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Thread: Factorio

  1. #1

    Default Factorio

    I managed to play too many hours since an impulse buy on it's release on Friday when I should have been working instead of building pretend factories on an alien world. Very recommended.

    It's an isometric game where you build factories and manage supply lines, and occasionally get attacked by aliens. The world is procedurally generated and infinite. It also runs way better when there are hundreds of factories and thousands of supply lines than it has any right to - I've yet to build anything sprawling enough to cause any perceptible slow-down.

    It's also currently the highest rated game on Steam, ever. That probably won't last though.

    edit: Steam link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/427520/
    Last edited by Wraith; 03-01-2016 at 06:44 AM.

  2. #2
    I saw this on Steam a few days ago oddly enough, popped up as recommended for me. It looks interesting, please let me know if it retains your interest.

    Are there many resources and/or goods that you generate? I don't see any towns or cities etc to act as "sinks" to sell resources produced to so how does commerce work?
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  3. #3
    There's no commerce. You wind up consuming all your resources and goods yourself. There's plenty of resources and stuff to make. Here's a list.

    Apparently it's been available off of steam for quite a while, so it's got a good mod base built up. I'd recommend the Resource Spawning Overhaul (RSO) as it makes the logistics more interesting by spacing out the resource spawns.

    As for holding interest, I've already got my money's worth.

  4. #4
    Weird to have a production game with no sinks or commerce. Is there an aim then to keep you going? A target?

    Or is it just produce in order to produce more?
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  5. #5
    There is a sink, it's just a natural one rather than things just disappearing into the void like you're probably used to. All the items in the game have a use and you will use them. If you're not going to use them, there's no reason to set up a production line for them.

    The goal of the game right now is to launch a rocket to get off the planet. There's a bunch of prerequisites and research you need to do this, and of course you need to actually survive the planet's current occupants. There are also various scenarios and a campaign that I haven't really messed with yet. There was a plan to add a space platform and stuff and have that be the end-game, but they cut that feature to make full release this year.

  6. #6
    Bought it.

    Is it possible to rotate a building once it's down?
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  7. #7
    Yes! Just hit 'r' while hovering over it.

    Also, deconstruction gets you the original item back, so do that liberally.

  8. #8
    Thanks!
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  9. #9
    This is lots of fun.

    Question, if I want to produce an item by hand that has a few intermediate steps I can just select the final product if I have enough raw resources and it queues each of the steps. I don't see any way of doing that automated though, it seems if there is a chain of say seven steps then you need about seven factories chained together. Is that right?
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  10. #10
    Yeah. It'd take a lot out of the game if factories automated themselves.

  11. #11
    Thanks.

    Spoiler:
    I had a big problem with automation in my last level (still early first of the Star Wars named New Hope campaign) because it wasn't clear say that an inserter for a factory won't give that factory raw materials (even if it has ran out) if the factory has finished goods inside, even if it hasn't reached its capacity for finished goods.

    I understand why an inserter switches off if the factory has enough raw materials as otherwise later factories on the belt would remain empty but don't think an inserter facing towards a factory should switch off based on what's not yet gone out of it. Is it possible to change that logic?
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  12. #12
    Not that I know of. Except for furnaces, I think every production facility in the game needs a place to output it's products to avoid getting backed-up. You can also output to chests if you don't have a transport belt set up for it or an adjacent factory that accepts it as input. Chests make good buffers in general; for my train stations I usually unload to chests and then unload those chests onto my belts.

  13. #13
    How do you unload chests? I tried to set a chest with an inserter set to forward it directly into a factory, as it burnt through the maximum 100 you could load very quickly but it didn't work. Does it work if you try to unload a chest to a belt instead?
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  14. #14
    Chest loading/unloading works just like belt loading/unloading. Have an inserter set to take from the chest (flat line) and give to the destination (arrow). To load into a chest you have the inserter facing the other way. I'm afraid that I'm not sure what you mean by burning through 100 quickly and not working.

  15. #15
    I had a factory producing copper wire from copper plates IIRC, this factory was nowhere near my copper plates factory, but I'd saved up thousands of plates but the maximum you can load into the factor is 100 copper plates; it was producing the wire very quickly and then I'd run out of plates and the factory would shut down.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  16. #16
    I think I understand. Wire factories are very copper-hungry, a single normal inserter isn't enough to keep up with demand for them. You need at least a fast inserter, or multiple regular inserters to keep them fed. You need the same deal on their outputs.

