Does anyone understand how would player move between planets?

[Anna]

In the blogpost they said everything on platform would be build remotely, and platforms would fly with different speed. What about players?

They can't just freez player out of the game during the long flight on unoptimized platform, and still player should somehow be on a platform, and probably delivered to and back from it.

[Fel]

Nobody knows more than what they said in FFFs so at best you would have theory crafting and other similar wild theories.

[Anna]

That is exactly what I'm asking for =)

[Galileus]

FFF mentions platforms can transport players. I assume the player will be able to use the remote view in the meantime.

[Sephimaru]

The devs confirmed on discord, that the player can enter the space platform hub, but not leave it, while in space. So you can travel with the platforms just fine, just not space walk.

[Halko]

Originally posted by Sephimaru:

The devs confirmed on discord, that the player can enter the space platform hub, but not leave it, while in space. So you can travel with the platforms just fine, just not space walk.

This is exactly how i assumed it was going to work myself. It is the only logical conclusion you can come to really.

[Chindraba]

Sometimes I find surprising little gems of information in random semi-official sources.

This time, however, I didn't have to resort to such research.

The FFF which introduced the platform pretty much answered this question for me.

The second sentence of the post reads:

Originally posted by FFF #381:

Space platforms are little (or not) flying factories that act as the means of transportation between planets, both for items and players.

(Bold in original)

So, it would seem that the player will move between planets. The FFF moves on into the fourth sentence where a comparison to train is also made.

The initial platform has only one structure - the space platform hub. The hub is a 1-per-platform central entity which stores items for both construction and logistics, has logistic requests, and a train-like schedule where planets act as stops.

The player gets to ride trains to outposts and ride platforms to planets.

[Anna]

That was my initial thought as well, but for me it seems like a very boring part of the game (if it takes long) because player would stuck in remote view only.
And if it would be relativelly short it would make platforms optimized for speed kinda useless.

[Galileus]

Originally posted by Anna:

That was my initial thought as well, but for me it seems like a very boring part of the game (if it takes long) because player would stuck in remote view only.
And if it would be relativelly short it would make platforms optimized for speed kinda useless.

I feel like there's a LOT of space between these two. As in the time to travel can be lengthy enough to make a distinction between speed and cargo meaningful, but not long enough to make limitation to remote a struggle.

Besides, with the upgrades to remote I'm not sure what would you need your (space) legs for anymore. It might be very well possible remote view is the new late game.

[Anna]

Well, for me even now late game is remote mostly, but planet transfers are not the end game as I understand.
And being stuck with slow barely working drones and a low density of those for me would be kinda sad.

Even now we have similar problem, you could just brute force your way to "drones only" production just moving the stuff between chests by hands and trash all the belt optimization out of the window. And it's even faster then building a lot of complicated belt systems we tested it with a friend several times, I hate moving stuff by hands he hates "bootstrapping" everything till drones. We produce science on par.

And it feels kinda the same. I afraid player would be able to optimize platforms, but it would be pointless, because otherwise it would be a big turnout for those who don't want to optimize.

Production optimization being required is a problem for those who just want to brute force the game. But ability to brute force the game makes optimization pointless since time spent on optimization equal to time spend on waiting otherwise.

[Galileus]

Originally posted by Anna:

Production optimization being required is a problem for those who just want to brute force the game. But ability to brute force the game makes optimization pointless since time spent on optimization equal to time spend on waiting otherwise.

I absolutely disagree with this, and here is my proof:

- Plenty of people build mega-factories even though they could've just brute-forced the game and won 500-times over.
- Plenty of people enjoy playing well instead of playing fast, similarly on how plenty of people pick other difficulty modes than easy in other games
- You could fast-forward a lot using custom map gen settings, yet you never once mentioned that it breaks the game for you
- Speedrunning community exists and yet people don't generally copy their designs "because it's faster"

I don't see why both need to be exclusive. Right now we have a game that you can play brute-force or going for insane optimizations, and people who want to play either find it fun to play.

