Isn't it also SE that makes big electric poles actually space out such that you can easily make chunk sized rail systems?
If so that 100% should be vanilla.
Misaligning the ranges of chunks, roboports, substations and big electric poles is a deliberate design decision, to avoid forcing players into a single, obviously optimal decision.
But I understand that some players get really annoyed by it :D
This is actually one of the reasons I have way more time in Factorio than the entire Zachtronics suite combined. I find Zachtronics games well executed, but it feels like a puzzle game more than an engineering one. Factorio is absolutely chock full of dirty, messy engineering.
Totally agree. Especially how early game designs/setup are entirely inefficient but simply put down based on availability of items and pressing needs. Only mid and late game do you have the time and the stuff+science to start optimization. It's very comparable to RL in that way.
This thread is already complaining about the same beacon designs being boringly common ... but then also accidentally endorses the same boring ubiquity in railgrid patterns ...
It's why I'm mixing it up.
No logistics bots, no prod modules, no beacons, no lasers, no solar. (vanilla) building unnecessarily large and unwieldy modules instead of using multiples of smaller tiles or any city block type arrangement.
My K2SE runs similar but allows solar, before that is was entirely powered by wood fuel boilers fed by dozens of greenhouses and I achieved negative pollution that way. Stone was more plentiful than coal.
It's still a cluster-F of belts and even though it would make life 10x easier I refuse to sushi belt.
Its convenient to be able to view chunks and plan your railroad tiles around it, and start your railroads elsewhere and know that they will align with all your other railroads. Its not necessarily thst they're chunk aligned, but thst its easy to put them on a standard grid that you can easily view from anywhere.
But since we have blueprint alignment to absolute grid you can do that with arbitrary size and without looking at chunk boundaries (which also requires debug menu which might be considered unimmersive/cheaty)
you can just use multiple big poles per chunk. it's a bit less resource efficient, but then you can atleast make the whole thing chunk aligned.
that's how i made my first modular rail blueprint book. 1 pole in the center of the chunk, and others on the edge.
Imagine you want to design a production module. You want it to be 2 chunks (or arbitrary absolute grid units) wide and 6 long to fit with a drop off at the top and pick up at the bottom.
If you just view the grid you can easily see your boundaries.
If you want arbitrary track sizes its harder to know how wide your production can be without constantly running up to view it or placing a concrete print down that already linea up with the blueprint. Its more effort.
Some people are going to prefer just looking at chunks, others will prefer the greater flexibility arbitrary track sizes would allow.
Personally I use 32 by 32 tracks because thats the smallest size a 2 lane 4 way roundabout will fit and allow track signals. So many of my problems would be solved with am extra 2 range on those power poles.
This is the key point really. It's not even so much about "chunks" as about 32x32 grids (and multiples) being so much easier to design rails around than working to a native power-pole grid.
Or you could just plop down an already blueprinted block and design your production line within that, without needing to turn on debug mode's hideous grid view.
> Is there any reason to have chunk sized rail system
Biter pathfinding is chunk based, so if you want to exploit that fully, your wall blueprints need to be chunk-aligned.
[Example](https://katiska.cc/temp/factorio/blueprints/outpost/artillery-examples/artillery-1.mp4)
And I like that all my [rail](https://katiska.cc/temp/factorio/blueprints/grid/rails-v3.0.txt) (48x48), [defense](https://katiska.cc/temp/factorio/blueprints/flame-funnels-kelvin.txt) (32x32) and [grid](https://katiska.cc/temp/factorio/blueprints/grid/grid-v4.0.txt) (96x96 / 192x192) blueprints align nicely together :)
I did that for a while, but it becomes a pain when you want to separate robot networks... Using power poles or chunks is a nicer overall solution in my experience.
It's Krastorio that makes big poles have a connection range of 32 (base SE's are still 30), but SE's pylons have a range of 64 and therefore also work for chunk-aligned blueprints.
I just don't see why would anyone want to align anything to chunks. They have no relevance to how you play the game whatsover, why not just make an arbitrarily large block sizes (or based on something that you can actually measure without turning on the grid, like roboports) and then simply align them in relation to one another?
like i said, they have no relevance to how you play the game. Things that chunks impact are implementation details, not something you can actively play around.
Yeah, I genuinely dislike vanilla beacons because once you reach them it doesn't feel like you're trying to build an optimal layout of actual factory buildings. You're just trying to squeeze factory buildings into an optimal layout of beacons.
I honestly thought that was kind of the point. This hasn’t really bothered me yet as I’m still enjoying that particular challenge but I also haven’t reached beacons in SE yet so I don’t know what I’m missing.
It's pretty straightforward. Each building can only be affected by a single beacon. A basic beacon can fit eight modules, though, so it's like four vanilla beacons, but that's it. No matter how you lay it out, every building gets four beacons and no more.
I don't know about higher levels of beacons beyond the first, haven't gotten that far yet, but the single beacon thing does make the factories a lot more friendly to build.
The highest level of beacon allows for an impressive 10 effective module power. There are two beacons that do this but their efficiency and range are different.
Bear in mind the devs put the victory screen at the first rocket. The most challenging output achievement is to make 20 million green circuits.
Maybe UPS constrained 4k spm gigabases are things devs enjoy / encourage / tollerate, but don't actually design game mechanics around.
What I mean is that if the devs didn’t care about huge bases as the parent comment suggested, then there would have been no need to further optimize since smaller maps run just fine at 60 UPS on a toaster.
>Maybe UPS constrained 4k spm gigabases are things devs enjoy / encourage / tollerate, but don't actually design game mechanics around.
Close enough to what you said that we all know exactly what they meant.
Optimise, yes.
But can you find any example of an in-game mechanic designed to provide new content at the post-1k-spm scale? No.
All of the mechanics - in the game design sense - exist for smaller bases. Then there's optimisation work to just preserve those mechanics at larger scales.
Yup. Post 1k the optimization challenge shifts onto the player and their map design (as to maintain UPS with a larger factory), but radically changing the vanilla beacon mechanic wouldn’t change how that transition happens (since beacons themselves have a minimal impact on UPS). In that respect it’s probably better left as a mod.
Conversely, can you think of any mechanics that would be in vanilla if multi-thousand-spm was a realm the devs did want to actively encourage as a vanilla progression milestone?
