Factorio MMO [Idea]

[Trucario]

When you think about factorio now, you see an spectacular Individual experience that can give you more than 50 hours (in the next oil update i think that the number of hours of gameplay will increase to more than 100). Then I will bring you my concept that I think that it could work;

Apart of adding the necessary multiplayer/LAN custom servers, etc, What if we all can connect to a "main" server who can be able to connect everyone into a Infinite-increasing world.

Yes, think about Minecraft + Industrialcraft + PVP then transform that into Factorio.

You begin in a Wasteland Planet, building your base and defending against aliens and other players, form CLANS, wars, resource market(Now imagine 20 guys running in the cars attacking a base and the enemy clan defending it beside the walls and the turrets firing their rocketlaunchers.)

Then, that idea is a hard concept to add but it would be my dreamed game.

[BurnHard]

Sounds very thrilling, but also hm devastating, if your 20h-build base gets raided by 20 other players

[vulstar]

An ongoing world with lots players would be awesome ofc, but i wonder how it will go when resources run out in starting area's of the map, and it would probably take allot of a server to handle that much players. I guess private servers where you play with some friends, or a public 2-20 player slot server with a fixed handmade map size and randomly new appearing resource fields from time to time would be easier to do.

[Trucario]

An ongoing world with lots players would be awesome ofc, but i wonder how it will go when resources run out in starting area's of the map, and it would probably take allot of a server to handle that much players. I guess private servers where you play with some friends, or a public 2-20 player slot server with a fixed handmade map size and randomly new appearing resource fields from time to time would be easier to do.

EXACT!

[Trucario]

Sounds very thrilling, but also hm devastating, if your 20h-build base gets raided by 20 other players

Its the risk. So Factorio world would be divided by "realms" and clans who cooperate for the survival.

[FreeER]

First,

Sounds very thrilling, but also hm devastating, if your 20h-build base gets raided by 20 other players

Is there a difference if your base gets raided by 100 biters and they manage to destroy everything? I very much hope that biters are more dangerous (less group and attack whatever is in the way strategies) before we reach a real MMO stage. Besides, I'm sure there would be non-PVP games.

Now onto the MMO stuff: To have combat each player would be need their own 'force' (in quotes because I'm talking about code mechanics) in the game (currently there is player, enemy, and neutral). Then you would need either respawning or perma-death (probably annoying for an MMO). I'm going to assume that the majority of MMO games would have respawning, but if you simply respawn as the same 'force' you were before dieing, then no 'force' could ever be annihilated (you could never actually lose, but you'd have no chance against the established 'forces' either). So then you have the question of banding together, the game would need to be able to merge two 'forces' together (building different 'force' turrets next to each other would simply cause them to destroy each other, plus mining/modifying of non-same 'force' entities is not allowed currently, more on that later). The players would need to be in control of this merging either through diplomatic actions (Alliances through a GUI and other 'forces' acceptance of it) or through military action (the opponents 'force' has been determined to be 'decimated', and the opponent's force is merged with the attacker's), or both. But you also need a way to 'split' forces (hopefully), which would allow a previously subjugated 'force' to rebel against their oppressors (or simply an alliance to end), the game would need some way to determine what player belongs to which split force (probably a GUI choice, support rebellion or suppress rebellion) AND a way for the rebels to 'claim' part of the infrastructure. To claim infrastructure the game would either need to allow mining of non-same 'force' buildings (you would then simply replace it, making it your 'force') OR have some way to 'hack' them, and in a rebellion some of this infrastructure should become part of the rebel's 'force' (perhaps anything within x distance of a rebel player).
Then you also need chat, but if you read all of the 'force' stuff above, you also know that each 'force' needs it's own chat (to plan attacks and such) and a way to communicate with other forces (We're competing for resources but there's a biter hive about to attack and it would be beneficial to stand together ). And each 'force' that has merged with another would need a way for the (possible) rebels to communicate without the main 'force' being able to hear it (not easily at least) so as to coordinate their rebellion. Which means 3 chats per force, though only 2 unique chats

There would probably be three main game maps, infinite (fairly obvious how this would work, assuming the server can handle it), finite (game ends after all resources are consumed), and infinite resources (but finite map) where either resources are never actually consumed upon mining or after the majority of resources have been consumed new resource spots are created in new locations.

