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

Factorio: Space Age

factorio.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 363 posts

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#181

Post by pmoriarty »

12345hn6789 wrote: post #152
vessenes wrote: post #70

Oh wow, I'm very excited about this. The post author wrote the absolutely incredible Space Exploration mod for Factorio, pitching itself as a "100+" hour expansion, realistically closer to 1000 hours for an average player. Space Exploration has its quirks, but is fundamentally an absolutely outstanding puzzle game, among the best ever made. One of the most delightful things about Factorio for coders is that the game…

Space exploration is not the best puzzle game ever made. Space exploration is not the best factorip mod ever made. Space exploration has a great presentation layer (graphics and UI) but the logistics challenge and gameplay challenges leave lots to be desired. I implore you to try many of the other high quality factorio mods made over the years. Pyanodons is easily the greatest factorio mod. The sheer quality and scal…

I tried SeaBlock, but aborted my playthrough before long because it was too boring. I'm enjoying K2, though.

Don't think I'll want to try Space Exploration if it's even worse than SeaBlock.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#182

Post by jcranmer »

oefrha wrote: post #160
db48x wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, Space Exploration is full of cool new challenges that aren’t “let’s make it as miserable as possible just because”. Angels, now that’s grindy.

My experience is that Angel's isn't all that grindy in itself--its main problem is instead that it feels excessively matrix-driven in development by itself. And there's a subsidiary problem that a lot of it ends up feeling kinda pointless (especially bioprocessing), so some of the interesting challenges it presents ends up being ignored because there's no reason to actually engage with them.

The other issue is that Angel's is kind of an incomplete mod by itself, it relies on something else to actually use all the new things it makes, and that other one is Bob's [1]... and Bob's is very much complexity for complexity's sake. Most of the vanilla items in the games are instead have extra dragged out production chains for seemingly no reason other than to make things more complex, and the modpack has evolved by finding one of the few things that hasn't been touched yet and complexifying that yet further.

[1] To be clear, Bob's predates Angel's by a lot, and Angel's was largely developed to create more interesting ways to make the things that Bob's added.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#183

Post by jayshua »

unglaublich wrote: post #124
birracerveza wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Custom input map with extensive radial menus and layers.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#184

Post by fps-hero »

duxup wrote: post #49
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.

I see a lot more indie dev type games that go through these super long development times, long early access, and really are committed to the game longer term. I suspect where some games might just move on these folks really are committed to "hey let's rewrite that" type decisions that don't fit in traditional commercial game development. It has been very encouraging to see that there room for an arguably improving qu…

Early access is a great way to outsource your QA. Triple A QA teams number in the hundreds, but for an independent game to have that many people playing it is a triumph in itself.

If people keep playing your game in early access, you must be on to something. There are tens of thousands of games people could be playing, but for them to pick yours means you are scratching an itch that can’t be found elsewhere, and that inspires developers create great games.

Early access does get flack for allowing people to release unfinished, often never finished games, but it’s a wonderful test of product market fit. If people try your game and like it, give you feedback to improve your game so even more people like it, it’s the ultimate positive feedback loop.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#185

Post by batmansmom1 »

jameshart wrote: post #162

Not sure this will scratch the itch for what I always felt was missing from Factorio, which is fundamentally a more satisfying ‘sink’ for resources. During main gameplay your resource extraction and expansion is driven mainly by the sink of ‘research’ - turn resources into science, science into unlocks. Additionally, biters eat bullets, and occasionally factory parts that need replacing. Other than that the main sink…

Friendly aliens trying to reach sustainability is such an awesome idea for a mod! (or Space Age feature @devs???)

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#186

Post by duxup »

fps-hero wrote: post #184
duxup wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot more indie dev type games that go through these super long development times, long early access, and really are committed to the game longer term. I suspect where some games might just move on these folks really are committed to "hey let's rewrite that" type decisions that don't fit in traditional commercial game development. It has been very encouraging to see that there room for an arguably improving qu…

Early access is a great way to outsource your QA. Triple A QA teams number in the hundreds, but for an independent game to have that many people playing it is a triumph in itself. If people keep playing your game in early access, you must be on to something. There are tens of thousands of games people could be playing, but for them to pick yours means you are scratching an itch that can’t be found elsewhere, and that…

It certainly sets expectations and gamers have really adapted to it / seem to receive the whole process fairly well.

I don't game like I used to but I was playing an early access game recently, got a pop up on a keyboard shortcut to submit a bug with a screen shot and the game state.

Total win win for everyone.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#187

Post by ecuzzillo »

feoren wrote: post #175
throwaway03624 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Man's Sky has a similar dedication. They have been constantly adding new features and expansions for free for the last 7 years. If this had been a different company, they might have saved some of those features for a version 2 or a paid DLC.

Wait, No Man's Sky? That game? Was it bought or something? Do they still have that liar who went on interviews and lied through his teeth about the game? It's pretty rare to see a project based entirely on lies from a smarmy psycho liar ever actually go anywhere, right? Did they ever go back and actually implement any of the things he lied were already in the base game?

Yes, they did go back. They basically used all the money they made from the hype and used it to make it real. Players bought them a billboard across from their office saying thank you. (https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/cr85av/th... ) See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5BJVO3PDeQ for one rendition of the story.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#188

Post by ecuzzillo »

batmansmom1 wrote: post #185
jameshart wrote: post #162

Not sure this will scratch the itch for what I always felt was missing from Factorio, which is fundamentally a more satisfying ‘sink’ for resources. During main gameplay your resource extraction and expansion is driven mainly by the sink of ‘research’ - turn resources into science, science into unlocks. Additionally, biters eat bullets, and occasionally factory parts that need replacing. Other than that the main sink…

Friendly aliens trying to reach sustainability is such an awesome idea for a mod! (or Space Age feature @devs???)

This happens in the Pyanodon mod pack, among others; you farm alien creatures and make little habitats for them.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#189

Post by dimava »

coryfklein wrote: post #167
12345hn6789 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space exploration is not the best puzzle game ever made. Space exploration is not the best factorip mod ever made. Space exploration has a great presentation layer (graphics and UI) but the logistics challenge and gameplay challenges leave lots to be desired. I implore you to try many of the other high quality factorio mods made over the years. Pyanodons is easily the greatest factorio mod. The sheer quality and scal…

So looking at /user/pyanodon, there doesn't even appear to be a mod named "Pyanodons", but rather he's made a whole bunch of different mods. Which one are you recommending? All of them at once?

See https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/567718271823118347/10... flowchart

4, 7, or all 9 mods depending on how long game you are looking for

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#190

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

pmoriarty wrote: post #181
12345hn6789 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space exploration is not the best puzzle game ever made. Space exploration is not the best factorip mod ever made. Space exploration has a great presentation layer (graphics and UI) but the logistics challenge and gameplay challenges leave lots to be desired. I implore you to try many of the other high quality factorio mods made over the years. Pyanodons is easily the greatest factorio mod. The sheer quality and scal…

I tried SeaBlock, but aborted my playthrough before long because it was too boring. I'm enjoying K2, though. Don't think I'll want to try Space Exploration if it's even worse than SeaBlock.

> Don't think I'll want to try Space Exploration if it's even worse than SeaBlock.

I would really recommend SE above SeaBlock, IMO SeaBlock feels like it throws away almost all of the recipies you know & doesn't give you much new to reward you, I felt like it was more like some random fanfic. Where as SE felt like it was a poorly edited directors cut of the original movie. There's way too much & it's audience is really the people that wanted a 4h movie with 6 different subplots. Also lacking the polish of the original, but still very much in the spirit.

Post reply on HN