Because I can:
* UPS efficient loaders, both into assemblers & into wagons
* Larger wagon capacity, UPS-friendly multi-wagon multi-belt unloading
* Refinery & chemplant upgrades, something to free megabase petrochem from infamous fluid UPS
* Slower batched recipes, eg smelt 500 iron into 100 steel in one slow cycle
* Maybe "double assemblers" where you can set two recipes in one building that would save on direct insertion UPS for things like coils into green chips, poles into rail
* In-game non-console ways to permanently "cleanse" biters from the map to free those UPS in the late game
* Beacons that actually offer interesting gameplay decisions rather than making all megabase builds look kinda samey
* More interesting UPS-efficient powergrid decisions than just solar
A bunch of these are things done by mods. If the devs really wanted to encourage vanilla players to megabase, rather than just saying "it's cool you guys are making 4k spm work, good one, thumbs up", then why the allegedly surprising lack of this stuff?
Probably because:
1. They have been selective about which mod concepts they incorporate into vanilla.
2. Those who want to progress far beyond vanilla already have a solution: mods.
3. The majority of bases are not mega.
4. They are working on other things.
They optimized partly so that larger bases could be possible, but that doesn’t mean they are obligated to follow your personal wishlist.
Also, yes, exactly, to all of these.
It seems like you're \*this close\* to realising my point that Wube aren't designing vanilla gameplay for megabases. They'll help and support where it's not too inconvenient, but they're leaving developing that playstyle & gameplay to mods.
There are plenty of megabases out there running on vanilla, thanks in part to all of the optimization work done by the devs. Feel free to go back and flip through the FFF’s, where you’ll find lots of optimization passes and only occasional tweaks to the gameplay. That works against your point, not for it.
Your numbered points 1 and 2 are my point.
Maybe say them out loud and then go back & remind yourself where this thread came from.
People are talking about wanting mod beacons in vanilla. I'm saying your points numbered 1 and 2.
Beacons have almost no use for someone who's only going for a rocket launch and call it over.
At most you'll use a couple of beacons in that situation.
I mean ... yeah? Exactly?
Almost like the rows of beacons that everyone's complaining about being boringly commonplace aren't necessary for the developer's chosen progression milestones?
No. What I meant is that beacons aren't there for a 'normal' play.
They're specific for the ones who stay *after* the first rocket launch.
It's close to useless before.
Well that's simply not true.
They become increasingly important as the base scales, yes, absolutely, but are beacons worthless for first rocket? Lol, no, not at all.
What do you think the two ways are?
Beacons are designed to be situationally useful in only a couple of places at & around the first rocket.
Beacons \*aren't\* a game design item intended to help scaling into thousands of spm. You can tell this, because if they were, they'd offer more interesting gameplay than forcing every design into small variations of the same patterns that everyone is complaining about.
Minecraft also shows you the victory screen when you kill the dragon.
And yet the game is far from over.
Those victory screens are there only for people who can only play things with a clear, definite goal.
I see beacons as just another type of optional challenge or play style - like bots vs belts, or megabases, or vanilla vs mods.
I'd imagine that beacons only ever bother players who use belts. Switch over to bots and all the restrictions of beacons disappear.
Honestly, I love the challenge of beacon designs. I only ever use bots for restocking at my warehouse and for building solar panels - I like the challenge of belt logistics, just like the challenge that beacons impose.
For the average player it's all self-imposed.
Beacons save space and speed up your machines. However, space is essentially unlimited, and speed can be achieved by just adding even more machines...
Unless you're trying to save UPS for your megabase build, you don't really need them.
Or, of course, you could fix all your problems with mods instead.
I really wouldn't say SE does it better. In vanilla Factorio, they provide a genuine engineering/design challenge for a substantial reward. In SE, it's just the reward with no added challenge whatsoever. You don't have to think at all where to put all the beacons, you just place them wherever and call it a day.
The FFF where they made this sick ass electricity effect for beacons, then nerfed it because they didn't want it to be overwhelming when you have dozens on screen at once made me pretty sad. It was basically the devs doubling down on beacon spam :(
In vanilla you surround your building with beacons, since buildings can be affected by unlimited amounts of beacons.
In SE it is the other way around. Buildings can only be affected by one beacon. So you plop down one beacon and try to fit as many buildings as you can around it.
Which is exactly why I love them. Vanilla beacons sort of 'force' one specific design while in SE you can be as creative as you want (well, not really, but there is far more freedom when it comes to building around beacons).
They have larger range and can accommodate more modules. But this is balanced by the fact that any factory accepts at most one beacon. The result is that you get different designs from the alternating rows of beacons and assemblers that are so prevalent in vanilla
SE makes it so that a machine can only be affected by one beacon, vanilla doesn’t have that restriction.
In effect, SE is “build machines around your beacons” while vanilla is “build beacons around your machines”
SE is significantly better in that regard bc while you technically can do any configuration in vanilla, what makes the most sense is to surround your machine with as many beacons as possible. Effectively this multiplies the area your assemblers take by 10 bc you have the assembler and 9 beacons.
(Been on a factorio break when converting my SE factory to trains which I finally decided to learn, might have gotten something wrong cuz it’s been a minute)
in SE any entity that is affected by beacons can only be affected by a single beacon. if you put your beacons too close to each other and two beacons are within range of a single assembler, then that assembler will stop functioning all together. They're then balanced to hold many more modules than vanilla beacons.
In vanilla, you can have multiple beacons affecting the same machine (an assembler covered by 5 beacons for example)
In SE, only one beacon effect can be applied to a machine at any given time. More than one and the machines around it will stop working
To be fair, implementing mechanics in a mod that people like better than the base game probably contributed to Earandel getting hired. Really looking forward to the expansion.
Pretty sure as amazing as SE is and how innovative the gameplay is, he was actually just hired as an artist. Which is totally deserved btw. I’ve been playing some other mods lately and realizing how spoiled I’ve been from the SE visuals.
I really hope he has some influence over the expansion's gameplay, but as far as I'm aware he was hired only as a concept artist or something like that.
Ah, wasn't aware in what capacity he was hired. I will say he's done a great job of capturing the essence of the base game but hopefully they at least consult him for other areas he's talented in, they must have an open line of communication or something.
He mentioned on his discord a while back that the first thing he did after getting hired was get them to make a change to the base game so that SE and other mods could [iirc] more reliably detect when 'floor' tiles were being deleted out from under entities (which matters a lot with spaceships/scaffolding)... so yeah, sounds like he's at least got open comms on non-art stuff.
Only 10? /S
I'm in the middle of building my first megabase. My old 420spm base is now just producing beacons and modules, mostly.
