TIL: Nilaus SE series is paused. I salute the skill to play what you find is fun, not what the community wants. I'm confident that spaceship design and arcospheres is in the Nilaus-fun-trigger TM, but burnouts are not.
@@benjaminchambers4361 I too think it will be far more friendly for most players. SE has a place of its own, a vast, huge, long lasting project, just how many players like it.
9:43 you can’t fit 16 beacons around the 4x4 electromagnetic plant as a 5x5 is on the very edge of being affected by all 16 beacons. A 4x4 can stilll only be affected by 12 beacons. 11:45 they also swapped the names of stack and bulk inserters. the green ones are bulk and the white ones stack inserters.
I really like that 1, just slapping a few beacons around will be much more impactful now than previously, and 2, that quality will also be super important. I think both of those are really good changes.
@@SkorjOlafsen You aren't getting charged for the "lootboxes", the worst outcome in any scenario is ending up with the same tier you put in, they are entirely optional, and it's completely feasible to make factories that crank out a specific quality level, at which point it becomes essentially just a cost multiplier for better stuff. It adds a lot to the maximum power level of personal equipment and robots, and does that without adding multiple new tiers of each machine.
@@SkorjOlafsen Because dealing with random drops is an interesting automation challenge in which you will get rewarded by resolving that issue in a smart way. This is not comparable to "lootboxes". The point here is automating the process of decrafting the lower rarity items until it spits out an higher rarity one. Got a common item? Recycle it, craft it again, but don't do this manually, automate this process, thats the point of the game.
Honestly I'm glad you're not burning yourself out on a game based on viewership like the content creators forcing themselves to play Kerbal 2 or Cities Skylines 2. You left SE at a good point to observe your design philosophy on Nauvis, in orbit, and with interplanetary logistics that I can take what you've done so far and finish the game. The master class and megabase series as well as the series' of other factory games have made playing them more understandable and enjoyable. You continue to be an invaluable creator on my sub list keep doing your own thing
You mentioned where else tons of science can be spent with all of this added performance from quality. One thing we do know of is prod research for some intermediates and research itself. Research productivity is infinite (base prod in labs), and intermediates like processing units and steel have research that boosts prod up to 300%, meaning recycle loops with quality will have zero loss for them, and you don't need prod modules in your machines to hit the ceiling for those given items. Klonan said something like it would take a 1k spm base ~120 days IRL to max out a single item, and its suggested there are going to be a decent amount of those to chase. So there will be plenty of choices on where to allocate science production, and I'm sure plenty more we don't even know about yet and might not know until close to or after launch.
I would prefer they make beacons that have a 1.0 transmission rate and just have 3 module slots. I wouldn't change anything about the final builds but at least there wouldn't be this weird situation where it's better to put a beacon with 1 speed module next to one assembler than just putting that module into the assembler itself.
Doesn't a beacon cost roughly the same amount of resources as a speed module? That would even out the case of 2 speed modules in a machine versus a beacon with 1 speed module next to it. Also, since beacons can easily affect 8 machines (with a 0.5 transmission efficiency), we already have that situation now. It was just harder to notice with the transmission efficiency being nominally 0.5.
i would prefer more asymptotic diminishing returns (first beacon is 100% transmission efficiency, second is 50%, etc), it would make players think more about balancing power consumption and speed
The devs anticipated players wanting to mod different effectiveness curves for the beacons, so they just made it a lookup table with a hundred entries so mods could replace it with whatever values they want. Reverting to 1.1 behavior or only letting 1 beacon affect each machine become trivial to implement just be filling in the table with the right values. You could also give it values for a logarithmic curve, an exponential curve (if you wanted beacons to _strengthen_ each other for whatever reason), or in your case, with the values of 2(1-2^-x)/x. Since I assume you want it to start at 1 and reach an asymptote of y=2, then with the beacon's new base strength of 1.5, the maximum number of effective modules provided by a high number of otherwise-vanilla beacons would be 6. This would change if you also changed the base strength or number of module slots for the beacon.
