Factorio Friday Facts

[@lukaszimmer1973]

My trust in the devs of this game and the creator of space Exploration is as deep as outer space

[@samsawesomeminecraft]

I really hope Factorio optimizes slightly more so that each surface can have its own CPU thread to make multi-planet megabases less likely to get lagged by a singlethreading bottleneck.

[@Erik_Ice_Fang]

Drones are getting significant performance upgrades and flight logic

[@Mantis_Toboggan_TrashMan]

The return of FFF and these videos led to me starting up another playthrough of K2 SE. I'm extremely excited for the new quality system.

[@ThePopeOfAllDope]

I just got to deep space science in SE, I’m completely burnt out. How bad am I gonna like K2 SE?

[@Mantis_Toboggan_TrashMan]

​@@ThePopeOfAllDope ​ Last time I played, I also got burned out. It's hard to say I have never played SE without K2. K2 was built to work perfectly with SE, so it's hard for me to tell where SE ends and K2 begins. But I really like K2. I would never play SE without it. Beacons are done differently; each building can only be boosted by one beacon. But there are better modules and beacons to counteract it. I could go on and on just google K2. Get the Fluid Must Flow mod. It's one of the recommended mods to go with K2.

[@Zaroff85]

Same I just resumed my K2 play-through lol.

[@notLune]

The new prod science isn’t actually infinite as there is a hard cap of +300% (this isn’t a machine cap, rather it’s a recipe cap) for prod on recipes. So it stops having benefits after research lvl 30. Devs have confirmed this behavior in the discord. I suspect it was made "infinite" so that it would be required for the All research achievement.

[@notLune]

Also one dev said the cost for research grew exponentially and lvl 30 was around 200M

[@fgardt]

@@notLuneif you want to calculate the cost for each level: 1000 * 1.5^x where x is the level you want to research. That gives ~192 million research packs to unlock lvl 30 alone. Another note: all of the productivity researches don‘t need space science (was said either on discord or reddit, don‘t remember completely).

[@umbrellaoli]

I wonder, if a mod can delete this cap. 🤔 Many mods adds a lot of tiers to modules. With this research the cap would be reached quickly.

[@notLune]

@@umbrellaoliCheck FFF 375. I believe there is some mention about mods being able to modify the cap but I haven’t double checked the wording

[@bayanzabihiyan7465]

@@umbrellaolithe reason they added the hard 300% cap is because of the new “recycler” building that turns products back into 25% of their materials (required for the quality update). 300% prod means getting 4x intermediates which matches the 1:4 recycle ratio and ensures you can’t get infinite positive feedback loop with recyclers.

[@lubricustheslippery5028]

That it's an infinite research don't necessarily mean the buff will be infinite. It could be an asymptote. Something like the first level you get +50% next +25 next +12.5 et.c. then you will get closer to 100% but never reach it.

[@owenbradshaw9302]

I’m getting so fking hyped for this expansion, every week so far my mind has been blown , individual recipe productivity , sooo cool, love it. How much more extremely cool stuff do they have up their selves , holy shit

[@sillymonkey725]

I read a post somewhere, the person hated the trigger system for techs. More specifically, the 50 iron plates for power production items. People really like to hate. Start a game, craft 4-5 burner mining drills (a small amount IMO) to make things a bit faster, then collect 40 more iron plates and there you are, 50+ iron plates produced. Power production is unlocked. And guess what, a steam engine, a boiler and an offshore pump will cost you... the 40 iron plates you have in inventory. And you don't have a lab yet. You don't have 10 red science packs yet, you still need more iron plates for those. It's not like power production was delayed in any way. About the productivity, someone should check what's the minimum amount of copper and iron ore required per minute to make, idk, something like 200 research of all science packs excluding space science. So tier 3 prod modules everywhere possible, for all production. Then when expansion comes out, do the same calculations but with the new productivity possible maxima. It'll cost at least 20 times less, with all labs and intermediate bonus, quality modules, etc. The new productivity will be insane, party time for megabase builders.

