Factorio - a factory building game - now with Space Age expansion

[Jaedar]

In other news: tank + uranium weaponry + Maximum personal lazors is now my favorite way to quickly kill alien bases. Can't even ram properly because everything just melts. I think it may even be faster than shotgun, if only because of the movement speed penalty when shooting on foot.

Did they buff personal lazors or something? It used to be that personal lazors did puny damage, and the way to kill alien bases was to go after them with the flammenwerfer, because it werfs flammen.

I believe they got two buffs since early 0.14, one made them get the laser turret boni to speed and damage, and the other was just a pure damage increase. They did indeed use to be pretty bad.

 

[Blaine]

Personal laser defense and discharge defense were almost completely useless in 0.13 and earlier, considering they used energy and slots far better spent on more shields or exos. They've been buffed substantially. Even on foot, if you pile on laser defense at the expense of a couple of shields and an exo or two, the offensive gains are quite noticeable... less so when behemoths start to proliferate, but there's a nice window of usefulness and it's nice that they stack with the tank.

I believe the tank used to suck but was buffed at some point as well, and the new uranium ammo and laser defense stacking renders it viable even after behemoths are everywhere.

I suspect the rocket launcher is still shit, though, especially with the advent of cluster grenades. Its damage and shooting speed upgrades are the only ones we haven't upgraded to max pre-infinite tier. It needs to be able to reach spawners from outside of worm range, thereby giving it a useful early- and early-mid-game niche. Until it can, it will remain shit.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

Through the power of circuits, behold automated kovarex process

I'm sure it could be done with fewer circuit fuckery, but it's been ages since I used them for anything remotely complicated. It's just a latch with some additional circuitry to ensure the 1-cycle signal doesn't push it into an undefined state. Initially the latch is on, as are both of the inserters it controls (filter and bottom blue one). As soon as one U-235 is placed in the chest, the latch turns off. The remaining U-235 and U-238 now move past the deactivated filter inserter to accumulate in the lower chest. Only once all 40 are in does the latch turn back on and the chest begins unloading, thus ensuring the filter inserter cannot pick up more than 1. Stability was my main concern rather than making it look nice, and it's been running flawlessly for hours now, so mission accomplished I guess. With some further tidying up I'm sure a third column could fit in.

 

[Blaine]

Hey now, I contributed.

I very clearly was the first one to say, "We need circuitry to remove just one piece of U-235 per output cycle." It's like you think that just because you agreed and designed the entire thing by yourself, you deserve all the credit! The nerve of some people!

 

[Mozg]

I thought I had permanently voided my absolute sperg reserves after I burned out on Dwarf Fortress however many years ago, but not so

 

[Blaine]

We collaborated and devised a "slightly" more compact and less inefficient setup. Each fast inserter on the right of the three right-hand centrifuge complexes is overridden to stack size 1, and is enabled whenever the attached sensor/decider circuit is reset to 0 Uranium 235, which happens after 40 pieces of 235 have passed the sensor. Since the default signal is 0 on setup, when the centrifuge produces output the blue inserter immediately grabs one piece of 235, is quickly disabled as further pieces of 235 start passing the sensor, and is re-enabled for the next batch once the remaining 40 pass the sensor.

I had the ghost of this idea earlier today, but Dirk is much more familiar with how logic circuits actually function. Getting it all working properly was a true autistic collaboration.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

I bet you purposefully waited for me to leave before you took that screenshot. OH YES BOY HOWDY LOOK WHAT AH DID.

 

[Blaine]

I bet you purposefully waited for me to leave before you took that screenshot. OH YES BOY HOWDY LOOK WHAT AH DID.

Listen here, you were perfectly happy with your setup that used 12 inserters, 50 combinators, and 400 belts per centrifuge before I came along with my ingenious ideas about one combinator, a sensor, and a few inserters.

The fact that I'd forgotten absolutely everything (or never knew in the first place, depending) about configuring the logic circuits to do what I want them to is just a minor detail.

 

[Mr. Pink]

 

[MrRichard999]

If anybody wants to help translate this into other languages, please visit here! - https://crowdin.com/project/factorio

 

[Makabb]

next level of autism

 

[Lazing Dirk]

Of course, it's not just ingenious circuit creations you can construct, you can do something more... organic. Like a zoo.

This was the second one since I mistakenly eradicated the first one with my personal laser defence. I've even provided entertainment for them in the form of exciting belts. I've seen them spin around in circles on them, I think they like it.

I suppose I could make it fancier by constructing the sign out of scrolling lights.

 

[Blaine]

Absolutely nothing is getting through this.

 

[MrRichard999]

such obsession

what a poor fellow

You playing Factorio now?

 

[anvi]

Absolutely nothing is getting through this.

A wall and and a bunch of one type of tower and that is enough to defend from anything... Yet tower defense is 'cancerous'.

 

[Blaine]

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 has guns, which people use to shoot at each other.

Jagged Alliance 2 also has guns, which people use to shoot at each other.

