Complaints after having beaten Space Age

[Falesz]

Hey all,
After having beaten the expansion and having started dabbling into Prometheum farming and Quality item production I would like to complain about all the things that I can remember right now (might update this post later to include more stuff) and as the kids would say, are messing with my vibe.

I will preface this by saying that Factorio is most likely my absolute all time favorite video game and I think it's the pinnacle of modern game design. Complaining about stuff to me means that I'm willing to take the time and energy to articulate things that occupy my mind about things that I care about and this is just how I show my love.

1. Space platform hubs don't prioritize Space platform foundations when automatically requesting construction materials and thus end up with full inventories of belts and inserters that can't be built anywhere because there is no platform yet. This was fixed in a recent minor update.
   
2. You can't set logistic requests in Space platform hubs via the circuit network in any way. That would be immensely useful for specifying cargo loading order to only request certain items when all other items are already loaded up and the platform is almost ready to depart to it's next station (looking at spoilables).
   
3. Expanding on the previous point: Biter eggs in space and on Gleba and no Inserter option to enable/set filter for items beyond x% freshness. Now that ♥♥♥♥ just upsets me. I made some lengthy discussions here a few months ago about this topic and all of you (most of you) have been incredibly helpful and I thank you again. But after all the brainstorming I have come to the conclusion that transporting Biter eggs to Gleba for production there AND upholding all my principles about safe zones in my factory (I should link to the old discussion here) is impossible without setting up some infuriatingly overcomplicated and wasteful circuit networks that would activate timers when the first Biter egg enters a container and purges the entire Biter egg supply when the oldest one reaches x% freshness. Even that wouldn't be foolproof as this idea depends on the assumption that the first Biter egg to enter a container also has the lowest freshness, which is not guaranteed. A simple Inserter option to work with items of specific freshness thresholds would be amazing for this problem.
   
4. Inserters can only have 5 filters. This limitation completely breaks my parameterized generic blueprint that would produce quality versions of items when I try to make anything that has more than 5 ingredients. My Quality production facilities have Assembling machines that are fed via Requester chests requesting all the ingredients of the crafting recipe in the Assembling machine and also via the output of the Recyclers breaking down the low-quality items produced. The inserters feeding the Assemblers from the Requester chests have filters set via a circuit condition to only input items from the chests that are not present of the output belt of the recyclers so that bots don't need to refill items in the chests which are already available in the system, just not specifically inside the Requester chests. Since Portable fusion reactors have 6 ingredients, production can never start because the Inserters just won't input the sixth ingredient for the recipe as there is no available slot for it's filter in the Inserters. I would need to start the design over from scratch to maybe implement this idea with a bunch of Selector combinators which would take up more space, require more convoluted wirings and would be a horrible overcomplication for a problem that wouldn't even exist if only Inserters could have an arbitrary number of filters set.
   
5. No filters or options to control which Rocket silo may request what items automatically to launch into orbit. I don't really have a specific usecase for this besides making Biter egg transportation less of a splitting headache yet again, but I guess it would have been nice for other things as well.
   
6. No Selector combinator and container item options to read the number of inventory slots of containers in a generic setup. Again, I can't even remember where this would have been useful for me, I just remember having to set up Arithmetic combinators with the number of container slots as constant values to calculate the total capacity of a container for a specific item and I thought to myself "Wouldn't it feel fancy if there was a "Read container slots" option in Selector combinators?".
   
7. Train and Space platform interrupts have no option to "hijack" the transports immediately in case of emergencies OR to be stopped dead in their tracks while some condition is true. This would be most useful for Space platforms taking damage to temporarily switch off their thrusters without yet again extremely overcomplicated timer setups or to turn them back with an Interrupt to attempt returning to safe Nauvis orbit via an immediately effective interrupt.
   
8. Space platforms can't be copy-pasted in their entirety if they exceed the camera movement limitations of the initial Space platform hub so you have to do them in two or maybe even more iterations. It's not a big deal, it's just kind of annoying since building those platforms take a bit of time, so you'll leave it to do something else, forget about it and by the time you remember to check how your platform is doing it's already been sitting there half-built without doing anything, waiting for you to paste the rest of the design there.
   