[Halko]

You will never convince everyone that there is more than one way to play though. Most people will play something one way and just absolutely refuse to acknowledge people can play another way. Especially when they see someone that doesnt play how they do getting attention "stealing" dev time. In all honestly though its actually far better from a gameplay perspective if players are forced to interact with all of the different ways to play since it keeps things interesting. Thats probably the line of thinking they were going with when they limited robots and the like on the space platforms. Now the players that abandon all belts late game are incentivized to interact with it in a way they normally dont have to.

[Anna]

Originally posted by Dr. Full Frontal:

I absolutely disagree with this, and here is my proof:

I guess I didn't explain my point good enough. First of all, current version brute forcing is very possible, so people could do it and win the game, or build mega factories, or do whatever they want. So game keep those people happy.
Optimization is pointless, because it's not optimal. It doesn't make it much less interesting or fun, plus people generally unaware that its pointless, you are happy after updating to blue belts because your factory became better, it's not optimal for time/production ratio, but who cares. It's better, and it could be beautiful.

Game can't be perfect for everyone, so it have to sacrifice someones happiness.

If it goes to the same level original mod was - it would kill enjoyment for those who don't like optimization
If it goes to death world it would kill enjoyment for those who hate fights.
If it goes to "everything is free" it would kill enjoyment for optimization freaks.
If it goes low resources it would annoy those who hates expanding
If it goes high resources it would annoy those who loves trains

A lot of parameters game have to tread very carefully. And Factorio does a fantastic job with it. Kovarex mentioned it in some early FFFs

There are plenty of ways to annoy different parts of community. And default settings matters, because it's what people use by default. And it's very hard to set it correctly so everyone annoyed the same amount.

They want to move space platform mod to general audience, because original is way too hard, and it's great, I just afraid they would make optimization game on platform way too easy for my taste because, well... It would be correct decision to make platform gameplay easier to annoy vast majority less and not trap people in remote only for too long.

I wish they could find a way to punish bad platform design, but not punish it by trapping a player inside, since it would never work, and at the end we would have bad design unpunished.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Anna:

Originally posted by Dr. Full Frontal:

I absolutely disagree with this, and here is my proof:

I guess I didn't explain my point good enough. First of all, current version brute forcing is very possible, so people could do it and win the game, or build mega factories, or do whatever they want. So game keep those people happy.
Optimization is pointless, because it's not optimal. It doesn't make it much less interesting or fun, plus people generally unaware that its pointless, you are happy after updating to blue belts because your factory became better, it's not optimal for time/production ratio, but who cares. It's better, and it could be beautiful.

Game can't be perfect for everyone, so it have to sacrifice someones happiness.

If it goes to the same level original mod was - it would kill enjoyment for those who don't like optimization
If it goes to death world it would kill enjoyment for those who hate fights.
If it goes to "everything is free" it would kill enjoyment for optimization freaks.
If it goes low resources it would annoy those who hates expanding
If it goes high resources it would annoy those who loves trains

A lot of parameters game have to tread very carefully. And Factorio does a fantastic job with it. Kovarex mentioned it in some early FFFs

There are plenty of ways to annoy different parts of community. And default settings matters, because it's what people use by default. And it's very hard to set it correctly so everyone annoyed the same amount.

They want to move space platform mod to general audience, because original is way too hard, and it's great, I just afraid they would make optimization game on platform way too easy for my taste because, well... It would be correct decision to make platform gameplay easier to annoy vast majority less and not trap people in remote only for too long.

I wish they could find a way to punish bad platform design, but not punish it by trapping a player inside, since it would never work, and at the end we would have bad design unpunished.

Most of your concerns are all ready addressed by the sliders included in the game to customize your world at start up. You can make it easier or harder, foxus more on what you like and less on what you don't.

In the current version of the base game you can all ready do all most every thing remotely using spidertrons. Combinators can be programmed locally, blue printed, and then built remotely. Train stations and train schedules can be changed remotely. The only thing you can't do remotely is load and unload spidertrons with inserters. Logistic bots are required. Roboport networks can be built remotely by the spidertrons, rail infrastructure can be built remotely by the spidertrons, and supplies and logistic robots can then be sent ny train to load and unload the spidertrons.

Remote play will just make this easier and available earlier than unlocking spidertron since you would be able to do it with just robots and small robot networks instead of huge ones that cover your entire base.