Factorio Friday Facts

[@lucidmoses]

Looks great. Maybe they could integrate the signals into the actual rail so it doesn't need an extra block.

[@rallyupboys]

I dont think that would really be able to work, reason being is that me and my friend run 2 trains to 6 cargo wagons, but some people only run 1 train and 4 cars. If you just integrate them then you wouldn't be able to modulate your signals to match your trains, unless you update the pathfinder to a degree in which it's essentially an AI driving each train. Not really something you want due to factorios UPS dependency.

[@Benthorpy]

@@rallyupboys Not sure if you understood, I think they mean placing the signal on the rail itself instead of on the side, so that you could actually signal two rails running right next to each other

[@lucidmoses]

@@rallyupboys Are you saying you would put signals on every section of track then? Why?

[@cruzcoda]

@@lucidmoses I think they're imagining it being more like Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Instead of the signal entity inhabiting a separate space next to the rail, it would instead be able to merge into the rail space. This would allow for much tighter compacting of rail lines, so that you could put signaled rails right next to each other, instead of needing once entity's worth of space between them, for rail signals. It could work fairly well, and probably wouldn't require too much effort to code, as you could just layer the signals atop the rail sprite.

[@lucidmoses]

@@cruzcoda Yea, Technically this doesn't seem like a big problem to me. Inserters are on one squire buy the graphic spans several. I have confidence in the devs. This seems like a glaring hole given the graphics they showed so I'm betting they have something in mind.

[@drakedbz]

The best part about this is that this is still very obviously a passion project for these folks. When they take that much time to do it right, you know that all of the other things they touch are going to be fantastic, and I'm here for it. As someone that started playing Blizzard games during their prime, and have since watched their fall, I can tell you that most companies that see this kind of success eventually streamline out the passion from their products. Individual devs may still really care, but management won't let them take multiple months to redesign a system that was already working just fine. This is why indie devs are so important to gaming in general. That drive to make something good, just that little bit better, and the willingness to spend a fair bit of time on it, is really something that only indie devs do. It's this kind of care for their product that keeps people playing the game for years. People are willing to overlook a game's flaws if it's very obviously made with love and passion. People are also willing to wait a long time for improvements because they know the end result will be fantastic.

[@TheJacklikesvideos]

"a delayed game is eventually good. a rushed game is bad forever." - Miyamoto, before the time of day zero patches.

[@angeldude101]

What do you mean "not flashy"? Tight S-bends, more signal positions, chunk-aligned power poles, and better looking hexagonal city blocks are _all_ super exciting!

[@gogudelagaze1585]

IKR? For me, this is even bigger than the space thing. I am so hyped

[@finalcam1740]

For me as someone who hasn't played in 4 months, don't care. I'm sure I'll be happy aboit rails when I come back but it's not bringing me back yet until theres content. I'm sure that's what he means.

[@memesiclekickflip]

arbitrary restrictions can be a good way to encourage out of the box designs but V453k and i have experience with OpenTTD and this provides a comparable level of network flexibility ive always wanted

[@carlostennent6814]

The quality problem that they have trying to improve Factorio is just the gameplay loop of Factorio

[@Epb7304]

32 reach electric poles! finally!

[@BonzoDeAap]

Hallelujah!

[@hanamichan8936]

Yay!

[@theaureliasys6362]

Btw. Krastorio had given us 32 poles for a while now.

[@akujie4821]

Hey man, I wanna say thanks for always looking into Factorio news. I fail to keep up and you are always on it!

[@Xterminator]

My pleasure! I'm happy to help you stay up to date on everything!

[@xboi3607]

i do personally keep up, but i really like hearing what other people have to say

[@Mechalanglo]

12:10 I think there's no arrow because it's a bi-directional signal

[@Ashebrethafe]

It looks like there's a pair of diamonds there, because each of those ends has both the head and the tail of an arrow. There's also a yellow block further down in that image that has tails on both ends, because there are signals on both sides of the track that aren't directly across from each other.

[@fast1nakus]

I honestly think factorio devs and gaming community is the best in the industry. Never ever did I had anything negative to say about the game and the changes they make.

[@badgamedevreacts3855]

That sounds amazing, I have had so many situations where I wish rails were just a bit more pliable, and this seems to address it all!

[@Xterminator]

Same here! I think once this comes out, the more we play with these changes, the more creative designs and such will be possible. Going to be great!

