Factorio News

Read this post on our website.

Hello,
We had a lovely surprise waiting us this Monday, one of our fans had sent us a delicious cake:



It didn't last very long...



Thank you very much Conn! It certainly helped with the bug fixing push this week.


This last week we have made a big push to fix as many remaining bugs as we can, and we are down to only 36 reports on the forum. Since these remaining bugs aren't really hard crashes, save corruptions, or desyncs, we are looking to consider 0.17.64 (releasing today) as our 'Stable candidate'.

What this means is that, if all goes well over the weekend and nothing too serious comes up, we will mark it as the 0.17 stable next week. We will continue to fix bugs and issues after the stable, and we will also start our work on the features of the 'next stable', so the GUI improvements and all the rest we have mentioned in the past.

In the next few weeks a lot of the team is going to be on vacation, so things won't get up and running with the new feature work for a while. This experimental period has been quite a long one, we had a lot of new things to fix and debug, and a lot of technical debt from the year of development. There won't be another release quite so large, we only have a few major things left to cross off the list before we can call Factorio finished:

• All new GUI's implemented.
• New Campaign and mini-tutorials.
• Completed high-res graphics.
• Maybe some small surprises along the way.

By no means are any of these easy, but each day brings us closer to concluding this chapter of Factorio history.


Just in time for the stable version, the prototype documentation for mods has received a major overhaul. The backend has been converted to use semantic mediawiki to store the prototype documentation data in a machine readable format.

Using the new ability to query the stored data, prototype pages now display all their base classes at the top for easy navigation. Furthermore, each prototype page now provides a compact overview of not only its own properties and their types, but also the properties it inherits from other prototypes. The documentation also boasts a new overview page that lists all 199 prototypes and their 1943 fields.

As always, let us know what you think on our forum.

• Inventory filters tooltip now shows they are inventory filters to avoid confusion. more
  
• The quickbar tooltip now shows what shortcut to use in order to clear it.
  
• Quickbar filters can now be set from the ghost cursor.
  
• In Introduction, changed some places Compilatron stands at to be less in the way. (https://forums.factorio.com/74138, https://forums.factorio.com/74018)
  

• Fixed some combination of graphics options could cause infinite loop at 95% of sprite loading in the demo. more
  
• Fixed assigning empty table to sprite definition would not cause loading error but crash in-game instead. more
  
• Fixed a desync related to accumulators in multiple networks. more
  
• Fixed transitions on tiles where landfill, grass and water meet. more
  
• Fixed logistic network technology description did not mention buffer chests. more
  
• Fixed "use-version-filter-in-browse-games-gui" config option didn't work. more
  
• Fixed possible crash in introduction scenario if player builds turrets too far to either side. (https://forums.factorio.com/74133, https://forums.factorio.com/74060)
  
• Fixed electric coverage visualization was not shown when hovering mouse over invisible widgets. more
  
• Fixed a crash when using a path_resolution_modifier of 8. more
  
• Fixed introduction leftover invisible entity after cutscene. more
  
• Fixed introduction bug where sometimes Compilatron wouldn't build things properly. more
  
• Fixed "toggle filter" control setting would not work if bound to modifier key and left or right click. more
  
• Fixed introduction bug where poles could still connect to the generator after it was destroyed. more
  
• Fixed introduction possible crash when removing power consumers. more
  
• Fixed missing laser-beam entity from demo. more
  
• Fixed issue with walls in hidden smelter section in introduction. more
  
• Fixed that biters could form too many attack groups when aggroed by artillery. more
  
• Fixed that clicking and dragging electric poles in multiplayer latency didn't work correctly.
  
• Fixed that fast-replacing assembling machines with fixed recipes didn't work correctly. more
  
• Fixed a crash when deleting surfaces during the same tick as auto-save running. more
  
• Moved integration patches of crash site entities to decals render layer. more
  
• Fixed that inserters would pick up from the left lane of a loader even when positioned closer to the right side.
  

• Added LuaEntity::request_from_buffers read/write.
  

You can get experimental releases by selecting the 'experimental' beta branch under Factorio's properties in Steam.

Read this post on our website.

