Cliff Explosives should be available sooner in Space Age

[Aux]

The change to Cliff Explosive research in Space Age was goofy and unnecessary. Cliff Explosives were in a good place previously. There is no reason them to haunt the player for so long into the game. Now you have to research space and go to another planet to learn how to take out a cliff properly? It's easier to research the atomic bomb than a cliff explosive now, so that's how I will be clearing them out I guess. But I'd say revert this.

[Underscorecow]

Originally posted by Khaylain:

And there we have them showing their real face XD

The first 5 out of 6 comments were flaming / belittling the op....and people like you saying the op has a bad attitude after the op was already flamed.....

I dont agree with them because I like the challenges of cliffs on nauvis but at the same time whats the point if you can wipe them with atomic bombs before seeing another planet

At least hold yourself to whatever standard you are trying to hold the op at, you`re just making yourselves look horrible.

[Aux]

Originally posted by Underscorecow:

Originally posted by Khaylain:

And there we have them showing their real face XD

The first 5 out of 6 comments were flaming / belittling the op....and people like you saying the op has a bad attitude after the op was already flamed.....

I dont agree with them because I like the challenges of cliffs on nauvis but at the same time whats the point if you can wipe them with atomic bombs before seeing another planet

At least hold yourself to whatever standard you are trying to hold the op at, you`re just making yourselves look horrible.

Thanks for understanding. I have no problem with respectful disagreement. A lot of trolls on here basically just telling me to deal with it or minimizing my perspective though. I guess that is to be expected from steam.

[SharkPlush]

The game is more challenging and interesting when your main bus can't be 40m wide by 200m long uninterrupted from the very beginning. The cliffs present a small logistics challenge, the explosives a reward for achievement.

I think it would be better if it was a Fulgora tech though, Fulgora is very easy (you can get there and stay in orbit safe with like 2 grabbers and 2 guns)

[SharkPlush]

Originally posted by BKo:

Artillery was move unnecessary as well. You're telling me I have to set up robust space shipping so I can ship in tungsten just to make artillery AMMO, meanwhile Nauvis biters are extremely tedious to deal with while I'm on other planets trying to build.

they're not unless you are very bad at the game, I am hanging out on Fulgora having touched none of the other planets. My base is an organically grown mishmash of max inefficiency with thousands of bots chaotically swarming several sq km covered with a huge mess of belts and trains.

When a turret dies it takes them almost a minute to replace it but they just do. They've not taken a flamethrower yet. If dealing with biters is "tedious" you might have either psychological problem with perfectionism or you need to learn the game's basic mechanics because it's casual. Flamethrowers could be optional if you use and replace more guns. This is considering behemoth biters vs upgraded red bullets, too.

[Aux]

Originally posted by Chindraba:

Originally posted by Aux:

We are being heavily sidetracked. My primary point has never been "realism" it is that the game had a system in place that worked well for 8 years. A system that is still in place for people not playing Space Age. A system that I was accustomed to and liked. Why try to fix something that is not broken? Why should I support a change to this system?

Glad to see the 'realism' factor removed. That narrows it down to player preference and game design.

The system we're used to, which worked well for so long, is a good system and serves well, then and now, for how the game is played on vanilla settings. It is not broken and they did not try to fix it. As you noted, it is still that same system (mostly anyway) without Space Age.

The rub is that Space Age is different than the base game. There are more objectives, different goals and much more to do. Yes, as someone noted somewhere above, they could have made Vulcanus' cliffs immune to "Cliff explosives" and made "Basalt Explosive", or something, to deal with them uniquely. The devs could also have added 2 or 3 more levels of assemblers, chemical plants, inserters and all the other things which quality makes a real difference with. Each requiring a different recipe on top of using the next-lowest tier item.

One of their objectives was to increase the puzzle without an explosion of redundant tier-based recipes. Quality, making only one set of new recipes, give 5 tiers of nearly everything, increases the options for making solutions and doesn't cause an exponential growth of the recipe book. Adding another level of explosives was an option. I'll bet they considered it. They did add a second level of landfill, so it's reasonable to think they considered it in other cases. Through whatever process they used - storyboards, prototype play, early playtesting, beta testing, etc., they seem to have reached the conclusion that moving cliff explosives to later was how they wanted to deal with it.