[@DeronMeranda]

So happy for this! It will make playing super-thin ribbon worlds so much nicer. And as someone who enjoys complex spaghetti-style rail layouts vs. sterile blueprinted grids, it will be so nice not to have as many of those impossible off-by-one rail line-up problems.

[@reeman2.0]

14:20 I remember reading a post on the forums where people were complaining that big power poles don't align with chunks, I believe one of the devs replied and said they wouldn't do this. Love to see it!

[@V12Maniac]

This makes me SO happy. finally i can condense my rail stations down to 2 tiles instead of 6

[@peterschmidt1900]

I want to achieve in my life the level of perfection that the factorio devs achieve in their game!

[@sillymonkey725]

I'm gonna make my rail blueprints 6 tiles between tracks, 34x34, using _rare big power poles_ to have the necessary pole reach. Just so it's not chunk aligned and will give OCD people panic attacks. :P

[@HenryLoenwind]

I was planning to use a 6-gap, too, but with a centre 2-way track for overtaking. I may make a mod with 17-range, track-side power poles for that if I can find someone to make the graphics...

[@Soul-Burn]

Uncommon large electric pole meta slashed before it had time to rise.

[@selecks6462]

as a rail junction aficionado I love this

[@kylerhaged3476]

If you can signal that 15:15 Then Yaaa!!!! for super compact stackers! And the power pole reach increase is great!

[@hunterkillerai]

I cannot fathom how do we fit in signals for that.

[@kylerhaged3476]

@@hunterkilleraiwell "if" the signals are mounted on posts then it might fit? Like I get they where prob showing off how tight the junction could be but it's not practical if no signals,

[@CamAlert2]

Me casually waiting for chunk-aligned roboports

[@dankyuji2072]

Man, i can´t wait to build a Hexdecagon-Cityblock-Megabase.

[@trashak3]

Those 1 to 5 junctions look amazing, no matter if you can signal all of them or not

[@JavierSalcedoC]

10/10 update. Imo for the derelict rails, the actual rails shouldn't look like bent/cut pieces of wire

[@TlalocTemporal]

It does kinda look like tin wire, eh? Just displaced rails, with a bent length or two would feel much more stable.

[@chaz706]

Hump yards are going to be a thing now.

[@BloodyMobile]

These changes are more exciting to me than the Space stuff. This is SO MUCH QoL I always wanted in the base game. Especially the powerpoles finally spanning an entire chunk instead of 2 tiles short. And my future trains are definitely sweating nervously now, given that these changes will give me even more options to build navigational nightmares for them :D

[@Olconer]

I absolutely looooveee factorio art style , can't wait for space age

[@ThatOliveMrT]

Changes I didn't know I wanted are the best kind. Can't wait

[@NoerLuin]

The power pole range increase is great for grid aligned rails. Currently there is so much waste that I choose not to include the power lines in the blueprint.

[@rafanowak6764]

bridges would improve complcated junctions so much. Its sad theyr not planing of adding them :(

[@Anson_AKB]

yes, but without completely rewriting the entire game to allow non-connected items to be placed on the same tile above each other, the best probably will be dirty tricks like some mods did (teleporting trains through "tunnels", jumping pads, etc)

[@floydwordsworth9175]

One thing I’m always confused about is why are there wooden sleepers but the recipe for making rails doesn’t use wood, like why not have concrete sleepers?

[@Xterminator]

I've also wondered the same thing! Very weird. It would be a nice use for all the wood you get when clearing forests for more factory lol

[@quban234]

If quality wasn't locked behind the DLC I would prefer that only uncommon or rare big electric poles had 32 tiles range. That way if you want a perfect chunk-aligned design you would have to work a little harder for that. Nothing stops you from using more poles but the cleanness of the 32 range design would incentivize you to try out a quality system. At least medium poles with one or two tiles bigger supply area could still enable more compact designs.

[@TallinuTV]

Definitely looking forward to getting my hands on these new toys!

[@RobertGoddard86]

Thx was waiting for this, then I had to get to work, just finally watching now

[@Reeuwijk78]

+2 increase to large power poles, finally!

[@vmened]

For me most annoing problem which related with rails - it is low fps due to entity updates and pathfinder on the base with 800 train stations (middle game of Space Exploration). I even agree to buy additional computer for avoid of rebuld whole base from zero. 😢

[@gogudelagaze1585]

Whoooaaaa, this is awesome! I'm starting to think I shouldn't read these FFFs because everything I've seen so far is REALLY good, but it's only coming in a year (at the earliest)

[@mrpocock]

No more using a 32 distance large poll mod :) now i just want bridges and tunnels and my trains wishlist will be done.