I think the initial foray into this will probably have all players being the same force and only fighting against the current enemy (natives), which simplifies everything to basically what it is now (except with multiple people and new code to support that). Then it would move to having separate 'forces' with merging (but no way to split), which allows for players to fight against each other (until only one force remains, then they build to their content, or an agreed upon restart time). The next stage would be allowing for rebellions And all the time there would be the occasional new content, new fighting mechanics, and hopefully improvements to the native AI.

That's how I see an MMO of Factorio evolving over time.

[Balinor]

I am going to be completely selfish and say I hope it doesn't come to pass. Main reason being that whenever games "evolve" into an mmo or into an mmo like experience it generally detracts from the rest of the gameplay. I bought Factorio as a singleplayer game and while I can maybe see some benefit from playing with others in multiplayer, switching the focus of the game itself is the wrong direction entirely. I know it is just being suggested as an addition but the cold hard facts of the matter are that mmo development is pretty much all encompassing and doesn't leave room for anything else in my experience.

[SilverWarior]

I say lets first wait to see how multiplayer would work and then start thinking about MMO.
But I would rather see that defelopers first focus on singleplayer content and more game depth before even introducing multiplayer.
There are bunch of decent multiplayer games but very few good singleplayer games unles you are prepared to play old ones (good old clasics).

[FreeER]

But I would rather see that defelopers first focus on singleplayer content and more game depth before even introducing multiplayer

Agreed (though obviously planning for multiplayer while adding single player content is a good idea)

I say lets first wait to see how multiplayer would work and then start thinking about MMO

Hm, while 'MMO' has a different connotation than 'Multiplayer', I don't think that a Factorio MMO would be much different from a Factorio multiplayer game. more people, and a larger (more people would explore more) constant map (would require freezing of chunks if no one was playing), but the code should be about the same (just more optimized). I would think anyways.

[Uglybob]

I vote for co-op multiplayer

[lordjoda]

just a quick idea I got when reading the "spawning resources" thing... Since we are on a alien planet everything can happen.. so I thought about Dune where you have these huge worms that when erupt generate spice. of course we don't have spice but there could be a different kind of rare very heavily fortified animal, that when killed spawns a resource field under it... This of course must be balanced and this may or may not upset the local population but I think this would be more interesting then having resources spawning out of nowhere...

[nours77]

a co op multi will be cool, but this game too easy for multi players, i mean it will just a split of playing time, for now.

[kovarex]

IT really depends on the implementation.
Coop could be good, if the difficulty went up a lot and players would have to be synchronised well to survive.

[Uglybob]

easy... sure.... (not so much for me but I'm still learning)....

run around in the same map with a like minded folk to build up a planet sized factory? Absolutely!@

I've only played a couple "games" while learning but I've found the "easy" part to be from the rapid research thats possible. The game is very fast paced.. needs to be slowed down somehow... imho.

[SilverWarior]

... but the code should be about the same (just more optimized)...

Here you are wrong. If you wanna make good MMO then you need to chagne your code to be server specific (dedicated servers).
This code should be able to handle servervide events lie data backups. You usually don't have this on normal PC-s.
Code should have as litle bugs as posible. Having just single memory leak could in time lead to using all of servers memory so system restart is usually needed.

[ssilk]

How would make MMO make sense for Factorio? I would say let's play with the size of the landscape!

Let's say assume one tile is one meter. 100 tiles is the size of the radar view... 100 meters.
1000 meters are 10 times the size of the radar. One kilometer. You take about 3 or 4 minutes to run that.

