Factorio

polypusher wrote:

They had tech demos to start with, expanded with more features, expanded with more content and had 1.0 releases without drawing things out TOO long.

So (paraphrasing here) your only issue with Factorio is that it calls itself Early Access but is too feature complete to be called a tech demo? Personally the game still feels like a tech demo to me, especially when you read the devblog and see placeholder stuff like this. They haven't even gotten into boats yet and lakes remain 100% impassible.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/HdPUMQG.gif)

There is so much the game could do in the future and that some mods already do. Someone figured out a way to make a factory inside a train that never stops moving for instance.

WANT THE SPIDER PLATFORM BOT

polypusher wrote:

WANT THE SPIDER PLATFORM BOT

Iknowright.jpg

Prison Architect and Kerbal Space Program both did it great. They had tech demos to start with, expanded with more features, expanded with more content and had 1.0 releases without drawing things out TOO long.

Other than being in development for longer before putting out the hat in Early Access, I'm not sure I see the real difference? If anything, I think Factorio's approach is better, because you're getting a much firmer idea of what you'll end up getting, once they think it's finished. KSP in particular was hardly the same game when they were done.

Now, admittedly, KSP is freaking great, but was missing so many things that it *could* have been a total trainwreck. If anything, I'd think they were more abusive, because they had a lot less game and a lot more vapor. They handled it brilliantly, but there was no way to know that ahead of time.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you think they're being deceptive with their early access release, so they can handwave away the bugs. But, even if that's the case, wouldn't that mean it wasn't ready for a full release? If it has a bunch of bugs that need to be ignored, wouldn't shipping it as a complete game be more misleading, not less?

So I just finished what there was of the early access. I damn near uninstalled/reinstalled the game 5 times. Basically I'd reach a point and throw my hands up and say 'No that's impossible, goodbye'. Then I get the itch to restart and try it again. Rinse wash repeat.

Finally got to the end building my rocket. I realized it would take about 3000 pieces of tier 3 stuff. I had the supply line going but it would take me forever. So I did cheat here since I just wanted to be done at this point. Really great game and if they released it now I would consider it pretty good.

I would say the only weak part is the end game where some of the last tier objects take too long and you need too many of them. Probable me being better at the game would help though. Also driving a tank through a biter base is awesome. Who needs bullets. Ramming Speed!

Factorio, aka the "where the hell did I park this time?" game.

(for those who haven't noticed: your car has an icon on the map. I didn't see that for quite awhile. )

master0 wrote:

I would say the only weak part is the end game where some of the last tier objects take too long and you need too many of them.

Well, remember the game is about automation and scaling; if it's taking too long, you need a bigger machine.

Malor wrote:

Factorio, aka the "where the hell did I park this time?" game.

(for those who haven't noticed: your car has an icon on the map. I didn't see that for quite awhile. )

master0 wrote:

I would say the only weak part is the end game where some of the last tier objects take too long and you need too many of them.

Well, remember the game is about automation and scaling; if it's taking too long, you need a bigger machine.

True. Watching a speedrun showed me how much more I could achieve just by scaling up and building a ton more stuff. That said I think my complaint was more on the fact that it just wasn't as interesting compared to earlier. It felt weak. That said it is still early access.

Finally got myself to all-solar. Man, that took a LOT of panels and batteries.... I think I have ~1800 active panels at the moment, and about 6.5MJ worth of batteries. (There really oughta be a top-tier fusion generator or something, since you've got the personal fusion generator; surely making a tiny backpack fusion plant is harder than an industrial installation?)

This game scales incredibly well. The code quality must be insane. I'm generating around 2000 iron plates a minute, something like 30 a second, and somewhere around 1200 copper, they're getting dragged around what must be miles of conveyor belt by now, and then there are probably more than a hundred factories generating all the little pieces of an economy. Everything just keeps ticking over beautifully. I see occasional slight frame hitches, but they're not annoying, and don't last long. I mostly see them at night, and get the impression that there's some slight rendering glitch somewhere.

I'm curious about what language or dev system they're working with, because it must be fast as hell.

Malor wrote:

I'm curious about what language or dev system they're working with, because it must be fast as hell.

It's all custom-written C++. Their weekly development blog has talked about some of their optimization work from time to time. This sort of technical nitty-gritty is a large focus of their development.

Well I watched Elysiums GWJ Plays... and now I feel like I don't know how to play Factorio...

At 25:25, my brain just broke... Holy sh*t that is huge and complex! madness!

Holy sh*t that is huge and complex!

That's what's really fun about the game. It doesn't start that way -- you build it. You construct it one piece at a time, so it will make sense to you, no matter how big it gets. (edit: my biggest problem is remembering where I'm building a given component. My second biggest problem is remembering where I parked.)

It's also interesting looking at other people's factories. Mooquack had a really clever belt splitter solution that impressed me, back on the first page, and I like Elysium's four-way belt splitter, there. I've usually gone for single fast belts with individual splits for different areas, and his wide/slow approach is kind of interesting.

Ya, designated parking for the tank, and a wall between that spot and the car's parking spot, its advised. First time I came roaring back into my base to get more ammo...

I ran over the car.

Crunch.

I've done that before >_>

Really the main issue is that the vehicle controls are tank controls in the worst way. There needs to be a way to snap to the cardinal directions because navigating straight roads and around square objects is way harder than it needs to be.

Has anyone played around with the server mode? Seems like a consistent GWJ world we could all drop in/out of would be pretty cool.

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/f...

