Upcoming features

This is a list of planned additions and changes for Factorio's next major release 0.17.

Planned features

• Mini tutorials
  • Improved quality
  • Cover the rest of the game mechanics
• Improved First Steps campaign and new main campaign [1] [2] [3]
  • Addition of shallow water as a natural barries that the player can walk on, but not build on [4]
• GUI rewrite [5] [6] [7]
  • Improve the looks of the GUI [8]
  • Change the way it works
    • Location of cancel and OK buttons [9]
    • Map generator GUI [10]
    • Blueprint library [11] [12] [13]
  • Research queue [14] [15] [16]
• New graphics back-end, SDL, OpenGL, DX11, v-sync fix, texture streaming, VRAM usage optimizations, shaders [17]
  • New font rendering [18]
  • Better rendering performance (CPU side) [19] [20]
  • Uses OpenGL 3.3 Core and DirectX 11 feature level 10.0 [21]
• Recipe tree GUI
  • Foundation of some kind of in-game "factoriopedia"
  • Should provide the player fast ways to get the answer to questions like:
    • "What is this item used in?"
    • "What is the graph of recipe dependencies for this?"
• Mod integration improvements
  • Syncing mods with multiplayer game [22]
  • Mod browsing improvements
    • Show the mod picture and more smaller things
• Map editor improvements, both technical and usability wise [23] [24]
  • All combinations of settings should no longer create strange maps such as circles of cliffs.
  • Much more predictable starting area resources that don't overlap each-other and are not covered by water, but the starting area will always contain water.
    • The starting area contains only iron, copper, coal and stone, in very predictable amounts. Uranium and oil are explicitly excluded from the starting area.
    • Starting area resources are usually in one ore patch each (depending on settings).
    • The starting area patches are usually close together.
    • The starting area size setting no longer affects resource placement, it just has a fixed size.
  • The resource generation settings now have a much more dramatic effect (previously they had little to no effect).
  • Increased the number of steps (small, medium, big, etc) for each setting from 5 to 9 for even more customization.
• Map generator improvements and fixes, autoplace specification improvements and documentation
• High-resolution sprites for the rest of the game, including a few changes to some entities
  • New laser turret textures, new laser beams [25]
  • Spawners redesign in HR [26]
  • HR defensive structures [27]
• Final game balancing
  • Science pack technologies [28]
  • Separation of nuclear energy and nuclear processing [29]
  • The rocket parts have their own technologies and are used in more recipes besides the rocket [30]
  • Launching a satellite no longer ends the game, instead the newly added "rocket escape pod" must be launched into space [31]
  • Better separation of technologies between high tech and production science [32]
• Upgrade planner [33] [34]
• Rich text editing [35]
  • Different fonts, color, and icons
  • Possibly: Item/recipe/technology references, map positions, and blueprint strings
• Fast pipe replacing [36]
• Better plural form localisations [37]
• More modding support [38] [39]
  • Infinity pipe (above link)
  • Cloning entities/areas (above link)
  • Lua function to generate a full tech tree (above link) [40]
• Better sounds [41]
• Copy, paste and cut functionality [42]
• Ability to undo building, mining, blueprinting and deconstruction [43]
• Small quality-of-life improvements [44]
  • Better recipe catalyst mechanics
  • Items no longer spill onto belts
  • Separate construction queue for tile ghosts
  • Belt immunity equipment
  • Bots can be shown on the map as a debug option [45]
  • Train out of fuel alert [46]

Possible features

• Spidertron [47] [48]
• Better car handling and car in latency state
• Better fluid physics [49]

See also

• Friday Facts #235
• 0.17 Mod/Script changelog as of July 22 2018
• Planned releases
• Version history