Factorio Friday Facts #421 – Optimizations 2.0

Factorio's development team has been focusing on optimizing game performance, particularly regarding Roboports and logistics systems. Recent play-testing revealed that Roboports, while not inherently slow, consume significant update time when numerous are built. An experiment to deactivate Roboports when idle resulted in a dramatic reduction in update time from 1ms to 0.025ms per tick. Additionally, a new radar logic system was implemented, allowing overlapping radar coverage without increasing performance costs, leading to a 3.6% overall game performance improvement.

Another optimization involved the "Lamp Always ON" feature, which allowed lamps to be forced on during daytime, reducing update time by 1.2ms. The introduction of a belt reader feature enabled players to read the contents of multiple belts simultaneously, significantly reducing update costs and improving performance by 9.5%. However, the electric network update optimization attempt failed due to memory throughput limitations, resulting in increased CPU usage without a corresponding performance gain.

The team also addressed issues with logistic robots, which had become overpopulated due to a lack of available stations. An alert system was proposed to notify players when worker robots have no space to station. Overall, these optimizations aim to enhance the gameplay experience by allowing players to build larger factories without hitting performance ceilings.