the function i have in mind is 2(1 + log(4, x)), which is not asymptotic but does boost lower counts like your proposal. overall this would likely be an incentive to invest in higher quality beacons and modules.
can't speak for other players, but when i first started downloading blueprints, i went overboard and it did make the game boring. i took some time away and came back, added all the bobs mods to mix it up and started making my own blueprints. it was so much more satisfying. even if mine are out of ratio and just barely able to work right, not modular, whatever, its a better feeling expanding and tweaking even if more frustrating sometimes. as time went on with that, i found some things i just don't want to build. a nuclear plant for example, someone made a great design that uses the circuits to make sure it only uses fuel when its needed and not continuously, has warnings and alarms if fuel or water runs low, and status lights. i would need to take courses to learn to do that, or i can plug in the pipe connections to their design and go. too many standardized blueprints ruins the replayability too. becomes a game of designing pretty city blocks and clever modularity, fun until you get to the end stages. almost turns into 3 bases to try, belts, trains, or bots. you can mix and match the types into one base but each part looks the same unless you intentionally change things up. which is the point for plenty of players. to me at least, it was easy to fall into the blueprint trap as a new player when i started encountering things i felt were too complex, then it was things that i had done a few times, then it was just looking for new interesting designs to slap into my factories, before i knew it i was basically just plopping blueprints from start to finish. standardized blueprints takes that discovery away, trying new things, having to adjust for what you did previously, trying to plan out the future. options will only add new paths and keep things changing up more, keep the progression going longer, make the factories gain more of a unique touch as you upgrade and expand, and give more reasons to try something different. not to mention what the wonderful modders and blueprint designers this game has attracted will bring to the new systems, and what some of the streamers and youtubers will come up with for challenges to play through
Personally I awaited more. In 1.1, almost everything has 3x3 foundation, assembling machines, electric furnaces, beacons, refineries. The new buildings in 2.0 are thankfully different, Foundry is 5x5, the electromagnetic Fulgora building is 4x4... So I hoped we would get multiple variants of beacons, both a big one with a unique footprint like a + in 5x5 foundation and a smaller one(2x2 or 1x2) with some overlapping mechanics, so the builds would be even more different. The huge beacon could get more efficient the more production buildings it affects, but it would eat insane amounts of energy if it covered just 1 or 2 buildings. I really would like to see blueprints with a big dominant beacon, production buildings scattered around it with direct insertions and some belts bringing resources in, and then small/smaller beacons placed between the production buildings in the leftover spaces to smooth out production, wring out some last bits of efficiency. Ideally covering the whole ground.
I must admit, the Wube guys are amazing when it comes to their decisions and changes they make. All changes we saw so far are reasonable and well done and they at least make the gameplay more interesting and that's the important part for me. I don't care if beacons are buffed or nerfed but right now they are simply a mandatory boring part of the late game. Now the paths to the perfect all legendary 16 beacon builds have more branches to explore and enjoy. I love it.
I just started watching your content, and I was suprised to realize that you are a fellow Dane. :-D that of course is not important. I am just always surprised to realize how many content creators come from our tiny nation. When that is said. I really hope that they find a good solution for beacons, I am using modded super beacons, just because I rather spend energy than space. 😅
Disappointed to learn that you won't be continuing SE. I was really looking forward to how you solved the gate puzzle, and the arcospheres puzzle. Yes, the science packs are a bit repetitive, but maybe you can skip those and focus on more end-game content? Don't forget the space train elevator!
My suggestion: Beacons got to touch factory, beacons can stack against other beacons with diminishing returns Makes the beacon look more like an underground addon of the factory. "the factory is faster because its bigger" Suddenly you get odd designs with factories sacrificing multiple sides for speed. Late game beacon research increasing its range. A tech pipe block, like a normal pipe but to connect beacons to a factory.
No! No! Run away while you can! Hey, welcome to the game. Nilaus sure gives some great explanations and I've learned a lot from his and others' blueprints. I wish you many happy hours, as I have.
Would have been good to do something to buff direct insertion too (maybe direct connectors that take up no space and give a productivity bonus). Then you'd have more reason to do combined builds, which would naturally be more varied.