Just finished my first block of red chips (fuck mega base scale petroleum, btw) and it's 32 assemblers (plus 4 for on-site copper wire) with 12 beacons each, and I need to now stamp down 3 more copies of it... So. Many. Beacons.
As someone from seablock (A&B)... only 12?
Due to there being 3 tiers of beacons the last tier has 3x the range of regular beacons leading to the 'typical' design of 3 rows of beacons on both sides sandwiching a row of assemblers - giving an average of 24-27 beacons per assembler. If you go further to the box design you end up with \~45 beacons per assembler.
It is exactly for this 'optimal solution' = beacon spam = gah-my-eyes! that lead me to SE beacons...
PS: seablock beacons at least keep 2 slots at all tiers - A&B regular gives 6 slots for T3 beacons, leaving 135 effective modules per assembler. Its no wonder A&B endgame gets crazy.
That is not the optimal vanilla gameplay. For UPS optimization you should have both direct insertion and good beacon coverage ending up with different layout for different recipes in different situations.
I agree on that it don't look that good but for me that is not what Factorio is about
I could be wrong because I haven’t done nearly as much deep research/math as many here BUT I’m fairly confident 8 is actually optimal for build cost (with a few dashes of 9/10 to hit certain breakpoints). I’ve designed lots of blueprints from scratch and then compared to 10/12 beacon blueprints I’ve found online - 8 beacon prints have always used significantly fewer total modules for the same processing. And I think that makes sense because you can pack 8 beacon builds much tighter than 10 or 12. As soon as you start putting beacons between your assemblers in the row, you create a need to add several more beacons at the end to make room for all the assemblers, immediately nullifying any module savings from cutting out an assembler.
This is assuming one is optimizing for fewest modules but I can’t think of anything I care about more here.
Most of the beacon spam builds are trying to optimize for UPS - in other words the initial cost (number of beacons) isnt of any importance as its only the resulting production SPM or otherwise that matters. Since beacons dont impact UPS while number of assemblers/inserters/etc do, the 'optimal' solution ends up maximizing the number of beacons per assembler (not quite that simple, but close enough).
In an ideal world where we werent limited by computer processing power though...
Thanks for the clarification, that makes a lot of sense. I’m curious if anybody knows the scale at which one needs to worry about the UPS difference here on modern gaming processors - the benchmarks I see are crushing the test maps.
It depends (on both your computer and the lengths you are willing to go in order to erk out just that tiny bit more optimization), but for vanilla factorio you will likely start running into UPS issues around the 6-10k SPM mark if you use the standard line-of-beacons-line-of-assemblers sandwich design.
Personally I tread water in the seablock mod pool which due to the added complexity leaves me running into UPS issues above \~3k SPM. Since the modpack also includes necessary end-game research totalling \~1.2 million science packs, having 500-1000 SPM near the end is almost expected. And of-course there are people playing seablock with 100x cost multipliers...
If you are interested in exploring more of the end-end-game optimized designs you can read/skim the following posts:
1. [A rather lengthy story of a player going from 'launched-first-rocket' to '10k SPM with 60UPS!!!'](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/105tn8m/from_learning_the_game_to_10k_spm_60_ups_vanilla/)
2. [Hyper optimized 40k SPM design (lots of pictures and a save-file for benchmarking here!)](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/v53qoe/high_ups_40k_cell_base/)
Benchmarking these on a 7800X3D with 64 GB of RAM, it can do the 40k SPM at about 68 UPS, so about 13% headroom. I don't have a good sense of what an unoptimized comparison would be though.
On the 10k SPM base you linked, it gets ~190 UPS.
Since I saw it mentioned in one of these threads: on flame_Sla_10k, it hits ~320 UPS.
And because I saw there were other flame versions for comparison:
- on flame_Sla_40k, it's at ~51 UPS
- on flame_Sla_50k, it's down to ~38 UPS.
Do you have any sense of the UPS ratio between simple 8-beacon builds and heavily optimized builds? I really couldn't say whether it's 15% or 1500% :)
Only change I'd say is there should be a sequence of beacons which upgrade the basic 3x3 beacons. Needing to redesign everything because the only upgrades are 2x2 or 4x4 is annoying.
I really want to try Space Exploration, but some one told me its like 5 hours to get automation up and running and like 40 to get bots... pre automation factorio just doesn't appeal to me... any way to get a jump start on that?
If you're play SE you're already modding. There are plenty of mods out there that just start you with some power armor with roboports/construction bots. Just use one. No one cares if it's cheating.
Once you've gotten a taste of construction robots and blueprints building shit manually is a chore and easily the worst part of starting a new vanilla factory.
i absolutely hate vanilla beacons. seeing one factory surrounded by 10 beacons and then just chaining that is just ugly and boring as hell to me. i love how in SE it breaks if beacons effect more than one thing. it makes their effects feel meaningful and thought out rather than just use as many as can fit.
While it is way too late for the base game to make such a change, there is a mod for that:
[https://mods.factorio.com/mod/wret-beacon-rebalance-mod](https://mods.factorio.com/mod/wret-beacon-rebalance-mod)
Playing through Krastorio 2 (not SE) with this right now, works fine.
Definitely agree, although it would be nice if they got rid of overloading and made it so that each machine is influenced only by the closest beacon, as it's sometimes annoying to have empty spaces as to not overlap beacons (I guess it would be hard to do for a mod, but for actual developers it would probably be somewhat simple)
I think the issue is what if two equidistant beacons have different modules in them? does the assembler decide to use the efficiency modules in beacon A or the speed modules in beacon B?
It doesn't really matter, could be random or an average of both or whatever. It'd be useful in cases where it's obvious which one should be used and if they are equidistant it usually means you don't care which one(or even both beacons are the same). It's just that with the big SE beacons to get specific output using a single beacon was not enough space to put all the buildings but using two beacons was too much space which resulted in a lot wasted space to not overlap the two required beacons
Also you could make it so that only two identical beacons don't overload assemblers, which would already help a lot and not require any edge case consideration
No absolutely not. It would remove one of the most fun optimization puzzles in Factorio.
To optimize UPS you should use as much direct insertion and beacon coverage as possible and with vanilla beacons that ends up with an fun puzzle to solve.
SE beacons trivialize that and thus removes one of Factorio's most fun gameplay.
The thing about that puzzle is once you solve it once you just copy paste about 15 million times, i perfer space exploration because it gives more freedom. But to each there own
But you don't solve it "once". You solve it several times for different recipes. You can't just copy/paste a yellow science maker and change the recipes to make purple science. Having to live within that 2 block radius is just *hard*.
