Factorio News

• Reworked all technology icons, and provided higher resolutions used by high GUI scale.
  
• Changed item icons for armors, to match the progression and tech icons better.
  

• Armor stages on the player character show as 1st with Light armor, and as 2nd with Modular armor.
  

• Roboport normal resolution graphics have been updated to be a downscale from the high resolution graphics. more
  
• Fixed cut-tool showing distinct selection color when holding shift. more
  
• Fixed armor rich text tags not using the correct icon. more
  
• Fixed pumpjack showing item drop indication arrows. more
  
• Fixed being unable to confirm the migrated content window if there was a game GUI open behind it. more
  
• Fixed a bad Lua event when invalidating the owning players controller during the gui closed event. more
  
• Fixed scaling of icons on buttons with more than 200% UI scale.
  
• Fixed issue where ghosts overlapping with non-ghost entity in cloned area is not cloned. (fixes https://forums.factorio.com/97861)
  
• Fixed using upgrade planner without explicit filters on entities marked for upgrade would not upgrade the existing upgrade orders.
  
• Fixed a crash with mods and chunk generation in some cases. more
  
• Fixed the wrong technology level shown on the icon in the currently selected technology.
  
• Fixed the missing notification (i) icon on the recipe group button, when there are more groups, so the tabs are shown as buttons instead.
  
• Fixed a crash when trying to undo actions done on a surface that was deleted in the meantime. more
  
• Fixed that train would sometimes NO_PATH during repath while in intersection where the path passes through a block that is already occupied by that train. more
  
• Fixed a crash when the link_id of a linked container is changed while a non-admin has the GUI open. more
  

• Added "add" and "remove" modes to the Infinity pipe and Heat interface.
  

• Removed the "tile-build" SoundPath type. It has been replaced with "tile-build-small", "tile-build-medium", "tile-build-large", allowing mods to specify which size they want to refer to.
  
• Added LuaEntityPrototype::related_underground_belt read.
  
• Added "add" and "remove" modes to `InfinityPipeFilter` and `HeatSetting.`
  

• Fixed various issues related to how chat tags are open. more
  
• Fixed that replays would break after winning the game. more
  
• Fixed that listbox would loose focus when clicking on other widgets that can't be focused anyway.
  
• Fixed GUI crash when furnaces would select recipes that have more products than it's output inventory size. more
  
• Fixed that fluids could be purged from the whole fluid system in certain cases. more
  
• Fixed a crash when loading save files in some cases. more
  
• Fixed locale related to deconstruction planner tile selection mode. more
  
• Fixed advanced rail signal tutorial losing items held in the cursor. more
  
• Fixed Alt+F4 would close the game on Windows even when other modifier keys were pressed. more
  
• Fixed that NAT-punching didn't work correctly. more
  
• Fixed that some infinite crafting recipes didn't work as intermediates. more
  
• Fixed color blending with a fully transparent color would produce slightly darker original color. more
  
• Fixed that clicking gps tags in chat would also trigger chart drag causing chart to be not centered on gps tag. more
  
• Fixed market gui would show wrong numbers when an offer has the same item multiple times. more
  
• Fixed crash when an entity marked for an upgrade is selected for another upgrade in multiplayer in some cases. more
  
• Fixed turret range could sometimes render long line to the top left corner of game window.
  

• Added defines.prototypes which contains all prototype type names (eg: defines.prototypes.entity = { container, furnace, assembling-machine, ... })
  

• Blueprints and copy paste of entities with upgrade order are created based on the upgrade order instead of the current entity. more
  
• Enabled upgrading entities marked for upgrade, in which case, the upgrade target is used as the source entity for the upgrade planner filters.
  
• The announcement of player death now contains GPS tag with the location.
  

• Increased the tank braking power from 400kw to 800kw. Before this change, the tank acceleration (600kw) was actually even greater than the braking force.
  

• Fixed incorrect color lookup table interpolation for ambient light around noon.
  