FFF 374 and 383. More stuff for construction bots than logistics, but they'll be better at charging; they won't all doggypile one (closest) roboport for it. So, in theory, you could just throw more bots at the problem.
IIRC I remember hearing how devs hated how logistics bots can just ignore all logistic issues, so it's possible that they won't change bots, leaving them for some low quantity operations. Could have been reading something else, so no source here.
I find this change somewhat useless. Builds are still going to look fairly similar in SA. Would have been better to just cap beacons at a given value. I.e after 4 beacons additional beacons do nothing... And then maybe scale by having Beacons Mk2, Mk3 and ofc the Quality stuff.
I agree with the forums; this won't change much beyond early game. They should have gone with (buffed) SE beacons and removed the overload rule. Then you pack in as many machines and as few beacons as possible, with many possible layouts that would vary depending on recipe inputs/outputs.
If they removed the overload rule, what would stop people from just putting layers upon layers of beacons around single factories, using their buffed area to stack the effect of dozens of beacons into one machine?
In SE beacons don't stack. I'm just saying don't make them overload, it's annoying. Then you're trying to minimize the number of beacons needed to hit each assembler at least once.
Completely understand why you're burning out on the sameness of SE. I'm still hoping to beat it someday. Have you seen the development log for SE? They're planning on redoing the science to make it more interesting. Would you be interested in picking it up again once 0.7 comes out?
Did you play 0.4/0.5, bobbin? It was way easier interplanetary logistics than 0.6. I think 0.7/0.8 is about even more exploration (fits the name), with enforced production per planet type. Which from how I understood Nilaus, is not the cup of tea he drinks. If you want to win SE, it is way easier now than later. (Of course, 0.8 has less sameness, means more fun. SE is a magnificent product. And it is not done.)
@leduke79 I did but I honestly don't remember. I got to vulcanite processing before saying "my base is too hard to scale up,.let me start over." I can't remember exactly what nilaus said, but it was something along the lines of him wishing the planets had something more to distinguish them other than new resources and biter meteors. I know that SE is not finished and I hope Earandel (if he's reading this) doesn't take this as criticism. I'm so looking forward to 0.7/0.8!
beacons from pyanadon do enough for imagination. but their imagination process rely on different sizes of boosted buildings and their interconnections. Vanilla doiesn't have enough variety yet
Beacons already give you diminishing returns *above 8 beacons,* merely from the fact that you place 1 beacon for each machine in an 8-beaconed setup, but 4 beacons for each machine in the most beacon-efficient 12-beaconed setup (and 5 beacons per machine in the typical 12-beaconed setup). The only real difference is that previously there wasn't any incentive to put in *less than* 8 beacons (unless that gave you trouble routing all the belts around). Since beacons *improve performance* (simply by needing less entities around), *why not lean into that benefit?* Beacons could have a stronger effect on machines that *direct insert* into each other. Direct insertion setups are quite challenging and fun to build (imho). And due to the desire to ideally have the ratios match, each direct insertion setup ends up looking different - not to mention that you have a freedom of choice where you start and end the direct insertion chain. The main reason why the example builds they showed all looked bland was that it was a whole row of machines doing the same thing. This change didn't really touch that META. A row of 8-beaconed machines all making the same thing is still the best _practical_ setup. The change seems to just have introduced a new, *very short* "early end game" phase between not having access to beacons and being able to afford beacons everywhere. And yes, the "late end game" is now about quality entities. But since they are hard to make, you'd likely want to have to upgrade the minimum number of machines - which is still the 8-beacond row.
Yep. I don't know if you need to be a visionary but this beacon change means absolutely nothing. The 1 beacon many machines is still by far the most "fun" and flexible option.
I am sad to hear you paused your SE play through; however not having fun playing entirely defeats the purpose of gaming. My own SE play is just a little behind yours and the grind to get anything set up is becoming more noticeable. Seems a much better mod for say 3-4 players to work together on; that way people can tackle individual tasks and get less overwhelmed with the sheer amount of things that need done to progress. (aka constantly upgrade things you thought were good enough)
I thought their solution was interesting at first but now I realize it really is not much different as far as boring builds. Now I think it would have been better to make it so beacons only affect adjacent machines. That way the builds would change a great deal depending on how many components are needed for the build. It would have made creativity in builds more exciting since trying to boost some builds would actually become complicated.
