Friday Facts #442 - Flip, Flow, and Fresh Paint | Factorio

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Friday Facts #442 - Flip, Flow, and Fresh Paint

Posted by<br>Klonan, V453000, Raiguard<br>on 2026-06-12

Hello,<br>It's Friday again

Flipping more things Klonan

After we introduced the concept of flipping back in 1.1 (FFF-364), it became more and more annoying to have certain entities prevent flipping. While some things will always be impossible (Train stops, Rail signals, etc.), we do what we can.

Pumpjack

The Pumpjack was always a touch strange with the rotations, maybe it was adding to the puzzle, but these days we are more of the opinion it is just making things more awkward.

Now it will be a little easier (or at least somewhat less frustrating) to get your pumpjacks and pipes all connected just how you like.

Burner miner

We also added it for the burner miner, so you can make your early burner empire more optimized than ever.

Drop lane indication on perpendicular belts

If you pay close attention, you might also notice that the drop arrow shifts subtly to the side, so that you know which side of the belt the machine will drop to.

It applies to all the entities which have a drop arrow mechanic.

Just knowing which side of the belt a machine will drop to is nice, but we also don't want to have any build inconsistencies when you flip an entity or blueprint. So using the flip hotkey it is possible to adjust which side of the belt a machine will drop to.

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And this works implicitly when you flip a blueprint, so a setup you copy and place down flipped, should work just the same.

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Adjusting the drop lane of inserters also opens up more opportunities.

Lane flipping is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.

There was some idea that the ambiguity of the drop was adding to the puzzle, you'd need to design builds to not rely on it, but we think the new builds and player expression the lane flipping allows outweighs this.

A semi-related change, related in the way of drop consistency, is that inserters will now always drop to the input sides of splitters.

New graphics V453000

With the rush before the release of 2.0 and Space Age we've naturally had to omit some projects, but very soon after the release of 2.0 we've started working on these so that they could be included some day.

Diagonal flamethrower turret

Continuing from the flippable entities, it has always felt clunky to combine flamethrower turret arcs so they would compliment each other, especially on wall corners.

Since we already have a diagonal turret in the railgun, we found it very natural to make the flamethrower turret match that.

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Since we already had the main parts of the 3D model, the biggest challenges Zsolti had to face were around positioning all of the models so that the pipes fit nicely, and it occupies the diagonal collision box well, which is always easier said than done.

Planet improvements

A lot of work went into creating the graphics for all of the things you get to see on the planets, and while we were quite satisfied with their state on release, there were a few things that we couldn't prevent ourselves from doing.

Fulgora ruins

It's always been planned that the oily ocean wouldn't be completely empty, but instead there would be more ruins sticking out of it.

The now dead civilization was at one point all over the planet, and these sunken ruins poking out of the oil could suggest that the islands of scrap are just a tip of the iceberg we're seeing, with much more hidden deep under the thick oily sea.

Gleba stromatolites

As we've shown in one of the past FFFs (FFF-431), Gleba received some significant last-minute changes, and one of the added things were stromatolites - rock-like formations of bacteria from which you can harvest iron/copper. We didn't have much time to focus on their graphics because Fearghall had his hands full with finishing Aquilo, so the stromatolites ended up being just paint-overs of existing rocks.

Thankfully you can't smell them through the rest of Gleba.

With release done, Fearghall had some time to improve them and make them more visible in the environment. We didn't want to alter the look too much so the new design is basically the same, but now they integrate with the environment better and form nice clumps.

Vulcanus rocks

Vulcanus was the first planet we worked on graphically, and at the time we were satisfied enough with the recoloured Nauvis rocks never became a priority before Space Age release.

You may notice that in the hotter areas, the rocks are not yet fully cooled.

Fearghall couldn't let them remain simple recolours forever, especially since...