[@SPPR89]

I love this feature to be added completely and successful 😊

[@coldhardwick]

This change might actually make me start playing again

[@acenovaYT]

with the skyrails you will be able to have the best offloading and loading platforms. Just have 2 rails next to eachother when you want to load / offload one goes up and over other is the un/loading platform then the first one goes down and they rejoin.

[@TripleOmega]

Hey Xterm I noticed that when you read these FFFs you try to put the text into your own words.(replacing "I" with "they" and such, and saying things in other ways) When you do this though you keep stumbling over your words as you're trying to read and convert the text while talking at the same time. You might want to consider just reading the text word for word as it would make the video much smoother.

[@bjornthorgudmundsson2781]

The first thing i thought with the rail control point issue is does the visual have to match up with the hitbox strictly speaking? Like the deviation from the curve is so tiny you wouldnt be able to notice it when the trains are moving over them so could they have made the in game sprite a perfect curve and just have the train move a millimeter off center during the curves

[@Anson_AKB]

what about the *_length_* of hitboxes when the connection point is somewhere inside one tile? on a diagonal connection, wouldn't the two hitboxes either overlap (making placement illegal) or have a gap (where something else could be built or create conflicts). this might require multiple hitboxes for one railpiece, eg building hitbox, deconstruction are (eg for trees) driving hitbox, blocking hitbox, etc, and as i understood, that currently is done and creates problems that the new system shall avoid.

[@TlalocTemporal]

Because a zig-zag (exactly the situation these were designed for) would sway off the control point in opposite directions. Having extra logic for rail sprites, signal sprites, and trains to move off the control points based on only certain configurations of rails, which gets canceled by adding rails, is just asking for bugs. Not to mention that you'd need at least 50% more rail sprites to make all that fit.

[@williambarnes5023]

The only thing we need now is to make the rail signals and chain signals stick into the rail itself. Instead of o-|____|-o, where the rail signals snap to the outside of the rail, attach them to these tiles |-oo-| so they occupy the same tile as the rail, but their graphic sticks to the outer edge. Then you can signal rails that are adjacent to each other. Also if we could have one tile offsets for rails please. >_>

[@Ligh7Bulb]

10:15 “I choo choo choose you” ❤

[@RobertGoddard86]

I don't know why but for some reason I felt like you should have hit the rocket the end😂

[@Epb7304]

15:28 I think that using RHD (I know, eww...) it may be possible if you could place the signals along the track just outside of the stacker and then after the stacker have signals for exiting, but idk perhaps not

[@Anson_AKB]

probably not, because having one tile for a signal next to the two tiles width of any track will require three tiles total. and that would also apply for rails in curves. an option might be to have a series of switches that each only split one rail into two, but that would require a distance of one S-bend in length for neighboring rails, looking similar to that double S-bend in one of the first screenshots.

[@walterroche8192]

Looks like they've still left in the "grass" though placed objects issue .. 🤐 The rails graphics look better at least though that's limited by the above.

[@rrai1999]

it's irritating, but there's a mod that does exactly what you want- placing concrete or objects down removes all grass, cut-down trees, etc

[@christophermccutcheon2143]

Rail changes sound amazing. One thing that does irritate me is just having to leave a huge expanse for tracks cos connecting them can be a bitch. I run a two-rail system as well, usually with a central loop branching out into depos, so i always need an enormous amount of space just for turning. I'd love to see a new radar added as well, and maybe a new roboport. Roboport with bigger range and then radars also with much bigger range in the late game. Have to place them too close together for the end game and they end up in the middle of your builds. How about a satalite? We launch rocket with a satalite and then we get the whole map revealed so long as a GPS console has power

[@K.M.3.]

Rail rework will completely remodel rail networks and I know it Just imagine a 4 lane rail networks that's Extremely compact

[@olduniverse9270]

Waiting for factorio 2.0. 1 year left.

[@Anson_AKB]

V always was a fantastic rail and mod programmer, even more than a decade ago, before he started working on factorio. i always used and enjoyed his mods for OTTD, including PURR, NUTS, YETI, RAWR and most of all WETrains (i hope i got the names right since i didn't play OTTD after being hooked on factorio and other games) tracks looking like canals, and trains looking like ships. is there a similar mod for factorio? :-)

[@lubricustheslippery5028]

Wube removed the mod API for having different types of tracks so it would be hard. There is an ship mod with invisible tracks on water but then normal trains can run on them and ships can run on tracks on land.

