observations and expectations from a new player getting ready to go for shattered planet

[craktorio]

now one thing before all: please don't spoiler anything.

hi, I recently got hooked (about november last year) with factorio, built a 5-10k spm megabase in vanilla factorio, but ups got bad so I lost interest, instead of rebuilding with ups in mind, I decided to plunge on space age, and what a nice surprise, consequent directionality shift towards where we came from, space, after all we crash-landed here, now we go back to the stars and explore other worlds, how refreshing as a general feeling experienced while trying to figure out each planet.

to not make this post not longer than absolutely has to be, here are a few key observations and then a few specific to the point in the game I am at now, which to me seems the most interesting point of them all, it's the point where you allegedly finished the game, but are still far from reaching the mysterious shattered planet. the fact that it is so enormously far away is a huge bonus on the mystery front and it's been chosen very very well. about 40x the distance from aquilo to the edge of the solar system, which was 100k kilometers if I remember correctly.

so basically I am there, creating lots and lots of theories on what might expect me on this shattered planet, I want to share some of my wildest but still realistic thoughts, so maybe game development can harness some of those and maybe even implement some in the future if they are valid or applicable enough.

some theories on the shattered planet considering the only hint the game gave me so far (I shunned any spoilage from youtube or other social media, so I really have no clue)

1. there will be a way to discover warp drive, or space folding drives, making my spaceships able to just jump from one planet to another, making the 4m km no more nuisance after been mastered once, would go in line with most of the game's mechanics, where, like in life, you have to prove you are able to go through some chores, to later be rewarded with technology which will make the effort worth it (crafting to automation, belts to bots, tank to spiders and so on). so, this is my biggest expectation I guess, but not the nicest, it will come later in this list. so somehow under very harsh conditions on this planet, I will figure out a way to get to this space-folding tech, think of "event horizon" there, they put a nice explanation of this tech in their movies.

2. not exclusionary to 1, but possible to go alongside: we find out more about either the civilisation that had to flee fulgora or what happened there, we find out more about monsters, or we have to deal with new crazy monsters there, some which are somehow connected to all other planets and make things make sense for the players a bit more, maybe some lore after all? or hell, what if this planet is actually inhabited by the civilisation that fled fulgora, and we have to arrange with them somehow? maybe nukes can come back to the table at this point as I feel nukes have kind of got a real wokeness treatment in space age so far (too heavy for a rocket, yeah, sure... anyways it would be a nice arc and a nice comeback like to show those fulgorians how far I have come from crashlanding on nauvis to sending some nukes to their bases, maybe even by some long range devices you know, so I can mine shattered planet "unobtanium" so I can get frickin space folding tech to get back in no time instead of having to chore through millions of asteroids.. just a thought.

3. this might be the nicest idea I got after looking through the pretty galaxy when officially finishing the game, and seeing other players as neighbors, so the shattered planet could be code for something really nice which really really would hit the players on a lot of levels really deep as an experience nobody expected from factorio at all. here it comes: you go to the shattered planet, you either figure out some crazy new tech (or not, does not matter really) but in the end it leads to you being able to *drumroll* *engage* with other factorio neighbors! holy cow, invite them to your planets or space ship, give the game new interfaces to give permissions to other factorio players, so they can actually join your game, improve designs, or do menial tasks like build a new mining outpost on nauvis in exchange for some socializing. what did I just say?? socializing in factorio?? Didn't everyone think this was some kind of entertaining addictive but antisocial (after all we all quit our social lives for about 2-3 months before finishing factorio and/or space age, didn't we?) task, when starting to play factorio? and now this guy actually expects the game to open op to what, mmo-territory? well, yeah kind of, think about it, think about the arc. first you crash land on an alien world, then eventually you manage to reach for the stars by cutting wood, crafting tools and managing resources, then you reach something like aquilo, which's soundtrack is just the epitome of where the arc (the game-arc I mean) in my mind is heading towards (mostly by expressing the desolate loneliness we suddenly feel so far out, nobody else there, and then because of some silly mistake or sucking too much cold fluoroketone and your base suddenly starts freezing, just wow) and then we even go even further out for some mystery planet further embracing our inner loneliness which really creates a huge huge desire for one of the mot basic human needs. socialization. and then we actually can do this with other (albeit) virtual human players? mind blown. this point three, if it's not implemented, would absolutely complete the emotional tension arc of the whole game, it does not even have to be very functional, not even the "let others do something on your base) part needs to be implemented, merely being able to have them walk around your base (without being able to shoot anything, unless permitted of course) and seeing two player images on your spaceship cargo landing pad window for once, would absolutely warm up hearts I guess as a final icing on the post-game-cake, which as I mentioned initially, I have not experienced yet, so no spoilers on what expects me on the shattered planet please please!

