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Bitburner, programming-based incremental game

bitburner-official.github.io

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Re: Bitburner, programming-based incremental game

#21

Post by williamoforange »

Mond_ wrote: post #20
williamoforange wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot of praise heaped on Factorio but I was underwhelmed when I played it, the game doesn't really capture what makes industrial engineering interesting for me, it seems more like software engineering wearing the face of traditional mech/chem/ind engineering. The way pollution is handled is also kind of insane (red overlay makes nodes mad now use gun kill...) and reflects more of the creator of the game and no…

May I ask how far you got? It's not a good representation of industrial engineering, for sure, but I do like the actual logistics management and "how do I deal with my technical debt" later in the game. I think most of this only really gets interesting once you use trains everywhere and build everything with bots.

I only got into circuitry myself, but I've watched skilled players go all the way through which is entertaining in of itself but not enough to overcome my initial misgivings. I can see how it would be fun from a Sim City for engineers perspective with tech debt to add a feedback to the gameplay loop.

The game feels very lonely and honestly imo quite selfish in its objectives, deplete the planet to escape using your brilliant intellect, science cost is just time*resources. This is the opposite of my experience in life where no-one can do it all alone from scratch, everything is the accumulation of shared motivation, experience and unique perspectives.

Re: Bitburner, programming-based incremental game

#22

Post by Lapsa »

williamoforange wrote: post #21
Mond_ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask how far you got? It's not a good representation of industrial engineering, for sure, but I do like the actual logistics management and "how do I deal with my technical debt" later in the game. I think most of this only really gets interesting once you use trains everywhere and build everything with bots.

I only got into circuitry myself, but I've watched skilled players go all the way through which is entertaining in of itself but not enough to overcome my initial misgivings. I can see how it would be fun from a Sim City for engineers perspective with tech debt to add a feedback to the gameplay loop. The game feels very lonely and honestly imo quite selfish in its objectives, deplete the planet to escape using your b…

you can implement D-Gate in Factorio (needed for inventory snapshots) and make your assembly machines completely dynamic - picking up whatever recipes and resources you require (including fluids). I've reduced game through automation so far that all I do is copy paste and hook up to railway network whatever resource mining outposts

Re: Bitburner, programming-based incremental game

#24

Post by InterlooperX »

Mond_ wrote: post #20
williamoforange wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot of praise heaped on Factorio but I was underwhelmed when I played it, the game doesn't really capture what makes industrial engineering interesting for me, it seems more like software engineering wearing the face of traditional mech/chem/ind engineering. The way pollution is handled is also kind of insane (red overlay makes nodes mad now use gun kill...) and reflects more of the creator of the game and no…

May I ask how far you got? It's not a good representation of industrial engineering, for sure, but I do like the actual logistics management and "how do I deal with my technical debt" later in the game. I think most of this only really gets interesting once you use trains everywhere and build everything with bots.

I like it well enough. Played it a bunch and actually managed to finally build that rocket. But I was not really skilled enough I guess.

Because the last couple of hours I basically just waited until enough resources for the last part of the rocket were built. I simply couldn't be arsed to rip apart the awful spaghetti code like things I have build to make it faster. It was really exhausting just sitting there ingame, knowing what i build works and will eventually produce enough but may god did it take its time for that.

From a game mechanic perspective, what I was missing in that game was a plateau at least of some kind. Since natural resources always run out the game was basically always forcing you to be on the go and keep on doing stuff, thus risking breaking something somewhere and then rushing to fix what broke all the while you originally were supposed to be doing something else etc. There was simply never a time were you could actually take a step back and take stock of what you build and take your time to try and work out on how to alter things to make them more efficient. Every change I made was basically never for the sake of streamlining anything. It was always a forced change by some external factor. Always. And this feeling of constantly being "chased" kind of reduced the replayability of this game for me.

Re: Bitburner, programming-based incremental game

#25

Post by fragmede »

InterlooperX wrote: post #24
Mond_ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask how far you got? It's not a good representation of industrial engineering, for sure, but I do like the actual logistics management and "how do I deal with my technical debt" later in the game. I think most of this only really gets interesting once you use trains everywhere and build everything with bots.

I like it well enough. Played it a bunch and actually managed to finally build that rocket. But I was not really skilled enough I guess. Because the last couple of hours I basically just waited until enough resources for the last part of the rocket were built. I simply couldn't be arsed to rip apart the awful spaghetti code like things I have build to make it faster. It was really exhausting just sitting there ingame…

> I simply couldn't be arsed to rip apart the awful spaghetti code like things I have build to make it faster.

Yeah but the feeling you get after having done that is so sublime that it's worth it, which is why some of us get so addicted to the game.

Re: Bitburner, programming-based incremental game

#26

Post by fragmede »

williamoforange wrote: post #21
Mond_ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask how far you got? It's not a good representation of industrial engineering, for sure, but I do like the actual logistics management and "how do I deal with my technical debt" later in the game. I think most of this only really gets interesting once you use trains everywhere and build everything with bots.

I only got into circuitry myself, but I've watched skilled players go all the way through which is entertaining in of itself but not enough to overcome my initial misgivings. I can see how it would be fun from a Sim City for engineers perspective with tech debt to add a feedback to the gameplay loop. The game feels very lonely and honestly imo quite selfish in its objectives, deplete the planet to escape using your b…

It's best played with friends, imo. Setup a server, gather some like-minded friends, and build something together.

Re: Bitburner, programming-based incremental game

#29

Post by foresterre »

cautiouscat wrote: post #10

Woah! I loved this game on Steam. If anyone likes factory games (Satisfactory or Factorio) and programming this is a must try. Also got a bit of idle game in the mix. Surprisingly immersive too for a mostly text game.

I've played both Factorio and Bitburner extensively (both >1000h, but that's unfair wrt bitburner, because you let it run in the background sometimes), but I don't find they compare that well. Factorio can be played without any optimization and completely mechanically if you wanted (i.e. no "programming" of circuits). It's visual style also makes interfacing with the game more like most games you encounter.

In bitburner, you literally have sort of editor (or terminal), which is also the world (you can use an external editor though). The whole game is about programming your way to destroy a BitNode.

I guess they're comparable because they are both about optimization of bottlenecks. In my experience though, having played Factorio for hundreds of hours with software engineer friends, BitBurner with its text only interface is far more niche, and only the thought of playing it reminds some of them of work (so they don't try) ;).

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