Stuff the game needs: The Thread

[Sono]

Lovely game, enjoyed all of my time playing it so far.
However, there are many quality of life improvements that could be added in.

1. Mass harvest area. Some kinda of click and drag for large area clearing of rocks and vegitation. Enchaining commands misses a lot, and you have to micro manage harvesting stuff to clear an area. I know you can just lay foundation later on, but this doesn't help in the early game.

2. Craft all, or craft more than 10 of something. The replicator on the mech suit needs to have a craft all key modifier, or option. Being able to craft more than 10 of something would be great too.

3. Replicator crafting queue clear all button. There needs to be a way to clear the entire mech suit crafting queue with one click or button press.

4. Search box for tech tree and inventory.

I'll edit this as I remember what else I wanted to write, or explore the game and find more.

[Mister Veeg]

-in place upgrade of assemblers/belts/sorters.
-Navigation points (e.g. pin planet from starmap, not autopilot - especially when interstellar flight is as much of a fuel hog as it is)
-Upgrades to core basic mech power output? (not needed because fuel is important and more or less irrelevant when you start making fuel rods, but it'd be nice?)

[yes]

pretty much all of factorios QoL features.

- blueprints incl. deconstruction and upgrade planner (and their respective filters)
- personal logistics
- the ability to place items over existing items to replace (and in case of assemblers copy - the settings right away) or chage direction (belts/inserters)
- the ability to rotate belts and insertes after they are placed

and many more. there is no shame in copying taking inspiration from the best.

[Fang]

Game desperately needs a method to control whether logistics ships will attempt to get resources from suppliers outside your initial solar system. Since currently they will attempt to do so even if they have no warp items available and will instead slow boat there way there. Means you have to supply your entire network with warpers or not at all.

[Ketamarine]

Originally posted by yes:

pretty much all of factorios QoL features.

- blueprints incl. deconstruction and upgrade planner (and their respective filters)
- personal logistics
- the ability to place items over existing items to replace (and in case of assemblers copy - the settings right away) or chage direction (belts/inserters)
- the ability to rotate belts and insertes after they are placed

and many more. there is no shame in copying taking inspiration from the best.

100% this

No excuse not to include quality of life features that all of your player base is used to using from competing games!

[Ketamarine]

Originally posted by Fang:

Game desperately needs a method to control whether logistics ships will attempt to get resources from suppliers outside your initial solar system. Since currently they will attempt to do so even if they have no warp items available and will instead slow boat there way there. Means you have to supply your entire network with warpers or not at all.

100% this too.

I just got to my second solar system which has tons of cool ♥♥♥♥, sulfur lakes, fire ice on planet, organic crytals, etc. and I am dreading building anything there as I know there is effectively no way to get it back to my main world!

I'd like to start a new main planet with actually organized lines now that I know what I am doing. At least a decent research area and planned out end game materials production.

But having to do everything without the support of my existing base seems unreasonable and I don't want to have to ferry ♥♥♥♥ myself.

[Panfilo]

-Buildings need to have their input/output nodes automatically align to the curvature grid of the planet. Placing buildings near the equator is fine, but the closer you get to the poles the more awkward it gets. I put some large storage crates on the 'north pole' because I planned on having interplanetary depots travel between the north pole of respective planets, but much to my dismay its really awkward to align sorters and belts because of how the longitude lines converge towards the poles. Alternatively I wouldn't mind a series of buildings simply meant to be slapped dead on the north/south pole and able to have a huge number of belts converge on them.

-A sorter that worked vertically (basically an elevator) would be really useful. Its cool you can have belts at multiple altitudes but limitations in the angle of them, as well as needing a certain amount of straight distance before they can turn or go up/down means you get a spaghettified mess when you are trying to have all the belts get over/under each other. Just being able to transport an item directly up or down would save a lot of space.

-While the game consolidates everything into belt fed items, seeing as there is a unique liquid storage building I would like to see pipes, faster than belts but only carrying a single liquid/gas. Belts might still be more versatile but in dedicated setups or where you're moving large amounts of a specific substance (like hydrogen) around.

-I like that there are 'shortcuts' to recipes if you can find a rare resource instead of brute forcing the process. I'd like to see more variations of these, as well as alternate ways to generate research cubes. Maybe to really encourage exploration there are nodes of the cubes themselves or some precursor material you can quickly process to that cube.

[BlueThunder]

personally id like tech that unlocks a miner mark 2 with a larger mining area or a tech that just upgrades the base miner with a wider area, its a pain to try and finish of an or vein and have to place 2 innefficient miners.

and maybe a mark 2 to things like smelters chemical plants and oil refineries, I have a few planets that have oil wells between 6-7/second and its a little nuts just how many refineries and chemical plants i need to use just one well.

or in place of the above (or both cause hey why not :P) techs in the upgrade section to reduce smelt time, refine time etc... and maybe a few more repeatable techs for logistics carry amount and solar sail in particular, but if they add smelting techs then def make those repeatable as well.

[thedoc31]

Few things in my opinion. First, I've not played Factorio, Satisfactory, Minecraft or similar games. I'm coming from a perspective of usability exhibited in games like Starcraft II and Civilization VI.