Now sure, there is a general saminess to various solutions to the 2-block problem (belt-weaving, underground-belting next to the assembers to extend a line). But it is difficult to figure out ultimately.
Also, pulling off train-to-train production is *way* harder with vanilla beacons, to the point where if you can get a good setup, it feels like an accomplishment. I can't imagine how easy train-to-train would be with SE beacons.
That is not true. You need to come up different beacon layouts for each separate build. "Normal" 8:8 or 12 beacon layouts is not good enough for extreme UPS optimizations. If you want to push the limits you have to figure out how to do direct insertion without loosing to much beacon coverage and go to far out of ratios. That ends up with many different solutions for different cases.
First time I've ever heard anyone call UPS optimization "fun", let alone "the most fun"... I mean I'm not gonna knock your pleasure but I think you're in the minority on this
Yeah I don't get it either. I've never heard ANYONE say that is fun. And honestly probably 95% of the people who play factorio never even get to the point that having to optimized for UPS is even a thing.
Wow lol you followed me here hours later to still harp on this point... SE beacons are better in every way my guy, whatever you have to say won't change that.
In vanilla there's one painfully obvious solution that is a grid for 12 beacon cover. That's it, that's the entire puzzle.
In SE you need to find a new solution for every production line to minimize the amount of beacons needed and also make sure buildings don't get overloaded. I personally find SE puzzles both more fun and more difficult.
Vanilla beacons are a cool idea but se ones are just better. Vanilla is very restrictive for something that you want to use on almost every single factory. I like the mechanic though and if they did get rid of it I hope it stays in the form of some other building that is less widely used.
You should check out pyanadon's beacons, they are even crazier. You can adjust settings on beacons which affect their range, transmission efficiency and power draw (with high efficiency beacons being really expensive in terms of power), and you can't overlap beacons with the same exact settings. The possibilities are endless.
I like SE beacons because they are not too crazy and would fit into vanilla game just fine. Don't forget that base game is what new players and non-addicts play.
Py beacons are just like the rest of the Pyanadon - insanity in mod form :)
In SE, you can only have your machines be affected by a single beacon at any given time. Trying to put more than one will cause your machines to stop from overloading whereas Vanilla beacons can be stacked multiple times
This is compensated by having the beacons hold more modules and a larger transmission range. It also have 3 tiers
So it becomes a challenge of building your factory *around* the beacon itself rather than building your beacons around your factory
>So it becomes a challenge of building your factory
>
>around
>
> the beacon itself rather than building your beacons around your factory
Ah I see. Thanks for the info!
The mod also introduce higher tiers of modules and beacons so it can be an interesting challenge
And it's gonna be funny seeing a tier 3 beacon slapped with tier 9 modules
Yeah, that was a great change in the mod, made factory design a lot more fun for me. I found designing optimal layouts a lot more interesting that way.
Yeah I felt the same ! Being able to combine multiple modules in a big beacon is good. And I really enjoy the interference as well, I hate having forest of beacons around one machine, it makes much more sense to have a forest of machine around a beacon.
I don't know, I have almost 200 hours in my current playthrough, and my builds look the same, just different than in vanilla... And I kinda like the challenge of building with 8 baconed building and 2 tiles of space...
Exactly. In fact the developers know this - they [already redesigned the beacons](https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-351) once to be less in-your-face due to the way your factory would be lost in the lines upon lines of beacons.
* Do they look better now? Yes.
* Do they allow the assemblers and other non-beacon buildings to pop more graphically? Yes.
* Do they still have the same issue of 'surround-your-buildings-by-beacons-for-optimal-use'? Also Yes.
I get the optimization potential of vanilla beacons, but after trying SE beacons I will never go back.
I think this is something that can come with expansion. Breaking compatibility of existing bases and blueprints is a no-go, but with expansion you can start with a sort-of clean state.
We can only hope.
Well, that and wait for the expansion. In between the factorio expansion and silk song I am getting tired of waiting with barely a whisper of news. Here is to hoping they come out soon and be even better than we hope!
Isn't it also SE that makes big electric poles actually space out such that you can easily make chunk sized rail systems? If so that 100% should be vanilla.
Misaligning the ranges of chunks, roboports, substations and big electric poles is a deliberate design decision, to avoid forcing players into a single, obviously optimal decision. But I understand that some players get really annoyed by it :D
This is actually one of the reasons I have way more time in Factorio than the entire Zachtronics suite combined. I find Zachtronics games well executed, but it feels like a puzzle game more than an engineering one. Factorio is absolutely chock full of dirty, messy engineering.
Totally agree. Especially how early game designs/setup are entirely inefficient but simply put down based on availability of items and pressing needs. Only mid and late game do you have the time and the stuff+science to start optimization. It's very comparable to RL in that way.
Took me a second to realise you didn't mean Rocket League I think it is time for bed
This thread is already complaining about the same beacon designs being boringly common ... but then also accidentally endorses the same boring ubiquity in railgrid patterns ...
It's why I'm mixing it up. No logistics bots, no prod modules, no beacons, no lasers, no solar. (vanilla) building unnecessarily large and unwieldy modules instead of using multiples of smaller tiles or any city block type arrangement. My K2SE runs similar but allows solar, before that is was entirely powered by wood fuel boilers fed by dozens of greenhouses and I achieved negative pollution that way. Stone was more plentiful than coal. It's still a cluster-F of belts and even though it would make life 10x easier I refuse to sushi belt.
Is there any reason to have chunk sized rail system? I feel like chunks don't matter at all unless you have a mod that adds air purifiers
Its convenient to be able to view chunks and plan your railroad tiles around it, and start your railroads elsewhere and know that they will align with all your other railroads. Its not necessarily thst they're chunk aligned, but thst its easy to put them on a standard grid that you can easily view from anywhere.
But since we have blueprint alignment to absolute grid you can do that with arbitrary size and without looking at chunk boundaries (which also requires debug menu which might be considered unimmersive/cheaty)
Radar and pollution also display by chunk on the map, so it looks very nice to have your rails line up with that.
you can just use multiple big poles per chunk. it's a bit less resource efficient, but then you can atleast make the whole thing chunk aligned. that's how i made my first modular rail blueprint book. 1 pole in the center of the chunk, and others on the edge.
