Friday Facts #443 - More Planet Deliveries | Factorio

-->

Factorio.com

Forums

Wiki

Mod Portal

API Docs

Log in

Sign up

Game

Screenshots

Videos

Content

Merch

Artwork

About us

Buy

Demo

Space Age

Content

Galaxy

Presskit

Buy

Blog

Support

Help

FAQ

Presskit

Contact

Friday Facts #443 - More Planet Deliveries

Posted by<br>Klonan, V453000, Hrusa, Fearghall<br>on 2026-06-19

Hello,

Good news today

Circuit network Klonan

We have several more circuit network improvements to share with you today.

Boiler/Heat exchanger circuit connection

The Boiler type entities can now be connected to the circuit network, which makes it super easy to set up backup or emergency power conditions.

You will also notice the beautiful new Heat exchanger graphics and working animation by Zsolti.

Land mine

Land mine was less of a "Why?" and more of a "Why not?"... but it makes itself quite useful as a tripwire or enemy detector.

Since the Land mine doesn't do any friendly fire, you can't quite use it to troll your friends unfortunately (though I admit it would be pretty cool to wire up a whole factory self-destruct switch).

Input/Output split

In a previous post (FFF-441), we showcased the new Space platform set requests.

In that we said: "It is also possible to use 'Set requests' at the same time as 'Read contents', due to a little bit of magic<br>self-subtraction.".

This topic generated some discussion about the problems of the magic self-subtraction, and possible solutions.

And we are happy to say, we did figure out a solution that should make the circuit network a bit more understandable and also mean we can remove the magic logic: Circuit Inputs and Outputs can be directed to different wire colors.

In the Circuit connection frame you can see the 'Input' and 'Output' frames with the checkboxes, these control which wire is used for all the connections in that frame. Hopefully it also makes it more apparent which connections are 'Reads' from the entity, and which are 'Writes' which affect the entity behavior.

With this change we decided it is acceptable to remove the signal self-subtraction after all, which unfortunately will break some 2.0 circuit setups (with assembling machines and asteroid collectors). Technically it is also an optimization, as the entities no longer need to update the network counts in the expensive way when their contents change, which furthermore allows us to give Requester chests the ability to 'Set requests' at the same time as 'Read contents'.

Lab control behavior

We had many requests to make some way to set research automatically. With Space Age it became a bit more useful when planetary deliveries of different packs would necessitate manual switching to optimize usage (especially with the Gleba juice).

We went through a few different iterations of the idea, feeling out the usage and feasibility, and I think we settled on a reasonable design.

The way it works is similar to the display panel:

The 'Research conditions' frame is shown when 'Set research' is enabled.

The player adds a 'Research condition', choose a technology and set a circuit condition.

The list of research conditions is evaluated top to bottom, the first one that passes will set the current research for the force.

Technologies that are already researched are skipped.

Technologies with levels/infinite techs, are automatically requeued.

If you have a Lab setting the research, players will be blocked from using the research queue, with a notice about why it isn't possible:

The label will show the camera tooltip on hover, and clicking it will open remote view at the location so you can quickly find the lab and adjust things. Other than that you can still browse and use the Technology GUI in the same usual way.

Landing pad unloading bay V453000

When items arrive on a planet into a landing pad, there are a few categoric ways to unload them.

When the traffic increases to the point you want to unload into trains, you eventually get to a state where you're placing roboports everywhere you can to meet the charging demands. At that moment you probably think there should be a more straightforward way.

Initially we thought we would specifically make a train loader, which is what Earendel prepared concept art for.

However, when Jaroslaw was in the process of making the graphics, we hit some severe issues and luckily this made us re-evaluate.

We realized simply allowing inserters take items out of it bypasses all of the weirdness, and instead feels much more Factorio-like as you can then use it to unload into any kind of entity inserters can interact with (train, chest, belt, ...).

We took inspiration in Earendel's concept art of the initial idea of the train loader, and adapted it to something quite different.

The Landing pad unloading bay is a special form of cargo bay which allows inserters to take items out of it.

While I was trying to help, Jaroslaw still had to figure out a lot more of the design than...