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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 expans
by vessenes 3y ago
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 smoothly takes you through multiple levels of abstraction, starting with handcrafting simple ingredients, and (in the base game), moving up to small networks of trains with automation, and flying robot armies to deal with construction and logistics. I'd say there are three-ish layers of abstraction in the main game, and each layer is super well balanced, has its own challenges and benefits, and is above all FUN.
Space Exploration adds two to three more layers of abstraction above these; culminating in networks of interstellar spaceships moving items into orbit and on and off planetary surfaces, where they intersect with the original game's buildings and mechanics. It's profoundly, profoundly good.
I knew Wube had hired the mod developer, but I'm super happy to see he's deeply involved with Space Age, which is explained to be a less hardcore experience, with a lot of the same fun as SE. Should be a blast. I hope they'll charge me more for it.
- mmastrac 3y agoI 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.
- wbl 3y agoTry logistic train network mod
- Aeolun 3y agoThey’re sort of understandable. When someone described it to me as the blue signals checking the status of the next signal (blue or colored) and doing that, everything made a lot more sense. They’re still sometimes hard to debug because there’s no visualization but I always end up feeling that the issue was my fault
- freeone3000 3y agoThe stuck train is your visualization :P
- pmoriarty 3y agoBlue signals just mean that some, but not all, segments ahead are blocked by a signal. Also, this video[1] by Soulless Gaming on "How to Fix Train Path Errors" has a lot of useful tips on train/signal troubleshooting. [1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gmsep-xJXkI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gmsep-xJXkI
- xedrac 3y agoThere's certainly a learning curve - it's a form of programming that must be learned.
- mmastrac 3y ago.
- TuringTourist 3y agoI would argue that train signalling is not intentionally obfuscated as brainfuck is however. Just a different form of thinking.
- bombcar 3y agoI think it's pretty clear from the blog posts that they tried to make trains as simple as they could, and it's as complex as it is now because that's the simplest it can be without having actual errors and bugs.
- moviuro 3y ago> The signals required a lot of patience to learn and I'm not entirely sure I still understand them. Chain signals before an intersection; regular signals after those, and on the track to split the track for multiple trains simultaneously. See: https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Train_signals https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Train_signals if you haven't already.
- drewmate 3y agoAnother major stumbling block for train signals once you get the basics down is segment length. Signals indicate whether the next segment is occupied, not whether any given train will fit in there (and potentially block a segment or intersection behind it.) I frequently set up tracks with segments as large as my longest train, but then end up having to add an intersection here or there, breaking up segments into smaller sizes. This is the root of most of my train woes (aside from LTN issues, which are a whole other issue!)
- jcranmer 3y ago> Signals indicate whether the next segment is occupied, not whether any given train will fit in there (and potentially block a segment or intersection behind it.) That's what chain signals are for. If a train waiting at a signal causes issues, replace the previous signal with a chain signal to prevent the train from problematically waiting at the signal.
- pmoriarty 3y agoI 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 mods it makes dealing with trains much less of a hassle.
- red_admiral 3y agoNot 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.
- pmoriarty 3y ago"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.
- mcv 3y agoI prefer to see it as regular signals designate the next segment as a segment where trains are allowed to wait. If you don't want trains to stop in that segment, don't put a regular signal in front of it. And of course you don't want trains stopping on intersections, because they'll block everybody, so you always put chain signals in front of intersections.
- guhidalg 3y agoRepeat after me: "Chain IN, Rail OUT" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZDmzFKhPI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZDmzFKhPI0 It's basically a visual version of the classic deadlock conditions. Chain signals create dependencies between locks, and the locks themselves (the rail signals) have to be granular enough to keep large sections of the rail network available to acquire. The confusing part about the chain signals is the blue state: the train will use its pathfinding to read forward of the signal and it will move if the path it needs to take is available. You have to look forward of the signal to see if the rail signal for the path the train wants to take is green or not.
- oefrha 3y agoVanilla trains are absolutely pitiful for megabases, and annoying even for midsized bases. I simply consider LTN part of the base game.
- bombcar 3y agoLTN is really nice, but it is "fun" (for some people, like me) to build a LTN-like network in vanilla before using LTN going forward. Once you've "figured it out" it's much easier to drop down "smart stations" instead of building them yourself each time. Just like I recommend players who want to do city blocks build their own blueprints instead of just loading up someone's (even if you later switch to someone's standard blueprint, you'll at least understand the why). And of course, it's a sandbox game! You could just download a completed map, but there's no fun in that.
- polski-g 3y agoI switched to Cybersyn, same functionality as LTN but way less complexity setting it up.
- dimava 3y agoThe best available explanation, think "20% of things that cover 80% of cases", is DoshDoshington's [Factorio Trains Explained in Less Than Three Minutes](https://youtube.com/watch?v=DG4oD4iGVoY https://youtube.com/watch?v=DG4oD4iGVoY)
- EMM_386 3y ago> I wouldn't put trains and smooth in a single sentence. I had over 500 hours in Factorio before I felt comfortable with signalling. I got so frusturated with it originally I just ignored it as best I could. But the "chain in, rail out" thing as others are mentioning really is the key. It's not always as perfectly simple as that, but it's a very good starting point. You break everything up into blocks ... if you place a chain signal right before an intersection and a rail signal on the way out, you'll be there for most situations. Most. My most complex map has about 50 trains running and all intersecting each other and so far, everything is running smoothly on that one. No trains slamming into each other and everything running efficiently as far as I can tell. Almost all of it is just that "chain in, rail out" thing.