9. Biter nest creep and Atomic bomb ashes never fully go away. It would be nice if the landscape eventually returned to a nice forested grassland after not being occupied by Biters for a while. I know it'll eventually all be covered in concrete, but in the meantime that would be nice.
   
10. No train scheduling options or circuit options to read the length of a train and set up conditionals based on that. I know proper planning and workarounds make this not strictly necessary, but still it would be soooo nice to have.
    
11. Train stations can no longer be skipped in the schedule. I know the devs said something about this feature no longer being feasible due to the technical implementation of the other features, but still I just encountered a case where exactly that would be so nice.
    
12. Liquid resource patches never fully deplete and never fully go away, leaving practically unusable dots on the ground that get built over and on the map cluttering the UI and giving me the false impression that there are resources there. This already bothered me in 1.1, but I just set the richness and size of the oil fields to max so that a nice big patch would never run out before I moved on from that savegame and it wouldn't really become a problem. But now we have a second fluid resource that outputs in the "x units per second" way and it just feels so icky. We did get a fluid resource that outputs its content as the non-fluid resources do, so why not the other two as well?
    
13. No way to automatically flush the contents of a fluid container. This would also be so nice for the constant Petroleum gas overflow. I just built a giga oil refinery where Heavy oil is broken down to Light oil if it overflows, Light oil is broken down into Petroleum gas if that overflows and Petroleum gas is loaded into barrels and recycled out of existence if that overflows. It's just a terrible bother. I had to build an entire section of the facility to handle the Petroleum barrel filling, I had to build a train station for new barrels to be imported to the facility, I had to set up two trains and a barrel loading station at my main base just for this. This thing is eating almost 2000 barrels per minute, which directly translates to 2000 steel per minute just because there isn't an automatic flushing/venting mechanic.

Thats all I can remember for now. Thanks for reading and now I'm back to crafting that Legendary Mech armor.

[🆄🅽🅲🅻🅴 🅹🅾]

Interesting thing: I've logged over 4.6K hrs in this game, and never once felt the the urge to come and post a wall of complaints about one of my favourite games ever. Maybe I'm just not that critical and just accept things the way they are. I guess my play style is just too simplified since I don't grasp even half of what OP posted.

[Falesz]

I guess that's just where I differ from the norm. I like to complain about things even when I love them. Especially when I love them.
Most of what I wrote was about stuff that could be solved in unreasonably complicated ways (as far as my understanding of the game mechanics go) and so I just wish the game would have implemented their otherwise extremely simple solutions for me OR they are just things I thought would be useful or fun in niche usecases but aren't included in the game.

[[UMM] EconNinja]

Originally posted by Csöpper:

1. Space platform hubs don't prioritize Space platform foundations when automatically requesting construction materials and thus end up with full inventories of belts and inserters that can't be built anywhere because there is no platform yet.

I think they already fixed this:
https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=127257

[Falesz]

Originally posted by UMM EconNinja:

Originally posted by Csöpper:

1. Space platform hubs don't prioritize Space platform foundations when automatically requesting construction materials and thus end up with full inventories of belts and inserters that can't be built anywhere because there is no platform yet.

I think they already fixed this:
https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=127257

Amazing!

[Kohni]

Most of these issues seem to be solve-able within the game using some logic, I understand not liking the challenge of figuring these out but one thing i want to comment on is the filter limit, i feel like its a good addition to the challenge, and adds direction to the game,

[GreenBeanN1]

Quickly scanning your list:
Belts, circuits, mods.
I don't have any of your problems.

[Hurkyl]

No filters or options to control which Rocket silo may request what items automatically to launch into orbit. I don't really have a specific usecase for this besides making Biter egg transportation less of a splitting headache yet again, but I guess it would have been nice for other things as well.

FWIW, you can disable bot feeding and use inserters instead. E.g. you can run a belt of science to the silo and load the silo normally with inserters, and you have a dedicated silo for launching science that won't get polluted with other stuff.

