Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Factorio Mindset

thediff.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 358 posts

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#201

Post by serverholic »

impalallama wrote: post #183

> I used to be of the opinion that the computer game Factorio was a colossal waste of talent, burning many billions of dollars of GDP every year.... But since trying it out a bit more I’m starting to suspect that Factorio is the rare computer game to actually increase GDP. Hell of an opener that just makes me immediately dislike this guys entire worldview. Kinda also backed up by the fact that he doesn't mention the…

Some people legitimately think the purpose of life is productivity. I see quite a few on twitter and I can't help but stare and study them like some alien lifeform.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#202

Post by jeffrallen »

enraged_camel wrote: post #185
bduerst wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, currently playing through DSP myself, as a factorio veteran. DSP is a great successor, even more than Satisfactory . It's amazing how well the DSP devs have figured out how to scale from small factory plots to inter-planetary supply chains to galaxy-wide economies, all to build a mega project. The only thing that's really missing (and same with Satisfactory , IMO) is the punishment for expanding too far too fast…

I'd like a greater focus on externalities, honestly. Oxygen Not Included does that really well IMO. Almost every production process has inputs and outputs, and a lot of the outputs are waste that you need to figure out either how to utilize as input in another process, or to dispose of safely and in a scalable way so as to avoid negative repercussions. Waste isn't just in the form of products either. For example, one…

Speaking of that... When people talk about limitless cheap energy from fusion reactors in 30-50 years, I wonder about goal warning from water great from all that energy consumed and turned into waste heat radiated into Earth's atmosphere.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#203

Post by vineyardmike »

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.

Yea, but its def a game, and that is more relaxed than actual programming. And you can do it with friends who may not want to code.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#204

Post by ExtraE »

tgarv wrote: post #145
outworlder wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is like crack for programmers. > 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. Sure. Maybe your time would be better spent working overtime too. Factorio is a game, and focus on the fun parts. Battling NPM dependencies after a full work day is not fun, it's just more work. There are so…

I felt the same way for a while (this is FUN, this isn't work!), but at one point I came back to the game after a few months off, started a new factory, got to something like "automate green circuits", and immediately felt like I was back to battling some NPM dependency. It had lost all its magic and suddenly felt like work again. This was after about 300 hours of playtime over a few years, but I haven't really been…

Yeah, I had basically the exact same experience. Haven’t launched a rocket yet.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#205

Post by brnt »

serverholic wrote: post #201
impalallama wrote: post #183

> I used to be of the opinion that the computer game Factorio was a colossal waste of talent, burning many billions of dollars of GDP every year.... But since trying it out a bit more I’m starting to suspect that Factorio is the rare computer game to actually increase GDP. Hell of an opener that just makes me immediately dislike this guys entire worldview. Kinda also backed up by the fact that he doesn't mention the…

Some people legitimately think the purpose of life is productivity. I see quite a few on twitter and I can't help but stare and study them like some alien lifeform.

They make for excellent employees. Promotion of this and similar values almost seem like they were designed for capitalists to exploit.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#206

Post by kroltan »

_aphw wrote: post #162
MattRix wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

On the multiplayer side - Eco. An incredibly underrated game. You have a month of playtime to extract resources, develop your society, and be advanced enough to stop an asteroid. Leaving minimum impact is heavily encouraged, and it has the most sophisticated economic system I've seen in any computer game.

This, I have joined a small server and it is just a good game.

I went in expecting it to have "cringeworthy levels of hippy idealism", but no, it is actually a reasonably sane game. It is the first game since Wurm Online that I have felt like part of a community thanks to the game mechanics themselves, and not just incidentally. A lone person will need inordinate amounts of time to go far into the tech tree, so instead people specialize, and soon after I was running a delivery company that moved orders of resources between players, with people greeting eachother when passing by at the trade district.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#207

Post by kroltan »

nohr wrote: post #182
_aphw wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the multiplayer side - Eco. An incredibly underrated game. You have a month of playtime to extract resources, develop your society, and be advanced enough to stop an asteroid. Leaving minimum impact is heavily encouraged, and it has the most sophisticated economic system I've seen in any computer game.

Can you play Eco with 2 people?

Not really, the game is really made for the "10s of people scale".

But thanks to how it works, it doesn't need 10s of coordinated people, you can certainly just join some existing server with a friend and have an equally good time.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#208

Post by sudosysgen »

jeffrallen wrote: post #202
enraged_camel wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like a greater focus on externalities, honestly. Oxygen Not Included does that really well IMO. Almost every production process has inputs and outputs, and a lot of the outputs are waste that you need to figure out either how to utilize as input in another process, or to dispose of safely and in a scalable way so as to avoid negative repercussions. Waste isn't just in the form of products either. For example, one…

Speaking of that... When people talk about limitless cheap energy from fusion reactors in 30-50 years, I wonder about goal warning from water great from all that energy consumed and turned into waste heat radiated into Earth's atmosphere.

That will be a problem in a few hundred years of our energy consumption continues growing at this rate; I've done the math on this website a year or two ago.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#209

Post by voidfunc »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #64
wccrawford wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also "Satisfactory", Factory Town, Human Resource Machine, Kubifactorium, and at least one more that I can't remember the name of at the moment. Some are more programming-like than others.

I've been on the fence about Satisfactory, but I just checked Notch's twitter and the dude is STILL sitting there playing it all day The man's rich enough to be swimming with whales or partying in space and he's sitting in his basement playing Satisfactory.. there must be something to it

I picked up Satisfactory a week ago and have been playing online with brother and one other friend... it definitely sucks up time.

It's a lot of fun. I'm not much for optimizing every little detail of production, but its a lot of fun to build and work out supply chains.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#210

Post by sudosysgen »

avereveard wrote: post #197
impalallama wrote: post #183

> I used to be of the opinion that the computer game Factorio was a colossal waste of talent, burning many billions of dollars of GDP every year.... But since trying it out a bit more I’m starting to suspect that Factorio is the rare computer game to actually increase GDP. Hell of an opener that just makes me immediately dislike this guys entire worldview. Kinda also backed up by the fact that he doesn't mention the…

Start a game, do absolutely nothing. Witness aliens killing you nonetheless. Aliens aren't the poor good natives, and it's so easily disproven I don't understand how it ever become to be a thing.

Drop into your local forest, do absolutely nothing. Eventually witness a wild animal kill you. Does that justify ecocide?
Post reply on HN