I really love your factorio guides, i was following your space exploration Guide/Walkthrough and i made up to astro3,material3,energy 3. But bioscience was the most overwhelming. Space exploration is not as funny as vanilla... good mod.
I think this diminishing returns idea is good for mid game where you'd actually have a limited amount of resources and power to spend on speeding stuff up. In end game where resources and power are a non-issue and the only thing you care about is UP - you'll still always want as many beacons as possible on each machine - so it doesn't really change anything. Personally i prefer the modded single beacon approach for end game.
I'm a noob in Factorio, the furthest I've ever got was setting up bots, but watching Factorio content I never found beacons or modules to be interesting. Mechanically it's basically the same as adding extra power poles, except they're way more expensive. The way I'd do it is to have the late-game buffs all come from one central building, call it idk, Factory Optimization Center. Maybe have it consume required items as a sort of fuel for the buffs and transmit those effects over specialized infrastructure. Heck, it could maybe even be an expandable building like the space platforms, or actually be a special kind of space platform. Then specific bonuses could require specific builds, each kind of buff requiring different inputs and output routings. Idk, just throwing shit at the wall here. The point is, there are tons of ways late-game bonuses could be made mechanically involved and interesting, instead of just plopping in/down mass produced buff items everywhere.
Another weird sidegrade. 12 beacon setups still give the highest bonuses overall, 8 beacon setups are still the easiest to build modular builds with. I'm happy they made it easy to adjust the bonus values via scripts, because this isn't very exciting.
8 beacons aren't the easiest anymore, 4 beacons are. Try the janky beacon rework mod. You don't aim for a beacon count anymore, you aim for building layouts and adjust to add beacons afterwards.
@@bananycus379 Different is only interesting for a few hours. On top of that, 4 beacon builds are just two lines of buildings surrounding beacons, instead of two lines of beacons surrounding buildings. Hardly novel in concept. Further, with the new inserter making stacks of products, you'll want your individual machines making products as fast as possible to build stacks as fast as possible. This means more beacons per building is still preferable.
@@jgrif7891 Having a smaller payoff for using more beacons means that space efficiency becomes more relevant, if you could (hypothetically) make a 10 beacon build which was substantially smaller than a 12 beacon build, it might become worthwhile to do so, and space constraints vary by planet and context. It also makes additional beacons less power and resource cost efficient, for the stages of the game where those matter. And there's nothing stopping people from still building the boring 12 beacon grids if they want to, and they'll still be faster, it just narrows the gap so other concerns might make for interesting choices.
@@IExistSometimes space efficiency is completely superfluous factorio. Your computer will stop running the game before you explore 10% of the playable of map in a playthrough. Resource and power efficiency are largely tied to space, so if space isn't a concern, neither will resources or power be on the whole. Sure, you can get some nice aesthetics by taking space into consideration, but again, this is a sidegrade. It's novel for a while and then it becomes rote like any other build.
TIL: Nilaus SE series is paused. I salute the skill to play what you find is fun, not what the community wants. I'm confident that spaceship design and arcospheres is in the Nilaus-fun-trigger TM, but burnouts are not.
Every time I try SE I get a free planets in and remember why I don't like it
Really looking forward to Space Age, it looks much better
@@benjaminchambers4361 I too think it will be far more friendly for most players. SE has a place of its own, a vast, huge, long lasting project, just how many players like it.
9:43 you can’t fit 16 beacons around the 4x4 electromagnetic plant as a 5x5 is on the very edge of being affected by all 16 beacons. A 4x4 can stilll only be affected by 12 beacons. 11:45 they also swapped the names of stack and bulk inserters. the green ones are bulk and the white ones stack inserters.
I like the "a machine can only have one beacon" mods.
