Unfinished: Factorio 03/09/2016

I've been itching to try this out but I fear for my life.

This game is a life destroyer.

Like, I've owned it since way before it was on steam. It's like a drug.

Time to get hooked.

It's worth it. The campaign essentially gives you damaged bases that serve as templates and idea generators as you learn the game. You rebuild/improve on what's already there, which is much easier to wrap your head around than starting in Free Mode.

There's still a learning curve, and I found myself restarting multiple times before getting things sorta-right. Lots of fun and great sense of accomplishment, though.

the audio being heavily left-sided is mildly infuriating.

*Italian voice* Factooorioo!

I've been playing this on and off for almost 2 years now. A lot of thought goes into the game updates. My early saves all still work while the game is very different. Also, the "real" game doesn't start until you unlock all the technologies, abandon your base that you built and then build a megabase with 50+ trains.

That assembly line is a nightmare. Main Bus it up.

This is my Stardew Valley.

But what if you could build machines that would tend to crops and go fishing and romance the townsfolk FOR you?

...what IF you could do that?!?!?

I've put a few dozen hours into this now and it is an incredibly satisfying experience. You start off just automating some basic processes, but you quickly end up with a large and sprawling base and the real genius of this game is working out how to optimise your base.

You have to shuttle coal around a lot, it's used by a lot of machines in the pre-electricity game. I originally had a ton of different tracks sprawling all over the place just transporting coal. I soon discovered it was better to have one huge 'central track' of coal and then build branches off that to feed into various different tracks that lead to the machines that need it.

The campaign is also very well done, it gently introduces you to increasing levels of complexity. I'd encourage everyone to play through that before leaping into the sandbox mode.

My only real gripe is with the research tree. It just isn't really displayed very well, and it can be confusing to work out which tech depends on which other tech.

still waiting for someone to build a Turing Machine with this thing.

Innocent Life was a terrible Harvest Moon.

I started playing this after Vinny talked about it on Twitter, and I'm in love. It's brilliant.

It's also apparently made in the Czech Republic, which is neat. Always nice to see games coming out of the less-represented parts of the world.

@mortface:

If you look at their dev blog, a properly formatted research tree is coming in the next version (or very soon, anyway.)

Looks really cool.

Vinny certainly has a very different style from how I play it. I try to skip burner components as fast as possible, getting electricity going ASAP. And I don't feed mixed components onto a belt and have it go in circles, I load one type of item on each side of the belt and use logjams to regulate against overproduction.

Also use a splitter and rejoin both lanes to fill both sides of a belt equally when transporting only one item, that doubles the throughput.

Oh man, where's the metal gear factory in the tech tree

Oh man I want to play this, but I'm afraid to do it. Though I have one last summer as an undergraduate so maybe I'll just waste it on this.

Been playing since just before the Steam release, and 'life-destroying' is certainly a valid descriptor. Really amazing game.

I've put about 20+ hours into Factorio... it is awesome. Takes a bit to get your head around but once it clicks it's a great game.

The whole concept of this game scares me because I know I'd be suckered into it big time. I love stuff like this and the visuals give me a real late 1990's PC nostalgia hit.

@fugan said:

Ha! Yes.

I have 200+ hours in this game since 0.10.x. It is so addicting, always something around the corner to strive for. There are some humps like Blue science, Construction Robots they need a lot of requirements, but the game changes so much with automated construction.

The late game can get a bit tedious when you have to constantly find new ore patches and fiddle with trains. But ramping up production 10x 100x is fun. Unfortunately this is also when the game can slow down a bit, at least on my pc.

I wanna see a Factorio speedrun. Maybe a random world to rocket speedrun.

Alex's continual leading questions at the start of this video come across as canned and as corny as an infomercial voice-over: There's got to be a better way!

@rasrimra: You mean like: http://www.speedrun.com/Factorio

Too scared to play this, it would give me a panic attack trying to get everything balanced.

Gonna pull this down for a bit to fix the audio panning but will be up soon!

"coal burner inserter" was my old steampunk erp handle

i've been waiting for this

The moment I realized I could feed coal into the machine that mines it was a 'oh fuck' moment for me and everything just snapped.

hi

We need to send some copper plates to scientists irl so they can finally cure cancer

this looks so dope

For me, it was when I realized I could make a giant perimeter conveyor belt dedicated solely to resupplying my gun turrets from an automated ammo factory.

I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this.

As someone with 25% hearing loss on my left side and counters it with windows balance control, this audio imbalance is driving me crazy :P.

I finished the tutorial, loved the slow trickle of new concepts, got to the part where I had to start a freeplay game or campaign, and Totally froze... it's really overwhelming. I've played Dwarf Fortress and that is all convoluted supply chaining but in Ascii... this should be totally doable but for some reason i'm stuck.... I thought the campaign would be a slow repeat of the tutorial stuff but instead they start you on building a lab and I was not capable of handling that yet.

I'll go play stardew valley until I get less afraid. Awesome idea that I hope to embrace in the near future.

Yeah this definately sold me on the game , buying it now

@bbalpert: Set up an elaborate enough sprinkler system.

Oh man! This game reminds me of the Tekkit modpack for Minecraft!

I played this game for 12 hours last Saturday & another 8 on Sunday. The last time I did that was when Civ4 came out back in '05.

Both games are pretty good, I'd say.

I can see why Vinny loves this. Looks to me like a more modern Railroad Tycoon, except about factories obviously.

this game is awesome

This game is so up my alley, but I don't want to ruin yet another game by over-playing it while in early access =/

I got to a point where I had robots researching how to build better robots, as well as building new robots, thus literally multiplying exponentially. Thankfully I beat the game before the robots took over my computer. This might be the best game.

Conveyor belt simulator 2016?

The game would be great if they hired someone who could design a better inventory and control system. I get that it's going for that obtuse mid 90's pc game where everything needs its own hotkey and stuff... but man, I just wanted to chill out on the couch with a controller with this and theres no reason someone couldn't design that with in mind.

This looks pretty sweet. Though seems like it needs more then bugs for hostile creatures. What is the end game point of all this?