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What is interesting about Factorio

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Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#221

Post by cptroot »

squiffy wrote: post #112
pmoriarty wrote: post #78

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.

On the other side of a list of small mods, here's some cool modpacks I've enjoyed:

- Space Exploration (go to space!)

- Industrial Revolution (intermediates galore!)

- SeaBlock (Start from nothing!)

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#222

Post by cptroot »

billfruit wrote: post #46

One annoying aspect in Factorio in the short time that I have played it was that there is a player character, who needs to move to each location before an object can be placed there. It adds a degree of tedium in building, if having requiring the player sprite to move about..

You could try the "Brave New World" scenario. In it you don't have a body, just robot friends.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#223

Post by cptroot »

corecoder wrote: post #92

I had stayed away from the game for fear of being hooked up, but decided to give it a try when I was confined home, so I downloaded the demo. I really wanted to like it, but I gave up after an hour or so, because I felt that the game devs want me to be frustrated. Now, of course nobody likes frustration, but I hate very much everybody who wants me to feel bad. First of all, I was expecting a sandbox game, and instead…

Note that the coal arm (Burner Inserter) will feed itself if it can.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#224

Post by timwaagh »

notthemessiah wrote: post #175
timwaagh wrote: post #125

You know what else is interesting? Their "no sales" sales philosophy. For me its the reason never to buy it. I actually revolt when I hear their reasons. I feel like it comes down to: we are willing to hurt our options for making more profit to prevent people with lesser budgets from buying it. But its very interesting since a lot of people have the opposite reaction. They feel it is more valuable if it doesn't go on…

Factorio is a polished experience, with devs committed to bringing it not just to completion, but to perfection (with performance, aesthetics, and balanced gameplay). In contrast, most AAA games are bland experiences built under sweatshops, and most Early Access games wind up half-assed or as abandonware. If there's any game worth your money, it's Factorio.

I don't doubt that it's worth the money. I just dislike their attitude. If it was a perfect fit for me, I'd swallow it and get it, sure. But thruth is I'm only a very occasional puzzle gamer. So i'd probably not play it much or at all. Also, let's not overgeneralize. I'm pretty sure a lot of indie devs are effectively sweatshops too. They face much less regulatory scrutiny and people tend to forgive them easily. Examples like Telltale and Riot tell us how ugly things can get if they grow too quickly and continue operating that way. Which doesn't mean factorio devs are that way too. there is just no way to know. It also depends on the country. For example gaming AAA giant Ubisoft is French. French regulations do not permit much in terms of unpaid overtime.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#225

Post by 7777fps »

beesbuzz wrote: post #187
notthemessiah wrote: post #182

One thing notable about Factorio's game mechanics is that crafting is idempotent: the tech tree is a directed acyclic graph. If one is looking for a different experience in which one thinks about closing manufacturing loops, I would recommend Oxygen Not Included, where you have to sustain life amidst an asteroid colony.

> One thing notable about Factorio's game mechanics is that crafting is idempotent What do you mean by this? You craft a thing once, you have one thing. You craft it again, you now have two things. That doesn't sound idempotent to me.

I think idempotent wasn't a good word but I think the idea being described is that crafting is acyclic.

For example Copper Wire + Iron = Green Circuit.

There's no recipe chain that takes in Green Circuits and produces either Iron or Copper Wire.

So once produced, you need to find a higher function for your products. You can't 'unmake' through a cyclic recipe.

Contrast that to ONI's water cycle, where clean water gets made dirty then cleaned again.

So ultimately in Factorio everything is leading toward the only resources that get destroyed - Science, Rockets, or Coal (or other energy types).

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#226

Post by bonestamp2 »

sdegutis wrote: post #25
fouc wrote: post #6

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.

That's because these kinds of games always were a form of work. When you have a higher purpose in life, these types of games drain you and leave you unfulfilled and unsatisfied and like we should have spent our time in a less tedious and wearisome recreation. I can no longer play Minecraft, and haven't even been able to get into Factorio.

I love rocket league for this reason. There are players of all skill levels, and the game tries to match you with similarly skilled players so you can have fun on day 1. Even if you don't intend to get better, you automatically get better the more you play. Plus, games are 5 minutes long, so if I need a distraction I can play a game or two anytime and feel refreshed.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#227

Post by fogetti »

piercebot wrote: post #124

> 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 "…

Except that the benefit is not yours, but your employer's. Let's take a look at the frontend landscape where every framework lasts 2-3 years at most. By the time you master something, you can start it over. And most employer does not support learning on the job. So you have to learn it in your spare time. The benefit is the employer's, the cost is yours. I can understand when people say f*ck it and they simply protest by not playing by their employers' rules. If they get the salary without investing time, they also reap some benefit at least.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#228

Post by TOGoS »

tartoran wrote: post #196
kryogen1c wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taking the time to master your tools is a COMPOUNDING benefit this is problematic, and the problem is made obvious when you take this fact to its natural conclusion. are you juggling credit cards to simultaneously maximize the benefits of opening new cards with promotional offers, limiting your interest rates, and maximizing your credit score? have you investigated the air quality of your working and living spaces?…

When those tools’ lifecycle is 2 years at most fewer people are willing invest the effort to master them and instead learn on a need basis. If there was a guaranteed lifecycle the benefits would indeed compound and pay off handsomely. For example I worked on an Angular project and invested a bit of time to learn the framework and certain libraries. I completed the project and it was successful, but my new projects ar…

This is why I stick to tools that have existed since the 1970s. Emacs ftw!

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#229

Post by res0nat0r »

mosiuerbarso wrote: post #43
jfim wrote: post #2

> It's also extremely addictive to engineers. Quite the understatement. Pretty much every engineer that I've introduced to the game has played for at least 40 hours.

I'm a former engineer. Toolmaker to be precise. I just could not get into this game no matter how long I tried. I love making stuff as a hobby, and reading all the good reviews this game had it seemed like a great way to kill a few spare hours. But I just couldn't gell with the game.It just seemed like I was back at work but now not getting paid for my time. For me, Rimworld is where it's at.

I like the game and think it's fun and interesting but the graphics are a big turnoff for me. I find it a lot harder to see what I'm looking at or if parts are lining up just due to the overall brown / ugly colors. If it had something much easier on the eyes I think I'd be more interested overall.

This is why I'm looking forward to Satisfactory coming to Steam within the next month or so. 3d Factorio with much better graphics.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#230

Post by TOGoS »

melvinroest wrote: post #123
percentcer wrote: post #9

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)

The other thing is that it goes at a speed that we can comprehend. If I type for (let i = 1; i And you run that in your console, it happens in the blink of an eye. Not with Factorio, it's fast, but we can still follow it. We can still see the individual materials being inserted or taken out. That makes me think of a project idea: create an environment that executes fast but not at the speed of a computer (like Factor…

I've long thought it would be neat to make a Factorio mod that lets you represent pieces of data as items that can be passed around and processed by different steps. For multithreaded, message-based programs it could really help one spot problems as the thing runs, e.g. messages never being responded to because someone's output buffer got full.
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