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Factorio: Space Age

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Re: Factorio: Space Age

#111

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

Jenk wrote: post #87
pmoriarty wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with that is that there aren't nearly as many people who know Haskell or Erlang compared to those who know Lua. Lua has been a modding staple across countless games, so millions of gamers/modders are already familiar with it. I'm convinced that chosing Lua for modding is one of the main reasons Factorio has over 5000 mods now. If they'd chosen a more obscure language I'd doubt we'd have nearly as man…

My point for choosing AA as an example was that it uses an entirely bespoke language, modelling system, and the APIs are just horrendous. Obscurity has not prevented (some) great things happen with/for Bohemia but I do wonder what greatness has been missed out because of it. As for Lua I think it is rather chicken:egg. Lua is popular because it is used by mod APIs, or is Lua use by mod APIs because it is popular? My…

Lua is used because it is dead simple to drop into a project as an extension language. It was designed to be easy to interoperate with C. Lua/LuaJIT is one of the fastest scripting languages available.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#112

Post by red_admiral »

pmoriarty wrote: post #92
mmastrac wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't put trains and smooth in a single sentence. The signals required a lot of patience to learn and I'm not entirely sure I still understand them. They are by far one of the most painful parts of factorio for me.

I just use city-block blueprints and never really worry about signals. However, the foolproof advice I've gotten from r/Factorio has been to put chain signals at the entrance and exit to every junction, and to make sure there's enough space for your longest train to stop behind a rail signal (and you wouldn't mind having it stop there). I can also recommend the cybersyn mod (or LTN). Once you understand one of these…

Not necessarily at the exit.

Normal signal: train stops if there's a train in the section ahead (or it's reserved for another train on a conflicting path), otherwise train goes.

Chain signal: train stops here until it can get a mutex on a path past another non-chain signal.

So if you have rail sections (small letters) and signals (capitals) a - A - b - B - c - C - d in a row on a plain line and A/B are chain signals and C is regular, then trains from the left will stop at A until the train can grab all sections b, c, d in one go.

That's why chain signals at the entrance to a junction are good (prevents a train stopping on the junction) but you want regular ones at the exit, at least if some plain line follows.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#113

Post by vluft »

Jenk wrote: post #87
pmoriarty wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with that is that there aren't nearly as many people who know Haskell or Erlang compared to those who know Lua. Lua has been a modding staple across countless games, so millions of gamers/modders are already familiar with it. I'm convinced that chosing Lua for modding is one of the main reasons Factorio has over 5000 mods now. If they'd chosen a more obscure language I'd doubt we'd have nearly as man…

My point for choosing AA as an example was that it uses an entirely bespoke language, modelling system, and the APIs are just horrendous. Obscurity has not prevented (some) great things happen with/for Bohemia but I do wonder what greatness has been missed out because of it. As for Lua I think it is rather chicken:egg. Lua is popular because it is used by mod APIs, or is Lua use by mod APIs because it is popular? My…

lua is used by mod APIs because it's very performant and extremely easy to embed in C/C++.

> especially difficult for new-to-programming gamers with great ideas to pick up

and you're proposing haskell or erlang as an alternative first programming language for somebody?

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#115

Post by willis936 »

Kiro wrote: post #44
acatton wrote: post #4

Reminds me of Mindustry https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.anuke.mindustry/ But it looks like Factorio was first.

I find it fascinating that you know about Mindustry but not Factorio. It's like being into block games but not know what Minecraft is.

I don't like this analogy. Block games and industrial games all are absolutely and relatively unique. The relative success (and arguably quality) of minecraft compared to other block games is much higher than that of factorio relative to industrial games. This is mostly due to block games have much wider appeal than industrial games. All standout games in both categories were well thought out and required large effort from the creators.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#116

Post by Laremere »

vessenes wrote: post #70

Oh wow, I'm very excited about this. The post author wrote the absolutely incredible Space Exploration mod for Factorio, pitching itself as a "100+" hour expansion, realistically closer to 1000 hours for an average player. Space Exploration has its quirks, but is fundamentally an absolutely outstanding puzzle game, among the best ever made. One of the most delightful things about Factorio for coders is that the game…

> The post author wrote the absolutely incredible Space Exploration mod for Factorio

Each section has an author, and only the Space Exploration section is written by the mod author. Most of the post is written by kovarex, who is the founder of Factorio, afaik.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#117

Post by jprete »

vbezhenar wrote: post #51

Postponing cliff explosives makes be extremely sad. I'm perfectionist freak and my factorio gameplay basically divides "before" and "after" cliff explosives. I hate when I can't fix terrain for my plans, I prefer to terraform as much as needed, turning lake into plains, if needed, but I'm not going to adapt my grand plan. I understand that there are players who find fun in adapting their bases to the environment, bui…

I had a similar reaction. But my read of the post is that rockets, space science, and other planets are now the mid-game, so cliff explosives are probably still mid-game tech, not end-game.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#118

Post by pmoriarty »

red_admiral wrote: post #112
pmoriarty wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just use city-block blueprints and never really worry about signals. However, the foolproof advice I've gotten from r/Factorio has been to put chain signals at the entrance and exit to every junction, and to make sure there's enough space for your longest train to stop behind a rail signal (and you wouldn't mind having it stop there). I can also recommend the cybersyn mod (or LTN). Once you understand one of these…

Not necessarily at the exit. Normal signal: train stops if there's a train in the section ahead (or it's reserved for another train on a conflicting path), otherwise train goes. Chain signal: train stops here until it can get a mutex on a path past another non-chain signal. So if you have rail sections (small letters) and signals (capitals) a - A - b - B - c - C - d in a row on a plain line and A/B are chain signals…

"Chain in, rail out" is the standard advice. However, if you search around r/Factorio you'll see there's debate about whether that's the best advice for beginners.

Chain both in and out is supposedly the foolproof method, and apart from stations, rail signals are just an optimization.

Though I've played a lot of Factorio, I've never really felt the need to dive deeply in to signals, and I'm happy to just use the foolproof method and leave more optimized solutions for those who need them.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#119

Post by magicalhippo »

Yo we heard you liked crack, so we put some more crack in your crack...

Factorio is just one of those games I can't play enough of until I get exhausted and it feels like work, and then have to take a long break from. And then the cycle repeats.

Took me a while to buy it because it seemed overpriced at the time, but given the continuous work over all that time... wow is all I can say.

Now please excuse me while I go inform my SO she can plan a vacation.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#120

Post by Akronymus »

dotnet00 wrote: post #61
CGamesPlay wrote: post #11

I "just" (160+ hours in) started a play through of space exploration at the recommendation of an HN comment. Super excited to see an official expansion that adds this kind of thing! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36561847 My ideas list for interesting Factorio challenges (apropos of nothing): - Products with a shelf life (must be consumed within 15 minutes or it turns into a "waste" product) - Products with "re…

You could look into Seablock and some of the related mods (iirc Angels and Bob's mod packs) which add some of those sorts of complexities. IIRC some things can require charcoal filters, in which case you have to build the filter frame and filter, get it to the machine that needs it, then recover, replace and regenerate the used filter. Another fun challenge is "feedback", where a later step in a production line produ…

For me, nothing beats angelbobs + the angel industry settings for the science and component overhauls.
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