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] [4]
  • Addition of shallow water as a natural barries that the player can walk on, but not build on [5]
  • Compilatron [6]
• GUI rewrite [7] [8] [9]
  • Improve the looks of the GUI [10]
  • Change the way it works
    • Location of cancel and OK buttons [11]
    • Map generator GUI [12]
    • Blueprint library [13] [14] [15]
  • Research queue [16] [17] [18]
• New graphics back-end, SDL, OpenGL, DX11, v-sync fix, texture streaming, VRAM usage optimizations, shaders [19]
  • New font rendering [20]
  • Better rendering performance (CPU side) [21] [22]
  • Uses OpenGL 3.3 Core and DirectX 11 feature level 10.0 [23]
• 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 [24]
  • Syncing mod settings to saves [25]
  • Mod browsing improvements
    • Show the mod picture and more smaller things
• Map editor improvements, both technical and usability wise [26][27]
• Map generator improvements and fixes, autoplace specification improvements and documentation [28]
  • 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.
• High-resolution sprites for the rest of the game, including a few changes to some entities
  • New laser turret textures, new laser beams [29]
  • Spawners redesign in HR [30]
  • HR defensive structures [31]
  • HR worms [32]
• Final game balancing
  • Science pack technologies [33]
  • Separation of nuclear energy and nuclear processing [34]
  • The rocket parts have their own technologies and are used in more recipes besides the rocket [35]
  • Launching a satellite no longer ends the game, instead the newly added "rocket escape pod" must be launched into space [36]
  • Better separation of technologies between high tech and production science [37]
• Upgrade planner [38] [39] [40]
• Rich text editing [41]
  • Different fonts, color, and icons
  • Possibly: Item/recipe/technology references, map positions, and blueprint strings
• Fast pipe replacing [42]
• Better plural form localisations [43]
• More modding support [44] [45] [46]
• Better sounds [47]
• Copy, paste and cut functionality [48]
• Ability to undo building, mining, blueprinting and deconstruction [49] [50]
• Small quality-of-life improvements [51]
  • 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 [52]
  • Train out of fuel alert [53]
  • Better error messages when building/inserting fails (out of reach etc) [54]
  • Selecting an inserter/miner shows what entities it interacts with [55]
  • Trains in blueprints [56]
• Keyboard bindings now use scan-codes instead of key-codes [57]

Possible features

• Spidertron [58] [59]
• Better car handling and car in latency state
• Better fluid physics [60] [61]

See also

• Friday Facts #235
• 0.17 Mod/Script changelog as of September 24 2018
• Planned releases
• Version history