Factorio Forums

The devs have decided to remove the research queue implementation for 0.17.
This poll seeks to get an idea as to the number of pitch forks and torches on each side. Poll will last 30 days. I have not found another poll on the topic.
I have tried to include the some of the responses to the Dev diary in the options. Moderators feel free to edit or removed this poll if appropriate and possible.

osric_athanasius wrote:The devs have decided to remove the research queue implementation for 0.17.

Nope, once again ONE dev has decided.

So the overall decision was to remove this feature, on the condition that I have to say that I kovarex, personally, killed it. I am the one to blame

Feels like the bots vs belts topic all over again. A topic to rile up the people. But be careful. The same heat that drove you to that decision might lead others to send you tons of bags of dicks.
Unless ... that was the intention all along?

As for my preferred implementation, not that it really matters ... the version with autoqueing prerequisites when selecting a later research, plus the ability to just keep researching an infinite research when selected.
And don't scare players with the research popup by default. Just make a sound and blink the button a few times.

NONE OF THE ABOVE as the research queue proposal was distinctly inferior to at least two mods which are already available.

The Auto Research mod is almost perfect and should be incorporated along with Picker Extended into vanilla. Auto Research needs only one more category - "research these only if you run out of other things to research" which can be assigned to techs you may want eventually but not any time soon.

The same as loaders: vanilla, but disabled.

I think the research queue needs to be redesigned. I want something more similar to Civ - not something where you manually queue 5 technologies (although that is a slight improvement from what we have now).

I agree with the devs,there is not much value to be had from queuing a few researches in advance. So I voted I do not care, who's is about the same as no.

I also agree with the devs. For the starting player, it's a core feature of the gameplay.
My vote is leave it as a feature that can be enabled in mods.

What is the difference of "I do not care" and "Not sure"? Also, why are they even an option? People who don't know what they should vote for simply don't vote. That's it.
I voted for making this itself a research-able thing...
Look at all those people who say "Yes". Consider the PROS!! The CONS!! We are talking about game design, not your convenience as an experienced player.
Why did more people vote for "No" instead of the same option but with mod support for the feature? I have a headache thinking about it.
I get the feeling that this poll was not a good idea.

They should leave this in the game! Make the hours spent implementing this count!!! Similarly to the loaders!!!

No BS "compromises".
No "make it an option" or "research the research que and lock it behind tons of research you would love to have had the research que for".
No fragmenting the UI over this bs, it should be designed with the que being there always, not sometimes maybe if you like it perhaps.

There really is no "middle ground" to meet at here.
Not using it is as simple as just clicking once and using it is where all players who played the game more than once will end up being.

This is a core feature that we've all been teased and waiting for for months now. It is finished already. Deliver.

If this was just implemented badly and didn't end living up to their expectations like they wanted it to be so you can click on something and it'll research all the prerequisites but it didn't work out, that would be one thing but instead kovarex made this about some sort of whimsical joy of clicking individual icons and forgetting you have researched something which are all "problems" he could have foreseen by playing any half decent game with a science tree in it.

Just implement it, make it an extra option, or make it an archivement after you first finished a rocket so you have it everytime u play again...

dont remove a usefull feature if you play the 01923123 time on a new map, you dont need to see each research..

If I vote yes then what do I even vote for? What does "research queue" mean actually. Please add a description of what exactly the implementation of research queue that was tested entails.

mrvn wrote:If I vote yes then what do I even vote for? What does "research queue" mean actually. Please add a description of what exactly the implementation of research queue that was tested entails.

Until they do...

Research queue is like the crafting queue. You place technologies in it that get researched, except that you can re-arrange them as long as every technology will have it's dependency met before it begins.

Gergely wrote:

mrvn wrote:If I vote yes then what do I even vote for? What does "research queue" mean actually. Please add a description of what exactly the implementation of research queue that was tested entails.

Until they do...

Research queue is like the crafting queue. You place technologies in it that get researched, except that you can re-arrange them as long as every technology will have it's dependency met before it begins.

Except the crafting queue builds intermediates automatically. From comments that isn't the case with the research queue that was thrown out. Which makes it pretty useless imho.

It shouldn't be a problem to automatically queue all prerequisites when clicking on a tech that needs other tech.

It's also possible to indicate "tech that can be researched when all items currently in the queue are researched", which will make queue selection more dynamic and obvious.

