Factorio - a factory building game - now with Space Age expansion

[Jaedar]

I am playing the Krastorio mod for the first time and it's still early game but I like what I see so far. It's interesting how different fuel sources have pollution modifiers, so for example coal is the most polluting fuel. Also they made wood really important, you even have a greenhouse production building for wood. You need more time to get rid of burners but it's not too bad.

I really like krastorio. Recommend it for anyone who is looking for a fresh second playthrough of the game.

 

[snoek]

I did 2 'big' factories that were still kinda shoddy. I put about 170 hours into the game in total (also did some experimenting and restarts).
It usually gets boring for me at the 70 hour mark when I have artillery and claimed back lots of land so I don't get annoyed by the biters anymore, with work on the space science and the rocket progressing rapidly.

( feel like it's probably still fun after that in multiplayer. )

Are there any mods that improve on this experience and add more stuff than just building the rocket? The spiderbot or whatever it's called was pretty cool. Is there more stuff like that out there in the mod landscape?

 

[Andnjord]

You can go the way of mods, but you can also go the way of the Megabase!

Past the Rocket lauching point the game becomes more of an engineering puzzle where you give yourself a target of x rocket launches per minute and you build up and up solving the logistical problems that come up along the way using bots and blueprints, circuit logic and self regulating train systems and multiple spidertrons so you can scale up from this:

Spoiler

To this:

Spoiler

You can still spot the original base south of the lake of nuclear reactors.

And you haven't pushed back the biters/used artillery until you've made 20+ artillery trains and self building, overly complicated outposts to kill thousands of them at once.

Spoiler

The hardest part is accepting that you're not going to recycle all the thousands of laser turrets you built during the various expansion phases and accept that you have to nuke them.

And you know you've gone very deep when you design an automated wood burning train loop to empty you crates of the tens of thousands of units of wood that have accumulated in there.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Are there any mods that improve on this experience and add more stuff than just building the rocket? The spiderbot or whatever it's called was pretty cool. Is there more stuff like that out there in the mod landscape?

Space exploration forces you to build-up several planets and create interstellar ships. Also, endgame is centered around making %-based recipies with random outputs.
Bob, Angel and some others add modular vehicles (install roboports in custom trains, cars, etc. and control them remotely or via scripts for all your RTS needs; also add custom biters for moar tower defense).

the truth

Also, self-imposed limits add to the "engineering puzzle" state. E.g. in my latest run I don't use cliff exposives or landfill AND still try to make grid-like train-base. Oh, and no laser turrets. On a DW. All that makes logistics more interesting.

And you know you've gone very deep when you design an automated wood burning train loop to empty you crates of the tens of thousands of units of wood that have accumulated in there.

Why won't you burn it in steamers? Or nuke the crates?

 

[Andnjord]

Or nuke the crates?

That's not automation!

Why won't you burn it in steamers?

Yes, but it is way more amusing to have your little self contained train circuit running in perpetuity in its own little corner. I did say I'd gone very deep.

 

[Average Manatee]

Oh, and no laser turrets. On a DW. All that makes logistics more interesting.

But Flame Turrets > everything. A single flame turret kills more biters than dozens of laser turrets and with walls spaced far enough out the spitters can't even hit the flame turret. And defending your whole base with them barely nibbles at your oil supply.

I've done similar self-limited games. My current rules are:

- no efficiency modules
- no solar
- no bots
- DW Marathon (though with a bigger starting area, I think I did 150% rather than 75%). Also changed the resource presets to the railworld levels.

I'd like to do a gun turret only run, but the way ammo cost scales on DW Marathon (piercing ammo is expensive as fuck) and how you can't get uranium ammo until basically the end of the game makes it almost undoable I think. At least without allowing efficiency modules to cut your pollution to almost nothing.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Coming to Switch

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/factorio-on-nintendo-switch

 

[Tweed]

Why gimp yourself when you can just pour on the autism with bob and angel's?

 

[Theodora]

Coming to Switch

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/factorio-on-nintendo-switch

Thought this was pretty interesting because of how far it goes against the notion of the 'stereotypical Switch gamer' -- some notion of ""casual"" -- given the "autism bait" Factorio is regarded as.

Thought it'd be because of the Steam Deck, but they said specifically that it was in development first.

 

[Nutria]

I think it's a terrible idea because Factorio is all about having this huge complex system and constantly rebuilding it to make it a little more efficient. It's about having a large scope and precise control, and I don't see that happening with a little mobile screen and no mouse. Also it doesn't make sense to play unless you're setting aside at least a couple hours, so it doesn't fit with when I would do mobile gaming, like while commuting.

 

[Theodora]

If it was a third party port that would seem valid enough a concern, but I would be surprised if its creator allowed the Switch version to be half-assed second thought.

