Anecdote: I was just last night trying to debug a relatively complex nuclear power plant blueprint [1].<p>Nuclear plants can be complicated in the game because they will consume their (expensive!) fuel even if it's not necessary, so people have constructed sophisticated logic systems to only feed fuel to the power plants when it's actually required.<p>For some reason, the blueprint I copied wouldn't feed new fuel into the power plants, and my factory ground to a halt for lack of power!<p>Not being fluent in Factorio's logic networks, I spent a couple hours trying to understand the logic connections and operations that made this system work.<p>And just as I write this, I find that a modified copy [2] (don't call it a fork :p) of the blueprint calls out my issue explicitly: if there is no fuel available to refuel, the system will wedge itself and effectively need to be rebooted!<p>The whole experience was amusingly similar to my job ^^;<p>[1] <a href="https://www.factorio.school/view/-LGzh1rL3S0dU-eJHfcr" rel="nofollow">https://www.factorio.school/view/-LGzh1rL3S0dU-eJHfcr</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.factorio.school/view/-La0aDEtd6Y4XlrpCfgW" rel="nofollow">https://www.factorio.school/view/-La0aDEtd6Y4XlrpCfgW</a>
I'm far beyond the point of having any shame about the fact that I have about 2500 hours in this game.<p>This game only <i>starts</i> when you launch your first rocket.<p>Building huge Megabases is where the real fun lies for me, and that's probably true for most players.<p>Trying for a target such as consumption of 10K science packs per minute, sustained. The size of that kind of factory is beyond anything, but it is awesome.<p>Unfortunately, I'm discovering that my DDR3 era PC can't cope with such large bases, I need faster gear...
I enjoy that this was posted to HN.<p>Factorio combines all the fun parts of my day job (algorithms, simple maths, tackling solvable problems) with a fairly quick reward cycle.<p>It has some very fun scaling challenges at every level of play. For anyone interested in trying it out they have a free and feature rich demo available (either through their site or steam).
It’s such an addictive game, I’m starting to worry that the developers themselves have become addicted to developing it - literally any other dev team would have declared it finished years ago and moved on to making Factorio 2. We are very lucky they have such commitment to quality.
Factorio is one of a handful of games I really wish I could play more but 1) I don’t spend enough time at my desktop to actually play it and 2) Could work very well on a tablet so it could be played anywher. Fortunately a lot of games on that list (Civilization VI, Prison Architect, FTL, etc) have been ported to tablets, but I’m really waiting on Factorio and Rimworld.<p>I know these small developers don’t have an infinite budget so I don’t expect anything of them unless it makes sense for their team, but unfortunately it does mean I’m less likely to play them. Which is a big shame because I’m pretty sure I would <i>love</i> Factorio.
If I can make a recommendation for folks who like this game. I have been playing a game called Dual Universe and I think it fits this exact crowd. It has a heavy industry component where you can build a simple amount of machines or hundreds of them. More so I think the folks of this site would enjoy some of the realism of space flight. While some rules are bent, you need to do actual physics calcs to get your ship flying into space to escape gravity depending on weight etc. Still in beta but reminds me a lot of factorio and I think it will move closer and closer towards it. Warning that if you are into sci-fi and problem solving that Dual Universe will be a time sink.
This game looks amazing.<p>While Empire Earth never seemed to get quite as big as many other rts games, I think certain macro-management aspects of gameplay flew under the radar. For example:<p>1-click to set units to explore; when multiple units were selected they would fan out to decrease fog of war.<p>Multi unit formation setting, to dictate the spread factor between units when moving and fighting.<p>Setting indefinite patrol loops (although I think I recall other games having this?).<p>It’s been a while since I’ve played the genre, and it seems like factorio’s really nailed the set and forget - but allow tinkering - for base management. What I want is similar automation for army control, that’s always the piece that gets tiresome with, for example, Starcraft for me.<p>Ultimately, I want to write a script for my civilization and be able to step into the fold to take over manual control as necessary. And then update my script. If that’s too much, being able to just define action buttons that execute scripts for selections of a certain composition.<p>And of course to run it in a a competitive environment against other people and see what we can all come up with :)
The fact that belt building wasn't done in line (and not possible to do in line) was actually one of my big pet peeves[1]. In a game done with so much attention to detail, this always felt like a big omission.<p>[1] Before I stopped playing due to it taking so much time
The biter pathfinding issues Nilaus is experiencing in his Death World playthrough on YouTube seem pretty rough, I don't have specific knowledge about if fixes to that issue are making it into 1.1, but I hope so.<p>Generally, I <i>very much</i> enjoy watching other people play Factorio, I myself don't have the time to do it in a way I'd consider "right".
Meaning this in the nicest way possible, but is there more to this game than spending hours at a time micromanaging? I do that at work anyways, don't want to bring that into a hobby.
I love this game and have 1k+ hours in it. But version 1.0 is a mature, fully realized game. It's a great game, and enough. Out of pure selfishness I'd like to see this brilliant team call it done, and start on their next big thing.