• Fixed that built electric pole from map view was also opened with the same click with alternative key binding. more
  
• Fixed that laser and fluid turret bonus, wasn't shown properly in the toooltip. This bonus is not used in vanilla which uses ammo category bonus. more
  
• Fixed that part of the flamethrower turret and flamethrower ammo turret description, which describes the properties of the flame bound to it stargets didn't show the bonus damage from upgrades. more
  
• Fixed that mod install could cause removal of blueprint entities if it didn't remove the entity, but just made it not acceptable to be used in blueprint. more
  
• Fixed that the confirm load game dialog with 2 green arrow buttons had tooltips with (E) to confirm, while the E to confirm doesn't work here as it would be ambiguous. more
  
• Fixed crash related to using smart ghost belt building with a mod that specifies belt without related underground belt. more
  
• Fixed that renaming Spidertron didn't trigger on_entity_renamed. more
  
• Fixed that disabling side menu guis through script would sometimes leave an empty frame. more
  
• Fixed that crafting machines wouldn't wake up when the speed effect was changed in some situations. more
  
• Fixed that focus-search didn't in some GUIs work while in the map editor. more
  
• Fixed that chat icon selector didn't remember the last opened tab when used outside the game.
  
• Fixed that pressing Escape with the chat icon selector opened in a dialog outside the game closed the whole dialog instead of closing just the selector window.
  
• Fixed that pressing Control + F to search in the chat icon selector that is opened on top of a non-game window that already had search activated the bottom window search.
  
• Fixed that enabled train stops would cause schedule records for trains on different surfaces to be rendered as available. more
  
• Fixed rare crash when using Map editor -> Convert save. more
  
• Fixed electric pole connection consistency issue related to fast replace of modded entities. more
  
• Fixed that building by moving ignored the position where the player built the last entity. more
  
• Fixed a crash that could happen when viewing the tooltip for certain types of ammo. more
  
• Fixed that ammo tooltips sometimes wouldn't show damage info. more
  

• Added mod dependency modifier "~", which marks the mod as required, but doesn't affect mod loading order, so these kind of dependencies can be circular.
  
• Prototype/EntityWithHealth::healing_per_tick is now also used by trees, so their automatic healing is no longer hardcoded. more
  
• Loaders are now able to take or insert more than 1 item per transport line per tick. more
  

• Tweaked search in the install mods GUI, so the search order prioritizes the results more naturally.
  
• Unified the search button in the mod settings GUI.
  
• Improved some descriptions in Map Generator GUI. more
  

If there was ever a game that needed mods, it'd be Factorio. Factorio mods, much like user-generated content for games like Kerbal Space Program, allow the players to fill in the small gaps and quality of life changes on behalf of the dev team, so that they can concentrate on the bigger picture.

It's not ideal, but it works, and communities like these are great at coming up with fixes and ideas the rest of the dedicated playerbase can get behind. Factorio is another early access darling as well - first appearing on the scene in 2016. The players have had half a decade now to figure out what they want, and what's needed to elevate the economic management sim to the next level.

We've compiled a short list of excellent Factorio mods that we think might be of interest to veteran or even returning players. We've cherry picked some enhancement mods, some helper mods, and a couple of overhauls that provide a new fresh experience. If you haven't had any experience with modding Factorio before, we've got a help section at the bottom of the article. Enjoy!

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In Stanisław Lem's classic sci-fi short story collection, The Cyberiad, there is a section called The Seven Sallies of Trurl and Klapaucius, two hyper-advanced robots who are so advanced they can conjure anything from technology. One of my favorite stories involves Trurl searching for a civilisation that has achieved the highest possible level of development (HPLD). To find such a civilisation, it decides it needs to find a 'wonder' or something that exists outside of rational explanation. In the end Trurl finds a cube-shaped star being orbited by a cube-shaped planet with the letters "HPLD" carved into it.

The planet's inhabitants are all laying around doing nothing. Trurl wants to know why, so it builds a computer to simulate the entire universe, and after millions of attempts it gets an answer: they simply have nothing left to achieve.

When I play city-building games, and especially the recent variety of factory simulators like Factorio, Satisfactory, and Dyson Sphere Program, I often think of Trurl's simulation. Each game has its own sort of end goal representing the highest possible level of development - a rocket, a space elevator, a Dyson sphere - but they all leave me feeling a little uneasy about their laser focus on efficiency above all else.

Read the rest of the story...

RELATED LINKS:

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