I made it / few observations

[grouchysmurf]

I made it. Took me twentish game-hours (preceded by tens if not not hundreds of failed attempts) to launch the rocket. Not much style applied, mind you, other than I limited myself to use only gun turrets and steam engines. Oh, and no robots. The latter is just a nuisance and a chore. Whatever; even with them game is a chore and feels more like a work than a leasure.

Anyway, few observations, if anyone is interested:

1. main bus approach is inefficient and distracts from things that do matter;
2. all you need to do is to assemble 1100 processing units. You may do it in as much time as you wish. Moreover, there is no need to have your factory run during that on its full speed. Production of processing units puts a sever strain on copper / iron supplies; it is quite likely that other parts of your base will starve. That's normal. Depending on how efficient your production is, it can take from couple of minutes to couple of quarters. Once it's done, you're done too.
3. game without a goal is boring. And easy. Good we have achievements. But I'd like to have more logistic challenges.
4. coal era goes too soon. I'd like a coal assembler.
5. I drive 1-1 trains. It is easy, it is expandable, it won't fuel your magebase, though, but it's more than enough to launch a spaceship! The concept has been taken from this guide: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =668428689 All I added was PAX stations. I theory I planned a supply train which would deliver goods (ammo, mainly), but that wasn't necessary.
6. it takes a lot of time to sky-rocket evolution to 1.
7. yellow belts are fine in 75% cases; in remaining 25% use red ones. Does not pertain to mega-bases and weird cases, mind you.

Screenshots, if you please. Hey, I want to brag too!

Overview:



Science:



Processing units:



It runs at 32 PU / m.

Rocket:



Building Store (*):



Map:



(*) derived from this thread: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=26760 This is the approach I take in each of my games.

[MrGrim]

I like it. For a single purpose built base it does exactly what it needs to do. I'm curious, though, why you kept playing if you found the game to be "more like a work than a leasure [sic]". That sucks.

I've noticed after reading these forums for a while that there are two distinct groups of people. One group enjoys setting arbitrary self imposed and self enforced goals on a continual basis. These types tend to build up towards mega bases and only stop because they hit performance limits. The other seems to require that goals be set and enforced by a 3rd party in order to extract any enjoyment from them. The later is the group that tends to dislike unpatched exploits and cheat codes as it breaks the "3rd party enforced" requirement. This later group tends to have the most negative opinions of the game.

I'm squarely in the former group myself. I wonder how the game could be changed to not offend either group. I may not understand the psychology of the later at all, but everybody should be able to have some fun here!

[grouchysmurf]

Hi. Thanks. Right, it should have said "leisure". Pardon my mistakes, for some reason I can't turn on spell checking in my browser.

Anyway. After spending, as I do strongly believe, hundreds of hours on factorio, I come to thinking that there are several "layers" of how you play the game or levels of advancement, if you prefer.

At starters, you would optimize and tinker. Since you do things manually, the base is more compact as you need to get from one place to another on feet. You would come up with most crazy ideas as to how to fit most in least space; you would change inserters to balance the production. For my own purposes I would call it "artisan" layer.

Then you become mogul; production grows, so does the chore. There are more and more things to look after and while you still are able to handle it, it takes more and more effort to accomplish things -- distances are longer, more resources are required. It does take time. Prior to robots, laying down tracks is a pain -- even with aid of F.A.R.L.; stations, you build manually, signals, turns, all that you would lay by hand as F.A.R.L., in terms of that, is mediocre, to say the least. But you manage and even when you need to chop down fifty trees to place a straight line of red belt, it remains fun.

And then comes obesity. The base is so huge, it takes minutes to get from one end to another, and that's even if you go by train. Without most sophisticated means of automation, you are a toast -- you need to monitor you outposts, hence depletion signals, you need to feed in ammo, hence automated supply trains, you need to lay down hundreds of square miles of solar panels merely to run that beast. If it wasn't for robots, it would make no sense.

And while it's fun to look at, in a same way as model trains are, I am not quite sure whether it's the type of commitment I am ready to make. Now, this is not to say factorio is a bad game -- it is great and I will keep on playing it and enjoying. The same way, I believe, I enjoy Dwarf Fortress -- right so, I do play it. But I need a strict boundary behind which I am not very willing to wander. That's why restrictions imposed by game designers I do need -- this way I know where is the end, the limit and by knowing I reached it, I am able to scratch my completionist itch.

I hope you understand.

EDIT: typo.

[MrGrim]

I hope you understand.

Kinda.. I think. Thank you for taking the time to help me to!

I'm currently well into the obesity stage and feel like I'm just now finally getting started on my current base. I have a desire to build a 1 RPM base. The resource demands for such a base are.. staggering. I just finished walling off my first major border expansion (pushed out 5-10km in all directions from my starting area) and am about to go on an outpost building spree. I can produce about 2 blue belts of green circuits and 3 each of copper and iron plates so far. I just broke the GW barrier in solar. I've paved with concrete and provided robot coverage for nearly 2 sq km of area in preparation for expansion. I have a power armor suite dedicated to just running fast.

Just getting started... this game will be the end of me.

[ssilk]

Moved from general to more matching board.

[Jupiter]

I wonder why you dislike the main bus approach because I find it to be a very clear and expandable (if you put everything in the right place) way of organizing things.

I very much agree on number 6. On my own game with close to 200h of playtime I'm still at 98%-ish evolution (or did you mean 1%? In that case, I don't know ).

Yellow belts might be enough for what you are trying to do but any other scale larger than this, yellow and red won't cut it. I have 3 fully compressed blue belts of green circuits in my factory and I wish I had more.

EDIT: I just realized that I contradicted myself by saying that the main bus design is expandable before complaining about my circuit throughput. This is because a main bus is only truly expandable if you build your production lines on just 1 side of it so you can add more belts on the other side. In my game I've build on both sides so I've accidentally put on an artificial cap on my base's capabilities.

[Hannu]

I hope you understand.

In some level yes, but not completely because I am very different player. I hate the predefined objectives and especially many modern movie like games in which there are practically one way to run from from the beginning to the end. I feel that late game begins when I can get regular rocket production running, I have most research done, my base produces everything I need to build more and I have plenty of resources to do whatever I want. That sandbox like game is the most entertaining phase of the game in my opinion. I play until I feel that there is no interesting things to do or I get some new idea (different playstyle, use or make mods, ideas what to do in other games (Kerbal Space Program with technical and reality mods is an another game I am addicted too much)). I have many personal limitations. I want to do things way I like aesthetical and technically reasonable instead of calculating exact Factorio optimum. And I do not want to make just big. I have found that I can get as large base as I want by just copying same stuff. In good sized base I can zoom out and see my large but not insane production cells working, I can see when wide belt buses transport stuff, I can see when 20 trains drive on rail network flawlessly and so on. When I am at that phase I can use hours just driving by train between base, possible other production units, mines, defence stations etc. I like to see other trains and trains stopping at signals. I like to see when hundred headed swarms of the enemies make their desperate attacks against my impenetrable defense walls but my turrets turn them to minced meat or well done barbeque biters.