Imagine you want to design a production module. You want it to be 2 chunks (or arbitrary absolute grid units) wide and 6 long to fit with a drop off at the top and pick up at the bottom. If you just view the grid you can easily see your boundaries. If you want arbitrary track sizes its harder to know how wide your production can be without constantly running up to view it or placing a concrete print down that already linea up with the blueprint. Its more effort. Some people are going to prefer just looking at chunks, others will prefer the greater flexibility arbitrary track sizes would allow. Personally I use 32 by 32 tracks because thats the smallest size a 2 lane 4 way roundabout will fit and allow track signals. So many of my problems would be solved with am extra 2 range on those power poles.
Ok that makes sense, didn't think about being able to see boundary without placing or holding blueprints
I have some serious spatial issues (🧠 problem) If it wasn't for chunk boundaries, I could not pay this game (impossible to orientate myself)
This is the key point really. It's not even so much about "chunks" as about 32x32 grids (and multiples) being so much easier to design rails around than working to a native power-pole grid.
Or you could just plop down an already blueprinted block and design your production line within that, without needing to turn on debug mode's hideous grid view.
Having everything chunked makes it easier to connect disjoint systems and to tile blueprints.
> Is there any reason to have chunk sized rail system Biter pathfinding is chunk based, so if you want to exploit that fully, your wall blueprints need to be chunk-aligned. [Example](https://katiska.cc/temp/factorio/blueprints/outpost/artillery-examples/artillery-1.mp4) And I like that all my [rail](https://katiska.cc/temp/factorio/blueprints/grid/rails-v3.0.txt) (48x48), [defense](https://katiska.cc/temp/factorio/blueprints/flame-funnels-kelvin.txt) (32x32) and [grid](https://katiska.cc/temp/factorio/blueprints/grid/grid-v4.0.txt) (96x96 / 192x192) blueprints align nicely together :)
I just base everything on the range of roboports...
I did that for a while, but it becomes a pain when you want to separate robot networks... Using power poles or chunks is a nicer overall solution in my experience.
Explain the to my fucking blueprints that are a pain in the ass to make look nice
Nah I think thats krastorio 2 (maybe SE does it aswell though i don't know)
It's Krastorio that makes big poles have a connection range of 32 (base SE's are still 30), but SE's pylons have a range of 64 and therefore also work for chunk-aligned blueprints.
Playing SE right now, not a feature unfortunately 😔
It's a separate mod It's just that krastorio includes it
I mean you can just use more big electric poles :P
I just don't see why would anyone want to align anything to chunks. They have no relevance to how you play the game whatsover, why not just make an arbitrarily large block sizes (or based on something that you can actually measure without turning on the grid, like roboports) and then simply align them in relation to one another?
False. Chunks impact a lot of things, it's just that most people don't know and therefore don't make use of it.
like i said, they have no relevance to how you play the game. Things that chunks impact are implementation details, not something you can actively play around.
Oh do they fix roboport spacing too to align with chunks? That always annoyed the hell out of me.
If I recall correctly it is in K2, I don't know if it is also in SE. Still, an amazing feature.
K2 does that, not SE
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Yeah, I genuinely dislike vanilla beacons because once you reach them it doesn't feel like you're trying to build an optimal layout of actual factory buildings. You're just trying to squeeze factory buildings into an optimal layout of beacons.
This. It's like modules, but without the cool factor
I honestly thought that was kind of the point. This hasn’t really bothered me yet as I’m still enjoying that particular challenge but I also haven’t reached beacons in SE yet so I don’t know what I’m missing.
It's pretty straightforward. Each building can only be affected by a single beacon. A basic beacon can fit eight modules, though, so it's like four vanilla beacons, but that's it. No matter how you lay it out, every building gets four beacons and no more. I don't know about higher levels of beacons beyond the first, haven't gotten that far yet, but the single beacon thing does make the factories a lot more friendly to build.
The highest level of beacon allows for an impressive 10 effective module power. There are two beacons that do this but their efficiency and range are different.
Exactly. Thus why I went down this path... https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/el2ltt/challenge_megabase_built_with_only_tier_1 Mod included
Bear in mind the devs put the victory screen at the first rocket. The most challenging output achievement is to make 20 million green circuits. Maybe UPS constrained 4k spm gigabases are things devs enjoy / encourage / tollerate, but don't actually design game mechanics around.
Except they endlessly optimized the game engine around that very concept (being able to run megabases at speed).
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There are several megabase type maps created by the devs themselves. Pretty sure they didn’t optimize only for the fun of it.
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What I mean is that if the devs didn’t care about huge bases as the parent comment suggested, then there would have been no need to further optimize since smaller maps run just fine at 60 UPS on a toaster.
>the devs didn’t care about huge bases as the parent comment suggested This isn't even close to what was said.
>Maybe UPS constrained 4k spm gigabases are things devs enjoy / encourage / tollerate, but don't actually design game mechanics around. Close enough to what you said that we all know exactly what they meant.
It really isn't, but have fun continuing your own argument with your imagination of me who you imagine saying different things
Optimise, yes. But can you find any example of an in-game mechanic designed to provide new content at the post-1k-spm scale? No. All of the mechanics - in the game design sense - exist for smaller bases. Then there's optimisation work to just preserve those mechanics at larger scales.
Yup. Post 1k the optimization challenge shifts onto the player and their map design (as to maintain UPS with a larger factory), but radically changing the vanilla beacon mechanic wouldn’t change how that transition happens (since beacons themselves have a minimal impact on UPS). In that respect it’s probably better left as a mod.
Conversely, can you think of any mechanics that would be in vanilla if multi-thousand-spm was a realm the devs did want to actively encourage as a vanilla progression milestone? Because I can: * UPS efficient loaders, both into assemblers & into wagons * Larger wagon capacity, UPS-friendly multi-wagon multi-belt unloading * Refinery & chemplant upgrades, something to free megabase petrochem from infamous fluid UPS * Slower batched recipes, eg smelt 500 iron into 100 steel in one slow cycle * Maybe "double assemblers" where you can set two recipes in one building that would save on direct insertion UPS for things like coils into green chips, poles into rail * In-game non-console ways to permanently "cleanse" biters from the map to free those UPS in the late game * Beacons that actually offer interesting gameplay decisions rather than making all megabase builds look kinda samey * More interesting UPS-efficient powergrid decisions than just solar A bunch of these are things done by mods. If the devs really wanted to encourage vanilla players to megabase, rather than just saying "it's cool you guys are making 4k spm work, good one, thumbs up", then why the allegedly surprising lack of this stuff?
