because you have to have huge amounts of accumulators to keep things up through the pauses between storms. The island where I built my Fulgora factory (not including scrap processing) is 50% filled with accumulators, and even then I still will lose power sometimes.

There's a few alternative ways to go about it. If you have heating towers from gleba, you can burn some excess solid fuel (and melted ice) from scrap to make steam. Might be short on ice but could drop some from orbit (if your asteroid processing tech is good enough?). Or cart in nuclear stuff from nauvis. If you've started on higher quality stuff you could probably recycle extra batteries and make higher quality accumulators (a little more space efficient...but if you're still power constrained you probably wouldn't be removing the old low quality ones...).

Re: Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer

#92

Post by db48x »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #87
temp0826 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't like fulgora for a long time...I think I started having fun with it when I got fusion power there and deleted the accumulator farms. Gleba was a thorn in my side for a long time but finally got it to a place of stable (over)production. It's begging for a rebuild (massively abusing robots there currently).

I can imagine that getting different power would help. My biggest problem with Fulgora is that even on the largest islands, it's so cramped because you have to have huge amounts of accumulators to keep things up through the pauses between storms. The island where I built my Fulgora factory (not including scrap processing) is 50% filled with accumulators, and even then I still will lose power sometimes.

Did you forget that you also have steam power? It is much more energy dense than accumulators, and there is plenty of fuel around.

Re: Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer

#93

Post by roenxi »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #22
zelias wrote: post #20

I burnt out mid-Aquilo. RIP

Same. I didn't like Fulgora, then I didn't like Gleba, but pushed through to get to Aquilo so I could see all the content. But then Aquilo wasn't fun either thanks to the massive amount of ice platform I needed to build and how slow it is to build. I just stopped playing. Overall I was pretty unhappy with Space Age, as it doesn't really feel like Factorio any more (except for Vulcanus which is excellent).

> ... it doesn't really feel like Factorio any more...

Something that stands out is that Space Age is more of an adventure (overcome challenges in series) where Factorio the base game was a sandbox (challenges can be handled in parallel).

In the base game, if someone doesn't like rail then they can just ignore it for an entire playthrough. Ditto nuclear/solar, most military techs, most other logistics, and so on. If someone likes yellow belts and coal power that can carry them through an entire playthrough. If you don't like Gleba/spoilage, you can't skip it because it is necessary to see any parts of the game gated behind it which is Aquilo onwards. Heaven help you if you don't like how space platforms work, because they gate everything and are quite unique compared to the rest of the game which some players must hate.

Re: Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer

#95

Post by rollcat »

polishdude20 wrote: post #72

I wonder if you could add in the production / consumption rates of various machines into this and have the visualizer show bottlenecks and other data

Remember that factorio simulates every inserter swing, the exact position of each item on a sushi belt, every dip in the power grid, every biter egg about to hatch.

Some designs in 100% runs use sushi (e.g. red circuits, as they take a lot of space/time but few resources, and must initially be built by hand). You can estimate the rates, but you won't be able to find a bottleneck.

Inserter timing often comes up in plastic builds - on paper it's easy to build the exact amount of chem plants to saturate a blue belt, but if you ignore inserter timing you'll be leaving tiny gaps.

Also remember spoilage is now a thing (,: as well as loops, probabilistic recipes, thruster efficiency, probably some more.

Only Factorio can simulate Factorio. The best way to automatically find bottlenecks is probably with a mod.

Re: Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer

#96

Post by caspar »

rollcat wrote: post #95
polishdude20 wrote: post #72

I wonder if you could add in the production / consumption rates of various machines into this and have the visualizer show bottlenecks and other data

Remember that factorio simulates every inserter swing, the exact position of each item on a sushi belt, every dip in the power grid, every biter egg about to hatch. Some designs in 100% runs use sushi (e.g. red circuits, as they take a lot of space/time but few resources, and must initially be built by hand). You can estimate the rates, but you won't be able to find a bottleneck. Inserter timing often comes up in pla…

A mod such as Bottleneck Lite[0], plus your eyeballs :)

[0]: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BottleneckLite

Re: Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer

#98

Post by jokoon »

kryptn wrote: post #52
jokoon wrote: post #18

I am a bit sad I finished factorio space age, it was such an amazing game, I wish I could have spent more time on it. All good things have an end. I really hope Wube could make it more interesting to play in multiplayer, in games of 50 or 100 players, unfortunately there are no incentives for it. I suggested to add some resources trading and currency, coupled with a land ownership system, to prevent trolls and scale…

> Unfortunately mods are not very good quality, or too difficult to enjoy. Most of my playtime in Factorio is with overhaul mods, there's a lot of quality content there. I'm not sure how many of them have been brought to 2.0 or even will be. I'm curious where you think quality lacks. Space Exploration has been my favorite, but Ultracube, Krastorio2, and Nullius were all quite fun. I'll admit I haven't finished Ultrac…

What I mean is that the game design is poorly made, unbalanced. Only vanilla and space age seems like they're accessible games.

Generally game design revolves the concept of a effort-reward loop: the player must feel he is regularly advancing in the game, at a steady pace, with a difficulty that slowly increases.

Mods are often badly designed because they are made by hardcore factorio fans who don't understand this or follow this golden rule.

There was a FFF who talked about a game designer they hired, and wube constantly had to make his designs simpler so the game can be a success. It requires a lot of work.

Making a great game is about "easy to learn, hard to master". A lot of people don't understand it, but a game must be attractive enough for casual to medium players, or it just will not sell.

The magic of factorio vanilla and space age is that the difficulty is well designed. Mods often just don't follow that rule, or have a lower quality.

There is more psychology behind game design that we want to admit.

Re: Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer

#99

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #88
mmastrac wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satisfactory's scale is so massive for building that it was a shock coming from Factorio. I started a project over the holidays and I'm pretty sure it's going to end up at nearly 200x50. I am not sure it'll fit in a screenshot, hah.

The scale is both the best and worst thing about Satisfactory. On the one hand, once you finish a build it's really fun to admire everything you built. On the other hand, it's an exercise in utter tedium to actually build those things. This is not helped by the fact that Coffee Stain has been aggressively anti-QoL as they developed the game. They absolutely refused to put any sort of blueprint feature or tool to spee…

> they actually make fun of the player for daring to want blueprints that don't suck

In their defense, Coffee Stain/Satisfactory makes fun of the player for absolutely everything. They always have. It's just the culture of their studio.

Re: Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer

#100

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

andix wrote: post #25

I really liked the concept of Factorio, but stopped playing after a few hours. I think one of the main reasons was, that it's really hard to visually grok the factories from the in game visuals. All the shades of brown and gray made it not really enjoyable either (I like pretty and colourful virtual environments, there is enough gray and brown in the real life). If the game would look more like those visualizations,…

I don't picture Factorio's base pallette to be drab, but if you do, you should check out the color blind mod that amps up the colors and adds distinct visuals for things that would otherwise need color to distinguish . ETA: did you play 2.0 or an older version? They've spruced up the color a few times over the years.

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

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