- TylerE 3y agoAlso; Bidirectional trap is a massive moon trap. Avoid it at all costs.
- infogulch 3y agoIf you just want to have trains and move on, I made a complete tiling rail kit a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/i2szgb/tiling_utility_rail_kit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/i2szgb/tiling_uti... > 2-way 6-wide right hand rail system on a global 60-tile grid with interoperable 90° & 45° variants. Intended to be simple, complete, & hard to misuse. > Features: rotational symmetry, red&green wired poles, landfill, blueprints for Through, Turn, Tee, Junction, and U-Turn for both 90° & 45°, 90°/ 45° transition blueprints > Tiling is based on large power poles, 60 is the max distance between 3 poles in a straight line, or 5 poles diagonally. Here's a big example with all the rail components slapped together for a demo: https://i.imgur.com/84P9nO0.png https://i.imgur.com/84P9nO0.png I also made the simplest tiling nuclear blueprint kit: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/gp0jmb/infogulchs_modular_tiling_nuclear_kit_supports/ https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/gp0jmb/infogulchs...
- animal531 3y agoI'm not even sure how many hours I have in the game, but I've never bothered with trains, I just didn't enjoy their gameplay for some reason. Fortunately this is totally fine, you can get by without them.
- Laremere 3y ago> 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.
- throwaway894345 3y agoIs the Factorio source code available anywhere? I would be really curious to see how a game like Factorio was developed (e.g., what parts are 'the engine' and what parts are scripted? how does such a complex game have so few bugs?)
- k12sosse 3y agoYou can turn bugs on or off when starting your world ;) depends on if you want to - oh, BUGS bugs, not bugs bugs.
- pmoriarty 3y agoFactorio is closed-source, unfortunately. Still, you can read a lot about how the devs developed it on their "Friday Facts" posts: https://factorio.com/blog/ https://factorio.com/blog/
- bombcar 3y agoThis is actually better than the raw source for understanding the development; you have to start at the beginning and read forward. Basically - tests, reproducibility, and dedication to tracking down "weird minor bugs" before they become "major show stoppers".
- Therenas 3y agoThe source is not publicly available, no. It‘s still being actively developed and sold after all. There isn‘t really much of a barrier between engine and 'scripting', it‘s all custom and integrated. The reason there are so few bugs is that there is a ton of effort spent on squashing them! The approach is basically to fix any reported issue if in any way reasonable.
- 12345hn6789 3y agoSpace exploration is not the best puzzle game ever made. Space exploration is not the best factorip mod ever made. Space exploration has a great presentation layer (graphics and UI) but the logistics challenge and gameplay challenges leave lots to be desired. I implore you to try many of the other high quality factorio mods made over the years. Pyanodons is easily the greatest factorio mod. The sheer quality and scale leaves SE trembling. https://mods.factorio.com/user/pyanodon https://mods.factorio.com/user/pyanodon https://mods.factorio.com/mod/SeaBlock https://mods.factorio.com/mod/SeaBlock https://mods.factorio.com/mod/AngelBob https://mods.factorio.com/mod/AngelBob https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Krastorio2 https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Krastorio2 https://mods.factorio.com/mod/exotic-industries https://mods.factorio.com/mod/exotic-industries https://mods.factorio.com/mod/IndustrialRevolution3 https://mods.factorio.com/mod/IndustrialRevolution3 I'd say nearly every single one of these mods has quality on par with Space Exploration.
- NelsonMinar 3y agoMost of these mods are "make the middle game more complex". Nothing wrong with that! Krastorio is my favorite of the ones you mention. Space Exploration is unusual in creating an interesting game after the main game, taking you to completely new places and gameplay modes. Seablock is also a little like that, only it makes the beginning of the game totally different instead of the end. It's great how many deep and interesting mods Factorio has allowed.
- koheripbal 3y agoI'd love a mod that actually respected the true materials/engineering recipes in real life. Obviously, you can't recreate the complete complexity of all global supply chains, but it would be nice for a mod to get a little closer. Standard factorio glosses over way too much to be considered educational, which is what i need before I get my son addicted with me. (Yes, i know standard Factorio still has a lot to offer - i just want more detail)
- fattless 3y agoFair but id offer that having more "realistic" recipies and those details would still offer far less than understanding and practicing the engineering process. Finding efficient solutions to your problems and engineering them over and over again for efficiency teaches excellent problem solving and engineering skills that would be hugely beneficial, imo more important than learning the specific materials that make each item irl.
- NelsonMinar 3y agoSpace Exploration is a fantastic mod and I thought it was great news when the company hired the developer. Excited to see the result is pretty much exactly what I hoped for! I appreciate the dev's comments about the differences, how the new Space Age will be accessible to more players.
- bombcar 3y agoI really liked his distinction between "normal game" and "what the modded players want" - you have a similar distinction in Minecraft and it's important for modded players to realize and remember that the normal game shouldn't be the modded one, they are different markets (and the modded players are the ones who go out of their way to 'get more').
- mananaysiempre 3y agoAnother game that is very much about abstraction levels is the text quest Hadean Lands[1]. Inform 7 source (not open but) available[2]! [1] https://hadeanlands.com/ https://hadeanlands.com/ [2] https://hadeanlands.com/src/ https://hadeanlands.com/src/ (spoilers) (duh)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Aardwolf 3y agoI'm excited for the expansion, and also for weekly Friday Facts again, yay! Those are a great mix of interesting technical content, and hype building