121–130 of 312 posts
This game made me empathize less and less with environmentalists. Forests are an impediment to a transport network. Wildlife are pests. Renewable energy has extremely low ROI.
sounds like a bad case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_rhetoric
Procedural rhetoric is an awesome concept and one that I'd wish to be seen discussed more often.
And I second your statement.
As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later. Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me. As do most interesting games. It seems like there's a learning curve to games that I don't want to spend the time dealing with anymore.
I still follow and keep upto date with most gaming releases but for some reason find the vast majority of them underwhelming these days. Lots of well made time sinks which when I was younger is probably all I wanted but now I'm always looking for something special and never finding it.
I used to waste/invest so much time into games, but now with a wife+kid+job I just don't want to spend my precious time on just any game. It has to be THE game. The perfect game.
Alas, I haven't found it yet. (Factorio comes very close, but it is too time intensive. You can't just play Factorio for 30 minutes.)
I think the biggest hook for Factorio is that it's an _actual_ visual programming language. So much of what we do day to day ignores this (dominant!) mode of perception. It's extremely refreshing to be able to simply look at a system to reason about it. (as an aside, I think this is also why the Zachtronics games are so effective)
If I type
for (let i = 1; i That makes me think of a project idea: create an environment that executes fast but not at the speed of a computer (like Factorio).
I have co-workers like this: people who don't bother to learn the tools of* their trade and waste dozens of minutes every day.
Taking the time to master your tools is a COMPOUNDING benefit and, at the risk of sounding inflammatory, is the type of activity that creates "skill gaps" between regular and "10x engineers."
For anyone here who's only played vanilla Factorio (ie. Factorio without mods), you should really try it with mods.. the mods enhance the game in so many ways (from eliminating annoyances, to making things more convenient, to adding way, way, way more content). I absolutely loved the base game, but the mods made it 10 times better for me.
Would you have a small list of recommended mods for someone like me with ~50 hours in Factorio? Thanks.
That said, I'd divide mods in to several types:
First, there are convenience mods, which make certain parts of the game less annoying or less tedious. Among those, I'd recommend:
- Squeak Through - Lets your character squeeze through spaces that you couldn't in the vanilla game. It doesn't sound like much, but it make a huge difference and makes the game much less annoying.
- Tree Collision - Similar to Squek Through, this lets you move through forests easily.
- Splatter Guard - Keeps you from getting killed by trains.
- Repair from Inventory - Automatically repair items in your inventory.
- Packing Tape - Lets you carry filled containers.
- Fill4Me - Automatically fills things things like turrets with ammo when you place them.
- Even Distribution - An easy way to put the same amount of something in to multiple entities (ex: same-sized batches of coal in furnaces).
- Belt Reverser - One keystroke to reverse the direction of a belt. Much easier than doing it by hand.
- Atilla's Zoom Mod - Zoom out much further than you can in the vanilla game. Also has keystrokes for quick zoom in/out.
- Todo List - I couldn't live without this mod, which lets me keep track of what I need to do.
- Far Reach - Lets you manipulate far way items as if they were near by. This could be considered "cheating" by some, but it makes the game much more convenient. If you are concerned that the game is too easy this way, you could always raise the difficulty with other mods.
- Where Is MyBody - When you die a line will be shown on the screen pointing to your body, so you can find it more easily and get your inventory back.
- What is it really used for? - A nice way to find what items are used for (which the vanilla game does not tell you.. it only tells you how to craft items).
The second category of mods is one that adds major features to the game and/or lots of different items. In this category, I can reommend:
- Factorissimo2 - adds "factory" buildings that can contain other buildings (including, if researched, more "factory" buildings). This is very useful for packing a lot in to a little space. If you're constantly running out of space this could be a good mod for you.
- Bob & Angel's mods - if you want a trillion intermediate products to extend the game
- Yuoki Industries - lots of strange, different items and intermediate products that feel very different from vanilla
Finally, if you found the vanilla biters too easy and want more combat, I'd recommend the Rampant mod, which makes the biters smarter and tougher. If you find Rampant too hard, you can dial down the difficulty in its options and/or install some other mods that give you more powerful weapons.
Ok, so this wasn't a small list of mods.. but I couldn't narrow it down any further without feeling like I'd left out some crucial mods. Hope you find something here that interests you.
> Isn't it amazing that someone could do something for 100 hours and not think about obvious improvements, and not even wonder if they've been setup? I have co-workers like this: people who don't bother to learn the tools of* their trade and waste dozens of minutes every day. Taking the time to master your tools is a COMPOUNDING benefit and, at the risk of sounding inflammatory, is the type of activity that creates "…
I have been working for my own businesses for about 8 years now. I learned to value my time, so any improvement in efficiency is welcome. But sometimes you just need to get the job done and not invest time upfront in improving a process. It's always a trade-off in time.
As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later. Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me. As do most interesting games. It seems like there's a learning curve to games that I don't want to spend the time dealing with anymore.
I have the exact same feeling with games as you now that I have a job and kids. I used to enjoy games like factorio (SimCity, Civilization, Roller Coaster Tycoon, etc) but they do feel like work now! What I enjoy now instead is actually watching gameplay on YouTube. It gives me a quick fix of the fun without a big investment in time. Also many of the videos can be funny!
As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later. Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me. As do most interesting games. It seems like there's a learning curve to games that I don't want to spend the time dealing with anymore.
> As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later. > Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me. Same. I was an avid AoE, Survival Horror and Gran Turismo nerd (quitting right before the GT academy happened to my dismay) and I held quite a few records during the outbeak days. But it…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you have a small list of recommended mods for someone like me with ~50 hours in Factorio? Thanks.
I don't know if you finished the game yet, but if you haven't, I suggest that you do so before adding mods, just so you have a good feel for what the vanilla game is like before you start changing stuff... it'll also give you a sense of what you don't like or would want more of, and that'll let you more intelligently pick mods. That said, I'd divide mods in to several types: First, there are convenience mods, which m…