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Factorio: Space Age

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Re: Factorio: Space Age

#121

Post by alyandon »

db48x wrote: post #46
alyandon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I greatly enjoyed Factorio and even went as far as doing a deathworld. I even tried some of the full blown mod packs like Seablock, Space Exploration and Krastorio2 to extend the base game. However, they all seem to be designed with this underlying theme that you should challenge the player by making everything pointlessly grindy. I really haven't played much since but I'll probably give this expansion a try.

Space Exploration goes out of it’s way _not_ to make things pointlessly grindy. Yes, you’ll need to scale your home base up more than in the vanilla game, but the space construction all involves different challenges than merely scaling out. The space sciences are each a different kind of puzzle. And it adds three new kinds of logistics network (cargo rockets, rail guns, and space ships), each with different strengths…

  Space Exploration goes out of it’s way _not_ to make things pointlessly grindy.
Your definition of grindy is not my definition of grindy - maybe "pointlessly" was a little harsh on my part. It's cool though - different people have different opinions. I have built vanilla bases large enough to have a fairly significant amount of SPM so I am pretty well versed in using circuits, trains, etc.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#122

Post by hiatus »

pmoriarty wrote: post #58
donatj wrote: post #42

Oh good, my life being utterly dominated by Factorio again is at least a year away. That gives me some time to get my affairs in order. I really wish this were a joke. Also, if anyone wants to play a game similar to Factorio while you wait - https://shapez.io is like Factorio without a player character and a cleaner aesthetic. I played it first, and really enjoyed it.

I enjoyed Shapez, and it's cool that it has many mods, but I just found it too abstract and sterile to keep my attention. Factorio just much more engaging for me in the long run, especially with mods.

Yeah among other things that caused me to abandon it, there is no relationship between expansion and neighbor aggression or any other external pressures (though maybe I did not progress far enough to encounter those elements if they exist).

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#123

Post by tailspin2019 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #36
endigma wrote: post #22

> It has been playable from start to finish for more than a year. This means that we have already made several improvement iterations based on the playthroughs behind us. You just don't see commitment to shipping quality product in the games industry like this. This is what makes Factorio special.

This has been Factorio's MO from the beginning. It was in Early Access forver, and all that time it was way more polished and stable than many fully released games with much higher budgets. In the decade or so that I've played Factorio, I can't even remember a single crash of the base game. It was always mods that crashed. Factorio performance is also fantastic, running smoothly on potato PC's until you get in to the…

Can confirm performance is pretty good on Macs too, even older Intel models.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#124

Post by unglaublich »

birracerveza wrote: post #59
roydivision wrote: post #29

I have purposely avoided Factorio just because I'm convinced that I'll sink so much time into it. It looks super fun, but I have stuff to do. Maybe one day....

Stay away if you value your time. It's not a joke when they call it cracktorio. Especially on the Deck...

On the Steam deck? How? With external KB and mouse?

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#125

Post by KptMarchewa »

vbezhenar wrote: post #60
pmoriarty wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just disable cliffs during world generation. That's what I do. They're slightly helpful for biter defense, but otherwise they're just annoying. There are also many mods that let you pump water from anywhere.

I'm not a fan of custom modes and mods. I might go this way, if there's no other choice, however generally I prefer to play game as it was intended to be played by developers.

It's not a mod. It's a setting in base game.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#126

Post by freeone3000 »

Aeolun wrote: post #84
mmastrac wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't put trains and smooth in a single sentence. The signals required a lot of patience to learn and I'm not entirely sure I still understand them. They are by far one of the most painful parts of factorio for me.

They’re sort of understandable. When someone described it to me as the blue signals checking the status of the next signal (blue or colored) and doing that, everything made a lot more sense. They’re still sometimes hard to debug because there’s no visualization but I always end up feeling that the issue was my fault

The stuck train is your visualization :P

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#127

Post by mcv »

pmoriarty wrote: post #92
mmastrac wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't put trains and smooth in a single sentence. The signals required a lot of patience to learn and I'm not entirely sure I still understand them. They are by far one of the most painful parts of factorio for me.

I just use city-block blueprints and never really worry about signals. However, the foolproof advice I've gotten from r/Factorio has been to put chain signals at the entrance and exit to every junction, and to make sure there's enough space for your longest train to stop behind a rail signal (and you wouldn't mind having it stop there). I can also recommend the cybersyn mod (or LTN). Once you understand one of these…

Trains are my favourite part of the game, and I always make myself a massive bowl of train spaghetti. I love watching my trains automatically find their way across my messy maze of train tracks.

My simple rules:

* Trains can only stop on the section after a regular signal. If you don't want a train to be able to stop in a certain place (like on an intersection), don't use a regular signal in front of it.

* Make sure trains have places where they can stop. This will mostly be stations, but that's not enough. Actually, I've been wondering if it might be enough for stations that are only visited by a single train; then the train would only go if it has a clear path straight to its destination. Maybe I should give this a try. For me, however, the straights outside the intersections are usually fine places for trains to stop. But for better throughput and less blockage, there should probably multiple tracks, and special tracks for trains waiting to enter a station currently occupied by another train.

* Trains cannot pass a signal on their left if there's not also a signal on their right. You can use this to make certain tracks single-direction. Single-direction is good and easier than double-direction, so of course I mix them, because I'm not playing this game because I like things easy.

* Don't forget to give your trains a place to refuel! This is actually the part I mess up the most.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#128

Post by ehsankia »

rvillanueva wrote: post #13

“Oh man the guy who made the Space Exploration mod is gonna be pissed they’re copying him” “Oh wait it’s the same guy”

My first thought was "but there's already a mod for that". I was delighted to see that addressed directly in the post, and doubly delighted when I actually read the answer.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#129

Post by mcv »

pmoriarty wrote: post #118
red_admiral wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily at the exit. Normal signal: train stops if there's a train in the section ahead (or it's reserved for another train on a conflicting path), otherwise train goes. Chain signal: train stops here until it can get a mutex on a path past another non-chain signal. So if you have rail sections (small letters) and signals (capitals) a - A - b - B - c - C - d in a row on a plain line and A/B are chain signals…

"Chain in, rail out" is the standard advice. However, if you search around r/Factorio you'll see there's debate about whether that's the best advice for beginners. Chain both in and out is supposedly the foolproof method, and apart from stations, rail signals are just an optimization. Though I've played a lot of Factorio, I've never really felt the need to dive deeply in to signals, and I'm happy to just use the fool…

I prefer to see it as regular signals designate the next segment as a segment where trains are allowed to wait. If you don't want trains to stop in that segment, don't put a regular signal in front of it.

And of course you don't want trains stopping on intersections, because they'll block everybody, so you always put chain signals in front of intersections.

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