I really like that 1, just slapping a few beacons around will be much more impactful now than previously, and 2, that quality will also be super important. I think both of those are really good changes.
Quality is qancer. Why do people like lootbox / random drop mechanics? I don't get it. To each his own, I guess.
@@SkorjOlafsen You aren't getting charged for the "lootboxes", the worst outcome in any scenario is ending up with the same tier you put in, they are entirely optional, and it's completely feasible to make factories that crank out a specific quality level, at which point it becomes essentially just a cost multiplier for better stuff. It adds a lot to the maximum power level of personal equipment and robots, and does that without adding multiple new tiers of each machine.
@@IExistSometimes The best part about quality is that you can turn it off.
@@SkorjOlafsen to each their own
@@SkorjOlafsen Because dealing with random drops is an interesting automation challenge in which you will get rewarded by resolving that issue in a smart way. This is not comparable to "lootboxes". The point here is automating the process of decrafting the lower rarity items until it spits out an higher rarity one. Got a common item? Recycle it, craft it again, but don't do this manually, automate this process, thats the point of the game.
as someone said "i like how many machines i can fit around this beacon way more than how many beacons i can fit around this machine.
Honestly I'm glad you're not burning yourself out on a game based on viewership like the content creators forcing themselves to play Kerbal 2 or Cities Skylines 2. You left SE at a good point to observe your design philosophy on Nauvis, in orbit, and with interplanetary logistics that I can take what you've done so far and finish the game. The master class and megabase series as well as the series' of other factory games have made playing them more understandable and enjoyable. You continue to be an invaluable creator on my sub list keep doing your own thing
You mentioned where else tons of science can be spent with all of this added performance from quality. One thing we do know of is prod research for some intermediates and research itself. Research productivity is infinite (base prod in labs), and intermediates like processing units and steel have research that boosts prod up to 300%, meaning recycle loops with quality will have zero loss for them, and you don't need prod modules in your machines to hit the ceiling for those given items. Klonan said something like it would take a 1k spm base ~120 days IRL to max out a single item, and its suggested there are going to be a decent amount of those to chase. So there will be plenty of choices on where to allocate science production, and I'm sure plenty more we don't even know about yet and might not know until close to or after launch.
I feel like beacons are boring AF. And this change didn't make em less boring
Fantastic! Thanks for the vid mate!
I would prefer they make beacons that have a 1.0 transmission rate and just have 3 module slots. I wouldn't change anything about the final builds but at least there wouldn't be this weird situation where it's better to put a beacon with 1 speed module next to one assembler than just putting that module into the assembler itself.
Doesn't a beacon cost roughly the same amount of resources as a speed module? That would even out the case of 2 speed modules in a machine versus a beacon with 1 speed module next to it.
Also, since beacons can easily affect 8 machines (with a 0.5 transmission efficiency), we already have that situation now. It was just harder to notice with the transmission efficiency being nominally 0.5.
@@Pystro modules are significantly more expensive than beacons
i would prefer more asymptotic diminishing returns (first beacon is 100% transmission efficiency, second is 50%, etc), it would make players think more about balancing power consumption and speed
The devs anticipated players wanting to mod different effectiveness curves for the beacons, so they just made it a lookup table with a hundred entries so mods could replace it with whatever values they want. Reverting to 1.1 behavior or only letting 1 beacon affect each machine become trivial to implement just be filling in the table with the right values. You could also give it values for a logarithmic curve, an exponential curve (if you wanted beacons to _strengthen_ each other for whatever reason), or in your case, with the values of 2(1-2^-x)/x. Since I assume you want it to start at 1 and reach an asymptote of y=2, then with the beacon's new base strength of 1.5, the maximum number of effective modules provided by a high number of otherwise-vanilla beacons would be 6. This would change if you also changed the base strength or number of module slots for the beacon.
the function i have in mind is 2(1 + log(4, x)), which is not asymptotic but does boost lower counts like your proposal. overall this would likely be an incentive to invest in higher quality beacons and modules.
