This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/factorio by /u/Tsevion on 2024-11-14 18:09:38+00:00.

I loved the expansion. I think it’s amazing. I think the devs hit it out of the park. But I do feel the new content has a lot of little rough edges… here’s what I saw/noted down during my playthrough.

Particularly, but not solely after doing a bunch of circuit and automation stuff (single crafter auto-mall, auto-quality recipe selection, various logistic solutions), here are in somewhat random order various features I think feel missing from the game:

• Multiple Circuit effects on buildings (Ability to both Set Requests and Read Inventory for example). It’s somewhat frustrating on requester chests and SUPER frustrating on your spaceport that you have to choose between reading contents and setting requests. It would be really nice after setting a request if it was possible to know if it was filled.
• Red/Green circuit separation on non-combinators. Combinators now can distinguish circuits on red vs. green. All structures should be able to, both for reading and writing. This would particularly useful on crafters, since currently you might have 3 signals you care about, 1 incoming, setting the recipe, then reading the ingredients for the recipe, and finally reading what’s currently in the crafter, which will obviously overlap the recipe. Being able to output one to red and one to green would help immensely.
• Getting Stone from space rock. I feel it’s messed up that you get all your resources from crushing rocks in space, and the one resource you can’t get is stone. I kinda understand the balance idea, particuarly in regards to Aquilo… but honestly it’s a little strange that you can literally build all the rocket parts in orbit, but need to ship up stone to make Concrete. Personally I’d make it a by-product of the crushing recipes that convert between types.
• Interplatform shipping/building. Currently to move stuff between platforms you need to drop it to a planet. This is both inefficient, and prevents things like putting a logistic hub at the Solar System edge. Also means you can’t have a space-dock that builds other platforms. Ideally just have a mini-launcher that operates like the rocket silo, but takes like 1/10th the resources per rocket… since 90% of the work is getting to orbit.
• A 2x2 or larger inventory building, Currently rocket silos and vehicles (parked train cars), let you do this, but feel janky. With all the various mechanics like quality and spoilage, the number of items involved in single operations has gotten much higher, literally the limitation of 4 arms connecting to a chest is becoming quite cumbersome. And again, you can already technically do this now… it’s just janky and kinda dumb.
• Max/Min on arithmetic combinators. Currently doable with a pair of deciders, but it’s awkward… and min/max are simple functions that easily fit with the current list in Arithmatic combinators.
• Interplanetary Signals. Currently interplanetary shipping generally means putting a bunch on a rocket, and then dropping or not based on whether it’s needed. Without interplanetary signals it’s impossible to block sooner. Could be a dedicated structure, a circuit connection on Rocket Silos, or possibly just way to read alerts sent by speakers, since those are already global.
• A practical way to read spoilage value. Maybe this is a design choice, but it’s currently very frustrating that there’s no way to incinerate all product with less that 10 minute left to spoil… particularly on eggs. Now if you get a bit silly it’s actually kinda possible by tracking known spoil time on nutrients made from spoilage, putting them in a chest and using an inserter set to choose most spoiled to pick on thing out… but this is impractical at scale. It would be much better if something could output a signal of spoilage percent or time remaining when it had the item in it.
• Copy/Paste on conditions. This should just be straightforward, but as far as I can tell there’s no way to copy paste conditions when editing them in combinators/train schedules/rocket schedules. It would help a lot.
• Better And/Or Hierarchy/Grouping on conditions. Current option for various condition editors is just high level Or and And groups underneath. Super frustrating in a number of areas. although the copy/paste option above would make it much nicer. Bonus points to be able to save/name a group of conditions into a single re-usable condition: being able to take something like “red bullets > 1.2k, rockets > 600, fuel > 10k and grouping it into a custom: ship ready condition”, that’d be amazing.
• Easy way to reselect a recipe at a different quality. Currently when re-selecting the recipe in a crafter it clears it completely, losing everything even the page it’s on… so just changing a recipe to go at a higher quality is a real pain.
• A way to reduce/clear quality on an item… substituting a higher quality part for a lower quality one should be doable. from a non-game standpoint, and just having a bunch of uncommon quality gears around and needing regular quality gears feels silly. And higher tiers of concrete/landfill should at least be buildable… currently having a ton of rare quality concrete (thanks Fulgora) is just kinda silly… you can’t even floor with it.
• Automatable blueprint placement. Some way for circuits to place a blueprint down would be generally incredible for creative factories/self-building factories/reconfiguring. But more simply this is also needed to automate train/spidertron deployment.
• Better Spidertron Automation. Currently you just right-click a group around. It’s labor intensive, and they’re not even smart about routing around obstacles. Currently remarkably non-automatable. Even some basic RTS stuff like setting a patrol route would be welcome… but potentially so much more could be done.
• A way to remotely place a Spidertron with its current configuration. At least I can’t figure out a way to do it, maybe there is? Currently though as far as I can tell need to blueprint the spidertron with its gear/color/name/requests if you want to remotely deploy it.
• Radar signals… you should be able to wire to a radar and read various things it can see as signals… enemy counts, detected resources etc… In my dreams it would be able to output signals for everything it sees, configurable either to its main coverage area or as a pulse when it explores an area (also giving signals for coordinates of where it just scanned)
• An all quality variant signal, would automatically sum all qualities of an item, which could be used to set filters.
• Some way to tell a blueprint to build with whatever the best available quality items you currently have. Currently a lot of upgrade planner tweaking it needed when late-game you start having a bunch of rare quality buildings on Vulcanus and Epic Quality on Fulgora, but still basic on Gleba.
• At Epic/Legendary Tier Nightvision should be 1x1, would solve the problem of a random 1x1 square left that you shove a solar panel into in Legendary Mech Armor.
• Combat robots need a better flight pattern, so they don’t all end up as a singularity. This makes them harder to use and super vulnerable to certain attacks. And looks kinda dumb. Some sort of flocking algorithm like Boids would be cool. Combat robots are really good, they did a lot of work for me… but the way they collapse to a single point really gets frustrating.
• Add a way to suppress/filter alerts… ideally by zone (Biter/Pentapod Eggs means certain areas WILL get attacked occasionally). There are a number of instances where a semi-persistent alert state can be around. A way to shut them up would be really nice.

Bonus things I thought I needed, but actually already exist:

• Select signals from the listed signals, when editing a combinator. (Q does this)
• Way to build what’s in the ship inventory… (again Q does this)
• Some automated way to clear Stack Inserters. This one is a little roundabout, but if you use a signal to set the stack size lower, then disable/re-enable with a signal, it will drop everything unsticking it. I found it really useful on the bacteria outputs on Gleba, since you really need the bulk speed from Stack inserters, but bacteria degrade into ore so quickly it’s really easy to get the inserter stuck with ore in hand.