Is it perfect? Hell if I know. It is, without mods at least, the way the game currently is. This post has probably gotten more pushback than it deserves. Likely from the language of the post. Still, I'd recommend accepting the current 'rules of the game' for a playthrough of the game. Sure, while starting on Nauvis you will miss the explosives out of habit from when you normally would have used them. You'll miss the tier-3 modules as well, which are much more important to the factory than whether or not cliffs make it difficult to build. Take the test drive all the way to the end. See if it is as bad, once you get over the habit, as you expect.

If you've reached the end, and gotten your star in the galaxy, you will have the experience to know exactly why it was a bad choice, and can cover that with all the rest of the fanbois.

This was supposed to be my 2¢, but you can keep the change.

Space Age is an "expansion pack" to Factorio, so I would generally prefer it to purely expand on the existing material instead of changing it, unless necessary. Very little about the Nauvis phase is different, so "Space Age is different than the base game" is sophistry in my opinion.

That said, I appreciate the post, and your point about reducing an explosion to the recipe book is noted. It is possible that it actually was a necessary change from a programmatic standpoint, but I don't know, and I am still skeptical I will come around on it, even after getting my star.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Initiate 1:

The game is more challenging and interesting when your main bus can't be 40m wide by 200m long uninterrupted from the very beginning. The cliffs present a small logistics challenge, the explosives a reward for achievement.

I think it would be better if it was a Fulgora tech though, Fulgora is very easy (you can get there and stay in orbit safe with like 2 grabbers and 2 guns)

I don't really think cliffs present any logistical challenges at all, water is probably better for that. I just feel like cliffs are ugly when they're running through the center of your base. If they were more obviously a challenge, then I think nobody would complain about it, but because they're just little sections of walls that intrude your progress a little tiny bit, it's kinda just annoying. It's like adding small potholes to a race track, it just makes it less comfortable and doesn't really add any serious challenge.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Aux:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

You mean like carrying around an entire inventory of trains in your pocket but only being able to launch 25 uranium cannon shells? Pretty picky about what you are complaining about.

Factorio is a game about engineering and the Romans had bridges and tunnels. We got bridges this expansion and won't be getting tunnels. If you don't like cliffs disable or reduce them. You can get nukes to eliminate them on Nauvis or you can get cliff explosives earlier than nukes by going to Vulcanus as soon as you can launch rockets.

We are being heavily sidetracked. My primary point has never been "realism" it is that the game had a system in place that worked well for 8 years. A system that is still in place for people not playing Space Age. A system that I was accustomed to and liked. Why try to fix something that is not broken? Why should I support a change to this system?

It has a new system that works all most identically to 1.0 as far as time to become available goes. You just have to adapt.

[♂eat CHICKEN♂]

No they shouldn't, they changed how cliffs spawn so they are less of an annoyance. Working around cliffs before getting cliff explosives is a problem to be solved just like anything else in this game

[Simon]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

It has a new system that works all most identically to 1.0 as far as time to become available goes. You just have to adapt.

In the base game, cliffs explosives are unlocked with green science, and only requires oil to build, while a rocket silo requires blue circuits, rocket fuel, and low density structures. Going to space alone takes at least as much time as getting yellow science setup.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Simon:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

It has a new system that works all most identically to 1.0 as far as time to become available goes. You just have to adapt.

In the base game, cliffs explosives are unlocked with green science, and only requires oil to build, while a rocket silo requires blue circuits, rocket fuel, and low density structures. Going to space alone takes at least as much time as getting yellow science setup.

So, adapt. You don't need a complicated set up to produce your first few blue circuits. You can make them without even using advanced oil processing. You need advanced oil processing for rocket fuel but a small set up that produces lube from heavy oil and turns every thing else into rocket fuel is more than adequate. Cliff generation is also smoother. Your start area on Nauvis is all most a bowl without annoying cliffs in the way. Its much easier to use them for defense in SA.

You all most have to try to mess up your play through for cliffs on Nauvis to be an issue before you can reach Vulcanus.

[Simon]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Originally posted by Simon:

In the base game, cliffs explosives are unlocked with green science, and only requires oil to build, while a rocket silo requires blue circuits, rocket fuel, and low density structures. Going to space alone takes at least as much time as getting yellow science setup.

So, adapt. You don't need a complicated set up to produce your first few blue circuits. You can make them without even using advanced oil processing. You need advanced oil processing for rocket fuel but a small set up that produces lube from heavy oil and turns every thing else into rocket fuel is more than adequate. Cliff generation is also smoother. Your start area on Nauvis is all most a bowl without annoying cliffs in the way. Its much easier to use them for defense in SA.

You all most have to try to mess up your play through for cliffs on Nauvis to be an issue before you can reach Vulcanus.