Now let's say the next player starts 10 or 20 kilometers away. Why not?
It would take some time (an hour? Two?) to walk to him. Or half an hour to drive there.
If you find him!! If you are not killed by the natives before!

The chance to rush someone on such a map is null, zero, nada, none. Because in the time you need to come to him and search he has developed so strong, that you won't have a chance.


Another example, which plays with the size: good old Siedler II. Take the algorithm, how the borders are calculated in that game: you have castles, towers etc. they drag the borders to the outside. Now, if I build a "castle" in factorio, I obtain, hm, 1000 tiles around that castle. And the border is shifted, so that I can now build another castle, which shifts it. And when we come near to the border of another player, we build a frontline. Many possibilities would be possible, but in the end we just have created a Siedler on a much larger scale (factor 2000 or more) which isn't bad and it would be fascinating, if the strategies work also there.

The point of the borders is: no one can build anything on the others land. Or outside of his land. Only if I allow him, because he is my ally, but also then the item belongs to me. The borders can limit also the land you own, to reduce the CPU-costs per player.


So what I wanna say is: factorio MMO would work, if we have much, much more space on one side, but limited space on the other and if the gameplay is much faster.

[Darthlawsuit]

I'm not interested in a factrio MMO. Multiplayer Coop and dedicated servers are more than enough for how I intend to use it.

[TGS]

An "MMO" styled game could work. Provided the players ultimately ran it. See whenever you throw "MMO" out there you are essentially putting the connotation of company hosted resources and 'closed' servers/realms where the entire games population is funneled into. Those games tend to have a bad reputation because all the data... all the work you invest is housed and controlled by the company or even in some cases a third party. People keep talking about the "hours" you can invest in Factorio. I really hate this because quite frankly games like this do not have a set amount of "hours" you can play. Depending on your interest you can get 30 hours, 40 hours or 500 hours. It's an irrelevant numbering system. However when you start throwing MMO around you are giving the impression that a foreign controller controls the hours you've spent into it. If you spend 100 hours building a massively awesome super factory... provided it doesn't get destroyed by players. What happens if the server operator/owner decides they don't want to pay for it anymore? Guess what? All your work down the drain.

Now this being said. If you wanted to say... make it like Minecraft with servers. Then it isn't "MMO" yet it can play like an MMO. That is more what should be done imo. Now yes the same situation can and will happen with regards to player 'data' being lost. But that could be fixed in various ways. By allowing players to make a local save of defined areas or even saving blueprints of everything in their factory. Plenty of options with that. Unlike with Minecraft where unless you keep a good track of all the things you do, the server owners still have the ability to pull the plug.

Honestly what I would love to see done in this game (And many games for that matter) is innate support of server clustering. Linking together servers to individually manage 'sections' or chunks with seamless transparent handovers. The main issue with a lot of server based games is that unless you have a significant amount of money you cannot host really good beefy servers. And even if you can, one server can only do so much with some games. Server clustering would allow you to spread the load significantly. It's a concept employed in almost every MMO and large-scale infrastructure system.

[Calico]

MMO - No, pls no. I really like MMO's, but i don't see this as one.

Co-OP Multiplayer on the other hand.... THAT sounds good. 2-4 Buddies taking on the Task to develop a thriving Base in the midst of nowhere on an alien Planet. Constant Attacks from every direction, sharing and pooling of ressources to survive. Maybe even building a base together...

Factorio sometimes does play like OpenTransportTycoonDeluxe (OTTD) with one of the heavier Econmic mods like FIRS... Supply and Demand, Transportation, mixing several "low-end" ressources to create more complex ones.... only that there is the constant threat of beeing attacked by hostile aliens.

Yeah, Co-Op sounds very promising. Already converted a former OTTD Buddy so we can build bases together.... when did you say co op will be released?

[libik]

I would like something like "simcity" mmo .

It would be simple, you start near borders (that borders should be only on one side, so the map is still infinite) and you can send or recieve items throuth that border .