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The Factorio Mindset

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Re: The Factorio Mindset

#141

Post by seanhunter »

Factorio is my favourite game of all time by a country mile. The thing that is so amazing to me is when you first play it and suddenly you realise that what you thought was the goal of the game (to launch the rocket) is literally completely irrelevant and the goal has at some point just become "to play more factorio".

The factory doesn't have to grow to feed the rocket. The factory must grow because it must grow. And you're there to make it grow.

Then pretty soon you've launched hundreds of rockets and you're still thinking "if I can just get my trains working a bit better, remove this bottleneck then I can expand over there..."

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#142

Post by Dobbs »

and0 wrote: post #127
foobarian wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satisfactory had even more of that effect on me and the kid when we played it. Perhaps because of being 3D and having all sorts of native flora and fauna that was very good at being annoying and getting in the way of construction. It essentially made it fun to destroy the native environment and replace it with concrete. It's not even that we didn't mind doing it, it's that we enjoyed it. It was kind of unsettling, si…

Satisfactory was fun for a while, and I want to try the v5 features still, but even as an FPS vet I get headaches and frustrations trying to do accurate placement of buildings, let alone tightly optimal. Amazing graphics optimizations, considering the dynamic lighting and how many objects are rendered.

A lot of recent changes to the game have been quality of life changes to make it easier to align things.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#144

Post by outworlder »

vsareto wrote: post #71

I just don't get this. I feel like people back port their learning experiences to games that have a similar enough structure. A nice observation, but you can't go in the reverse direction by playing Factorio to learn something tangible. Factorio doesn't have the same failure granularity as the real world and so the usefulness of the analogy/mindset just doesn't do it for me. Plus my skill can be replaced by roughly h…

> A nice observation, but you can't go in the reverse direction by playing Factorio to learn something tangible

What about Factorio circuits? :)

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#145

Post by tgarv »

outworlder wrote: post #133
gmadsen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 able to get back into it since then. It's really unfortunate because it was one of my favorite games when I was still enjoying it.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#146

Post by neogodless »

stackedinserter wrote: post #103
bloqs wrote: post #48

Please please try Satisfactory. It's a beautiful, 3D equivalent. Holds a coveted Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam.

Thank you for yet another reminder that it sucks to be a mac user :-)

A "mac user" isn't who you are as a person. It's who you're being in a moment of time. If you want to play PC games, buy a machine that handles playing them and use it for those instances. In this case, it looks like they only released Satisfactory on Windows, with mostly good results playing on Linux using Proton.

https://www.protondb.com/app/526870

Factorio seems to run on macOS and SteamOS + Linux.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#147

Post by depaya »

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.

For what it's worth, the aliens are a completely optional part of the game. I almost always play with them disabled now so I can focus on the more fun parts of the game.

Also some mods can counteract resource depletion if desired.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#148

Post by dkersten »

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.

Its a similar itch as programming for fun, but often that becomes less fun after spending the entire day programming for money. Factorio is just different enough to still be fun and relaxing, even though its similar.

Programming also comes with baggage that Factorio can do away with (eg sibling comment mentioned build tools, I've given up on an evening of personal programming before because setting up the build environment was too much effort... looking at you cmake you piece of garbage... Or because I hit a bug that was too much effort to find/fix. Factorio "debugging" is much simpler, its about finding blockages or optimizing things, not figuring out why undefined is not a number in some deeply nested code where the value couldn't possibly be undefined but it turns out some async code changed it without you realizing...)

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#149

Post by ineedasername »

deltaonefour wrote: post #59
ineedasername wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like this is merely someone's opinion that Factorio may have some transferable skills, namely a mindset-- along with the limitations-- of automation. I'm not sure why this would be so frustrating for you. It's not like the author themselves went down your slippery slope to full blown theory. If they had? Sure, that would be a bit of the usually breathless attempts at "thoughtleading", but I see no need for p…

I'm frustrated because these types of opinions are everywhere. Especially factorio: https://www.google.com/search?q=factorio+is+like+programming There are tons and tons of these.

I program, and I've played Factorio. It feels kind of like programming, so it does not frustrate me that such an opinion can be found everywhere.

Is it your opinion that Factorio does not have elements of gameplay that require (or benefit from) an approach to what is used in programming?

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#150

Post by mdemare »

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

Anything for iOS?
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