Personally I'm quite disappointed with the decision to exclude the research queue. Almost none of the stated reasons really apply to my playing style, and there's plenty of times when I wish I had a way to enqueue research. Apparently quite a large number of people agree.

I agree with the decision and don’t care if there’s modding support for it so voted “No.” to simplify development/maintenance.

Thinking back to Civ, I often queued up techs and almost just as often changed them. Being able to didn’t really add anything useful nor did it really save time in the long run. (Breadth is bad.)

That said, being able to select one distant tech and have it automatically research the shortest path was really good and feels the same as selecting one local tech even if I change focus. I’d like this in a Factorio, but this isn’t what is being removed. (Depth is good.)

I think queue for science and queue for crafting share too many characteristics not to be implemented both when one of them is. And in games where queuing research is present, I inevitably use it.
It is so convenient, when you play casually on a map, to remember "what was I aiming to again ?" if you have already selected a path in your tech tree.
And I think this kind of game mechanism does belong to vanilla, not mods (even if mods can somehow add it).

TL;DR : I really do hope Kovarex will change his mind .

After playing hundreds of hours of Factorio... needing to select research every time it completes becomes tedious. You're really not depriving anyone if they have already experienced a few playthroughs, and have learned which research order is really needed.

I propose a few ways of immersively adding a research queue:
1.) User setting for the map which you can enable at anytime upon relaunch of the map (aka startup mod option)
2.) Achievement based unlock requiring something like TINS and Lazy Bastard (does not need to be achieved together)
3.) Researched based unlock, where you research the next tier for automation of previous tier (i.e. queueing red requires a red+green research, queueing RGB requires RGBP, queueing RGBMPY requires RGBMPYS, and finally queuing for RGBMPYS takes a tier 2 research which is much more expensive than the one to unlock RGBMPY queueing.)

Another thing the research queue could do is allow researching multiple things.

For example you queue up artillery, which needs military science. After that you queue up fluid handling, which needs no military science. As long as thee are military science present in a lab it will research artillery. If they run out but other science packs are present research for fluid handling can progress.

This would become even more useful with mods. For example with the Seablock pack you have normal research, module research and alien research. Each of those uses different science packs and even different science labs. Currently only ever one set of science labs can work with the two others idle.

mrvn wrote:Another thing the research queue could do is allow researching multiple things.

For example you queue up artillery, which needs military science. After that you queue up fluid handling, which needs no military science. As long as thee are military science present in a lab it will research artillery. If they run out but other science packs are present research for fluid handling can progress.

This would become even more useful with mods. For example with the Seablock pack you have normal research, module research and alien research. Each of those uses different science packs and even different science labs. Currently only ever one set of science labs can work with the two others idle.

Well, the science labs currently are practically treated as assemblers, where beginning research applies a set recipe to all labs. It honestly would be possible to do something like on-next-research-complete-per-lab to set an enqueued research that the lab can supply, the only issue becomes what happens when you daisy chain labs; causing them to deplete their science packs independent of the current research.


Most of the time, once you get a new science pack production facility up; your research quickly outpaces your utilization of that research (at least until you deplete the useful researches, or until you need to setup more science production.)

Krazykrl wrote:

mrvn wrote:Another thing the research queue could do is allow researching multiple things.

For example you queue up artillery, which needs military science. After that you queue up fluid handling, which needs no military science. As long as thee are military science present in a lab it will research artillery. If they run out but other science packs are present research for fluid handling can progress.

This would become even more useful with mods. For example with the Seablock pack you have normal research, module research and alien research. Each of those uses different science packs and even different science labs. Currently only ever one set of science labs can work with the two others idle.

Well, the science labs currently are practically treated as assemblers, where beginning research applies a set recipe to all labs. It honestly would be possible to do something like on-next-research-complete-per-lab to set an enqueued research that the lab can supply, the only issue becomes what happens when you daisy chain labs; causing them to deplete their science packs independent of the current research.


Most of the time, once you get a new science pack production facility up; your research quickly outpaces your utilization of that research (at least until you deplete the useful researches, or until you need to setup more science production.)

1) maybe inserters should not be able to pull the currently in use science packs out of a lab. They can't pull the burning coal out of a boiler either.
2) for the duration the lab is missing some science it would research something else. If you don't want that then don't queue up sciences with different set of packs needed or don't daisy chain your labs.

What I had more in mind was that you produce red/green science with 1 pack / s but blue science with only 1 pack / minute (because you just started setting that up). So you could do a lot of red/green science between blue science packs.
Then for the 14 ticks it takes the