Seems like the devs are scrapping the loader concept in favour of this "heavy inserter". This feels like a cop out, I would much rather have the loader even if it was stuck with placeholder graphics. Adding new and bigger inserters doesn't solve the original problem which is overcomplicated and bloated mechanics.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/kePD6VY.gif)

This picture is a snapshot I took off of youtube. The guy who made this is named Arumba and this is his design for a "full throughput" train station. That is the station is capable of loading and offloading enough items to completely fill a transport belt with no wasted gaps. This concept of belt saturation is something a lot of the alpha players almost fetishize and will go to great lengths to achieve. As a result they and the developers resist making changes that would somehow cheapen this micromanagement "puzzle".

Everything you see in this picture could be replaced by 4 belts leading into 4 loaders, one for each train car. Even Arumba admits he would rather have the option to use loaders than not have it.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/KtE4sPW.png)

Love the systems optimization aspect of this game. I'm a project manager, so why do I want to run home and play this until 1am every night?

I guess because the inserters don't talk back.

I caved and bought it last week. Working my way through the tutorial levels now and watching a lot of videos. It really digs those "just one more..." hooks in while playing. Till 1am every night.

Not sure if it deserves its own thread, but Blueprint Tycoon is out on Steam now offering some similar sort of gameplay. And it is only $2.69 right now.

polq37 wrote:

Not sure if it deserves its own thread, but Blueprint Tycoon is out on Steam now offering some similar sort of gameplay. And it is only $2.69 right now.

Just played that. Very similar to anno series not factorio. Quite good though.

I'm digging this very much. I ditched on the tutorials in favor of some let's plays and kept the alien threat to a minimum per some other advice from the internet: https://wiki.factorio.com/index.php?...
this one in particular was broken up to where I would watch and learn and be inspired for next phases of my own game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13k7...
I got a long ways and decided I wanted to start over making better decisions. I'm still minimizing the threat because there's enough fun for me just fighting myself and rash, suboptimal decisions and building with an awesome set of toys.
Maybe it doesn't sound like it but it is kind of zen for me.

I've been playing quite a bit of Factorio over the course of the last days (in fact, the only other game I've played more than this in 2016 is Xcom 2) and now I'm at the point where I can't avoid using oil anymore. Until now I was mostly able to get along without watching any tutorials (Apart from trains. Those train systems are not very intuitive either), but refining oil is one of the most complex things I've seen in a while in any game. That alone could be a game on its own...

I really like the game a lot and I guess it's because it sort of combines my two favourite PC games from the 90s MINUS the things I hated:
- Transport tycoon minus having to tinker with the height of the terrain
- Command & Conquer minus micromanaging all those units in combat
The 15-year-old boy inside of me is very happy. I'm interested to see what they add in the future. This game feels rather complete already.

I also get the feeling like it's a great combination of other games, and love it. I have been playing the first train scenario, where you have to resurrect the base and then put a TON of resources in your car. It's a bit of a frustrating scenario, because the resource demands are really high, and there's nothing nearby except the other train station area full of iron. The scenario should be teaching me how to setup train stuff first, and then fill the giant order.

I decided to punt on the campaign/scenario missions for now. I got to the first train one and got annoyed with the giant shopping list.

I started my first completely new game on peaceful mode with very large, dense, and frequent resources.

Mixolyde wrote:

I started my first completely new game on peaceful mode with very large, dense, and frequent resources.

"Peaceful" as in "no monsters"? I've played through all the story missions (there are just two more after the train mission and one of them is very short) and I'm playing the sandbox mode with more than normal resources, too, but I wouldn't be that interested in a game without the critters. I've put them on "normal" and they haven't been much of a problem so far. If one nest is too close to my base, I just smoke them out with my laser turrets. The variety of monsters isn't very interesting, though. It would be more exciting if there were flying monsters and monsters that can swim, too.

How do you get alien artifacts for research in peaceful mode? I know there is a mod for that but I don't think the base game accounts for the lack of purple science packs.

As far as I can tell, the game won't work properly without monster hives to harvest. Setting to 'no aliens' will mean you can't finish.

Factorio 0.13 is now out. The changelog may be found here. To get it, you'll need to enable the "experimental" branch on Steam, or experimental updates if you're using the non-Steam version.

Brainsmith wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

I started my first completely new game on peaceful mode with very large, dense, and frequent resources.

"Peaceful" as in "no monsters"? I've played through all the story missions (there are just two more after the train mission and one of them is very short) and I'm playing the sandbox mode with more than normal resources, too, but I wouldn't be that interested in a game without the critters. I've put them on "normal" and they haven't been much of a problem so far. If one nest is too close to my base, I just smoke them out with my laser turrets. The variety of monsters isn't very interesting, though. It would be more exciting if there were flying monsters and monsters that can swim, too.

Peaceful mode means monsters won't attack unless provoked. Basically meaning you don't have to care about pollution. One thing to note is that monsters do change over time. Faster with pollution. I kept pollution down relatively low and never had an issue but I imagine it could be a problem later.

13.20 got moved from experimental to official. It adds a ton of QoL UI improvements, more multiplayer support and some mod support stuff. If you're interested in multiplayer, give it a try. The experimental 14.x builds are mostly multiplayer improvements and bugfixes. 15 is planned to have more gameplay changes.

I'm not sure how much sandbox mode I'd play as I tend to like it when a game creates a specific challenge for me to overcome. So, does the campaign have enough legs to make it worthwhile? Since it doesn't seem like Factorio will go on sale anytime in the foreseeable future, I' thinking of getting it while I have a Humble Monthly membership since I'll get a little bit off.

Also considering Rimworld.