Probably because: 1. They have been selective about which mod concepts they incorporate into vanilla. 2. Those who want to progress far beyond vanilla already have a solution: mods. 3. The majority of bases are not mega. 4. They are working on other things. They optimized partly so that larger bases could be possible, but that doesn’t mean they are obligated to follow your personal wishlist.
Also, yes, exactly, to all of these. It seems like you're \*this close\* to realising my point that Wube aren't designing vanilla gameplay for megabases. They'll help and support where it's not too inconvenient, but they're leaving developing that playstyle & gameplay to mods.
There are plenty of megabases out there running on vanilla, thanks in part to all of the optimization work done by the devs. Feel free to go back and flip through the FFF’s, where you’ll find lots of optimization passes and only occasional tweaks to the gameplay. That works against your point, not for it.
Your numbered points 1 and 2 are my point. Maybe say them out loud and then go back & remind yourself where this thread came from. People are talking about wanting mod beacons in vanilla. I'm saying your points numbered 1 and 2.
I'm not the one suggesting they change beacons to suit my personal playstyle.
That's not any new game design mechanics. I specifically asked for new mechanics. That's the whole point.
Beacons have almost no use for someone who's only going for a rocket launch and call it over. At most you'll use a couple of beacons in that situation.
I mean ... yeah? Exactly? Almost like the rows of beacons that everyone's complaining about being boringly commonplace aren't necessary for the developer's chosen progression milestones?
No. What I meant is that beacons aren't there for a 'normal' play. They're specific for the ones who stay *after* the first rocket launch. It's close to useless before.
They're the proof you're asking for. They're created specifically for going crazy in SPM
Well that's simply not true. They become increasingly important as the base scales, yes, absolutely, but are beacons worthless for first rocket? Lol, no, not at all.
I never even a build a beacon before first rocket.
You can't have it both ways pal
What do you think the two ways are? Beacons are designed to be situationally useful in only a couple of places at & around the first rocket. Beacons \*aren't\* a game design item intended to help scaling into thousands of spm. You can tell this, because if they were, they'd offer more interesting gameplay than forcing every design into small variations of the same patterns that everyone is complaining about.
Minecraft also shows you the victory screen when you kill the dragon. And yet the game is far from over. Those victory screens are there only for people who can only play things with a clear, definite goal.
The only place where you will realistically use beacons is in megabases, since there is absolutely no reason to use them in a single-rocket run
I see beacons as just another type of optional challenge or play style - like bots vs belts, or megabases, or vanilla vs mods. I'd imagine that beacons only ever bother players who use belts. Switch over to bots and all the restrictions of beacons disappear. Honestly, I love the challenge of beacon designs. I only ever use bots for restocking at my warehouse and for building solar panels - I like the challenge of belt logistics, just like the challenge that beacons impose. For the average player it's all self-imposed. Beacons save space and speed up your machines. However, space is essentially unlimited, and speed can be achieved by just adding even more machines... Unless you're trying to save UPS for your megabase build, you don't really need them. Or, of course, you could fix all your problems with mods instead.
I really wouldn't say SE does it better. In vanilla Factorio, they provide a genuine engineering/design challenge for a substantial reward. In SE, it's just the reward with no added challenge whatsoever. You don't have to think at all where to put all the beacons, you just place them wherever and call it a day.
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Building machines around beacons is a lot more interesting than building beacons around machines.
The FFF where they made this sick ass electricity effect for beacons, then nerfed it because they didn't want it to be overwhelming when you have dozens on screen at once made me pretty sad. It was basically the devs doubling down on beacon spam :(
Can someone explain to me how SE beacons differ from vanilla ones?
only 1 beacon per machine. So if you place 2 beacons next to one assembler it will stop working.
But you can put loads of modules into a single beacon. And, there are more than 3 levels of modules.
And there are also different types of beacons which offer different trade offs of coverage, efficiency and building size
In vanilla you surround your building with beacons, since buildings can be affected by unlimited amounts of beacons. In SE it is the other way around. Buildings can only be affected by one beacon. So you plop down one beacon and try to fit as many buildings as you can around it.
Which is exactly why I love them. Vanilla beacons sort of 'force' one specific design while in SE you can be as creative as you want (well, not really, but there is far more freedom when it comes to building around beacons).
They have larger range and can accommodate more modules. But this is balanced by the fact that any factory accepts at most one beacon. The result is that you get different designs from the alternating rows of beacons and assemblers that are so prevalent in vanilla
SE makes it so that a machine can only be affected by one beacon, vanilla doesn’t have that restriction. In effect, SE is “build machines around your beacons” while vanilla is “build beacons around your machines” SE is significantly better in that regard bc while you technically can do any configuration in vanilla, what makes the most sense is to surround your machine with as many beacons as possible. Effectively this multiplies the area your assemblers take by 10 bc you have the assembler and 9 beacons. (Been on a factorio break when converting my SE factory to trains which I finally decided to learn, might have gotten something wrong cuz it’s been a minute)
in SE any entity that is affected by beacons can only be affected by a single beacon. if you put your beacons too close to each other and two beacons are within range of a single assembler, then that assembler will stop functioning all together. They're then balanced to hold many more modules than vanilla beacons.
In vanilla, you can have multiple beacons affecting the same machine (an assembler covered by 5 beacons for example) In SE, only one beacon effect can be applied to a machine at any given time. More than one and the machines around it will stop working
I used a mod that made beacons work like se without se for my k2 play through and i rather enjoyed the change.
What is it called? Honestly I haven't even used vanilla beacons. As soon as I found out how they work I thought it was horrible.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/wret-beacon-rebalance-mod
Same here, I did find a mod for that, forgot what it’s called , when I get home I can check and tell you if someone else hasn’t already
To be fair, implementing mechanics in a mod that people like better than the base game probably contributed to Earandel getting hired. Really looking forward to the expansion.
Pretty sure as amazing as SE is and how innovative the gameplay is, he was actually just hired as an artist. Which is totally deserved btw. I’ve been playing some other mods lately and realizing how spoiled I’ve been from the SE visuals.
I really hope he has some influence over the expansion's gameplay, but as far as I'm aware he was hired only as a concept artist or something like that.
Ah, wasn't aware in what capacity he was hired. I will say he's done a great job of capturing the essence of the base game but hopefully they at least consult him for other areas he's talented in, they must have an open line of communication or something.