Therefore these two games are basically the same thing. I am unable to discern any key differences between the two.

 

[Data4]

Spoiler

I'll see your autism and raise you a full on sperg. Even has a built in lolwhut.

 

[Norfleet]

A wall and and a bunch of one type of tower and that is enough to defend from anything... Yet tower defense is 'cancerous'.

SOMEONE clearly cannot count. There are *THREE* types of towers.

 

[anvi]

Maybe so but you only need 1.

 

[Blaine]

Maybe so but you only need 1.

With only laser or gun turrets (they clearly aren't towers at all, but I let that slide initially; there's only so much one cares to do to correct false comparisons), late-game shitters can and will damage turrets on a regular basis, which is a logistical pain in the ass. With the added benefit of longer-range inaccurate AoE turrets to thin the ranks, as well as extremely high-damage short-range "point defense" turrets to finish off biters specifically, shitters are still able to damage turrets, but much less frequently.

In Factorio, shitters are a nuisance. Defending against their attacks isn't the game's primary focus. They aren't really meant to break through unless you've made a mistake in designing your defenses, or fail to do the necessary research to keep up in the "arms race." They're much more challenging to deal with offensively. An experienced player with the best equipment late in the game will rarely die on the attack, a trait shared with the great majority of computer games ever developed.

Tower defense is cancerous because it's a casual and very same-y genre featuring simple, shallow game mechanics in almost all cases and linear game structure and progression. Talentless hack studios crank them out by the dozens, or used to.

If you want a tower defense game, play a tower defense game. If you want a hybrid tower defense-like game with shallower game mechanics than Factorio and slightly simpler defensive setups than a dedicated tower defense game, play FortressCraft Evolved. If you want a pure logistics puzzle, play Infinifactory (and post your scores on the most challenging maps; I'm in the top 5% of players worldwide). Alternatively, download perfectly serviceable mods that transform Factorio into the game you want, and realize that your highly specific personal preferences may not belong in the core game and that modders have time and manpower separate from and additional to the developers' time and manpower.

 

[Makabb]

Spoiler

I'll see your autism and raise you a full on sperg. Even has a built in lolwhut.

i'll see your full sperg and raise you supreme sperg overlord

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgfwwqwxdxY

 

[anvi]

Tower defense is cancerous because it's a casual and very same-y

Not all of them. And building a factory is casual too, especially with nothing to defend against. Why do you all your posts have to be so dumb?

If you want a tower defense game, play a tower defense game.

If you want a basic building game go play Minecraft, Simcity, or the million others I linked earlier. SeE i CaN mAeK dUm RePliEz ToOo.

game with shallower game mechanics than Factorio and slightly simpler defensive setups than a dedicated tower defense game, play FortressCraft Evolved.

That game isn't shallower than Factorio. They are both as shallow as each other.

 

[Blaine]

There's nothing basic or simple about Factorio. For that matter, there's nothing basic about SimCity (well, SimCity 4, at any rate). You continue to speak as though there's some prestigious, super-complicated, unspecified game out there in your quest to whinge your highly specific personal preferences into Factorio. Next I suppose you'll be telling me that SMAC is also just like The Sims.

In whining about the fact that spamming out loads of turrets is enough to fend off biters, you're missing the point. Yes, it is technically possible to do the absolute minimum required of you and bumble past the finish line in a mediocre, braindead fashion and launch a rocket. It's also possible to finish Fallout 1 in ten minutes.

Fallout is ten minutes long, folks. Pack it up, the game is shit. All you do is walk a few minutes to the end!

 

[anvi]

There's nothing basic or simple about Factorio. For that matter, there's nothing basic about SimCity (well, SimCity 4, at any rate).

Lols. You get a green line, build houses. Blue line, build commercial. Yellow line, build industry. Stick the several utility things in the middle of it all and that's it. I filled the map in those games when I was about 8 years old.

You continue to speak as though there's some prestigious, super-complicated, unspecified game out there in your quest to whinge your highly specific personal preferences into Factorio.

There are loads of complicated games.... And I'm just telling you that you are a dimwit for pretending Factorio is deep and complex. It isn't even close.

Yes, it is technically possible to do the absolute minimum required of you and bumble past the finish line in a mediocre, braindead fashion and launch a rocket.

Finally you get it.

 

[Juggie]

Factorio is not perfect but implying that there are many games of much higher levels of complexity (without naming one) is just silly.

It seems that you wanted the game to be something it never tried to. Like having more clearly defined goals to work towards or mechanics that could realistically lead to defeat (such as proper combat). This just means the game is not for you.

If you don't find enjoyment in the process of improving your factory the game probably seems like a chore to you. It's not exactly super hard to "beat", but you can set goals of your own for yourself and try to meet whatever criteria you specify. Working within constraints of the system to reach those can be very challenging.

The game will probably never turn into what you want it to be (without mods at least) so maybe just forget about it and play whatever type of games you enjoy?