Handling biter eggs extra safely would be a little trickier too, but still this is a primitive you can work on engineering that.

[kremlin]

Give your inserters a break. There's no good reason to try to overload a single inserter to insert every ingredient into an assembler. Stack sizes can screw that up even, when your inserter can't drop everything in its hand it will lock up.

[knighttemplar1960]

From what I saw space platforms receive items (either building or deliveries) based on their internal number that is used for sorting items in your personal inventory. To solve the problem you have with item 1 in your list I simply made a rocket silo that was outside the roboport network that only had access to space platform foundations.

For 2 I have a couple different systems. One is to use specific platforms designed for speed and only haul one spoilable product with that platform. The other was a series of S/R latches to make available on the planet filling the requests only the items requested in the number and order I wanted them shipped in. The bit that made me unhappy for your item 2 is you can't use a constant combinator on the space platform hub to reserve material. For example you can't set a constant combinator to -500 ice for example to trick the system into leaving a buffer of 500 ice in the hub. The hub always shows what's actually in it to the circuit network. Minor quibble but I had to change my plans for my space platform designs.

For item 3 I discovered long ago (due mainly to the physical size of the combinators) that mechanical clocks consisting of a chest, a loop of belt, and 2 inserters often takes less space than a complicated clock based on combinators. The time they run can be regulated by inserter speed, belt speed, and the number of items in the chest. You can chain several mechanical clocks in series or parallel to each control a different item/task. You have to fiddle with number of items, belt, and inserter speeds but once set up it continues to work the same every time. The benefit to Space Age is I can now use a recycler to eliminate the trigger item (which is usually something cheap that I can make on that planet but I don't keep in the logistic system on that planet (iron chests on Nauvis, shot gun shells on Vulcanus, Yellow ammo on Fulgora, etc)

For your Item 4 I just went less complicated and use more inserters.

For Item 5 I just use separate rocket silos in separate logistic systems that have access to only a few items. Biter eggs section has its own separate rocket silos.

6 would not have been useful to me but I would have just used the red "X" to limit number of available slots and leave the number of slots static. If you want a "storage chest" that you can lock products to inventory slots lay a few rail tiles and just use a cargo wagon as your static chest.

For 7 I always eliminate the chance of emergencies. First trip was always manual to see how the set up performed. If there was a problem I brought it back and adjusted the design. Once I got a working design I never made it bigger I just made more of the design that worked.

[Omega-Cyber-King]

Originally posted by 🆄🅽🅲🅻🅴 🅹🅾:

Interesting thing: I've logged over 4.6K hrs in this game, and never once felt the the urge to come and post a wall of complaints about one of my favourite games ever. Maybe I'm just not that critical and just accept things the way they are. I guess my play style is just too simplified since I don't grasp even half of what OP posted.

God forbid someone give constructive feedback for a game.
How dare they.

[RiO]

Originally posted by Csöpper:

Space platform hubs don't prioritize Space platform foundations when automatically requesting construction materials and thus end up with full inventories of belts and inserters that can't be built anywhere because there is no platform yet.

This is actually fixed with version 2.0.38
Platforms will not create automatic construction requests for ghosts that effectively cannot be built yet because there is no foundation yet.

Originally posted by Csöpper:

You can't set logistic requests in Space platform hubs via the circuit network in any way. That would be immensely useful for specifying cargo loading order to only request certain items when all other items are already loaded up and the platform is almost ready to depart to it's next station (looking at spoilables).

This is my peeve as well, but realistically - it's not solvable to set logistics requests via circuitry. Sure; you can pick an item signal and set its amount -- but how are you going to specify the planet the platform should import from?

Unless you create some kind of exemption such that circuit-added products are imported from whatever planet the platform is over.
... which might not actually be so bad. The platform hub can tell you what planet it's over via the to/from signals. Stationary orbit is signal value 3 for a planet signal.