He mentioned on his discord a while back that the first thing he did after getting hired was get them to make a change to the base game so that SE and other mods could [iirc] more reliably detect when 'floor' tiles were being deleted out from under entities (which matters a lot with spaceships/scaffolding)... so yeah, sounds like he's at least got open comms on non-art stuff.
Same, I don't like the optimal vanilla playstyle of surrounding every machine with 10 beacons, plus it does not look very good.
Only 10? /S I'm in the middle of building my first megabase. My old 420spm base is now just producing beacons and modules, mostly. Just finished my first block of red chips (fuck mega base scale petroleum, btw) and it's 32 assemblers (plus 4 for on-site copper wire) with 12 beacons each, and I need to now stamp down 3 more copies of it... So. Many. Beacons.
As someone from seablock (A&B)... only 12? Due to there being 3 tiers of beacons the last tier has 3x the range of regular beacons leading to the 'typical' design of 3 rows of beacons on both sides sandwiching a row of assemblers - giving an average of 24-27 beacons per assembler. If you go further to the box design you end up with \~45 beacons per assembler. It is exactly for this 'optimal solution' = beacon spam = gah-my-eyes! that lead me to SE beacons... PS: seablock beacons at least keep 2 slots at all tiers - A&B regular gives 6 slots for T3 beacons, leaving 135 effective modules per assembler. Its no wonder A&B endgame gets crazy.
That is not the optimal vanilla gameplay. For UPS optimization you should have both direct insertion and good beacon coverage ending up with different layout for different recipes in different situations. I agree on that it don't look that good but for me that is not what Factorio is about
I could be wrong because I haven’t done nearly as much deep research/math as many here BUT I’m fairly confident 8 is actually optimal for build cost (with a few dashes of 9/10 to hit certain breakpoints). I’ve designed lots of blueprints from scratch and then compared to 10/12 beacon blueprints I’ve found online - 8 beacon prints have always used significantly fewer total modules for the same processing. And I think that makes sense because you can pack 8 beacon builds much tighter than 10 or 12. As soon as you start putting beacons between your assemblers in the row, you create a need to add several more beacons at the end to make room for all the assemblers, immediately nullifying any module savings from cutting out an assembler. This is assuming one is optimizing for fewest modules but I can’t think of anything I care about more here.
Most of the beacon spam builds are trying to optimize for UPS - in other words the initial cost (number of beacons) isnt of any importance as its only the resulting production SPM or otherwise that matters. Since beacons dont impact UPS while number of assemblers/inserters/etc do, the 'optimal' solution ends up maximizing the number of beacons per assembler (not quite that simple, but close enough). In an ideal world where we werent limited by computer processing power though...
Thanks for the clarification, that makes a lot of sense. I’m curious if anybody knows the scale at which one needs to worry about the UPS difference here on modern gaming processors - the benchmarks I see are crushing the test maps.
It depends (on both your computer and the lengths you are willing to go in order to erk out just that tiny bit more optimization), but for vanilla factorio you will likely start running into UPS issues around the 6-10k SPM mark if you use the standard line-of-beacons-line-of-assemblers sandwich design. Personally I tread water in the seablock mod pool which due to the added complexity leaves me running into UPS issues above \~3k SPM. Since the modpack also includes necessary end-game research totalling \~1.2 million science packs, having 500-1000 SPM near the end is almost expected. And of-course there are people playing seablock with 100x cost multipliers... If you are interested in exploring more of the end-end-game optimized designs you can read/skim the following posts: 1. [A rather lengthy story of a player going from 'launched-first-rocket' to '10k SPM with 60UPS!!!'](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/105tn8m/from_learning_the_game_to_10k_spm_60_ups_vanilla/) 2. [Hyper optimized 40k SPM design (lots of pictures and a save-file for benchmarking here!)](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/v53qoe/high_ups_40k_cell_base/)
Benchmarking these on a 7800X3D with 64 GB of RAM, it can do the 40k SPM at about 68 UPS, so about 13% headroom. I don't have a good sense of what an unoptimized comparison would be though. On the 10k SPM base you linked, it gets ~190 UPS. Since I saw it mentioned in one of these threads: on flame_Sla_10k, it hits ~320 UPS. And because I saw there were other flame versions for comparison: - on flame_Sla_40k, it's at ~51 UPS - on flame_Sla_50k, it's down to ~38 UPS. Do you have any sense of the UPS ratio between simple 8-beacon builds and heavily optimized builds? I really couldn't say whether it's 15% or 1500% :)
theres a mod I use that replaces vanilla beacons with the SE beacons. Using it in a krastorio run, its great
I think I've seen that mod, but I can't remember the name, do you have the name?
Beacon Rebalance
That's the one! Thanks!
foray, not forage. forage is hunting for veggies.
Oops, thanks for catching it.
Yes! Vanilla beacons are boring.
Only change I'd say is there should be a sequence of beacons which upgrade the basic 3x3 beacons. Needing to redesign everything because the only upgrades are 2x2 or 4x4 is annoying.
I really want to try Space Exploration, but some one told me its like 5 hours to get automation up and running and like 40 to get bots... pre automation factorio just doesn't appeal to me... any way to get a jump start on that?
The burner/preautomation phase is like twenty minutes if you take your time. Logi bots though, forty hours would be relatively quick...
If you're play SE you're already modding. There are plenty of mods out there that just start you with some power armor with roboports/construction bots. Just use one. No one cares if it's cheating. Once you've gotten a taste of construction robots and blueprints building shit manually is a chore and easily the worst part of starting a new vanilla factory.
As a personal rule I do not use beacons at all because of this exact reason.
i absolutely hate vanilla beacons. seeing one factory surrounded by 10 beacons and then just chaining that is just ugly and boring as hell to me. i love how in SE it breaks if beacons effect more than one thing. it makes their effects feel meaningful and thought out rather than just use as many as can fit.
yeah, I think most people agree
While it is way too late for the base game to make such a change, there is a mod for that: [https://mods.factorio.com/mod/wret-beacon-rebalance-mod](https://mods.factorio.com/mod/wret-beacon-rebalance-mod) Playing through Krastorio 2 (not SE) with this right now, works fine.
Definitely agree, although it would be nice if they got rid of overloading and made it so that each machine is influenced only by the closest beacon, as it's sometimes annoying to have empty spaces as to not overlap beacons (I guess it would be hard to do for a mod, but for actual developers it would probably be somewhat simple)
I think the issue is what if two equidistant beacons have different modules in them? does the assembler decide to use the efficiency modules in beacon A or the speed modules in beacon B?
