Factorio Forums

Posted: **Fri Feb 06, 2026 5:55 pm**

craktorio wrote: Fri Feb 06, 2026 5:00 pm sure I have not really learned how to run a nuclear reactor, or anything realistic about fluids usable in my house, but at least it was a nice technical challenge here and there not too difficult for someone who built and installed his own off-grid solar system in his house&garden, with cabling, balancing and storage all done in house myself.

Look deeper what Factorio does. It has more depth than just provide things to play with like a toy nuclear reactor. It's a simulation and teaches more about the real world than you think. For example, I learnt that transport and logistics is more than just calling a truck when I have to transport something from A to B.
I have a better understanding what happens if I read in the news that some never heard of company from the supplier industry manufacturing light bulbs is on strike and as consequence half of the automotive industry has to stop production.

Or about container trade: with the Corona shutdown worldwide trade had a crisis. It almost stopped, although there was still supply and demand. What happened? It had to do with empty containers. Ports were shutdown and it wasn't possible to ship filled or even empty containers to locations where goods waited for shipment. But there were no containers to package them. It was some kind of container crisis. If you're not able to package your goods, you cannot trade. Such kind of congestion crisis is what we see in Factorio every day.

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2026 3:07 pm**

craktorio wrote: Fri Feb 06, 2026 5:00 pm
NineNine wrote: Sun Jan 04, 2026 3:16 am
Panzerknacker wrote: Sat Dec 27, 2025 11:35 am For me personally it was a missbuy.
I have to laugh every time I read somebody writing something like this. [...]
it sounds funny to me, too. like as if a video game was some kind of investment or something. basically every video game wastes time unless you go pro and earn money playing it. many zoomers probably still live in their parents basement or something so maybe they really count their dollarinos, not to make fun of them but if you ask me factorio was one of the best misbuys I ever made, and I probably only spent like $500 on video game entertainment in 20 years. the price needs to be compounded with the time invested which could be used to learn something useful (like learning how to make a video game, instead of playing one), so any price really dwarfs in comparison to the hours you did not get paid playing the video game. really silly statement to call any video game a miss-buy. again, to me it was one of the nicest ways to waste some time this winter in a long time, in the most positive ways imaginable. some even consider mentally challenging video games as stimulating for brain development and capacities, in which case it would not be wasted time at all. sure I have not really learned how to run a nuclear reactor, or anything realistic about fluids usable in my house, but at least it was a nice technical challenge here and there not too difficult for someone who built and installed his own off-grid solar system in his house&garden, with cabling, balancing and storage all done in house myself. it's a game for tech nerds or at least perfect for DIY guys like me. I mean I even repair my own green circuits in my synthesizers, came by lots of capacitors there, never one supercapacitor, and no superconductors yet though, so there's that.

Depends on the definition of missbuy. Once you have bought the game you either never play it then it trivially would be a missbuy, even independent of the quality and compatibility with your tastes. Or you actually play it and then it becomes more expensive even by your standards where you compound time invested with the price.

We can assume that Panzerknacker played space age for a while and didn't have the expected fun doing so. By your definition the total cost went up every hour so the missbuy is even bigger the longer he played it.

What he seems to be misunderstanding though is that game version 1 being compatible with ones tastes does not guarantee game version 2 to be compatible as well. So he adds even more hours of (IMHO) useless complaining to his tab making the missbuy even worse

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2026 7:34 pm**

meganothing wrote: Sat Feb 07, 2026 3:07 pm
What he seems to be misunderstanding though is that game version 1 being compatible with ones tastes does not guarantee game version 2 to be compatible as well. So he adds even more hours of (IMHO) useless complaining to his tab making the missbuy even worse

It's not necessarily useless though. It shows a level of investment with the vanilla 1.x experience someone who played the game before had.

There's a critical response I have to some of it. Practically; at a certain point I have to ask myself if the standard fluid simulation is what I want to repeat as a puzzle while playing a game about making factories. Nullius fluid simulation worked in that pipes have different capacities, so you had to know your inventory at least at the point of working with it or it wouldn't work. So it was a bit like this: all pipes had a pump attached to the end, and if you used a bad pipe it would be like using a 300 fluid pump instead of a 1200 fluid pump on say, a space platform engine set. You'd short feed your build in the same way. You could bypass that if you made a lot of carbon fiber and made pipes with 100% flow.

But other mod developer's aren't Anachrony. And the puzzle I was interested in was knowing my inventory. And Space Age provides that in spades.

Saying "you know, that simulation was fun" gives mod developers a chance to examine why it was fun. And build institutional knowledge in the company and community. A mod developer might be interested in fiddling around with the heat system because that has similar traits to the old fluid system, and make some kind of mega-reactor mod. It gives a chance for grief to be recognized as grief, and to be brought to a healthy resolution.

Posted: **Sat Feb 07, 2026 9:02 pm**

coffee-factorio wrote: Sat Feb 07, 2026 7:34 pm Saying "you know, that simulation was fun" gives mod developers a chance to examine why it was fun. And build institutional knowledge in the company and community. A mod developer might be interested in fiddling around with the heat system because that has similar traits to the old fluid system, and make some kind of mega-reactor mod. It gives a chance for grief to be recognized as grief, and to be brought to a healthy resolution.

That would imply the devs didn't know the simulation was fun, which i believe isn't the case, it was fairly well explained in FFFs the reason why the fluid system was changed, and this is not even the topic of the thread, it's fairly unhealthy to make a fixation on it, disregarding the actual feedback that was expressed by the person who made the thread.

Posted: **Sun Feb 08, 2026 5:33 pm**

mmmPI wrote: Sat Feb 07, 2026 9:02 pm
coffee-factorio wrote: Sat Feb 07, 2026 7:34 pm Saying "you know, that simulation was fun" gives mod developers a chance to examine why it was fun. And build institutional knowledge in the company and community. A mod developer might be interested in fiddling around with the heat system because that has similar traits to the old fluid system, and make some kind of mega-reactor mod. It gives a chance for grief to be recognized as grief, and to be brought to a healthy resolution.
That would imply the devs didn't know the simulation was fun, which i believe isn't the case, it was fairly well explained in FFFs the reason why the fluid system was changed, and this is not even the topic of the thread, it's fairly unhealthy to make a fixation on it, disregarding the actual feedback that was expressed by the person who made the thread.

That would be circular reasoning. If the simulation was not fun, a developer can explain why the simulation was not fun.

And they would have explained why they used the simulation.
And the simulation wouldn't be fun.

It has no bearing on the overall utility of the thing which itself is undecidable in theory and has to be judged in practice. I'd take the position Wube took the right ~~one~~ (edit->option). Building a direct proof of anything is unfounded simply by kicking at either leg of the reasoning.

Some tolerance is necessary because one review was being reacted to with another.

A newsletter is an artifact, a consistently contributed bug report is a living document.

Saying the idea is gone is one thing. Noticing it exists in reactors is another one that has relevance beyond modders. As in the past, if you mess up your heat pipes you'll short feed your heat exchangers. It isn't the same puzzle. It shouldn't claimed to be. But if there's demand for it, someone interested in fine grained control of a power station might need a more detailed simulation to do it.

Recognizing an emotion critically does more to dispel it than to mock it. There are exceptions but, as you indicated, an unhealthy fixation can lead someone to make statements that are irrelevant to the matter at hand. Those exceptions are not the rule.

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