Originally posted by Csöpper:

Expanding on the previous point: Biter eggs in space and on Gleba and no Inserter option to enable/set filter for items beyond x% freshness. Now that ♥♥♥♥ just upsets me. I made some lengthy discussions here a few months ago about this topic and all of you (most of you) have been incredibly helpful and I thank you again. But after all the brainstorming I have come to the conclusion that transporting Biter eggs to Gleba for production there AND upholding all my principles about safe zones in my factory (I should link to the old discussion here) is impossible without setting up some infuriatingly overcomplicated and wasteful circuit networks that would activate timers when the first Biter egg enters a container and purges the entire Biter egg supply when the oldest one reaches x% freshness. Even that wouldn't be foolproof as this idea depends on the assumption that the first Biter egg to enter a container also has the lowest freshness, which is not guaranteed. A simple Inserter option to work with items of specific freshness thresholds would be amazing for this problem.

Agreed. Just full-stop agreed.
Circuit-readable freshness should have been a thing.

Originally posted by Csöpper:

Inserters can only have 5 filters. This limitation completely breaks my parameterized generic blueprint that would produce quality versions of items when I try to make anything that has more than 5 ingredients. My Quality production facilities have Assembling machines that are fed via Requester chests requesting all the ingredients of the crafting recipe in the Assembling machine and also via the output of the Recyclers breaking down the low-quality items produced. The inserters feeding the Assemblers from the Requester chests have filters set via a circuit condition to only input items from the chests that are not present of the output belt of the recyclers so that bots don't need to refill items in the chests which are already available in the system, just not specifically inside the Requester chests. Since Portable fusion reactors have 6 ingredients, production can never start because the Inserters just won't input the sixth ingredient for the recipe as there is no available slot for it's filter in the Inserters. I would need to start the design over from scratch to maybe implement this idea with a bunch of Selector combinators which would take up more space, require more convoluted wirings and would be a horrible overcomplication for a problem that wouldn't even exist if only Inserters could have an arbitrary number of filters set.

You could use a simple looping belt and a splitter and use belt monitoring to create a somewhat balanced sushi belt that's topped off from a requester chest. It's not fully bot-based, but it solves the problem.

Filters are probably limited to 5 per inserter as either an overall game balance concern, or a performance concern. (Keep in mind: an arbitrary sized filter list means an arbitrary amount of comparisons for every inserter every time it needs to pick up an item.)

Originally posted by Csöpper:

No filters or options to control which Rocket silo may request what items automatically to launch into orbit. I don't really have a specific usecase for this besides making Biter egg transportation less of a splitting headache yet again, but I guess it would have been nice for other things as well.

You can disable automatic requests and direct-insert biter eggs into the rocket silos only when they receive a request signal from orbit. Just have to make sure that the product you want to have dedicated launch silos for, is not present in your logistics network.

Originally posted by Csöpper:

No Selector combinator and container item options to read the number of inventory slots of containers in a generic setup. Again, I can't even remember where this would have been useful for me, I just remember having to set up Arithmetic combinators with the number of container slots as constant values to calculate the total capacity of a container for a specific item and I thought to myself "Wouldn't it feel fancy if there was a "Read container slots" option in Selector combinators?".

That actually would be nice, yes.

Originally posted by Csöpper:

Train and Space platform interrupts have no option to "hijack" the transports immediately in case of emergencies OR to be stopped dead in their tracks while some condition is true. This would be most useful for Space platforms taking damage to temporarily switch off their thrusters without yet again extremely overcomplicated timer setups or to turn them back with an Interrupt to attempt returning to safe Nauvis orbit via an immediately effective interrupt.

This is a consequence of the design choice to only evaluate interrupts when the train/platform schedule advances. Which was done from a performance perspective. (Constantly checking schedules each tick means potentially having to constantly check reachability within the rail network to stations. Which is very expensive.)

[Khaylain]

Originally posted by Omega-Cyber-King:

Originally posted by 🆄🅽🅲🅻🅴 🅹🅾:

Interesting thing: I've logged over 4.6K hrs in this game, and never once felt the the urge to come and post a wall of complaints about one of my favourite games ever. Maybe I'm just not that critical and just accept things the way they are. I guess my play style is just too simplified since I don't grasp even half of what OP posted.