can't speak for other players, but when i first started downloading blueprints, i went overboard and it did make the game boring. i took some time away and came back, added all the bobs mods to mix it up and started making my own blueprints. it was so much more satisfying. even if mine are out of ratio and just barely able to work right, not modular, whatever, its a better feeling expanding and tweaking even if more frustrating sometimes. as time went on with that, i found some things i just don't want to build. a nuclear plant for example, someone made a great design that uses the circuits to make sure it only uses fuel when its needed and not continuously, has warnings and alarms if fuel or water runs low, and status lights. i would need to take courses to learn to do that, or i can plug in the pipe connections to their design and go. too many standardized blueprints ruins the replayability too. becomes a game of designing pretty city blocks and clever modularity, fun until you get to the end stages. almost turns into 3 bases to try, belts, trains, or bots. you can mix and match the types into one base but each part looks the same unless you intentionally change things up. which is the point for plenty of players. to me at least, it was easy to fall into the blueprint trap as a new player when i started encountering things i felt were too complex, then it was things that i had done a few times, then it was just looking for new interesting designs to slap into my factories, before i knew it i was basically just plopping blueprints from start to finish. standardized blueprints takes that discovery away, trying new things, having to adjust for what you did previously, trying to plan out the future. options will only add new paths and keep things changing up more, keep the progression going longer, make the factories gain more of a unique touch as you upgrade and expand, and give more reasons to try something different. not to mention what the wonderful modders and blueprint designers this game has attracted will bring to the new systems, and what some of the streamers and youtubers will come up with for challenges to play through
Personally I awaited more. In 1.1, almost everything has 3x3 foundation, assembling machines, electric furnaces, beacons, refineries. The new buildings in 2.0 are thankfully different, Foundry is 5x5, the electromagnetic Fulgora building is 4x4...
So I hoped we would get multiple variants of beacons, both a big one with a unique footprint like a + in 5x5 foundation and a smaller one(2x2 or 1x2) with some overlapping mechanics, so the builds would be even more different. The huge beacon could get more efficient the more production buildings it affects, but it would eat insane amounts of energy if it covered just 1 or 2 buildings. I really would like to see blueprints with a big dominant beacon, production buildings scattered around it with direct insertions and some belts bringing resources in, and then small/smaller beacons placed between the production buildings in the leftover spaces to smooth out production, wring out some last bits of efficiency. Ideally covering the whole ground.
I must admit, the Wube guys are amazing when it comes to their decisions and changes they make. All changes we saw so far are reasonable and well done and they at least make the gameplay more interesting and that's the important part for me. I don't care if beacons are buffed or nerfed but right now they are simply a mandatory boring part of the late game. Now the paths to the perfect all legendary 16 beacon builds have more branches to explore and enjoy. I love it.
I just started watching your content, and I was suprised to realize that you are a fellow Dane. :-D that of course is not important. I am just always surprised to realize how many content creators come from our tiny nation.
When that is said. I really hope that they find a good solution for beacons, I am using modded super beacons, just because I rather spend energy than space. 😅
Disappointed to learn that you won't be continuing SE. I was really looking forward to how you solved the gate puzzle, and the arcospheres puzzle. Yes, the science packs are a bit repetitive, but maybe you can skip those and focus on more end-game content? Don't forget the space train elevator!
My suggestion: Beacons got to touch factory, beacons can stack against other beacons with diminishing returns
Makes the beacon look more like an underground addon of the factory. "the factory is faster because its bigger"
Suddenly you get odd designs with factories sacrificing multiple sides for speed.
Late game beacon research increasing its range.
A tech pipe block, like a normal pipe but to connect beacons to a factory.
I'm only just now doing my first playthrough of Factorio and even I think this is interesting. Haven't even gotten to Beacons yet.
No! No! Run away while you can!
Hey, welcome to the game. Nilaus sure gives some great explanations and I've learned a lot from his and others' blueprints. I wish you many happy hours, as I have.
Would have been good to do something to buff direct insertion too (maybe direct connectors that take up no space and give a productivity bonus).
Then you'd have more reason to do combined builds, which would naturally be more varied.
Was their any FF for Bots ? With 4xspeed Belts and Massive Stack Inserter their is no way common Bots can handle these inputs .