[@vaclavbenc8769]

Hi Anson, thank you, that was really heartwarming to read ❤

[@rrai1999]

Yes, there's an exact mod like that called "Cargo ships" :)

[@Anson_AKB]

@@lubricustheslippery5028 in factorio, it would be quite difficult to set up rail systems with different types of rails when there are no bridges or tunnels to connect the two halves of a network on the left and right sides of a different straight rail with a different type. but a "simple" (remember how long it took to properly create the graphics for the new rails that was described in this fff) replacement set of shapes might be possible, requiring the user himself to have the discipline to keep trains/trainships on the proper tracks and not visually mess it up ingame too much (except at crossings).

[@Anson_AKB]

@@vaclavbenc8769 thanks ... the "good old times" :-) my favorite singleplayer maps used 1000+ wetrains of minimal length and the biggest project on ottdcoop was the huge crossing with 4x6 incoming and 4x6 outgoing tracks, each being directly connected to each (and always using split before merge), which barely fit on 2x2 screens at max zoom. some memories for eternity :-) i played factorio for the first time on version 0.6 after it was mentioned (maybe/probably by you?) on that icq, but paused again after i had built a "perfect system" to transport everything on a 3-wide multipurpose belt (at that time vanilla inserters had max reach 3, belts had not two lanes but could push up to three items besides each other on the same belt, and there were not much more than 9 different item types). i really started playing factorio again around the change from 0.12 to 0.13 and got 15k+ hours each on the standalone as well as later on the steam version. thanks for stealing so much of my time, LOL :-)

[@rtificial8292]

Ugh. Just as i escape this addiction. They bring out more reasons to play

[@Insanekiller278]

Okay hear me out. I suck at rail signals, so much so that I have to run 1 train per rail. It's terrible. I e watch dozens of tutorials, but my brain just can't grasp it for some reason. What if there was a setting or a rail signal test button that would show each error, beit the wrong signal type, location, ect.. Food for thought. The factory must grow.

[@americankid7782]

If you want to, all you need for rails is to have a chain signal signal at the beginning of an intersection, and at the exit. Then on the straightaways, have a rail signal every train length or so. Anything more than that is just optimization. If you want I can give you my discord so I can help better.

[@Insanekiller278]

Thanks for that! Once I get done moving, I just might take you up on that.

[@raaan]

Are your website down forever?

[@sanderbos4243]

13:25 The caption was just joking about how all these exciting new ways to signal your way through making a spaghetti junction, may trigger some friends who want everyone to use a single chunk-aligned rail junction blueprint :)

[@matejsojka6683]

Hi, Am i the only one who does not like this? new graphics looks better, but those changes are not what I would like.... I think that this is what is bad: 1. Rail-switches cannot have 1 in and 3 out (or more) - that is not possible. It should always be 1 to 2 or 2 to 2. 2. There should be a possibility to build a different angle of curves but sharper turn should mean lower speed. 3. Even in new graphics it misses blank spaces when multiple rails connect to each other (there must be a blank space for train wheel to be able to cross it) 4. Sounds.... I miss wheels screeching in tight turns, I miss those sounds when train wheels goes over train switch. 5. Trains are very big... but also not very big. Train size is a good but it is not in line with capacity of wagons... wagon is 2x5 and it has less space then 1x1 steel chest. Wagons should be bigger (8x times?) in capacity and more heavy when full. Train would then act more naturally. 6. More locomotives to choose from.

[@darkmoon556]

1. fair enough 2. how would you make manualy driven trains slow down? 5. just download a mod for the cap 6. even shuttle locos?

[@matejsojka6683]

@@darkmoon556 2. train would autobrake in automatic mode it can slow down in manual mode too. 5. modding comunity is awesome... but we are talking official here... 6. just start with steam one that needs from burning fuel also water, then you can go with diesel one without water that can run on light oil, electric motors integrated in wagons in late game (like no fuel, best acceleration, rails acting as power delivery also)

[@mikeydflyingtoaster]

Really?? Like in the next release??? Please say it’s true

[@Xterminator]

Not until the expansion comes out unfortunately

[@mikeydflyingtoaster]

@@Xterminator saddest face

[@mikeydflyingtoaster]

@@Xterminator it always seemed so weird to me cos I love creating my snap-to-grid rail BP books and it has meant so many annoying compromises

[@GhostStyle007]

9:50 i prefer the old rendering. The new style is too "shiny" and dont really fits with the environment ( just my opinion )