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so anyways, these are some thoughts so far, sorry if this is mostly meta, and not regarding actual in-game mechanics or details, as I think they are so well done already, the only gripe I have in this regard, is with the stack inserters waiting for more nutrients in hand, which then turn to spoilage then the inserter is fcked. this caused my gleba base to shut down once or twice I guess, but nothing which can not be sorted out. if you saw my 400spm gleba base, you would vomit all over your desk but it's a functional mess as long as I don't use those stack inserters too much there.

so yeah, to sum-up my wishes and expectations for the mystery planet: 15% lore expansion, 60% socializing networking features aka let other players join your solar system, combined with the necessary new tech (which you have to work through chores to actually get there in usual factorio fashion) to make this all possible 25%. of course any player should not know that he is working towards this goal while doing so, as is very typical for factorio, too.

what an arc that would be after all, right? I really do hope this expects me, something which I just can not really expect from past experiences in this game up until this point. basically it all boils down to this:

TLDR: another player on your mega "shattered-planet-spaceship", the pride of your fleet and the epitome of your efforts, shared. what is it all worth, if we can't actually share?

I hope this post inspired some. now I will go off upgrading my best space-ship to finally go to the likely dark and cold and crazy mysterious shattered planet, to find out if the imagination of a whole team of developers was even better and more appealing and cohesive than the ideas I shared on here. I really am excited about this, I am a bit over 40 and have not played a video game in a long time. I usually do music and sound-design for other projects, and since I am on a mac, gaming is usually not worth it performance wise, but hearing how well this game does on my m1 max mac, which I use for work, and gathering how likely engineers (yes some call me an audio engineer, too) like this game, I thought I'd give it a try, and oh boy did it perform well, mostly the fans did not even turn on despite megabasing, how nice for a change. of course vanilla factorio then mostly turned into a how much spm per UPS I can get without upgrading my cpu. little did I know space age would bring quantum processors, aka quality modules and crazy productivity increases and stack inserters which makes megabasing kind of moot, and thus tames the cpu/vs megabase spm discussion a bit, it seems, for now, well probably not really in the end, I will likely try to megabase space age, too at some point.

anyways I hope you liked my post, and maybe I will do a remix of some of the aquilo soundtracks, if that is ok with the composer, you know we musicians have way too inflated egos, so there is always that...but playing so much factorio, made me compose technoid remixes of cold harsh aquilo soundtracks in my mind several times already. luckily I have a really nice studio with lots of old analog synthesizers, and I hear such have been used in the scoring for this brilliant game already. but, the soundtrack must grow, doesn't it?

(edited spelling errors (arch--->arc) on february 6th)

[craktorio]

ok it happened, I reached it today, what an odyssee it was, I had never dreamt what would expect me there, mind completely blown. go see for yourself

[craktorio]

so, I have more feedback to give, and found other more specialized threads for this, but I thought I would concentrate my findings here so its easier to digest for development; mods, if this gets a bit spammy, please move it somewhere more "niche" than general discussion.

so, first things first: first things I noticed on my quick yourney through this game, starting with the demo, quickly deciding to buy vanilla and then soon wanting more and thus going for space age: very satisfied with my investment tbh.

1. most of the game shortcuts are accessible intuitively. I never looked up or googled "force build", or the copy&paste functionality. playing through all three games "demo, vanilla and space-age", I probably checked key binding page like 10-20 times. which is not a lot considering the hours I put into this. I like when a feeling of "it would make sense if I could do 'Y', which is similar to 'Z', while 'Y' is accessed by adding shift, so 'Z' might be doable by using control+shift"

1.5: everything is snappy, the interface, the sounds the interface makes, everything screams "I am here to perform while you try to build your megabase", it's the tiny details which make the cake, like basically no delay between any menu change, zoom levels, remote view and real view etc. this needs to be this way, and the following points mostly outline my observed minute exceptions from this necessity.