FFF 374 and 383. More stuff for construction bots than logistics, but they'll be better at charging; they won't all doggypile one (closest) roboport for it.
So, in theory, you could just throw more bots at the problem.
IIRC I remember hearing how devs hated how logistics bots can just ignore all logistic issues, so it's possible that they won't change bots, leaving them for some low quantity operations.
Could have been reading something else, so no source here.
@@runelt99 They made a FF about bots vs belts and how bots are just too good at everything, recommend reading FF224 and FF225
if anyone wondering the SE speedrun record is at around 17-18 hours which is insane. (though peaceful biters)
I find this change somewhat useless. Builds are still going to look fairly similar in SA. Would have been better to just cap beacons at a given value. I.e after 4 beacons additional beacons do nothing... And then maybe scale by having Beacons Mk2, Mk3 and ofc the Quality stuff.
I agree with the forums; this won't change much beyond early game.
They should have gone with (buffed) SE beacons and removed the overload rule. Then you pack in as many machines and as few beacons as possible, with many possible layouts that would vary depending on recipe inputs/outputs.
If they removed the overload rule, what would stop people from just putting layers upon layers of beacons around single factories, using their buffed area to stack the effect of dozens of beacons into one machine?
In SE beacons don't stack. I'm just saying don't make them overload, it's annoying. Then you're trying to minimize the number of beacons needed to hit each assembler at least once.
i can't be the only one who dislikes modules, beacons, and upcoming quality?
quality has an interesting cycling/recycling challenge
Kovarex said in an interview that space age will come out in oktober or earlier
Was still waiting for his weekly space exploration vid :(
Disappointed that Space Ex mod isn't being played anymore. I'll be checking out again till you make some more factorio content. See you then!
Completely understand why you're burning out on the sameness of SE. I'm still hoping to beat it someday.
Have you seen the development log for SE? They're planning on redoing the science to make it more interesting. Would you be interested in picking it up again once 0.7 comes out?
Did you play 0.4/0.5, bobbin? It was way easier interplanetary logistics than 0.6. I think 0.7/0.8 is about even more exploration (fits the name), with enforced production per planet type. Which from how I understood Nilaus, is not the cup of tea he drinks. If you want to win SE, it is way easier now than later.
(Of course, 0.8 has less sameness, means more fun. SE is a magnificent product. And it is not done.)
@leduke79 I did but I honestly don't remember. I got to vulcanite processing before saying "my base is too hard to scale up,.let me start over."
I can't remember exactly what nilaus said, but it was something along the lines of him wishing the planets had something more to distinguish them other than new resources and biter meteors.
I know that SE is not finished and I hope Earandel (if he's reading this) doesn't take this as criticism. I'm so looking forward to 0.7/0.8!
beacons from pyanadon do enough for imagination. but their imagination process rely on different sizes of boosted buildings and their interconnections. Vanilla doiesn't have enough variety yet
Beacons already give you diminishing returns *above 8 beacons,* merely from the fact that you place 1 beacon for each machine in an 8-beaconed setup, but 4 beacons for each machine in the most beacon-efficient 12-beaconed setup (and 5 beacons per machine in the typical 12-beaconed setup). The only real difference is that previously there wasn't any incentive to put in *less than* 8 beacons (unless that gave you trouble routing all the belts around).
Since beacons *improve performance* (simply by needing less entities around), *why not lean into that benefit?* Beacons could have a stronger effect on machines that *direct insert* into each other. Direct insertion setups are quite challenging and fun to build (imho). And due to the desire to ideally have the ratios match, each direct insertion setup ends up looking different - not to mention that you have a freedom of choice where you start and end the direct insertion chain. The main reason why the example builds they showed all looked bland was that it was a whole row of machines doing the same thing.
This change didn't really touch that META. A row of 8-beaconed machines all making the same thing is still the best _practical_ setup. The change seems to just have introduced a new, *very short* "early end game" phase between not having access to beacons and being able to afford beacons everywhere. And yes, the "late end game" is now about quality entities. But since they are hard to make, you'd likely want to have to upgrade the minimum number of machines - which is still the 8-beacond row.
