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The Factorio Mindset

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Re: The Factorio Mindset

#91

Post by daenz »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #79
daenz wrote: post #77

If you want to add more of the human dynamic to resource management and refactoring, I suggest FrostPunk. While Factorio feels more like managing and scaling code, FrostPunk feels like running a startup. It's rewarding, but very stressful. 0. https://store.steampowered.com/app/323190/Frostpunk/

My understanding is that ForstPunk is more like a Grimdark dystopian climate nightmare than running a startup.

You're right, the theme is a dystopian climate nightmare. The resource management, regular sacrifices, and dealing with growing human problems make it feel like a small company that is struggling to grow and succeed, which is more relatable to me.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#93

Post by MattRix »

lordnacho wrote: post #78

I'm literally playing Factorio right now, with my kid. Got into it over Christmas based on HN talking about it all the time. Good game to multi because I don't have to pay attention all the time. It really reminds me of software in many ways. You fiddle with tiny little things like balancing a belt, and then move on to building belt balancers. You then move up the abstractions to where you're not really placing inser…

Dyson Sphere Program is a great Factorio-like that feels more optimistic and less dark. It’s still about harvesting every last resource though. On the other hand there’s Terra Nil, where the goal is to clean up a destroyed landscape and then leave it without a trace. It’s more of a puzzle game than a factory game, but still worth playing: https://vfqd.itch.io/terra-nil

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#94

Post by rkuykendall-com »

cwkoss wrote: post #38
toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factorio should be the interview test ;) Tech’s Ender’s Game. (factorio fan, but with little time to enjoy it)

I would love to see ~ "Factorio - 524 RPM base, trains only no drones" on a resume Or heck, even completing either Angels or SpaceEx mods show a serious amount of dedication, "self-starter-ness" and competence in reading documentation. I've put 5000+ hours in and fell off spaceex in the green space science - so much depth.

Honestly yeah, I'm gonna add a link to my 1k SPM walkthrough to my resume. Down downside seems very low and the upside very high.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#95

Post by rustyminnow »

shane_b wrote: post #14
minihat wrote: post #8

My friend has 600+ hours played of Factorio. He just beat the game for the first time. I bought it, we played multiplayer. And I taught him the mantra "great is the enemy of good enough". Our run took 14 hours. I also know many people like this at work, and wish they could have the Factorio experience. If you refactor at the first sign of trouble, you remain blind to totally new to problems just around the corner.

In software dev, my team has a “naive, naive, refactor” rule for this problem

Could you elaborate on this rule?

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#96

Post by altairprime »

In theory, finding the ‘Factorio’ aspect of production just-enough management in other games is easy; Big Pharma is a lovely example of this. But instead, I want to talk about Stardew Valley, and the psychological effects of scaling up production.

There is a very popular player mod for Stardew that allows automation of all “click to perform” actions normally operated by the player: Harvest fruit from a tree, Brew honey into mead, Cook wood into coal, Age mead in cask, and so on. Essentially, it introduces the conveyor systems of any production game — Verb Noun With Machine — and uses footpaths as the invisible conveyer belts. It is possible, with careful pathing, to build a farm that is automated from harvest to sale, and generates an endless supply of any product with minimum downtime.

I found that when I applied this approach to Stardew, it was really fun making it work, and once I had it all working, there just wasn’t anything left to enjoy. Not because the game doesn’t have a near-infinite list of things you can produce (especially with mods), but because it turns out that the joy I derived from Stardew is about doing things myself. And so my intricately-pathed full scale production farm sits unopened.

I point this out because in tech we often forget that capacity and automation can, in some cases, be inversely proportional to enjoyment. I could apply a photo editing ML algorithm to my photo library and no doubt it would be nice, but I enjoy the act of taking a photo and fiddling with it, even if I send exponentially fewer photos to my friends. One of them has a complex multi-device “ingestion pipeline” and it treats them well for their purposes, and I’ve built one before, and it turns out I just don’t enjoy digital photography at that scale.

I love playing games like Factorio (though I haven’t gotten much into it yet) for their own sake, and I don’t deny that it’s possible to enjoy the art of scaling and automating these things, and that others feel differently. But my experience with Stardew pipelines was a really useful lessons in learning what I enjoy and when I enjoy it, and when that means I shouldn’t scale it up any further.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#97

Post by fennecfoxen »

MattRix wrote: post #93
lordnacho wrote: post #78

I'm literally playing Factorio right now, with my kid. Got into it over Christmas based on HN talking about it all the time. Good game to multi because I don't have to pay attention all the time. It really reminds me of software in many ways. You fiddle with tiny little things like balancing a belt, and then move on to building belt balancers. You then move up the abstractions to where you're not really placing inser…

Dyson Sphere Program is a great Factorio-like that feels more optimistic and less dark. It’s still about harvesting every last resource though. On the other hand there’s Terra Nil, where the goal is to clean up a destroyed landscape and then leave it without a trace. It’s more of a puzzle game than a factory game, but still worth playing: https://vfqd.itch.io/terra-nil

Factory Town is my current go-to. Rise of Industry has its points, as does Voxel Tycoon, but Factory Town is cheery and fun and it brings back the Factorio-style logic networks (and be prepared to use them, as it takes away Factorio-style train-routing — though you gain tagging support.)

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#98

Post by cultofmetatron »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
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.

Factorio should be the interview test ;) Tech’s Ender’s Game. (factorio fan, but with little time to enjoy it)

> Tech’s Ender’s Game.

I think the last starfighter would be a more apt analogy

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#99

Post by BenoitP »

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.

AssemblyStorm weekly?

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#100

Post by jl6 »

I feel compelled to repost a comment of mine from the simutrans thread:

—

So, this is totally pop-evolutionary-psychology, but I think the relevant predisposition is towards hoarding. For 100,000 generations, humans (and our ancestors before then) have had to gather and store food and other supplies to see them through the winter (or other hard times). We are wired to do this because we would have died out if we didn’t.

Building games let you build up your hoard of stuff (whether trains, rails, buildings, tiberium silos, green circuits, …) in a tight feedback loop that repeatedly triggers the “this is my stuff, now I am safe” dopamine response.

This also explains collecting hobbies, and goes some way towards explaining the desire for wealth acquisition in general.

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