Auto Mass Fab Feedback/Discussion

Can mass fabs just be a global state thing that converts overflowed energy into mass? Each mass fab gives X "fab power" to convert a total of Y overflowed energy into Z mass. Then it is maximum simplicity both gameplay and sim wise.

@thomashiatt said in Tuning the new Auto-fabber behavior:

Can mass fabs just be a global state thing that converts overflowed energy into mass? Each mass fab gives X "fab power" to convert a total of Y overflowed energy into Z mass. Then it is maximum simplicity both gameplay and sim wise.

Then every time you overcharge, your mass fabs would stop running for at least 1 tick. Maybe that's not important.

We would also have to look into how that affects adjacency bonuses. Maybe fix it so that all buildings with mass fab adjacency have the adjacency bonus turn on and off. (Otherwise it would interfere with using mass fab adjacency for a nuke launcher)

I do like the idea of keeping things simple for the players.

Curious about making this an in game option. I use a mod that turns them off and you can tune it, I always turn it pretty low like 50% e

Curious about making this an in game option.

We can not have UI options for code that runs in the sim. It is a massive desync bomb waiting to happen.

bump

We can use this topic to discuss the feature. It is fully functional on the main branch. One issue that we noticed is that there is no clear indication as to how many fabricators are turned on / off, we're looking into that.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Introducing and keeping eco manager built-in into FAF client is a bad thing. I had plenty of situations there his behaviour lead me to losing mass income for no reasons. F.e:

  1. assisting air factory with hives (no energy stalling with or without eco manager, but because of energy spikes it disables massfabs)
  2. building anything with hives with negative energy income, but exact number of energy stored to finish building before stalling.

I often trying to use 100% of energy (including teamates energy overflow) without stalling, this system forces me to play with overflow or without massfabs. I do not think it's necessarily must be built-in in client, especially at the cost of freedom of choice.

Before introducing this mod to client I played a lot with friends who have eco manager as some form of UI mod, both of us had no problem. No perfomance effects were noticed while playing.

Situation can be bearable if disabling fabs will be done only at 10-25% energy storages, not more. Best solution is to remove this entirely.

Would it be possible to give not running fabs the paused icon? That way it's a little more obvious when you don't have sufficient power.

We're looking into that, we tried the:

  • stun icon, but that also shows for enemies (and through the fog)
  • objective icons, but that also shows for enemies (and through the fog)
  • decals

We can use the pause icon, but that is also used when you manually pause the entire behavior (and shut down the fabricator).

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Is it possible to add a new icon or do you have to use an existing one?

Mass extractors also have the same icon for being paused and disabled, which can sometimes cause extreme confusion on the rare occasion you intentionally or accidentally turn them off.

Would it be possible to use the pause icon with a different color for auto-pause?

I'm not sure yet - there's some engine magic involved there πŸ™‚ .

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

@jip work progress is a good idea anyway

β€œBe a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
β€” Steve Jobs.
My UI Mods

Is there an option to just disable this auto behaviour? I still find that it doesn't re-enable (all) my fabs. Only when I take like 90% of my bp and pause it and the E-surplus goes from +2k to +50k apparently wakes up all the fabs.

As Jip has stated already, no, this cannot be made as a toggleable option.

Deribus is right.

For all those reading this, we're working on a UI that helps you identify what the current status quo is of the mass fabricators. See also:

We'll also introduce a threshold that no fabricators are turned off when you have more than 50K of energy in storage, while they can be turned on again. This means that if you have 15+ energy storages you effectively 'disable' the behavior.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

A yellow pause button could work

Never Fear, A Geek is Here!

As said above i just noticed integrated fab behaviour is so stupid as it is now...
https://forms.gle/w1JcLTs4Pt1pL8d56
Lets do a quick poll about it and decide what to do after it.

I find this post slightly frustrating.

Lets do a quick poll about it and decide what to do after it.

The poll is meaningless - depending on who you share it with the poll can have a completely different outcome. I will refuse to listen to the outcome - we've been open for feedback, and to some extent even searching for feedback since the very start. See the changelogs, for example:

e08c7eae-52f7-4a25-b03e-940e04a514e9-image.png

The only topic that provided some kind of feedback is this one:

Which, after 20 days - is not a lot of feedback. Other feedback came in through voice chats (like the developers session organized by BlackYps) or by people talking to us directly. All of the feedback that we've been given can be summarized in one paragraph:

  • Can you make it tune the behavior using game options -> no, that can cause desyncs.
  • Can you change the parameters -> yes, but you ought to give us a good idea why you think the other parameters you suggest are better. And generally we get zero rationale beyond that it fits their playstyle

Meanwhile we did identify some issues, such as people being unable to see the current state of their fabricators. We're working on that and the pull request is almost finalized:

That should make the situation a lot less frustrating as you can identify that the majority of your fabricators are turned off (or on) at any given moment.

We're also tuning the parameters slightly to allow people to disable the behavior if they have sufficient energy storage. As an example, regardless of the ratio of your storage - as long as you have more than 40K (9+ energy storages) then your fabricators will not turn off and remain turned on. This guarantees that Overcharge remains fully functional, and gives sufficient room for the fabricators to turn themselves off when you're in dire need of energy.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

This thread should be closed and any feedback should go in the relevant thread.

@jip said in I couldnt help but notice all that movements with mass fabs....:

I find this post slightly frustrating.

You are way too nice to even have wasted this much time writing such a well-structured post when this person clearly didn't spend more than five seconds on it.

@deletethis I did spend more than 5 seconds creating poll. 😜
But on a serious note automanaging fabs was meant to make this part of a game done by ai and not human hands. So as of now it is me manually managing fabs that decide to turn off when my e storage is almost full and i am once again manually managing fabs. Thats why i came to WHINE on forums. All you have to do is take part in a poll or just wait results of a poll. Because you would actually know what people think about autofabs.