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The Factorio Mindset

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Re: The Factorio Mindset

#321

Post by zouhair »

pm90 wrote: post #286
zouhair wrote: post #257

> I used to be of the opinion that the computer game Factorio was a colossal waste of talent, burning many billions of dollars of GDP every year. I dunno if the author is joking or not, but I heard this argument over and over. Am I in the minority to think that it's totally insane that everything should revolve around raising the GDP? I feel smart people working at Facebook or Google working hard at finding new ways…

A charitable interpretation is that it’s an attempt to continue the spectacular growth of labor efficiency that has lifted large sections of the world out of poverty. Doesn’t change that it’s rather silly to constantly think of individual actions’ effect on a macroeconomic measure.

Labor efficiency didn't lift anyone from poverty, social policies did. We are more efficient than any time in history but we still have to work full time to survive.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#322

Post by baud147258 »

pm90 wrote: post #231
kortilla wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he doesn't mention the very unsubtle commentary of you basically strip mining an alien planet clean mutating the wild life into a homicidal frenzy in desperate attempt to stop you from killing their home with pollution. People who get hung up on this are pretty shallow though. It’s such a tiring trope of “oh no, look at how bad colonialism is”. There is a lot of good stuff to discuss about the game beyond the sopho…

The game allows one to disable the wildlife, no mods required, so it’s possible to focus solely on game without dealing with it at all. However. I do think it’s a pretty amazing mechanic that the game designers put in the game, and is a great tool to shine light on the darkest aspect of the human race: our unbelievable capacity to subdue and destroy. Factorio isn’t just about being dropped in a war zone and shooting…

honestly, I though the pollution and wildlife aggression were put in the game as balancing elements (urge to switch power source, force to invest in defences, slow expansion) rather than any commentary

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#323

Post by kgwxd »

tharkun__ wrote: post #221
DerArzt wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest hurdle for me getting back in is just getting past the bootstrapping phase to where you can automate the construction of things from blueprints. Luckily the game is made overwhelmingly with mods in mind, so there is a mod for my issue.

I'm with your parent. For me there was a progression. First playthrough I was anxious to get to the automation parts. This continued as I explored more of the game, more of the automation possibilities, blueprinting, trying to make an all solar, all steam or all nuclear factory etc. At some point and I don't know when exactly it turned. I like the initial bootstrapping phase and at varying points I just get this "ugh…

Sounds like the honeymoon phase of starting a new software project. The second you hit a problem there’s no beautiful solution to, the magic is gone.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#324

Post by philwelch »

kuschku wrote: post #219
sudosysgen wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will be a problem in a few hundred years of our energy consumption continues growing at this rate; I've done the math on this website a year or two ago.

At the rate our energy consumption is growing, even if we avoid climate change wrecking our society today, the heat waste of our energy production will start to eclipse the effects of climate change in only a few centuries, at most a millenium. Which isn’t that long of a time.

Are you accounting for population collapse? Increased energy consumption corollates to wealth correlates to below-replacement birthrates.

If that doesn’t solve the problem, a culture capable of generating and using that much energy will just build space colonies, which solves the problem too.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#325

Post by h2odragon »

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.

Thank you; i feel better about "just under" 3,000 hours now.

I've only really played 2 games. Started messing with making mods and decided I'd better stop playing that game for a while.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#326

Post by sudosysgen »

zrobotics wrote: post #315
sudosysgen wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually not true. If we use solar energy, we are reducing the albedo of the earth, thereby introducing more energy than otherwise. As far as wind, you are correct, but the amount of wind energy we can harvest is limited enough that there simply won't be enough at that point assuming that trend. Similarly with wood, at that point we would just run out of wood.

Question-are we reducing albedo with solar? Solar cells appear more reflective than soil; I wouldn't think that albedo would be reduced unless we were putting solar cells over the ocean. Do you have a source for this, that's an interesting conundrum but seems counterintuitive. I would think that solar cells actually reflect more heat than they absorb, I have had to work around them and they act as though they reflect…

Photovoltaic panels exhibit Fresnel reflection, meaning that they are more reflective at an angle but very weakly reflective head-on, just like glass.

According to this: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020EGUGA..2218924S/abstra... , the albedo is of 0.23, which is a lot lower than the albedo of soil.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#327

Post by cbzbc »

optimalsolver wrote: post #279
_9omd wrote: post #241

My problem with games like Factorio (and more recently Oxygen no Included), is that after I get addicted and get up past 100 hours of gameplay I start to question what the hell I'm doing with my life. Up until that point it's great fun designing, building, and optimizing, but then a switch in my head flips. I start to become anxious about the fact that I was excited about getting better at skills in a virtual world.…

"How Much Are Games Like Factorio And EVE Online Sapping Away The Intellectual Potential Of Humanity?" https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/ml00ac/how_ ... >I often wonder if these specific types of games are redirecting a nontrivial amount of human intellectual output into a deadend. They're explicitly geared to lure in the kind of obsessive tinkerer types who've historically driven scientific and engine…

As the first response there says "Play is a way to learn and hone skills."

And there's an assumption that people who aren't 'playing' would automatically be doing something 'worthy' instead.

I suspect the reality is that most of us here went through an obsessive period of learning something which paid off in unexpected ways later. Eve could be teaching all sorts of things, including business and organizational skills: https://youtu.be/6rEfQ3GT73A?t=878

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#328

Post by FreeFull »

FumblingBear wrote: post #164
martincmartin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 start…

Interestingly, Minecraft itself was inspired by a Zachtronics game called Infiniminer

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#329

Post by iliketrains »

eezurr wrote: post #254
iliketrains wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what do you mean by "realistic spacing/placement of structures", could you elaborate? Do you mean that in reality you would not build a farm next to a blast furnace? That's true, we did not implement any mechanics regarding building proximity to others, but that is certainly an interesting idea! When I mentioned our focus on reality, I meant that the mechanics and processes are mostly driven how things…

Sure, I'll try. The structures are all lined up and flush up against each other, and the buildings are bunched up. There's nothing wrong with that, I was just confused by "realistic processes". To me that also means (closer to) realistic functionality at the structures too, both in placement and functionality. Since you mentioned it, it seems like a key part of your game but to me that isn't communicated in the video…

Thanks for the clarification and you are right. I probably should have said that it is merely more realistic than other games in this genre.

It's great to hear from other game devs! What is your game called?

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#330

Post by MayeulC »

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.

I haven't tried factorio yet, but it seems very similar to mindustry, except that mindustry is also a mix of "real" tower defense and RTS.

I really like mindustry. It's open source, available for free on multiple platforms (it's java), and paid on others.

It constantly gets updated, and has a nice progress curve. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the recent addition of processors. It breaks the balance of the game a bit, as you can basically program your own AI for it, and do stuff like smart electric grid load balancing, shutting down reactors before they overheat, and use units as resource transports. On the other hand, it's fun to play with, and with a bit of automation you can save a lot of space.

As an electronics engineer, that game is quite appealing to me, and nicely illustrates some of the challenges we face everyday in engineering: refactoring, dependencies, synchronization, modularity vs optimization, "security", etc.

I feel like a better link might be the official website at https://mindustrygame.github.io/

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