Warning this Friday facts is about the Introduction scenario, not about anything that will be in Freeplay Factorio. You may want to read previous FFFs (FFF-257, FFF-284) about the Introduction.

TLDR: the Stable candidate of the Introduction scenario is now in Experimental please play it and send me your screenshots. Feedback especially on the “freeform endgame” would be greatly appreciated. We have also released a Experimental version of the Demo, be sure to send this link to your friends ASAP

SPOILER WARNING: If you have not yet played the Introduction Scenario, go play it before you read this.


The tutorial components of the Introduction are working very well now. There is still more polish to do, but I feel confident it is ready for new players of all kinds.


The rest of this article will discuss the Introduction, but from the point of view of a player who has not payed for the game yet. Once 0.17 Stable comes out, the Free Demo will be replaced with just the Introduction Scenario.

The old demo has a very limited amount of content, and only about 2 hours of playtime. The content it does present is very dated, and hardly could be called representative of contemporary Freeplay Factorio, it did not even include Research!

We had some design constraints for the new demo, some of which were:

• The player can fail during the demo
• Difficulty is respectful, Fake danger is disrespectful

Whatever happened, we hoped that the new demo would demonstrate a wider range of Factorios concepts, including a small taste of deathworld difficulty. I would say we were too successful.

We decided to do this with a final quest where the player has to quickly complete a long research while the biter attacks increase in strength. The player needs to be completely attentive, otherwise their defense will fall over.



An invisible, dynamic difficulty curve meant that everyone was challenged to the breaking point, veterans and new players alike. See FFF-284. For the goal of being a challenge, I would say it was working well.

People loved it or hated it. I received many elated emails saying how intense the final battle was and how sweet the victory felt. I also received pseudo-hatemail about 1,000 hour players rage quitting.

The reason a lot of vets were failing was because they were pretending to be new players. This generally meant playing as a vet (using shortcut keys, and high APM, heavy pollution) but placing few turrets, generally in sub-optimal locations, and being lazy with ammunition delivery.

Newer players felt pressured and were generally able to pull off a close victory. Many said they were overrun at the end, but still were victorious, giving an interesting moment to leave the game and start freeplay with a high heartrate.

Feedback was far more positive than negative, but from the negative feedback there were two recurring themes.

• The most common negative feedback was that such intense combat is not representative of Factorio.
• The second most common feedback was that the player did not expect such a difficulty in a 'tutorial' level.

This removes the chance that the player can lose, but introduces new problems with the design. It removes ammunition as a production pressure, and makes Turret placement irrelevant.

This sounds like it could work and for the second problem listed above, it does. The player has more time to react. However this means that only new players experience the challenge, as they most likely have built the fewest Labs, and take the longest to finish the quest. Vets will finish before the attacks built up to any meaningful level. Just making it easier for the players who are able to overcome the challenge the most seems odd.


In order to have a decent number of biters so the production challenge is not lost, the waves need to be very large. For the player to have enough notice between waves, there is a chance they will be able to finish the research before the first one comes. Also the most common failure state was when a Turret with 200 rounds is destroyed, meaning the player cannot craft enough new ammo to keep up with the waves. This happens more often with bigger, less frequent waves.

All three of these solutions have one thing in common: we would need to implement them in a way that removed the challenge almost completely. So I suggested an alternative solution.


Now there is no timed research and defence quest at the end of the Introduction. Instead the player is told to destroy Biter spawners to reduce the attack frequency, and then they are left to deal with Freeplay style attacks. The structure of the final quest is similar to Freeplay itself "Research a technology at the bottom of the tech tree". The player now needs to automate Logistic Science packs to win the Introduction.



If the player cannot survive here, they will not survive a Freeplay game, but realistically the biter challenge in Default settings Freeplay is not particularly worrisome.


Having a great Demo is important to us. We don’t want someone to pay for the game, just to see if they like it. It is also fits well with our no sales policy. We already offer an extended refund period to players who buy on our website, if they gave the game a red-hot go but discovered it was not for them.

Demos are in general a super cool thing from the 90’s that most people here wish still existed.

