Factorio - a factory building game

[Jezal_k23]

Also I don't think the game is even about beating the enemies. That's like a tertiary concern at best. The game is about automation, creativity, building your factory efficiently and using the resources at your disposal to expand.

 

[anvi]

Factorio enemies don't respect mazes, they just chew their way straight through obstacles. If you annoy them too much by trying to build a maze, they'll just eat the maze.

Yeah but that is easily fixed. Just program the enemies to head towards the base or player and ignore towers. Suddenly the game is 100% more interesting and fun.

Also I don't think the game is even about beating the enemies. That's like a tertiary concern at best. The game is about automation, creativity, building your factory efficiently and using the resources at your disposal to expand.

Yeah but that is boring and not enough. There could still be a traditional mode where the enemies are just as they are now. But a lot of people want a mode where the enemies are a real problem and fighting back is important. They used to drop items in earlier beta but they nerfed that, probably around the time that they decided to half ass everything now that they are millionaires.

 

[Perkel]

Yeah but that is easily fixed. Just program the enemies to head towards the base or player and ignore towers. Suddenly the game is 100% more interesting and fun.

Or just use rampart AI mod. Bugs will be combining, looking for weak parts of defenses, test defenses etc.

 

[Jaedar]

Also I don't think the game is even about beating the enemies. That's like a tertiary concern at best. The game is about automation, creativity, building your factory efficiently and using the resources at your disposal to expand.

Enemies are a destructive external pressure on your logistics. Without them there is no threat and your factory can be as inefficient as it wants. With them there is suddenly consequences to blackouts (all your laser turrets stop working), terrible designs (the aliens will grow in power faster than your abilities to contain them) and such.

But the game is not about killing aliens. And if you've gotten everything set up to mass produce nukes/artillery than you have proven you deserve to trivially wipe them.

See: Oil nerfs. When have they actually added anything lately?

Afaik oil was not nerfed in total, it's just that the curve is more gentle: You still have the same amount of oil types to juggle at the end, but now you only have to juggle one type when you start using oil.

You are right that the development has kind of stagnated though, and the devs seem stuck in some perpetual cycle of perfectionism, starting over and redesigning. Most of the actual improvements now seem to be high resolution graphics and performance improvements.

It's kind of hard to not call that a nitpick though. "Oh noez, the developers just made an awesome 30+ hour game with huge modding potential and aren't adding features any more"

 

[Jezal_k23]

I assume they'll continue working on it after 1.0 is out. They've just reached a point where they feel the game is ready for release, and I don't think they're wrong. It had to happen at some point, otherwise they'd be in a state of continual feature creep forever.

 

[Perkel]

New kind of degeneracy. "Pay me so that i can play game"

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

production and utility science packs are a complete letdown compared to every other science pack
automation is the basic stuff
logistics is the introduction of chain automation and actual splitting of resources for efficiency
military introduces a minimum of 2 belts for crafting the science pack and also the requirement of hot furnace on furnace action
chemical brings in a new level of chaos by taking everything from before and adding forced use of multiple liquid systems and the usage of trains/rail systems + varying speed differences of parts requiring sort-of-careful balancing during the peak growth of biters and spitters

production and utility are just increases in their bloated area and resource requirements, which is generally reasonable considering progress should require more and more from your factory, but there's really nothing that forces any new adaptions or modifications to your factory aside from what you've already probably been doing between from automation to chemical

 

[Perkel]

I really do wish they wound expand vanilla. For past 2 years they added basically nothing. Game still have like 5 resources, same one steam engine etc.

 

[Tweed]

If you really want to suffer you can always pile on Bob and Angel's.

 

[Jaedar]

production and utility are just increases in their bloated area and resource requirements, which is generally reasonable considering progress should require more and more from your factory, but there's really nothing that forces any new adaptions or modifications to your factory aside from what you've already probably been doing between from automation to chemical

I kind of agree. The game never adds any recipes that require large amounts of input/outputs, so you can always just tile
BELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELT
BELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELT
ManufactoriumManufactoriumManufactorium
BELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELT
BELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELTBELT

It is a bit of a shame there aren't any recipies in vanilla that require 7+ inputs. Then again, it would just be trivialized by logistics bots anyway. After a while the game becomes more about scaling up, rather than adding any complexity. There is some complexity in large train networks and such, but it it's not quite the same.

I hope they figure something out for whatever game they're making after Factorio.

 

[Perkel]

If you really want to suffer you can always pile on Bob and Angel's.

I am playing like that non stop.

Also just 5 minutes ago i got the biggest facepalm ever. Turns out that Angels has whole industry rework that is switched off by default. If you switch it on everything makes sense. Buildings are build from logical parts, inserters are made from 10 different things and so on.

love angels/bobs

also chutes are amazing and make so much sense in factorio. It also resolves why so much copper was unused in bobs/angels games at start. Now with this rework i need ton of coper for science.

 

[Perkel]

hot damn AAI programable vehicles is fucking amazing now. I played with it years ago but at the time you had to use combinators to effectively do any orders like patrol or use waypoints. Now it is as easy as making 2 waypoints with path controller and using unit controler to roll into starting point.

You can now very easily use haulers rather than trains if you want. Definitely something great for my full angels early game where i can easily run out of Saphirite.

 

[Perkel]

1.0 released !

Launch trailer:



Old trailer reworked with new assets:

 

[Jaedar]

They also added the spidertron to the game. Endgame walker vehicle that fires rockets (manual or remotely(?) controlled).

 

[Tweed]

I was wonder what the hell that thing was at the very end of the trailer.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Oh I want the Spidertron.
Is it automated or do you have to pilot it? I really wish they would introduce sentry drones.
As in, you add combat drones to a roboport, and if enemies are nearby they attack automatically.