2. one big change (to me) that needs to happen, not sure if this has ever been addressed, cause it's a nuance to most I guess, is the animation continuity when traveling to a space platform. this was most noticable when putting your character - with which you come to identify a bit during so many hours of gameplay - to space for the first time. so the rocket starts, you follow closely, the capsule unmounts, and you already get the nice feeling of space-floating dynamics, but then the game has to load a new surface somehow, and two things happen at this transition, first of all I get tiny stutter, similar to when a quick-save happens, it already diminished this feeling of "I am in space now, everything is floatey, and everything follows a predictable trajectory, not with the stutter though, but the other thing that really gives me OCD in such a state of otherwise awe and amazement: the trajectory of the capsule suddenly changes after this "surface shift" and does not really fit with the one the rocket gave the capsule initially. please fis this. it does not sell the idea of space compellingly to me, I don't feel like I am in space. the trajectory has to fit with real physics, otherwise I am feeling cheated. yes I might be nitpicky, but if you look closely, the movement of the capsule does not make sense after the point where the anmation has to switch from one surface to the other. it is close, but not perfect, and emphasized by the slight stuttering I get when the surfaces change. basically what I'd like to see here is a completely fluent motion expectable from space travel, ideally with no stuttering from surface-chage at all, and most importantly correct logical physics of motion. idk how important this is to anyone, but it would add of lot of immersion, and after all the soundtrack is already doing such a nice job with immersion, that I can't think of any world where the devs don't care a ton about immersion. so please, fix the trajectory, physics, parabolics, elliptics, curves, or whatever you might call what I mean, of the space capsule when going to space. it starts to bend its trajectory even before firing any correctional boosters. this rubs me, - as an old space-aficionado or "trekkie" - the wrong way each time I go to space

3. quick saves: they are nice and fast, and lauded by many online already, for being so minimally intrusive, especially on m1 macs, they say, so I have one of those macs, and yes, quicksaves are really tolerable. well, tolerable. you see, you get very fluent gameplay, animations and performance throughout all the game, wathinc the lovely animation and sprites throughout this game is super immersive, many of the players just sometime sit there and watch the game unfold before their eyes, which I did a lot, too. so then what is my issue with quick saves? well if I had one wish, it would be for some special technique to be developed, to make quicksaves absolutely transparent to gameplay continuitiy. is this anyhow possible or thinkable at all? similar to point 2 I made, this point 3 really revolves about continuity/fluidity of gameplay, which when not given, deters from immersion, and lack of immersion seems to increase chances of quitting the game to go to sleep, we don't want that, to we?

4. glorious industrial steampunk graphics, really, whoever designed all the buildings and animations is a genius and an artist sometimes I just zoom in all the way to admire the ruins on fulgora, there seems to be so much love and detail in those sprites, not just fulgora though. time for some appraisal. I know this was important for the devs from the get-go, but I just want to emphasize that this was a very smart decision which likely majorly added to the overall success of this project. on the other hand, 3d is not an issue at all, and I hope 3d graphics never come to factorio. there is something about the old school "designed with love"-sprites, that works very well on a nostalgia front, one which puts you back into good old times, times which never got outdated and hold their own as a solid niche to reside in forever. I'm talking about the golden age of arcades, where we used to go to to hang out and put coins into machines to play stuff with glorious graphics, graphics we could never dream of having at home. factorio to me, is up there with the greats of all times in terms of sprite quality, and I would go as far as comparing it to metal slug in terms levels of love for details.

5. this is mac-specific, as the last time I checked trackpads on windows, well, they all sucked, and the implementation thereof on windows probably is sub-par to this day, I it's been almost two decades sinceI switched from PC's to macs. so, on my machine I use both a gaming mouse (razer naga pro) but on the left I always have an apple trackpad, as audio software like logic really make good use of this, also other softwares like ableton live and pro tools really use it well, but browsing is a charm with this trackpad. so, the other day when watching my factory, I wondered what happenes when I try to use my trackpad to zoom in factorio, well. not what I had hoped, no stepless fluent zoom. not that I mind much, and the zoom levels are likely fixed for good performance reasons deep in the engine as well. but boy would this game shine if I could zoom stepless on a trackpad in addition to the scroll-wheel on my mouse. one of the bigger appeals to content creators for going for a mac machine (up until recently when apple silicon chips became the biggest pull factor) was the smoothness and accessibility of all mac animations and interactions. swipe gestures, window management, and so on, on a mac, well it's its own league and windows seems like stuck in prehistoric stone-age when it comes to this, but I exited windows when they introduced a new graphics model which made interacting with my audio software a chore, basically It got less snappy, but I digress...) so I can't comment on whether this has improved on windows in the meantime.
TLDR point 5: any chance I can have stepless zooming conforming to the mac trackpad swipe-gesture ecosystem in factorio at some point in the future?