Yep. I don't know if you need to be a visionary but this beacon change means absolutely nothing. The 1 beacon many machines is still by far the most "fun" and flexible option.
I am sad to hear you paused your SE play through; however not having fun playing entirely defeats the purpose of gaming.
My own SE play is just a little behind yours and the grind to get anything set up is becoming more noticeable.
Seems a much better mod for say 3-4 players to work together on; that way people can tackle individual tasks and get less overwhelmed with
the sheer amount of things that need done to progress. (aka constantly upgrade things you thought were good enough)
these are not bulk inserters.. they are stack inserters.
I thought their solution was interesting at first but now I realize it really is not much different as far as boring builds. Now I think it would have been better to make it so beacons only affect adjacent machines. That way the builds would change a great deal depending on how many components are needed for the build. It would have made creativity in builds more exciting since trying to boost some builds would actually become complicated.
I really love your factorio guides, i was following your space exploration Guide/Walkthrough and i made up to astro3,material3,energy 3. But bioscience was the most overwhelming. Space exploration is not as funny as vanilla... good mod.
I think this diminishing returns idea is good for mid game where you'd actually have a limited amount of resources and power to spend on speeding stuff up. In end game where resources and power are a non-issue and the only thing you care about is UP - you'll still always want as many beacons as possible on each machine - so it doesn't really change anything.
Personally i prefer the modded single beacon approach for end game.
I'm a noob in Factorio, the furthest I've ever got was setting up bots, but watching Factorio content I never found beacons or modules to be interesting. Mechanically it's basically the same as adding extra power poles, except they're way more expensive.
The way I'd do it is to have the late-game buffs all come from one central building, call it idk, Factory Optimization Center. Maybe have it consume required items as a sort of fuel for the buffs and transmit those effects over specialized infrastructure.
Heck, it could maybe even be an expandable building like the space platforms, or actually be a special kind of space platform. Then specific bonuses could require specific builds, each kind of buff requiring different inputs and output routings.
Idk, just throwing shit at the wall here. The point is, there are tons of ways late-game bonuses could be made mechanically involved and interesting, instead of just plopping in/down mass produced buff items everywhere.
when's the capitan of indusrty?
they made it more complicated for what they admit is a very minor change. I don't get it
Another weird sidegrade. 12 beacon setups still give the highest bonuses overall, 8 beacon setups are still the easiest to build modular builds with. I'm happy they made it easy to adjust the bonus values via scripts, because this isn't very exciting.
8 beacons aren't the easiest anymore, 4 beacons are. Try the janky beacon rework mod. You don't aim for a beacon count anymore, you aim for building layouts and adjust to add beacons afterwards.
@@bananycus379 Different is only interesting for a few hours. On top of that, 4 beacon builds are just two lines of buildings surrounding beacons, instead of two lines of beacons surrounding buildings. Hardly novel in concept.
Further, with the new inserter making stacks of products, you'll want your individual machines making products as fast as possible to build stacks as fast as possible. This means more beacons per building is still preferable.
Yeah, I see no reason at all to change my existing 8-beacon BPs.
@@jgrif7891 Having a smaller payoff for using more beacons means that space efficiency becomes more relevant, if you could (hypothetically) make a 10 beacon build which was substantially smaller than a 12 beacon build, it might become worthwhile to do so, and space constraints vary by planet and context. It also makes additional beacons less power and resource cost efficient, for the stages of the game where those matter. And there's nothing stopping people from still building the boring 12 beacon grids if they want to, and they'll still be faster, it just narrows the gap so other concerns might make for interesting choices.
@@IExistSometimes space efficiency is completely superfluous factorio. Your computer will stop running the game before you explore 10% of the playable of map in a playthrough. Resource and power efficiency are largely tied to space, so if space isn't a concern, neither will resources or power be on the whole. Sure, you can get some nice aesthetics by taking space into consideration, but again, this is a sidegrade. It's novel for a while and then it becomes rote like any other build.
These are stack inserters not bulk inserters, they changed the names