 

[Jaedar]

Oh I want the Spidertron.
Is it automated or do you have to pilot it? I really wish they would introduce sentry drones.
As in, you add combat drones to a roboport, and if enemies are nearby they attack automatically.

I havent tried spidertron(3500 of all research) but as I understand it fires rockets automatically at enemies, and you can make it walk to places remotely.

 

[baud]

Oh I want the Spidertron.
Is it automated or do you have to pilot it? I really wish they would introduce sentry drones.
As in, you add combat drones to a roboport, and if enemies are nearby they attack automatically.

From the blog post:

• It is a vehicle that can be driven, or remotely controlled.

• It can traverse obstacles and small bodies of water.

• It has a built-in radar, and you can place blueprints in its vicinity.

• It has an equipment grid, so it can build with construction robots and use combat equipment.

• It has four rapid-firing rocket launchers that can shoot automatically.

• It can be researched very late in the game (all science packs except Space).

• Multiple of them can be deployed at the same time, but each requires its own linked controller.

 

[Blaine]

THEY DID IT

THEY FUCKING ADDED THE SPIDERTRON

THEY KEPT IT SECRET THIS WHOLE TIME AFTER ANNOUNCING IT YEARS AGO, MAKING US ALL THINK IT HAD BEEN FORGOTTEN

OHHHH FUCK!

I started a new game about a week ago and began playing in preparation for 1.0. Spidertron, here I come!

 

[Perkel]

Well if you can control it remotely it means it has new kind of AI logic other than biter and this will allow mods like AAI to shine. On other hand it is spidertron that seems to ignore terrain obstacles so maybe it won't.

I really hope someone will make mod that will add population to your factory + ground units. So not only you will have to take care of production but also survival of people on planet.

New AI separate from biters would allow for that.

 

[Blaine]

I really hope someone will make mod that will add population to your factory + ground units. So not only you will have to take care of production but also survival of people on planet.

The entire premise of the game is automation involving a single engineer or a team of engineers crash-landing and starting from scratch. There's currently nowhere for any population to go, conceptually, since the assemblers are entirely self-contained and automated. I'm in no way opposed to anyone modding in anything they want, but turning it into a management/quasi-RTS type of deal involving population and unit management seems like a bit of a stretch, and inappropriate for the fundamental scale of the game.

As for the mods that you like, such as Angel's or Bob's (or Krastorio 2, which I tried recently), I've found I intensely dislike mods that add complexity via adding more inputs to existing recipes. For example, in Krastorio 2, you need additional "inserter parts" to assemble inserters, and "automation cores" for factories and many other buildings, in addition to the existing vanilla inputs. What I prefer (were I to use such mods) would be expansions or additions, such as a complete "logistical ecosystem" of biomass processing and manufacture (I know there are several popular mods that do this). Krastorio 2 kind of shoehorns wood into science pack production, for example. It's a meta form of adding more inputs to existing recipes.

Or in other words, I want that "more shit" to add stuff mostly independently of vanilla inputs, especially at the most basic levels of production. Sadly, few if any of these mega-mods leave existing input balance untouched, and most radically alter it.

 

[Silly Germans]

Are there any puzzle like scenarios for Factorio, for example you are given a limited amount of power, space and resource tiles and you have to reach a certain output of item x with it ?

 

[Blaine]

Are there any puzzle like scenarios for Factorio, for example you are given a limited amount of power, space and resource tiles and you have to reach a certain output of item x with it ?

Quite a few, although it's been ages since I've fooled around with them.

If you want more structured puzzles, I'd suggest looking into Zachtronics games (not that I'm saying you should avoid Factorio, but structure, in my opinion, isn't its long suit).

The entire freeplay game is, in essence, a freeform logistics puzzle from beginning to end, one that grows more complex as it progresses.

 

[Jaedar]

As for the mods that you like, such as Angel's or Bob's (or Krastorio 2, which I tried recently), I've found I intensely dislike mods that add complexity via adding more inputs to existing recipes. For example, in Krastorio 2, you need additional "inserter parts" to assemble inserters, and "automation cores" for factories and many other buildings, in addition to the existing vanilla inputs. What I prefer (were I to use such mods) would be expansions or additions, such as a complete "logistical ecosystem" of biomass processing and manufacture (I know there are several popular mods that do this). Krastorio 2 kind of shoehorns wood into science pack production, for example. It's a meta form of adding more inputs to existing recipes.

FWIW I think Krastorio does this in a reasonable way. It adds stuff to existing recipes, but also removes other stuff. The inserter stuff is not very cool, but I don't mind wood processing for green circuits (the wood that goes into science is only for the most basic (second most basic?) science pack, which you will obsolete after a few hours). It's way more generous with starting power/storage/items so you can think of it as trading manual mining for extra work to set up basic material automation.

I finished a Krastorio2 playthrough a few days ago, felt quite similar to playing factorio for the first time. Adds a bunch of new stuff, but none of the Angel/Bob ridiculousness of having a 7 step iron smelting process or 30 different 'iron' shapes. I also sharply like how it reduces some of the mass production requirements of certain things in vanilla (looking at you, blue circuits and your 24 greens each). Recipes are different, but in a somewhat interesting way, it adds uses for resources (like stone and coal) that feel interesting and not like busywork etc.

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

I don't see the appeal in this game.
I see that it's well done, has nice graphics etc., I just have no desire whatsoever to "play" it, eventhough SimCity4 is one of my favourite games of all time, for example. Factorio has solutions that range from retarded, inefficient to most efficient, but I don't see any way to be creative or something; and no, figuring out the most efficient solution isn't creative - it's busywork. It's a puzzle game for autist, imo.