[@Maadhawk]

I am very excited to see the introduction of item quality. Will make me feel like the master craftsman/engineer that I am in my dreams!

[@blaegme]

Need a new achievement for running an all legendary assembler 3 + max beacon + speed module making landfill for 1 minute. Maybe call it "Pangea (assembly required)"

[@Akirasip]

I am glad that devs have clarified on quality, puts my mind at ease.

[@aleksszukovskis2074]

a climax of industrial scale indeed

[@DeronMeranda]

I really can't wait to see some new terrain stuff. I love the Alien Biomes mod, and the RibbonMaze mod was unique, but I'd like to see some more varied interesting generation overall, including how resources are placed. Perhaps this will be part of the planets?

[@Xterminator]

Same here. I'd really love to see some very different stuff on the new planets!

[@LordWhirlin]

There's a LOT of new bells and whistles that they're proposing... especially with discovering technology/etc... It seems super weird to just have a lingering feeling that I hope they're not introducing too many new things that are going to be net new processes that can slow down megabase building/etc. Even on my SE playthrough, I'm only at a dozen or so planets, but am already starting to feel some UPS problems... I just hope that we keep the optimization we know and love with the new stuff as well.

[@peterschmidt1900]

Fully agree with what they wrote! Loved last weeks dev diary.

[@HeintjeMTB]

About prod research, First of all, you can be sure you need the new sciences as well, only in this screenshot they are hidden to keep them a secret. Second, I think those researches will get exponential more expensive. So later on you will need so much items that the productivity bonus still slows your progress if you don't expand. /Edit, I don't think positive feedback loops are a bad thing. At the infinite state of the game it can be a fun challenge to make a self sustaining base. Keep in mind that if your loop is net positive at some point your base will lock up. So basically you have to adjust your base after each level of research you complete.

[@ignaloidas]

the devs did say that you don't need all of the new sciences, and for example they plan that at least steel productivity research would be available before launching rockets. As for feedback loops, they did say that 300% is an absolute cap that you can't bypass with productivity research.

[@binathiessen4920]

I think the item productivity research will be balanced by having them debuff the recyclers for those specific recipies. If 1.8 iron plates make 1 steel (ignoring normal productivity), then 1 steel will be recycled to 1.8/4 plates.

[@owenbradshaw9302]

I ready for some insane single machine extreme beacon builds , let’s goooo

[@Xterminator]

Yeah stuff is going to get insane in the very late game once you have all this stuff!

[@Hjylps]

They could add the yellow belts and burner inserter to the trigger techs; X amount of burner miners for the inserter, and x amount of gears for the belt.

[@americankid7782]

On you not using the same blueprints every time, I do a similar thing. The only blueprints I re-use between runs is my mining setup and junctions for rail setups. Everything else is either made in the world or a 1 off import from another world.

[@aleksszukovskis2074]

i think uranium should need to be extracted from coal, like in real life, not as a separate ore

[@jameshall5171]

That is actually a really good idea, especially since uranium is only used for nuclear plants, and in the late game when you actually make nuclear plants, coal as a resource starts to become not as useful except for plastics and for the few grenades needed for military science. (I would include coal liquefaction but that's optional as you can always get oil from oil fields). Adding this as a feature ensures that coal always is useful.

[@gaahinalover]

the productivity researches reminds me of a mod I use. It's implemented differently but it's pretty useful. I look forward to it :D

[@jockeril]

yes I CAN hear your excitement in your voice - that's how we know you really like this game :)

[@lubricustheslippery5028]

How should you know that you should find oil and uranium if you don't have the tech. Is it a list in the research screen with the triggers?

[@melind82]

I can't imagine they'll allow positive recycling loops so I was assuming these would still cap out at 300% productivity on the machine. Maybe there will be exceptions for labs and other things that don't produce an output, but yeah, that recycler is dangerous.

[@szalyn8849]

The thumbnail is way too cute 😭😭

[@KaneYork]

Steel productivity will be so nice for the newbies who don't realize they're 5 belts to 1

[@americankid7782]

Even at a few hundred hours I still forget how many ores and plates I need in order to make enough steel plates. I always underestimate the amount of steel production I need compared to what I consume.