I always have and always will have a complicated early game setup. I don't do speed running, or half baked solutions. That is not satisfying for my brain. No. I will not setup blue circuits before advanced oil processing. I always take care of scaling up advanced oil processing first.

Cliff generation is as annoying as usual. It's not an issue of it being challenging. It's an issue of it being ugly when I expand my wall around it and built factories around it, and tore down all the trees and rockets around it, and layered concrete on top of it.

Cliffs are useless for defense. A straight wall is vastly superior for logistical and defense reasons. There is pretty much no point in using cliffs for defense.

[POWER WITHIN USER]

Cliff generation is as annoying as usual.

it's not.

Cliffs are useless for defense.

Wrong.

[Simon]

Originally posted by POWER WITHIN USER:

Cliff generation is as annoying as usual.

it's not.

Cliffs are useless for defense.

Wrong.

You're right, they're useful if you don't have any stones, although you probably do have stones by the time you reach your first cliff, so they're largely completely useless by that time, because walls are just vastly superior, and cheap.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Simon:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

So, adapt. You don't need a complicated set up to produce your first few blue circuits. You can make them without even using advanced oil processing. You need advanced oil processing for rocket fuel but a small set up that produces lube from heavy oil and turns every thing else into rocket fuel is more than adequate. Cliff generation is also smoother. Your start area on Nauvis is all most a bowl without annoying cliffs in the way. Its much easier to use them for defense in SA.

You all most have to try to mess up your play through for cliffs on Nauvis to be an issue before you can reach Vulcanus.

I always have and always will have a complicated early game setup. I don't do speed running, or half baked solutions. That is not satisfying for my brain. No. I will not setup blue circuits before advanced oil processing. I always take care of scaling up advanced oil processing first.

Cliff generation is as annoying as usual. It's not an issue of it being challenging. It's an issue of it being ugly when I expand my wall around it and built factories around it, and tore down all the trees and rockets around it, and layered concrete on top of it.

Cliffs are useless for defense. A straight wall is vastly superior for logistical reasons and easier to work with. There is pretty much no point in using walls for defense.

So essentially you can't or won't adapt.

I'm disabled and have poor motor control. It takes me about 3 times as long as most people to place things by hand so I'm not a speed runner by any stretch of the imagination. I always have to rush grenades, rush flamethrowers, and rush robots. Once I have construction robots I don't have to place things by hand any more I can just use my blue prints.

You have to have plastic for red circuits and sulfur to research advanced oil processing. What did you do with your basic oil plant? Why not use it to make the stuff you need for robots instead of building a huge advanced oil processing plant by hand?

If I didn't use cliffs and water for defense I'd get over run or I'd spend all my time fighting and have no time for building.

Nothing half baked about using what you all ready have built to bootstrap yourself. Once you have robots you can recycle old set ups.

[Simon]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Originally posted by Simon:

I always have and always will have a complicated early game setup. I don't do speed running, or half baked solutions. That is not satisfying for my brain. No. I will not setup blue circuits before advanced oil processing. I always take care of scaling up advanced oil processing first.

Cliff generation is as annoying as usual. It's not an issue of it being challenging. It's an issue of it being ugly when I expand my wall around it and built factories around it, and tore down all the trees and rockets around it, and layered concrete on top of it.

Cliffs are useless for defense. A straight wall is vastly superior for logistical reasons and easier to work with. There is pretty much no point in using walls for defense.

So essentially you can't or won't adapt.

I'm disabled and have poor motor control. It takes me about 3 times as long as most people to place things by hand so I'm not a speed runner by any stretch of the imagination. I always have to rush grenades, rush flamethrowers, and rush robots. Once I have construction robots I don't have to place things by hand any more I can just use my blue prints.

You have to have plastic for red circuits and sulfur to research advanced oil processing. What did you do with your basic oil plant? Why not use it to make the stuff you need for robots instead of building a huge advanced oil processing plant by hand?

If I didn't use cliffs and water for defense I'd get over run or I'd spend all my time fighting and have no time for building.

Nothing half baked about using what you all ready have built to bootstrap yourself. Once you have robots you can recycle old set ups.

No, I'm simply telling you how I play the game to have fun, I don't always speed run technologies, and I place lots of things by hand, otherwise I get bored, I even play with a high science multiplier for fun, because it makes advancing and progression slower.

You get overrun... on Nauvis? Pre-Behemoth evolution stage? Standard world settings?? How... I mean, I get using water (fewer turrets needed) but... cliffs??? Please tell me, how is a straight wall not simply better?