6. enemies: some have lamented that biters only play a secondary role in factorio, well, d'uh, of course they do, factorio is not an action game, the way I understood it, is that enemies make the whole scenario of crash-landing on an alien planet more realistic and immersive with alien live, hostile alien life, but the main challenge remains to build up something useful to maybe get off the planet some-time. and in space age, it's to get to other planets, and you know, the story arc leaves something to hope for once you mastered this challange fairly well, as well, but one this, re-read my first post in here. an observation on this subject: because of some youtuber I think I decided to disable biter expansion on my first space-age playthrough (island mode or something I guess it was called) and I kind of regret it, as I did not have to bother with artillery on Nauvis at all, not sure if I missed out on some interesing dynamics there. basically I applied bill gates' planned parenthood on biters , it feels wrong, this might bring us to point 7.

7. don't be afraid to encourage people (with medium obtusive pop-up) to play the game with settings intented by the makers, at least on first playthrough. yes I was warned that some steam achievements would be disabled if I pick this setting, but I was not directly informed I might regret selecting this, or to put it positively "the game is likely more fun to play with default settings". which brings up something else: mods and modding. yes this is nice, but I feel like even the rate calculator or factory planner mod, which I use, and many youtubers seem to, too, kind of slithly deter from the original intended experience already. while I meticulously ratio-planned sciences in vanilla, I gut-decided on the amounts of required factories a lot more in space age, and it felt a lot better. after all it's a game, and not a paid task assignement from microsoft, right? which brings up the next subject:

8. youtubers. well, they are the only ones earning money playing factorio, well, ad-money that is, I guess, or maybe to share their work, too. new players should consider this, as this affects the whole game dynamics. blueprints do, too, they are a nice addition, but the temptation to just copy and paste someone elses stuff in your base is there, and one needs to know whether to go for it or not. I actually got lazy and used some blueprints in my base in space age. my sciences in vanilla had more charme, the whole base in vanilla did. idk. if I were to recommend a new player how to play factorio, I would tell him or her to not go to youtube ever before finishing the game for yourself, and likewise do not import a blueprint the first time around, so this brings up the idea of maybe research locking blueprint functionality for the first playthrough, to make sure it is played as intended the first time around? don't get me wrong, blueprints are just amazing and I love dealing with this functionality a lot, but after going for my own city block blueprints, and eventually running into ups issues cause of 20k inserters active in my megabase in vanilla, I kind of regret not having gone a cuter way with less blueprints. tbh I don't even know if mega-basing is a viable way to play this game at all, but the question of "what do do once you won" remains, and some strive for the "the factory must grow" mantra, which brings us to point 9

9. post game antics: what do do once you won? well I tried megabasing, admired how all those trains beautifully worked in custom made trainstation-blocks and block-factories each containing a shittonn of assemblers and even more inserters (made the mistake of not using enough beacons in my first attempt) just to se ups crumble under about 10-20k inserters which used 7ms of tick processing if I remember correctly. so I quit this one and got space age. in space age I did not megabase, and probably won't. I started going deeper on circuits and I like it, maybe I try to build a display using lamps, just to show how much I am producing in each part of the factory. others seem to go deeper on designs and making the base prettier. anyway, the game's first imagery after startup (in the background) seem to suggest cute little custom made designs might be much more rewarding than megabasing but to each their own. but yeah, post-game leaves you a bit in the dark, but maybe it's for the better, factorio takes a lot of time and attention to play not to get wrecked by some biter attack or asteroid ramming your platform, after the game is won, it does not exactly open up a lot except for infinity research. this could be improved a bit, maybe along the lines of my first post, but on the other hand maybe it's also nice to get one's life back after sufficiently succeeding at factorio

more observations to come...