[@Vadymaus]

I wonder what will be reveal next. Maybe farming? Some mods have farming, but it hidden under default crafting sequence.

[@acenovaYT]

there should be biter based techs like 10 % increased pollution absorb, but 20 % increased health of biters that way you could also make the leg quallity items also increase pollution so they could be op, but not so op you could make your base 10x smaller removing biters from the picture as they would not get reached by the pollution anymore. Another thing that should happen is a second layer of pollution aka smog it would get created when pollution in a certaint area reached a huge concentration without dispersing fast enough, but the smog would not like sitting on top of pollution thus would start to pathfind to the outer edges it would also spread out over as much area as it could and only would be absorbed by biters and trees so tiles would not help in dealing with it the attacks would take into calculation how much pollution was used to create the smog when creating biters from it

[@basildaoust2821]

A couple more of these and I might just have to stop playing Starfield for a Factorio run. :)

[@michaell.6883]

I just wanna do silly challenges with the item qualities. Like a whole steel chest of legendary blue belts speedrun 😂

[@quban234]

I love how you could potentially use just one quality higher power pole to reach some of those annoying inserters in a highly condensed spaghetti. Or imagine a legendary coal power plant fueled by legendary burner inserters and burner mining drills or electric drills but with quality modules to feed that higher quality coal straight into a fire.

[@reosin2536]

Unpopular opinion: I find the quality mechanic is just shifting items from inventory to inventory with no real purpose. There is a lot of real life technological processes and aspects of manufacture to adapt in the game. Instead we get the "gacha quality" with assembling and disassembling and item for 5 times. For example, metalcasting and alloy smelting. With different molds and chemistry included, with hot liquid metal pouring. We have only furnace making plates right know. Other example is chemistry with mixing liquids and getting the metals from minerals. With remastered pipe system. Or maybe totally different approach like biology and biter farming with its own dedicated science pack. The last example is maintenace. Assemblers can have their own consumable kits. Lubricants, drills, tools, needed to be manufactured and provided once in 10000 production cycles. And you can also connect maintenance mechanic to quality, like late maintenance leads to defective products that need to be scrapped and recycled. I just don't get the focus on a vapid "gacha quality" instead of something completely new.

[@angeldude101]

Quality as it's being added is ultimately an abstraction for much of what you suggested. It's really not that different beyond being a simplification for the purpose of gameplay and different terms for the purpose of whimsy. The fear of the gacha mechanic is overblown because the whole point of Factorio is that you're producing in such absurd quantities that The only thing the randomness actually affects if you're ability to count outputs and predict exact when you'll get a better item, instead only being able to have the factory react to a particular quality output which gets produced at a predictable rate. Also, everything gameplay-wise that people are complaining about with quality is already in the game. We already have a gacha in the form of uranium processing, which can be rerolled with Kovarex enrichment. If you've built a nuclear reactor in Factorio, then you've almost certainly already built a recycling loop under a different name. People put up with this because a 0.7% chance every 12 seconds eventually becomes a consistent 2.1 U235 (and without Kovarex, 21 fuel cells) per hour per centrifuge, while a single reactor requires 1 fuel cell every 200 seconds, so despite the far worse odds for the Uranium gacha than the quality gacha, you still only need about 1 centrifuge per reactor in order to roll frequently enough that the randomness becomes irrelevant. With quality, you're usually not even consuming the products constantly, so there are even fewer demands on throughput, and a lost roll is also far more useful than a list roll on Uranium.

[@reosin2536]

@@angeldude101 you missed the point. Uranium processing and bobs/angels/pyabodon already have random byproducts. My point is those represent some meaningfull technilogical processes with different machines and items. While quality is just putting the same items in inventories. Covarex uraniun processing has a meaning. Two different uranium resources have different look and different purpose. They represent two different materials. Quality has no meaning. All the items even look the same with rarity icons from looter games.

