What is interesting about Factorio

The thing I wouldn't picture is moderation. Or awareness of long term consequences.

Again, most things that feel good are fine, as long as done in moderation. What you describe doesn't sound excessive at all, so sure, play more. Sounds like you've got the foresight to understand the trade-offs and hopefully have the willpower to not let it get out of control.

Since once it's out of control and you spend 14h/day on games and media for years straight, getting yourself back to normal can be quite hard and require external help.

> I'm pretty sure I won't regret wasted potential, because I know how unique it is to realize it in any spectacular manner.

"spectacular manner"? I feel you're overestimate my standards. It's more a case of "I justified that excessively expensive GPU in 2008 not with gaming, but wanting to do more GPU programming. So why is the best thing I've got to show for the last decade a (nearly finished) CS bachelor?".

I understand to have many years ahead of me. And all of that might leads me to a great path with a happy ending. But right now I'm certain having played less would have made such a path more likely.

As I said I find it very interesting how people respond to it. This whole thread is an example why. That makes it interesting. Why Factorio? Why not 'Farming Simulator'? Theres other games like this too. For example Dominions. You can't criticize that either without getting /significant/ pushback. What do Dominions and Factorio have in common. I'd say they are both very hardcore games that attract a certain audience. It reminds me of review wars when coding. trying to find every little thing to nitpick on. People really butting heads against each other for no good reason. The spite, the vindictiveness. How we all get caught up in these arguments.

> Do Factorio developers show any sign that they're "growing too quickly"? Telltale took on dozens of contracts for games that showed no sign of selling well, and Riot went public and were acquired and became Tencent's bitch. How is any of that relevant to Factorio not going on sale?

It's not... The comment I was replying to was making other assertions. I would also like to ask you to not use that word again.

Fair enough. But heroin addict wants to do heroin in every moment and nothing else. While in my cases it varies wildly from moment to moment. At any given moment I might want to play a game, talk to human, craft a response on stackoverflow, read about some obscure database, build a prototype in language I barely know, connect solar panel to LiFePO batteries, sculpt large ugly head out of polymer clay, read online about covid19 related research, think about how you can prove simple tautologies within axiomatic logic system, attempt to fix a bug in a program I just started using, discuss philosophical ideas with you, watch youtube video and then game some more. All of it just as useless as heroine (although less harmful), but all of it something that I wanted to do in that given moment.

> The thing I wouldn't picture is moderation.

Moderation comes from diversity of whims.

> I understand to have many years ahead of me. And all of that might leads me to a great path with a happy ending. But right now I'm certain having played less would have made such a path more likely.

I wish you all the best. When I was younger I had this urge that everything I do should ultimately give some monetary benefit. Once I felt secure with what I had materially this feeling subsided and I felt (bit aimless) freedom. Now I just want to be as happy as possible. Even if that desire has nihilism as a foundation.

Each cell focused on executing the recipe as fast as it needed to to fill up the output station faster than it could be drained by other cells' input trains. If something was being produced faster than other cells' trains were draining it, then it would back up and stop (and even shut off power via a switch logistic-connected to the output chest). If something was being produced slower, 80x80 is plenty of space to add more factories till it isn't.

Near the end the bottleneck was actually how fast I could ship ore from the faraway mines to the smelter cells (I built it organically so all the smelter cells ended up near the center, while the ores were coming in from the outside), but at time I was launching one rocket every few seconds so it didn't really matter.

Building it took multiple days because I only built out one or two cells a day, but the freedom from having to think about belts and ratios was worth it. I did not have to worry about prioritization because if one cell needed an output more than another cell, its trains would implicitly be coming to the output station more often. With belts you can end up with a situation where, say, the demand for green circuits is high but your iron plate bus only has two lines dedicated to the green circuits factory area, and there's no space to add more lines. With trains I would just add more factories to the green circuits cell, and its iron plate input train would automatically start running more often without me needing to do anything to it.

Unfortunately that experience has spoiled the vanilla game for me. Every time I try to play I remember how easy it made things and don't want to play any other way, but I also remember how many days it took to build and I don't want to repeat it.