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Factorio: Space Age

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Re: Factorio: Space Age

#61

Post by dotnet00 »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #11

I "just" (160+ hours in) started a play through of space exploration at the recommendation of an HN comment. Super excited to see an official expansion that adds this kind of thing! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36561847 My ideas list for interesting Factorio challenges (apropos of nothing): - Products with a shelf life (must be consumed within 15 minutes or it turns into a "waste" product) - Products with "re…

You could look into Seablock and some of the related mods (iirc Angels and Bob's mod packs) which add some of those sorts of complexities.

IIRC some things can require charcoal filters, in which case you have to build the filter frame and filter, get it to the machine that needs it, then recover, replace and regenerate the used filter.

Another fun challenge is "feedback", where a later step in a production line produces as waste something you can consume at an earlier stage.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#62

Post by quchen »

philistine wrote: post #2

I’ve gone once through vanilla. I’ve launched a rocket the one time. I feel like the majority of players and blog readers are modded up the wazoo, but this expansion is not really for them. It’s for players like me who did not go beyond the base game.

My mods are mostly QoL, and I’ve played hundreds of hours (well, didn’t count, bought it in version 0.14 years ago). It’s a sandbox that made me read papers on telecommunication routing for optimizing my splitters (Clos networks). You need to mod it like you need to mod Python to do a lot with it. Sure you can, but lots of us just fiddle around with it in different ways just for the sake of it.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#63

Post by rollcat »

vbezhenar wrote: post #51

Postponing cliff explosives makes be extremely sad. I'm perfectionist freak and my factorio gameplay basically divides "before" and "after" cliff explosives. I hate when I can't fix terrain for my plans, I prefer to terraform as much as needed, turning lake into plains, if needed, but I'm not going to adapt my grand plan. I understand that there are players who find fun in adapting their bases to the environment, bui…

Fortunately Factorio is the kind of game where nobody has the right to tell you how you're supposed to play. I'm sure if this change makes it to 2.0 (heck maybe even during an open beta, which I'm sure will drop at some point), there will be a mod that reshuffles the tech tree. You can also always tweak the mapgen parameters for Nauvis to produce less cliffs, or use a console command.

Some of these will disable achievements, but anyway, the true achievement in this game is simply the number of hours you sunk in ;)

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#65

Post by endigma »

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…

Project Zomboid comes to mind as well

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#66

Post by jcranmer »

sumtechguy wrote: post #21
Olreich wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factorio inspired a lot of factory games you're seeing: Mindustry, Shapez.io, Satisfactory, Techtonica, Dyson Sphere Program, etc. One of the devs have stated that they were inspired to create Factorio by the IndustrialCraft and BuildCraft mods for Minecraft, and I suspect that things like Infinifactory were also inspirations.

oh boy Dyson Sphere is my jam. Especially once they added in blueprints. I honestly am not looking forward to the enemy expansion they are going to add. I can see they promised it and want to deliver on it but I do not really want to fight off waves of enemies. I just want to build a huge factory. It is one of the things that keeps me from really getting into factorio. Was going to get a mod to turn them off. But nev…

> I honestly am not looking forward to the enemy expansion they are going to add.

I have the same trepidation in DSP, and I'm hoping they at least take the same tack as Factorio and allow enemies to be turned off entirely. While there is a little bit of fun in trying to design self-sustaining defense lines in Factorio, I never found that enjoyment worth the effort of having to clear out the enemies to build ever-larger factories.

Well, except for Clusterio Gridlock event. In that event, given that you were starting the map with 40x mining productivity and similar bonuses, and were playing with 100+ other people, giving you awkward map layouts with high enemy growth was just about the only way to make it interesting.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#67

Post by gdprrrr »

vbezhenar wrote: post #60
pmoriarty wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just disable cliffs during world generation. That's what I do. They're slightly helpful for biter defense, but otherwise they're just annoying. There are also many mods that let you pump water from anywhere.

I'm not a fan of custom modes and mods. I might go this way, if there's no other choice, however generally I prefer to play game as it was intended to be played by developers.

It's definitely intenfed by the developers to play however you have the most fun. That's why they included the option, just like the peaceful mode.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#68

Post by proactivesvcs »

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.

Not just the games industry, but software in general. Wube's commitment to efficiency and bug fixing is to be lauded.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#69

Post by organsnyder »

troupo wrote: post #57
roydivision wrote: post #29

I have purposely avoided Factorio just because I'm convinced that I'll sink so much time into it. It looks super fun, but I have stuff to do. Maybe one day....

My personal problem with these games is that it feels too much like programming an work, and I do all that at work :)

The difference for me is at work, I need to deal with code reviews, users, and aligning with business objectives. In Factorio, if I decide to refactor my entire base because I want to improve something, I'm free to do so (as long as I keep the biters in mind).

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#70

Post by vessenes »

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 smoothly takes you through multiple levels of abstraction, starting with handcrafting simple ingredients, and (in the base game), moving up to small networks of trains with automation, and flying robot armies to deal with construction and logistics. I'd say there are three-ish layers of abstraction in the main game, and each layer is super well balanced, has its own challenges and benefits, and is above all FUN.

Space Exploration adds two to three more layers of abstraction above these; culminating in networks of interstellar spaceships moving items into orbit and on and off planetary surfaces, where they intersect with the original game's buildings and mechanics. It's profoundly, profoundly good.

I knew Wube had hired the mod developer, but I'm super happy to see he's deeply involved with Space Age, which is explained to be a less hardcore experience, with a lot of the same fun as SE. Should be a blast. I hope they'll charge me more for it.

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