[@youwanttoliveforever]

Anyone else notice the lack of powerpoles / substations in the assembler build.

[@Unusual_Danger]

That is an extremely good point. I didn’t notice that. Who knows if it’s like a legendary substation or some new massive power tower

[@Mantis_Toboggan_TrashMan]

​@@Unusual_Danger I've been thinking about what legendary belts could do or can you even build legendary robotports or bots. How far does it go. A legendary radar would be nice I always play with big brother. Big Brother increases the radar scan speed and range with tech upgrades. It's kinda OP but I can't play without it now.

[@RandomPlaceHolderName]

@@Unusual_Danger Frame is only 18 wide and normal substation is 18x18. My guess is any quality substations just out of frame would be good enough.

[@notLune]

IIRC, this is something that can be done in the editor

[@bjornthorgudmundsson2781]

​@@Mantis_Toboggan_TrashManif memory serves the devs mentioned in the last friday facts post that xterminator covered that some items like walls, belts and pipes just get more extra health from the rarity upgrades

[@1110jesse]

I think the rocket control unit productivity research might not make you produce more parts, but make parts contribute more towards the building of a rocket, and you can't exactly recycle a full rocket once it's ready to launch.

[@Elearen]

There’s no difference between the two

[@1110jesse]

@@Elearen There is. If you have a factory that produces rocket parts that each contribute a set amount of progress towards the rocket, you have two variables. How many parts you are producing that come out of the factory and go to belts. That is the first variable, and second is how much each individual part contributes towards the rocket completion once the part enters the silo.

[@DeronMeranda]

The randomness of the new quality production sounds similar to the already existing randomness in the isotopes produced in Uranium processing, just more intense and varied.

[@Xterminator]

That's a really good comparison! People have adjusted to that so I think adjusting to the randomness in Quality production will happen over time too.

[@Utoxin]

Regarding the productivity / recycling loop question: My thought is that maybe the items that have recipe prod research available are blacklisted from recycling?

[@notLune]

Devs confirmed that the new research is affected by the hard cap of +300%

[@Utoxin]

@@notLune Ah well. Still a powerful tool to help build a more efficient factory. Lets you swap in speed at later levels.

[@notLune]

@@Utoxin speed or quality. But I agree with you... very powerful, though expensive

[@Selmephren]

Hey, getting a "This page is blocked by service provider" when trying to go to your site from beget.

[@mx2000]

The clarifications on quality were disappointing, but expected. It really feels like this is the pet feature of the lead dev (he spent years on it), he’s very much invested in it, and now with the massive success of Factorio there is no one anymore who can talk the head honcho out of bad ideas, just like George Lucas on the prequels. Just consider the part about the naming - the feedback was almost *universally* negative on the names, and he still feels kinda reluctant to change it (there were literally dozens of excellent suggestions). So I really don’t think this is gonna change anytime before the release. I mean just consider how it took them half a decade to come around on the research queue. I’m personally most worried about inventory clutter and extra work needed on every filter. I’d really like them to show how they deconstruct one of these lootgrinder blocks. You would then have multiple levels of modules and assembler 2/3 in your inventory. Do I now need to set up logistics filters for every level? Now my bots will go out and stuff them somewhere, contaminating my logistics network with random mid-tier crap, that, depending on how the filtering is implemented, will either end up polluting other processes, or sit around in a yellow chest until the end of time because they are never requested by anything outside of the loopgrinder loop.

[@Draugo]

Yeah there were never any chance that the quality would be changed. Personally I just don't think it fits, it's too gamified. How does a "better quality gear" make an inserter move faster especially considering the inserters are worse than their real world counterparts. Why are they only locked to 180 degree arc, makes no sense but somehow "legendary iron plate" makes them better.

[@Omnifarious0]

The trigger thing is something the True Nukes mod already does.

[@dickinaround87]

It's used in the starting sequence of Seablock, too.

[@TheFillyosopher]

Yeah, multiple mods do it! SeaBlock and OmniSeablock come to mind. Will be nice for modders to have official support though, rather than having to script their own triggers.