  17. #17

  18. #18
    Struggling to automate railways, got all research done for it but it doesn't seem to want to work and the wiki's on railways are less than clear. Very useful manually driven for moving large quantities of resources.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  19. #19
    Yep took a bit of figuring out them trains. Trick it seems is to place the stop on the right side of the track.

    What a strange little game. To get automated production of the Blue Science bottles took some mega-convoluted conveyors. Proper landscape of spaghetti I've got going on. Trying to be elegant in my designs but it's not working out that way. Very organic at the moment.

  20. #20
    Yeah, pay attention to the direction the arrows are going when you drop the train station.

    Also, you can make double-headed trains with a diesel engine on each end. That way you don't need to build a loop so that it can turn around. If you want to just have a simple track setup, this is the easiest way to go about it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Timbuk2 View Post
    Yep took a bit of figuring out them trains. Trick it seems is to place the stop on the right side of the track.

    What a strange little game. To get automated production of the Blue Science bottles took some mega-convoluted conveyors. Proper landscape of spaghetti I've got going on. Trying to be elegant in my designs but it's not working out that way. Very organic at the moment.
    I'm on my fourth game. Each factory is a little less crazy looking. My current one is still far less organized and clean than I originally intended. I have a pretty good idea of how to improve it when I start my fifth game, though!

  21. #21
    I tried a double-headed train with a long straight(ish) platform. I could automate it to go East to the first stop (facing forward with the the first engine), but I couldn't get it to automatically go West to the second stop, it would always say "No path". Tried putting the train stop on both sides but it made no difference. Could manually drive it forwards if I went into the other engine but couldn't automate it.

    Never had a game which made frustrating you so fun. My general routine is to manually concentrate on something while letting my previously mastered stuff be automated, until I get frustrated and automate what I'm doing at which point can then start the next challenge. Rinse and repeat. Strange game that turns frustrations into a fun point.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  22. #22
    It's a tad confusing that level to level the buildings available keep changing. New ones getting unlocked I understand of course, that is standard in a campaign game. But in my current level the radar has vanished. Can't find it anywhere and I don't start with one so can't scout the map with a radar.

    Weird as that was the whole point of one of the first tutorials for it to suddenly be removed as an option.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  23. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by RandBlade View Post
    "No path".
    From about 16:30 onwards:


  24. #24
    Senior Member Flixy's Avatar
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    Sounds interesting, I'll give the demo a go
    Keep on keepin' the beat alive!

  25. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Timbuk2 View Post
    From about 16:30 onwards:

    It looks like the example at 25 minutes is what I was trying to do. Odd.
    Quote Originally Posted by Wraith View Post
    I'm on my fourth game. Each factory is a little less crazy looking. My current one is still far less organized and clean than I originally intended. I have a pretty good idea of how to improve when I start my fifth game, though!
    I've just finished the campaign (New Hope) and the other campaigns look like weird scenario stories rather than a proper campaign so I think I'm going to go on to regular scenario or free play games. What set-up options would you recommend for a fun game?
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  26. #26
    I go entirely with default set-up options. I have installed the RSO mod that Wraith recommended above - sets your resources on the map in a way that drives use of hubs/substations, so having to ship in resources from a distance by train (once nearby resources have been used up ... to set up the initial base) to your main production hub.

    Game seems driven toward use of hubs. So resource hubs, then production type 1 hubs (cogs, copper wiring etc), then production type 2 hubs (green circuits, conveyor belts, inserters etc), then production type 3 hubs (Science thingies, red circuits, plastics ... ) etc etc.

    That's how I'll be attempting my third map in any case, which I've just started. Will make continued expansion far easier.
    Last edited by Timbuk2; 03-07-2016 at 01:01 PM.

  27. #27
    Cool I'll give it a go.

    For a challenge try the Supply scenario. It ramps up every six(ish) minutes demanding certain products to be supplied into boxes that then disappear once you put them in. The game prompts what you need to produce this round and what will be added to your production demands in the next round.

    Starts off simple, just stone in round one, but goes up from there, after a few rounds you need to eg give a load of iron plates, iron cogs, science bottles and electric circuits etc. This gives you a challenge because it sort-of prompts you to stay on the right track, but fail to meet the production quota for that round and its Game Over.

