#0.16

[factoriostuff]

New types ground tiles? That’s something I wasn’t expecting!

The ones on the left are the new, “refined” types of concrete (with a bit of good old stone brick in the middle). They sure do look more “refined” than normal concrete!

But they’re actually kind of expensive. Twenty regular concrete, eigth iron sticks (the most useless item ever!) and a steel plate for just ten refined concrete tiles?  At least the “hazard” variation is basically free, similar to regular concrete.

I mean sure, that’s not the kind of resources you might care about in an endgame playthrough. But it’s just an additional 10% compared to the usual 140% movement speed increase from standard concrete.

And honestly? I often don’t even end up paving my base with regular concrete, since stone brick already provides an 130% bonus and it barely even seems worth the effort, for just 10% more. Movement speed is what exoskeletons are for!

I will either use it for really, really high frequency paths or solely for the aesthetic, since they are a little bit prettier.

[factoriostuff]

I only just figured out that the range of artillery turrets and trains is much larger in manual firing mode!

I dind’t even realize that, for some reason. But it actually makes a lot of sense, because what’s even the point of the firing remote if the automatic firing will target everything for you?

But as you can see in the following two screenshots, the range for the manual firing mode is significantly larger than the automatic firing mode. Just toogle the “firing range” display of the map view and grab the artillery remote control to see the difference:

Another surprising application of artillery: you can use them to reveal parts of the map your radars can’t even reach! Because, remember: artillery shells are build with radars and reveal the map along their trajectory.

I just fired some shells in every direction to reveal more of the map. You can still see some flying off into the distance on the right side of the screenshot.

Even with my current technology, you can reveal parts of the map your normal radar coverage doesn’t reach. And I haven’t researched a lot of artillery range upgrades yet, only level two if I remember correctly.

[factoriostuff]

Artillery Train, Terrain and Merch

Oh my god it’s real! The artillery train is coming to rain long range death on biter bases! Since tumblr’s weird about gifs, check them out on the official website.

You can apparently choose between an automatic and manual firing mode, to either shoot at any nearby bases or click on the map to target a specific area.

The artillery shells also reveal the area around the impact, so you can watch the biters get wrecked!

Firing at biter bases will aggro them however, so make sure you have some more defenses near your train!

They also worked on smoother terrain transitions, including form land to water. And it should be more sensible what tiles can be build on soon. As it is, sometimes you can build on tiles that seem like they’re mostly water or the other way around.

And finally something we’ve all been praying a long time for: merchandise!

There are only a limited number available for now. And since they do all the packaging and shiping themselves, they can’t promise it’ll arrive before christmas. But I’m definetly going to order one, once they arrive in the store!

And because the devs wanted us to be able to play during the holidays, they plan to release the 0.16 experimental version sometime during next week!

In my personal experience, even the experimental releases are really, really stable. So I wouldn’t worry about bugs and crashes all too much.

Christmas is officially cancelled, I’ll be busy playing Factorio!

[factoriostuff]

This is another HD graphic appreciation post!

Look at those oil refineries and chem plants bubbling away. They look especially good with all those differently cloured fluid running through their pipes!

[factoriostuff]

Oooh, that’s a nice feature as well!

[factoriostuff]

I really love the new graphics for wall end pieces. They look nicer and they give a much better visual indication of wether you can move past them or not! Especially in combination with the improved land to water transition.

[factoriostuff]

These new icons will appear when you hold a water pump in your hand and indicate all the tiles you could place one, similar to the indicators for oil wells.

I think these will come in handy, at least for new players!

With a special guest appearence by: FISH

[factoriostuff]

I completely missed the new nuclear fuel, crafted from rocket fuel and one of the rare uranium isotope.

As you can see, the maximum speed is still 298.1 km/h (115% to the normal max speed of 259.2 km/h). But the acceleration rate of 250% is even more insane than it already was with regular rocket fuel.

Accelerating one engine with no wagons (like above) to maximum speed takes literally three seconds! That’s ridiculous! Nuclear fuel cells only stack to one, however. So the total possible run time is lower than the other end-game fuel types.

You can calculate the maximum run time in seconds by dividing the fuel value by the energy consumption of the train. Then multiply by the stack size to see how long a whole stack will last.

As you can see, a full stack of rocket fuel will last longer than a single nuclear fuel. But I don’t expect most trains to run for more than roughly 6000 seconds (remember: each train has three fuel slots) without a pitstop, so if you want the extra acceleration and can afford it, nuclear fuel is a great option for you!

I will probably use it for my “personal” train, that I carry to get around the map quickly. Not as general train fuel, though. I didn’t even get around to changing all my fuel stations from coal to rocket fuel yet! Although my nuclear processing is running so smoothly nowadays, I could easily afford the U-235.