[@Thrill0g]

Hey! super video, thanks for your continuous work.

[@Xterminator]

I appreciate that! Thanks for watching!

[@tedg1278]

I think it is funny that they keep putting together these recycler demos when most things will not require a recycler at all or even a better than +1 quality random roll. I would even argue that using recyclers will be a serious waste of resources for a very negligible gain in how soon you can produce a higher quality item.

[@sevret313]

I imagine that recipe productivity upgrades will reduce the amount the recycler gives you as you're basically updating the recipe.

[@mementomori5580]

Why would it? It just works as if you automatically have a productivity module in the assembler with the recipes for those researches, nothing more. The recipe is not being touched at all. So the amount the recycler gives you should not be affected at all.

[@sevret313]

@@mementomori5580 I believe this is plausible as it is a way to give more than +300% productivity without breaking the game due to the recyclers.

[@notLune]

There is no way to get +300% prod without the use of external mods

[@sevret313]

@@notLune With infinite research then yes it is possible.

[@notLune]

@@sevret313 devs confirmed that it’s not actually infinite. After research level 30, there is no more bonus. +300% is a hard cap

[@leeux]

Let's say you want one "Legendary" Power armor... you only want/need ONE of those, maybe two... at most let's say three? The fact that you have to constantly create power armors and recycle them just to have a roll for the "legendary" chance... it's completely stupid and completely kills the mechanic for me. I can understand the logic behind "large numbers turn randomness into ratios" for stuff like mass produced items, but for single use items or low quantity items like spiders & grid equipment is completely wrong IMHO, or at least turning a blind eye to the issue with randomness, and to make matter worse: those are the very items for which the system matters, IMHO. If the justification is that (i.e. "at big scale large numbers turn chance into ratios") why then don't make it ratios from the very start? I don't mind the need for a grind, or exponential requirements for higher quality items, it's just the loop create/decon, and waste of time that makes hate that part of the system.

[@Xterminator]

While I see your point, and do agree for the specific case you gave of having to constantly make power armors for a chance at legendary... That shouldn't be how you go about getting one imo. Remember that you can just straight up make legendary items by using legendary ingredients. So if you just have legendary modules, blue circuits, etc needed to craft an armor you can just skip the RNG on that. Obviously you do have to go through the process of getting the legendary intermediates, but honestly I would think/hope you'd have those anyway for making legendary assemblers, lvl 3 modules etc at that point. So could just take some of those and make yourself a power armor straight up. Just my two cents. :)

[@leeux]

@@Xterminator I hope it works that way! I didn't knew/read that there were specific recipes added for specific qualities using the corresponding quality ingredients. If that's the case and I trust your word on that, that changes things and my complaint it moot, you're right! Thanks for the reply, and best wishes!

[@konfuzius7743]

question being, is a infinite feedback loop of items really that much of a problem, when we are talking about these high numbers? probably its just me, but i think being able to NOT go out and search for new ore every time you want to craft a new item (talking in a primitive way ik but still) might actually be quite interesting to experience no? we are talking about infinite research on recipie productivity etc, so why not allow the players to get resources for free aswell? we still are in the super hyper ultra lategame, where the numbers on some specific items will probably become 6, 7 or even 8+ digits long. do we really have to go out and get a new ore outpost once were in that state of the game? :) great vid tho, thanks for keeping me/us up to date ^^

[@nordishharfaklid]

Bro, can you you put the text you're reading in the middle of the screen, where the first and most logical place a person is going to look at to find, to read along. Especially when a lot of the time pausing the video causes the progress bar to block the actual line you're reading.

[@rhueoflandorin]

also I'm glad the devs stole my mod and adding it to base game, gives me an excuse not to work on a version for V2

[@AlessandroRodriguez]

As Usual Factorio work work in myterious ways....

[@YeOldePixelShoppe]

Could be a diminishing returns research.

[@Xterminator]

That's something I hadn't thought of! But definitely makes sense so it doesn't get too powerful

[@YeOldePixelShoppe]

@@Xterminator could converge on say 100%

[@rinunderscore]

W

[@thetuerk]

I hope that instead of a random chance at a quality item, it works like productivity, where a bar fills up as you produce items which makes every so-and-so item the next higher quality.

