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The Factorio Mindset

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Re: The Factorio Mindset

#81

Post by kllrnohj »

caycecan wrote: post #65

Recently discovered Satisfactory. It's roughly GTA2 vs GTA3 when compared to Factorio (2d top down vs 3d open world). I'd love to hear peoples thoughts on the two games and what one does well vs the other. What people get out of either.

Having sunk vastly too many hours into Factorio, and recently just about 'completing' Satisfactory, I think Factorio is the far richer factory game.

Satisfactory's unexpected joy is in exploration, such as finding all the alternative recipes. However mid game starts to be a bit of a drag, and late game is borderline miserable (the Smart! mod helps tremendously but I'm talking vanilla-only experience here). In particular in satisfactory you never out-tech problems. You never get tools to help you start abstracting away details like you do in Factorio with construction bots, beacons, modules, and substations.

Satisfactory makes me want to design & build pretty or well laid out factories. But since it doesn't give me any tools to help with that, I end up with just floating slabs in the sky of endlessly repeated simple connections.

Factorio feels far more rewarding when you come up with clever layouts for things, as you can then copy/paste it. Or design it to be modular for later expansion. There's the metagame there if making things tileable for rapid expansion later on. Satisfactory largely doesn't have that. It's too painful to expand anything, so it's all one & done stuff

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#82

Post by storyinmemo »

dragontamer wrote: post #76
leetcrew wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as you unlock more technologies, it becomes increasingly easy to refactor/maintain a large factory. ex: bots are a major inflection point in the game. you could scale up petroleum processing and red circuits before getting bots (you need these two things to make them), but that involves a lot of manual effort. it's usually better to do a barely sufficient (but tileable!) petroleum and rc setup, then immediately fix i…

Cleanliness doesn't really matter, because space is infinite. ----------- So long as you've unlocked enough military (ie: shotgun in the early game, or tank in the mid-game), you can just clear out more room and then build there. (Shotgun has significant pierce-damage, enough to kill the alien bases. Tank also has significant pierce damage and impact-damage, allowing you to win against small / medium aliens through t…

Hi, it's me your local site reliability engineer. I care about things like latency, monitoring, and being able to understand the overall moving pieces. Scaling things in appropriate ratios is also relevant to me. I'd put you in a storage box and nuke if I could, but let's go have this conversation standing on these train tracks.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#84

Post by benlivengood »

Factorio is an SRE game if there ever was one. It comes with graphs and dashboards. You can create audible alerts. The QPS (errr, biters) will come and the factory better be ready. Success failure is a thing.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#85

Post by AnotherGoodName »

caycecan wrote: post #65

Recently discovered Satisfactory. It's roughly GTA2 vs GTA3 when compared to Factorio (2d top down vs 3d open world). I'd love to hear peoples thoughts on the two games and what one does well vs the other. What people get out of either.

Satisfactory is more designed for social interaction. That alone makes it worthwhile.

I suspect this is part of my own mindset. Satisfactory is all about watching the sunset over your factory as you goof around with good friends after a real world hard days work. There's no frantic action to be had by design. The factory is slower.

I really didn't like Factorio at all. It's either too frantic with enemies or just a grind with no enemies. I'm always down for Satisfactory and beer with friends though. That game has a relax and chill factor like no other.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#86

Post by gmadsen »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #10

I have over 5000 hours in Factorio. I am part of a group where several of us are over 5000 hours. Some of us have Autism. Some of us have ADHD. Some of us have both. The majority of us are in the tech industry. The companies we work at have been made to understand that the factory must grow.

honest question, but is factorio not a similar itch to programming? I always feel with these type of games, that my time would be better spent working on a personal software project, where i get reasonably similar enjoyment, more satisfaction, and presumably more transferable skills.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#87

Post by hhmc »

zethus wrote: post #35
julianeon wrote: post #20

I often encounter this issue when it comes to programming-like games. I’m wondering if I should adjust my thinking here. 1) Hmm, this game is a lot like programming. A lot like it. 2) Maybe I should just program? That is real work & I can get done more work done, be more productive. 3) [stopped game, started programming]

If your life goal is to optimize for "productivity", then you will of course encounter your issue. I imagine the vast majority of people seek out leisure activities. What I've found that Factorio does for many programmers is that it hits the same dopamine receptors that productive programming does, just in a non-work context. A professional football player should be able to enjoy playing basketball in their off-time…

> it hits the same dopamine receptors that productive programming does, just in a non-work context.

Plus without the inevitable bullshit that's coupled to any real work.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#88

Post by tekno45 »

gmadsen wrote: post #86
DiabloD3 wrote: post #10

I have over 5000 hours in Factorio. I am part of a group where several of us are over 5000 hours. Some of us have Autism. Some of us have ADHD. Some of us have both. The majority of us are in the tech industry. The companies we work at have been made to understand that the factory must grow.

honest question, but is factorio not a similar itch to programming? I always feel with these type of games, that my time would be better spent working on a personal software project, where i get reasonably similar enjoyment, more satisfaction, and presumably more transferable skills.

whimsy makes learning a lot more bearable.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#89

Post by kllrnohj »

bentcorner wrote: post #52
leptoniscool wrote: post #19

Dyson Sphere Program is a similar type of game, with prettier graphics.

Satisfactory is IMO a superior Factorio in that it drops the Tower Defense and resource-depletion mechanics. It's also in 3d. I can understand that Factorio is balanced differently but it's annoying to build up a factory and then need to do non-factory things when a resource runs out or aliens attack your base.

> Satisfactory is IMO a superior Factorio

Early game I agree, but mid/late game I couldn't disagree more. Satisfactory desperately needs a construction bot or blueprints or something to help you build at the scales it starts pushing you towards, or you just afk forever. Also the ticket loop as the endless resource sink is far less interesting than factorio's endless research paths.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#90

Post by iliketrains »

Aperocky wrote: post #25

Going to give a shoutout to https://anuke.itch.io/mindustry and https://songsofsyx.com/ In particular, mindustry can actually run scripts within the game to automate a lot of things. If you like factorio you're going to like these 2 games.

Me and my friend are actually working on a somewhat similar game called Captain of Industry [1]. The game is less about automation and scaling and more about realistic processes, mining with excavators, trucks logistics, and taking care of your workers. It's not done yet but we are quite close!

[1] https://www.captain-of-industry.com/

PS: To my surprise, simulation games are a lot of very technical work full of algorithms and optimizations, compared to an average SWE work in a tech company.

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