The early game tutorial is helpful but needs to be expanded with an overview of what materials are, how you combine them to make other things, etc. What should my first production building be? I found myself wandering around gathering items for an hour before I realized how to start research and actually do things with what I'd gathered.

When wandering the planet you will find resources which could be useful later on but you can't do anything with yet. I want a way to flag them so I can return later and easily find them. I'd also like to see this available in a mini-map of some sort.

I want to be able to rotate the entire planet without having to run around it to find strategic resources. Perhaps this is something I can do later with technology? Coming from Civilization VI or Starcraft, I can move the maps around however I like. Having map pinned to the Mecha is too limiting.

When viewing in full planet mode, you can continue scrolling out to jump into solar system mode, but for some reason you can't zoom back in from solar system mode to planet mode. It seems I have to hit ESC to get back to the full planet mode. I should be able to seamlessly zoom in/out using the mouse scroll wheel.

In that same vein, every dialog box or popup screen, including the tech tree, should have a clickable "Close" button to return me into the game. I should not be required to push anything on the keyboard to navigate the game. This is an accessibility issue for those who may not be able to use both mouse and keyboard at the same time.

The UI needs a help/tutorial/quick reference guide so I can easily review things I forgot how to do between sessions.

I feel like the tech and upgrade trees need to be more intuitive. I am presented with lots of options, but no reason why I'd choose one over the other. I also noticed that the flowchart organization isn't entirely accurate. For example, you have to research Electromagnetic Matrix before you can unlock Electromagnetic Drive, but based on the arrows it makes it appear that I should be able to research *any* of the available options above and below it before I choose to research Electromagnetic Matrix. Electromagnetic Matrix should therefore be bumped outside of the other arrows and all technologies that require it should be organized below it.

The differentiation between the thick "Main Quest" arrow and the smaller thinner flowchart lines doesn't make sense. Why is one thicker than the other? Why are all the others thin?

I'm sure I'll have more as the time comes. Also, it might be useful to convert the in-game text to markdown in a way that the community can collaboratively edit their own native languages. It would make the localization process much faster and folks can contribute. I know I'd be happy to put in quick fixes when I see the need.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by thedoc31:

....

When wandering the planet you will find resources which could be useful later on but you can't do anything with yet. I want a way to flag them so I can return later and easily find them. I'd also like to see this available in a mini-map of some sort.

I want to be able to rotate the entire planet without having to run around it to find strategic resources. Perhaps this is something I can do later with technology? Coming from Civilization VI or Starcraft, I can move the maps around however I like. Having map pinned to the Mecha is too limiting.

....

Both of these are already in the game, after a few researches. You can toggle "ON" a resource view which will name every resource on the planet and how much is in that vein.

You can use the middle mouse button to rotate the planet. Hit the "M" key for the map first. Then, hit the "M" key again to zoom back to your mecha.

[nDeavor]

In addition to all that was said above, I'd like to see a mass deconstruct option. It's very tedious to click (or hold and try to aim) to deconstruct large portions of the factory when you try to refactor in mid/late game. Select for deconstruct and the drones go to work picking things up.

[Xbwalker]

Friendly suggestion - The ability to rename individual buildings.

[yes]

beacons - or some other form of marking certain spots on the planet/system/galaxy map. id really like to see them be physical things, but id be fine with just UI stuff aswell.

[sitroniste]

some sort of pin or waypoint for a star i want to go to, finding a star on the starmap i ike, just to spend alot of time finding it in the mechs view is a chore. also, be abe to see rare items of stars in the starmap witout clicking it.

som way of exiting warp close to stars, using another warp thingy just because you clicked to exit warp a tenth of a second to late or to early sucks.

[Panfilo]

-Double clicking a belt should give you three options: upgrade belt upgrading it to the next higher tier using all the components you currently have in your inventory (radiating the upgraded section outward until all continuous sections are upgraded). Purge Belt which instantly puts everything currently on the belt in your inventory (going from closest to furthest if you run out of inventory space). Remove Belt which removes the entire section of belt along with any contents on them at the time.

-To automatically upgrade long sections of belt, you could have an assembler set up on one end assembling 'Tier 2/Tier 3 belt upgrades' These boxes would travel along a belt and as soon as they reached the relevant point they would instantly upgrade that section, much like a train assembling tracks ahead of itself. So you could build out a length of Tier 1 belt then just use assemblers to gradually upgrade the seconds. Sorters could be upgraded in a similar way, automatically upgrading to the next tier when the sorter grabs the 'upgrade kit' on the belt.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by Panfilo:

...

-To automatically upgrade long sections of belt, you could have an assembler set up on one end assembling 'Tier 2/Tier 3 belt upgrades' These boxes would travel along a belt and as soon as they reached the relevant point they would instantly upgrade that section, much like a train assembling tracks ahead of itself. So you could build out a length of Tier 1 belt then just use assemblers to gradually upgrade the seconds. Sorters could be upgraded in a similar way, automatically upgrading to the next tier when the sorter grabs the 'upgrade kit' on the belt.

The problem with this approach is that the Mark 2 belt segments would clog up the belt, or mix with the product the belt is supposed to be carrying. You would have to watch it closely.

Unless you mean that the mark 2 belt segments would travel in a different "layer" and would not interfere with the other product on the belt.