So we will increase the amount of content in the demo. You can continue playing at the end of the Introduction, and I suspect there is about 10 hours of stuff to do. We are also adding more recipes and technologies to the Demo.

The new list of what is available:



A complete and unique demo techtree that uses Automation and Logistics science packs, Mining Productivity infinite tech, Shooting speed infinite tech, Grenades, Steel, Piercing rounds, Car, Medium power poles, Heavy armor, Submachine gun, Assembling machine 2, Turrets, Lamps, Long handed inserters, Gates, Walls, and more to discover.



The size of the final play area is also much larger.

Click to view full size

We have released the changes today, and also released an experimental version of the demo. Please let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions in the usual places.

• Combat robotics 2 technology now require Laser. more
  

• Fixed fluid mixing checks for some setups when setting an assembler recipe. more
  
• Fixed flying notifications showing player's inventory updates were visible to all forces. more
  
• Fixed error during PNG decompression would cause crash on Linux. more
  
• Fixed that save files could become very large. more
  
• Fixed that cloning furnaces wouldn't preserve the crafting progress. more
  
• Fixed inserters being slower and rotationally asymmetrical after the previous version.
  
• Fixed that wandering units could be activated for longer than necessary. more
  
• Fixed a crash when trying to check if 'game' is equal to anything using the Lua API. more
  
• Added a check for overlapping crafter fluidboxes to detect wrong mod configuration. more
  
• Fixed desync related to inserter ghosts and belts. more
  
• Fixed setting health of item stack of item-with-entity-data to 1 would do nothing. more
  
• Fixed a desync with the map editor resource editor. more
  
• Fixed a desync with the map editor decorative editor. more
  
• Prevented some rare cases of fluid mixing tied to underground connections. more
  
• Fixed placing entities that consume type of energy other than electric would still show electric coverage visualization. more
  

• Added InserterPrototype::draw_inserter_arrow.
  

• Added LuaGuiElement::choose-elem-button elem_types "decorative", "item-group", "achievement", "equipment", and "technology".
  

You can get experimental releases by selecting the 'experimental' beta branch under Factorio's properties in Steam.

• Basic oil processing produces only Petroleum gas, for more streamlined oil setup in the beginning.
  
• Basic oil processing keeps some of the refinery input/output slots unused, so it is more clear which ones will be used by Advanced oil processing.
  
• Chemical science pack requires Sulfur instead of Solid fuel.
  
• Flamethrower ammo requires crude oil instead of heavy and Light oil.
  
• Rocket fuel requires light oil.
  
• Laser Turrets, Lubricant, and Worker robots technologies need Chemical science pack.
  
• Deathworld marathon preset was made a little bit easier.
  

• Fixed a crash when trying to show invalid thumbnails for mods. more
  
• Fixed that up/down keyboard navigation of the load/save game GUIs and manage mods GUI didn't work in some cases. more
  
• Fixed that cloning belts with items didn't preserve the item positions correctly. more
  
• Fixed a script error in train stations mini-tutorial. more
  
• Fixed a script error in the NPE. more
  
• Fixed car turret shadow would rotate in opposite direction to the turret. more
  
• Fixed that changing sound settings didn't persist through game restart. more
  
• Fixed that the migrated-content GUI wouldn't show in some cases. more
  
• Fixed that right-click-and-drag didn't work in the blueprint GUI to remove things. more
  
• Fixed that unit groups would use paths going through cliffs. more
  
• Fixed some cases of entity rotation with blocked underground pipes. more
  
• Fixed inserters sometimes getting stuck when picking up from a non-backed-up underground belt. more
  

• Added CraftingMachinePrototype::default_recipe_tint.
  

• Added LuaEntityPrototype::supports_direction read.
  
• Fixed that LuaGuiElement::force_auto_center() didn't work. more
  
• Added LuaGameScript::get_filtered_entity_prototypes(), get_filtered_item_prototypes(), get_filtered_equipment_prototypes(), get_filtered_mod_setting_prototypes(), and get_filtered_achievement_prototypes().
  
• Added workaround for a driver crash when calling D3D11CreateDeviceAndSwapChain. more
  

You can get experimental releases by selecting the 'experimental' beta branch under Factorio's properties in Steam.