God forbid someone give constructive feedback for a game.
How dare they.

Not like any developers are going to read it here, so it's useless here if it's meant as constructive feedback and not just posting a wall of complaints for other users to read.

[Galileus]

Originally posted by Khaylain:

Originally posted by Omega-Cyber-King:

God forbid someone give constructive feedback for a game.
How dare they.

Not like any developers are going to read it here, so it's useless here if it's meant as constructive feedback and not just posting a wall of complaints for other users to read.

Nothing wrong with engaging in constructive discussion, either. I disagree with those being complaints - more like "want to haves" - but as long as it's all respectful and thought through, nothing wrong with it.

[Falesz]

I see many of you were open to my ramblings and thanks again for reading.
Yes, all of these problems are more "ME" problems than "Factorio: Space Age" problems. Most of them stemmed from me designing complicated and elaborate systems only to find out way after finalizing them that they are fundemantally broken in certain corner cases and my first instinct wasn't to start hours of work over from scratch but to come to the forum and cry "I wish the game did this more like I imagined it would!" Eventually I'll just get over it and do the work, but it feels nice to let the frustration of it out of my system.
Even the Biter egg problems on Gleba could be considered a "me" problem. "Getting alerts every minute because a Biter egg hatched and nibbled on a laser turret for a millisecond? Just ignore the alert! Problem solved." Well, not for me. I wanted to keep my Factory completely alert-less when everything is working more or less as intended, but no luck there and it's annoying me. Eventually I'll probably sit down and just design a Biter egg pipeline so ridicolously robust that there is no chance any Biter egg will ever hatch anywhere. I see lots of combinators, lots of wirings and rewirings and lots of frustration in my future.

Thanks to RiO and knighttemplar for indulging me in the lengthy conversation. Those were some nice reads.

Also yes, I didn't intend for any of this to reach the devs specifically. I know they are giant trolls and would probably laugh at my Biter egg-induced alerts. I just came here to share my thoughts and maybe discuss them. The negative tone of the title is sort of a social experiment to see if negativity would really drive the engagement upwards more.

Especially thanks for pointing out the performance considerations of inserter filters and transport interrupts. I wouldn't have thought of them on my own, but they totally make sense.

Originally posted by RiO:

Originally posted by Csöpper:

You can't set logistic requests in Space platform hubs via the circuit network in any way. That would be immensely useful for specifying cargo loading order to only request certain items when all other items are already loaded up and the platform is almost ready to depart to it's next station (looking at spoilables).

This is my peeve as well, but realistically - it's not solvable to set logistics requests via circuitry. Sure; you can pick an item signal and set its amount -- but how are you going to specify the planet the platform should import from?

Unless you create some kind of exemption such that circuit-added products are imported from whatever planet the platform is over.
... which might not actually be so bad. The platform hub can tell you what planet it's over via the to/from signals. Stationary orbit is signal value 3 for a planet signal.

For this point I also considered something like this. I would believe automatic construction requests are also just served from the logistic networks of whatever planet the platform is in orbit of, no? I see no reason why the same system couldn't be parameterized with circuit signals.

[RiO]

Originally posted by Csöpper:

For this point I also considered something like this. I would believe automatic construction requests are also just served from the logistic networks of whatever planet the platform is in orbit of, no? I see no reason why the same system couldn't be parameterized with circuit signals.

Good point. Indeed, automated construction requests would already have this 'special' behavior.

Actually; I'd go one step further and state: I honestly think the whole import-from-planet thing was poorly thought out.

It would've made more sense to not couple the import-from-planet filter to the logistics requests, but to have created a separate system for it. Because that would've allowed its reciprocal to be worked in in a logical manner as well: an export-to-planet filter.

And you'd have been able to more precisely control which goods get dropped to which planets - preventing platforms destined for distant worlds like Aquilo from dropping off vital supplies for that planet on a stop passed Gleba or Fulgora where they have to pick up other things that also need to go to Aquilo. Right now you can only make that work reliably by denying the platform to unload at those scheduled stops in its entirety -- which for some things just doesn't make sense.