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The Factorio Mindset

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Re: The Factorio Mindset

#161

Post by Kaytaro »

iliketrains wrote: post #90
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 algor…

I mean this as a compliment when I say I hope this never gets released.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#162

Post by _aphw »

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

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.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#163

Post by bduerst »

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

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, the way the bugs in Factorio operate. DSP is supposedly adding combat later though, so we'll see how it pans out.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#164

Post by FumblingBear »

martincmartin wrote: post #22
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]

What other games are like programming?

One thing I don't see mentioned on here often is actually rather surprising. Modded Minecraft! There are a lot of highly technical mods that are focused on providing resources that enable mass automation, and many modpacks that push the limits of that concept.

Some of my favorite modpacks are Enigmatica 2: Expert, Omnifactory, and one I just started recently, Divine Journey 2.

They all have a similar process of starting with nothing but a book full of quests to guide your progression, and end up with you automating everything from farms to quarries to mob grinders in order to produce items that have comically difficult "recipes" to craft.

Scratches the same itch as Factorio, Zachtronics games, Satisfactory, etc. but often has some fun side goals such as making your factory look beautiful, exploration, fighting bosses, and best of all, getting your friends hooked on the game and playing on a server in a group!

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#165

Post by bduerst »

mdemare wrote: post #150
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

Anything for iOS?

Mindustry and Shapez IO (browser) are pretty good.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#166

Post by deltaonefour »

ineedasername wrote: post #149
deltaonefour wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No it frustrates me when something so obvious needs to be announced 50 million times as if it's some revelatory discovery.

Here a list of games that are unintentionally turing complete:

  Dwarf Fortress
  OpenTTD
  Terraria
  Minecraft
  Minesweeper
  LittleBigPlanet
  Baba is You
  Factorio
  Cities: Skylines
  Opus Magnum
  Portal 2
  Geometry Dash
You can come up with approximately 10 analogy blog posts for each game... written, of course, from a different blog with each post presenting the analogy as if it's some amazing idea. Then of course post it on hackernews and flood the front page with this stuff.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#168

Post by leetcrew »

dragontamer wrote: post #135
leetcrew wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe we are talking past each other, but I'd say clean interfaces and bots are very important even if you don't want to tear down the original factory. you want to be able to double production of high volume products with a couple copy-pastes. can't really do this if you have some gnarly IO setup. I agree clean layouts inside of functional units is unnecessary. land is cheap; just make something that works and cp it…

> you want to be able to double production of high volume products with a couple copy-pastes. In my experience, no. Any high-volume production needs to be built from the ground up from smelters (or even miners) on downwards. If you have 1-belts of iron feeding your factory and then want to expand, the easiest way to do so is to build a parallel +1 belt of iron (including the 70+ smelters and 50+ miners somewhere else…

before I have bots, I usually put down a minimal production line that doesn't saturation a belt. I place them perpendicular to the main bus, so they can be 2x'd or 4x'd before saturating an output belt or fully consuming an input. in the early stages of having bots, I scale them a couple times as needed.

but once I have a good number of bots and a couple speed upgrades for them, I try to switch to remote train-served factories for bulk items. so doubling steel really is as simple as copypasting the original smelters and train stops. with current train mechanics, you don't even have to rename the stops. from here you can either fully transition to block architecture (probably overkill for vanilla) or widen your original bus at the end by injecting materials via train.

if you do it right, the only manual effort for scaling is adding new trains to prevent starvation.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#169

Post by m463 »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #151
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.

I mean, some people just prefer to play the game more leisurely. It's not a speed run or a business deliverable. I have around 80 hours on my factory so far and it's pretty clear to me I could have "finished" by now with a lot more corner cutting but I'm enjoying the process of exploring each tech tree discovery in depth and scaling things out "right". This takes longer, but it's fun and I feel better about the end r…

I got to the point where I could copy-paste walls with lasers around an area and then develop inside it at my leisure. Then the game was no-worries building therapy.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#170

Post by ansible »

electroly wrote: post #36
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]

Factorio is right on the cusp for me. SpaceChem, too. TIS-100 was a bomb for me; if I'm literally writing code, it better end up in a GitHub repo. With Factorio for me, I always reach a point where I know how I'm going to scale up, and then I lose interest in actually doing so. Just knowing that I could do it is satisfying enough.

> ... TIS-100 was a bomb for me ...

I started it, but never finished it.

On the one hand, it is a vastly better debugging experience. You can see the entire state of the machine, and easily step through the execution.

In contrast, with my day job, I'm dealing with incomplete documentation, poorly designed and very large libraries without adequate comments or organization, subtle bugs that only occur in unidentified situations, etc.

But at the end of the day, TIS-100 felt more like work or a hobby project, so I'd be better off doing one of those.

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