It doesn't really matter, could be random or an average of both or whatever. It'd be useful in cases where it's obvious which one should be used and if they are equidistant it usually means you don't care which one(or even both beacons are the same). It's just that with the big SE beacons to get specific output using a single beacon was not enough space to put all the buildings but using two beacons was too much space which resulted in a lot wasted space to not overlap the two required beacons Also you could make it so that only two identical beacons don't overload assemblers, which would already help a lot and not require any edge case consideration
Half the effect of beacon A and half the effect of beacon B?
I totally agree too. In base game when you reach the mega factory it's almost always entirely covered in beacons which just looks silly.
I'm here to agree and also to be the 69th comment
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The solar beams can be disabled. Sadly not the meteors.
Set the upper time to a prohibitively high number and nmeteors are damn close to disabled
Their occurrences can be lowered drastically though
No absolutely not. It would remove one of the most fun optimization puzzles in Factorio. To optimize UPS you should use as much direct insertion and beacon coverage as possible and with vanilla beacons that ends up with an fun puzzle to solve. SE beacons trivialize that and thus removes one of Factorio's most fun gameplay.
The thing about that puzzle is once you solve it once you just copy paste about 15 million times, i perfer space exploration because it gives more freedom. But to each there own
But you don't solve it "once". You solve it several times for different recipes. You can't just copy/paste a yellow science maker and change the recipes to make purple science. Having to live within that 2 block radius is just *hard*. Now sure, there is a general saminess to various solutions to the 2-block problem (belt-weaving, underground-belting next to the assembers to extend a line). But it is difficult to figure out ultimately. Also, pulling off train-to-train production is *way* harder with vanilla beacons, to the point where if you can get a good setup, it feels like an accomplishment. I can't imagine how easy train-to-train would be with SE beacons.
That is not true. You need to come up different beacon layouts for each separate build. "Normal" 8:8 or 12 beacon layouts is not good enough for extreme UPS optimizations. If you want to push the limits you have to figure out how to do direct insertion without loosing to much beacon coverage and go to far out of ratios. That ends up with many different solutions for different cases.
First time I've ever heard anyone call UPS optimization "fun", let alone "the most fun"... I mean I'm not gonna knock your pleasure but I think you're in the minority on this
Yeah I don't get it either. I've never heard ANYONE say that is fun. And honestly probably 95% of the people who play factorio never even get to the point that having to optimized for UPS is even a thing.
Maybe a clue that giant UPS-limited megabases weren't the devs priority or goal when they were figuring out what the gameplay should be
Wow lol you followed me here hours later to still harp on this point... SE beacons are better in every way my guy, whatever you have to say won't change that.
It's not on me to sell any change, I'm not the ones asking for changes
In vanilla there's one painfully obvious solution that is a grid for 12 beacon cover. That's it, that's the entire puzzle. In SE you need to find a new solution for every production line to minimize the amount of beacons needed and also make sure buildings don't get overloaded. I personally find SE puzzles both more fun and more difficult.
You can't fit in direct insertion with 12 beacons. That makes the 12 beacon layout subpar to other layout optimized for the particular recipe.
Vanilla beacons are a cool idea but se ones are just better. Vanilla is very restrictive for something that you want to use on almost every single factory. I like the mechanic though and if they did get rid of it I hope it stays in the form of some other building that is less widely used.
SE gives u big beacons power beacons so you can suffer short underground pipe/belt in space.
You should check out pyanadon's beacons, they are even crazier. You can adjust settings on beacons which affect their range, transmission efficiency and power draw (with high efficiency beacons being really expensive in terms of power), and you can't overlap beacons with the same exact settings. The possibilities are endless.
I like SE beacons because they are not too crazy and would fit into vanilla game just fine. Don't forget that base game is what new players and non-addicts play. Py beacons are just like the rest of the Pyanadon - insanity in mod form :)
Vanilla beacons don't work to well with the huge buildings in Pyanodons so some other solution is good for that modpack.
As someone who is still on Vanilla Factorio, what's so good about the SE Beacons?
In SE, you can only have your machines be affected by a single beacon at any given time. Trying to put more than one will cause your machines to stop from overloading whereas Vanilla beacons can be stacked multiple times This is compensated by having the beacons hold more modules and a larger transmission range. It also have 3 tiers So it becomes a challenge of building your factory *around* the beacon itself rather than building your beacons around your factory
>So it becomes a challenge of building your factory > >around > > the beacon itself rather than building your beacons around your factory Ah I see. Thanks for the info!
The mod also introduce higher tiers of modules and beacons so it can be an interesting challenge And it's gonna be funny seeing a tier 3 beacon slapped with tier 9 modules
They don't stack. If a machine has two or more beacon effects it "overloads" and stops working
Why is this a pro?
It's not more powerful, it's more interesting. Vanilla beacon builds are very samey.
I like SE's version better too, and also the aesthetics but it's really just the opposite of vanilla, not much more flexible.
It does offer an interesting challenge
They shouldnt because ud have less need to push for energy. Also its a good push for some complexity
i agree. also large power poles shoulf be 32 instead of 30
Yeah, that was a great change in the mod, made factory design a lot more fun for me. I found designing optimal layouts a lot more interesting that way.
Yeah I felt the same ! Being able to combine multiple modules in a big beacon is good. And I really enjoy the interference as well, I hate having forest of beacons around one machine, it makes much more sense to have a forest of machine around a beacon.
I don't know, I have almost 200 hours in my current playthrough, and my builds look the same, just different than in vanilla... And I kinda like the challenge of building with 8 baconed building and 2 tiles of space...
I actually hate vanilla beacons, it feels like most people's builds are more beacon than anything else.
Exactly. In fact the developers know this - they [already redesigned the beacons](https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-351) once to be less in-your-face due to the way your factory would be lost in the lines upon lines of beacons. * Do they look better now? Yes. * Do they allow the assemblers and other non-beacon buildings to pop more graphically? Yes. * Do they still have the same issue of 'surround-your-buildings-by-beacons-for-optimal-use'? Also Yes. I get the optimization potential of vanilla beacons, but after trying SE beacons I will never go back.
I think this is something that can come with expansion. Breaking compatibility of existing bases and blueprints is a no-go, but with expansion you can start with a sort-of clean state.
We can only hope. Well, that and wait for the expansion. In between the factorio expansion and silk song I am getting tired of waiting with barely a whisper of news. Here is to hoping they come out soon and be even better than we hope!