 

[Nutria]

Yeah, I'm sure it's not just a cynical cash grab because their entire history shows that they don't do that kind of shit. And it would be great if this draws more people into playing, especially kids. But I hope they go to mouse+keyboard+30 inch screen and play the game how it really excels.

 

[Jaedar]

Why gimp yourself when you can just pour on the autism with bob and angel's?

Weakling. Real men play space exploration.

 

[Late Bloomer]

As for the technical, I am interested in what he can pull off with the Switch. Here is an interesting dev blog if you are into that sort of thing.
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-366

The more people that are able to play this game the better.

It looks fun on handheld.

 

[Average Manatee]

Why gimp yourself when you can just pour on the autism with bob and angel's?

It's a different type of game. One you can actually have difficulty pressure and the potential for losing, one is a purely about how much time you have to put into it to figure out recipes.

 

[KateMicucci]

Well after 48 hours I launched the rocket and never died. It was fun but I don't feel any desire to continue playing this.

 

[anvi]

jk lol

 

[Kruyurk]

FFF #370 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-370

Mostly about the switch version. The end mentions the upcoming expansion, not ready sooner than in a year from now.

That's nice, but what about the expansion?! kovarex​

It wouldn't be fair to not address the elephant in the room, which is the progress on the expansion. We have been working hard on it and have a lot of progress, but still haven't shared any specifics for the strategic reasons mentioned previously.

In the FFF-367 we specified that we are in Step 4, and now we can say, that we are somewhere deep in Step 5. First, I had a playthrough from start to finish, where we had to assemble and fix systems on the go. It was very rough and long, partially because I had to repeatedly update the factory as we implemented changes.

But the result was the game being playable from start to finish. Having a "skeleton" of the playthrough was critical for managing the team, as people could more efficiently split their effort into more independent sections of the game.

The second playthrough was a week-long office LAN-party in July 2022, where 12 people spent 5 full days racing to finish the game before the end of the week. Some of us took family vacations because of this, so we tried to get the most out of it. You can imagine how intense it was, and how destroyed we were at the end. But it was a great experience, and playing one playthough in one continuous session, gave us an accurate feeling of the overall pacing. The key takeaway was that the game was too long, and some parts were too boring or repetitive.

Since then, we mainly focused on fixing the problems identified. Also, a lot of the things we used in the playthrough technically work, but its look and feel is very simplified as it is a prototype. Imagine an inserter prototype which moves things from A to B, but it is a grey square and doesn't swing its arm. This is the state of a lot things at the moment.

The reason why we still don't share specific details is, that we have to sadly inform you, that it still won't be ready sooner than in a year from now. Once the estimates get reasonably close, we will start dropping some FFFs.

 

[Perkel]

Wish me luck guys, After my full bob's angels run i finished i will go now where time is destroyed and autism spectrum crystalizes.

I'll be doing full pyanodon.

 

[Theodora]

It looks fun on handheld.

Tbh, most things are neat on a decently-performing and ergonomic handheld (so not necessarily the Switch lol). The real hard bit is find places other than holidays and in bed where you'd both feel safe taking out an expensive device, and not look like a total dork (perhaps extra hard with a game like factorio ).

Was there any word on what the subject of the expansion was meant to be?

 

[Blaine]

Was there any word on what the subject of the expansion was meant to be?

They've been purposely vague, but I'm >99% certain it will expand the scale of the game past a single planet and out into interplanetary space. Interplanetary content is the focus of a major (and very popular) Factorio mod, Dyson Sphere Program has it, and, to a minor extent, Mindustry has it. It's the logical step, by far.

Of course, underground, underwater, and overwater are also viable (and perhaps even preferable) planes of expansion, especially considering that the natives are burrowing insectoids. Adding layers to what is essentially a single-layer playing field is something I can get behind.

The only substantive statements they've made are that 1.) it's going to take a while, and 2.) the expansion will be as beefy as the base game.

As an aside, I've got close to a thousand hours played in Factorio, I can't even begin to imagine playing it on a tiny screen without a full keyboard and mouse.

 

[anvi]

I bet that's what they do, Rimworld style, they just copy paste the same thing over multiple planets. Like Starfield too I guess. The McDonald's-ation of gaming is complete.

 

[Average Manatee]

The guy who made the space exploration mod also works for them (not sure whether they hired him before or after).

 

[Perkel]

imho the avenue they will go is "hard mode" essentially something between angels/bobs and vanilla + space exploration.
Official hard mode would instantly generate them money considering a/b is most downloaded mods comp ever.

I don't think they will expand sideways underground and so on.

 

[Jaedar]

I don't think they'll go for multiple planets: there's already mods that do it, and they've stated most of the reason for the secrecy is they don't want to get scooped by mods.

If I had to guess I'd go with underwater, complete with automated boat traffic. I also think they're going to overhaul the biters, possibly even add full RTS-style combat with robots to build and fight for you (this was a proposed direction for the game way back).