    The challenge though is that you need to produce enough both to supply for your new quota and to continue your development at a swift pace. So if you're only producing a few red bottles and put them in the box to avoid game over you might get through this round but fall behind the pace for research and then fail in a future round as you're needing to produce something you haven't researched yet.

    The latest I've got to is round 13 so far which is about an hour and a half in. Didn't complete the research for automation 2 (for the 3 or 4 ingredient recipes) and so was completing my green bottles etc by hand for ages and eventually ran out of time to be able to produce enough by hand.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  28. #28
    Tried the new game with default settings (no mod) and it kept coming up with awkward maps where I could only find one or at most two of coal, iron and copper. Even after walking in random directions until coming to monsters I could only find them. I don't see how you can start without at least iron and copper (coal you could avoid at first by chopping trees). Then tried with the RSO mod mentioned above and it gave me a starting point with an absolutely enormous amount of everything. Don't think I'll need to travel for a long while. Not sure how much I like the balance of either of those. Have some but travel once bigger seems reasonable. I've now got a huge sprawling city with everything that doesn't involve oil getting maxed out with pollution spewing everywhere (a lot of burners since I can't unlock electric ones yet) and constant attacks by natives as a result getting mowed down by my turrets. Not running a particularly PC, love the aliens and the environment, Avatar style game that's for sure!

    I'm curious, how do others deal with oil? It seems to me that petroleum is the prime one of the three by-products that is very useful so I'm tempted to take the three split by-products at first to fill reservoirs, use the petroleum and crack the other by-products to petroleum once I've created plastics (and can stop produce heavy I believe).
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  29. #29
    Sounds like you have just been a bit unlucky with the map generation spawning resources. If I don't get what I need then I restart a new one. You certainly can't get anywhere without a reasonable chunk of copper and iron ( I thought coal was a necessity too - didn't realise you could use wood from trees to generate coal??)

    My current map (with RSO mod) had large copper, iron and coal reserves at the starting point, but very few oil puddles - just two. Even so, those huge chunks are rapidly drying up on my map, and I'm on the verge of venturing out into the wild to find new reserves to tap. These will then need to be trained in to keep my main hub ticking over nicely.

    In essence, don't think short term; that large initial reserves are an imbalance. Each game has longevity it seems, so those large initial reserves really are just the starting point to get your main (first?) base up and running.

    I researched electric burners as a priority as I didn't want coal conveyors going everywhere. I just ran around supplying coal to burners manually until that point. I now have a massive coal loop doing nothing but supplying the boilers for generating leccy. Plastic requires a bit of coal too, so did that manually until I reached logistics bots.

    In terms of oil, it's been a struggle as I only have those two puddles like I said. But yes I discovered that you can crack light oil, so I do that too, as petroleum is in high demand. There is a third oil puddle relatively nearby I discovered which I've now tapped, and use bots to carry in drums of crude from there to bolster my petroleum supply.

    Yes, build multiple tankers for storage of all liquids; crude oil, light oil, heavy oil, and sulphuric acid. Helps for storage of over-supply, which comes handy in times of over-demand. Heavy oil is used to make lubricants which are used in the production of engines (either normal or electric, I forget which), but not much. Don't know yet if light oil is used for anything else apart from cracking, not that I've researched thus far anyway.

    You need to get to the point of logistics, as this opens up a whole new level of automation, and is great fun. Bots flying around supplying different processes, as well as automatically supplying your avatar with anything/everything you need as you run around building stuff. Constructor bots automatically repairing any damage done by aliens to your walls/turrets/infrastructure. It's been a whirl setting it all up.

    I won't spoil what happens as the next step, but it seems there is tons still to do. Like I say I need to venture out into the wilds now, so am busy researching better armours and weaponry.

    Fun times. This an addictive little game.
    Last edited by Timbuk2; 03-10-2016 at 01:24 PM.

  30. #30
    You can't use wood to generate coal but you can use wood as a fuel source. Not indefinitely but to get you started at least. Each wood piece had half the energy of a coal piece, since trees have 4 wood each one is equivalent to two units of coal. I agree though that you'd need coal to grow to any real size but as a challenge you could burn trees without it and then expand elsewhere but I don't see how you get even that far without the two ores.

    My RSO map sounds just like yours. Getting nervous to venture in the big bad world for a source of oil.

    Not discovered these bots you speak of yet, wasn't covered in the campaign. Looking forward to discovering them.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

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