[@cooltv2776]

how would this interact with the chance to improve quality more than 1 step? I dont see that being a good change. it forces you to make many copies of items. which is identical to what you would be doing at end game stages anyways, and guarantees that early game quality items are expensive, rather than a high chance of being expensive. all I see it doing it making the system less interesting in the early game

[@angeldude101]

At large scales, the two are pretty much indistinguishable. The difference is only really at the smaller scale when you're just trying to get your very first high quality items or feel like gambling for a single specific item. With productivity, there isn't as much hype from the prospect of getting an extra item compared to getting a better item, so there'd be no reason to make it random.

[@thetuerk]

@@cooltv2776 I feel you, it doesn't exactly seem like an expansion to the core gameplay, but Ido think I get why they would want to do this. People who want to build big bases but are bottlenecked by performance can reach their goals by using quality items. It's a much better solution than just increasing the output of everything or adding assembly machine 4's and beyond. It's also an extremly flexible, with one systemic addition they've added many more tiers of most buildings. My hope is that this will be like the addition of robots, circuits, trains and modules, and how they change your approach about problems during gameplay.

[@Maadhawk]

I am one of those anti-beacon players. Feels too cheaty to me. I also don't even research the spidertron because arachnophobia.

[@lolmao500]

I wonder if someone would be able to do a ``quality of items`` mod before the expansion comes out lol

[@heyhoe168]

They could, but this is a pretty deep mechanic. It will be overbloated if not made on the side of core game.

[@angeldude101]

Already done! Called "Janky Quality". It's not really supposed to be a substitute for the vanilla quality mechanic so much as a preview for what it could be like so people could experiment with various setups and ratios before the expansion actually comes out.

[@CatalepticHunter]

I honestly wouldn't mind if (after a sufficiently huge investment) efficiency/productivity research _did_ result in a positive feedback loop, to the point where the logical thing to do would be to _dismantle_ more and more primary production. It'd basically be a win condition, which seems fine.

[@Valarxx]

comment for algorithm 🔥🔥🔥

[@starburst98]

Best idea for names is an option box where you an just type in 5 words to use for your own game.

[@RandomPlaceHolderName]

Feels like most of the things they're changing should be base game changes.

[@notLune]

Research queue always on and research triggers are confirmed for Factorio 2.0 (base game). Quality is dlc only (technically some of the quality code will be in 2.0 but locked at normal qual) New prod research, I don't think I've seen this has been confirmed either way

[@RandomPlaceHolderName]

@@notLune Are bots 2.0 as well?

[@imperiumgraecum9126]

Just take my 30 euros already, Wube!

[@Fluffyman2271]

Yippie

[@shadowhenge7118]

Ill just have to make a mod for quality. It should not be rng. It should increase quality at the cost of time, power, and materials.

[@DianeSteele]

that is how it already works when you factor in scale

[@Zaroff85]

I think productivity is separate from recycling. So I am sure the recyclers will not get a productivity bonus. Since you are breaking down to get those parts. Think about it the quality modules on recyclers are going to get you close if not back to 100% of the components. And productivity is not factored. Like in the coding the recycler is not an entity that is affects by your researched productivity multiplier.

[@walterroche8192]

This is why game devs shouldn't say anything until AFTER the release! This really doesn't sound like "just talk" or good PR, but more along the lines of "justification of design" & damage mitigation. (facepalm) Just let the players decide! They will anyway. Sheesh! What's the most disturbing is how they are handling the extension. Having the ability to turn on/off some feature turns it into a mere MOD and not really an official extension of the game. Too much similarity. Options I get, but it's the OFFICIAL extension! It's your view of how the game should be played, stand behind it!

[@Elearen]

Agreed, either all expansion features on or all expansion features off. To be fair though, factorio is a game that already has a million settings when starting a new game, so there’s precedent. There’s no real need for such a level of control.