Be Excellent To Each Other

This has been mentioned in the Indie games thread, but it really does deserve a thread of its own. Factorio is a game about crashlanding on an alien planet, and having to bootstrap your way from a little guy with a pickaxe through to building mining machines, factories, and eventually a rocket launch silo.

Only, it's so much more than that. Factorio is about building things. Then it's about automating building things. Then it's about automating building the things that build the things. Then it's about doing that at a 10x scale because you need so many more of those things. Then it's about doing it bigger. Or smaller. Or faster. Or prettier. It's about automation taking over your life. It's about daydreaming about throughput capacities of belts of raw iron ore. It's about it being impossible to go to bed because the ratio of inputs to outputs on the 12th factory along isn't quite right so it's not quite as efficient as it possibly could be...

You'll not complete Factorio. It doesn't really have any defined end, so it's not getting into your Finish 52 list. And yes, it's still in beta. Version 0.15 has just released so it's a great time to get into it because all the new stuff to you is also new to everyone else. It's got a massive community of modders, supporters, and just nutters who compete to build the largest/silliest/fastest thing (take a look at r/factorio).

It's £20 on Steam (you'll have to tell Steam that you want to download the beta of 0.15.x in the properties, or you'll get the older currently stable 0.14.x version).

You should get Factorio, so you too can AUTOMATE ALL THE THINGS.

http://www.factorio.com

Stupid addictive Factorio.

I was playing until 2.30 last night. Things kept needing fixing!

Nope. Not going down another rabbit hole, thanks. Minecraft swallowed half a decade of my free time already and I've only just weaned myself off that.

Doooo eeeeeetttt

This does look as if it might be of interest to me. Maybe I should check it out, just to be certain.

How "Betay" is it?

It's rock solid in terms of reliability etc - it just doesn't have much of an endgame. It's not really a game where the endgame is the point though, much like Minecraft.

Luckily I managed to dodge a bullet with Minecraft. Bought it, installed it, literally spent almost an entire weekend on it. Decided that was ridiculous and stopped, never to go back.

You wouldn't catch me playing one game forever with no end game in sight!

I bought Minecraft at the alpha stage on PC in 2010 when there wasn't really much to do in it and barely any documentation, so I never got hooked on it. Probably a good thing considering how addicted to stuff I can get - although usually to games with defined goals.

Beep beep!

GOG.com have it for 15 quids, but you don't get any DRM with it.

This might just be the most addictive game I've ever played.

It's probably a very good job i don't have steam then.

No need for steam! Direct download straight off the Factorio website. HTH.

*Whimper*

Must stay strong. Must stay strong. Must stay strong.

Come join our talk of belts and insertion.

Oh no.

And the vigorous pumping of various oils.

And an entire train full of lube.

Toot toot!

When i lose my job, house and family, i can come live with you guys, right?

Families will be automated.

OK, so I'm not good at this. It took we a while to twig the whole "different sides of the conveyor" thing, my electricity pylons look like they been laid out by someone with the shakes, and my whole factory is filled with odd little ad hoc systems that smush up against each other. But it's fascinating!

Power ain't pretty.

There's loads of little tricks you get used to regarding belt siding, and how to put/pull things on a particular side, filter a double belt to a single side, etc.

Following this post last week, I thought I'd dig out my account and see if it was still valid. After a bit of faffing around migrating to a Mojang account, I'm still able to play the PC version and there was a free code to redeem for the Windows 10 App, which is nice of them. After loading up the app, I still have no clue what to do, and I'll probably never go back to it, but it's the thought that counts

Catastrophically back on my bullshit.

And still only half the cheevos!

I still suck sooooo bad at this, but I've worked out that half my issues at least are not giving myself enough space to do things in. I've tried to avoid spoilers regarding the best layouts ( apart from having to look up how splitters work ) and so I doubt my patented "Ingredients Carousel" set up, or the famed "Long String O' Smelters" are the most efficient. It does seem as if you can "complete" it now, but I'm SO far from that it may as well not exist.

This is the source of much evil in Factorio. However much room you think you need, double it. No that's still too small.

Of course, for any given factory design maxim, you can find dozens of posters on Reddit who are deliberately breaking it and still having fun. The game isn't at all prescriptive. There is no right way.

If I understand you correctly, this is a moderately common design pattern, often called "sushi belts".


Launching a rocket isn't too hard to get to. But it's only a small value of "completed."

Some of them are fucking mental. Like "lazy bastard": https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 1090708169

Factorio is probably in my top five games of all time. I can't claim it has broad appeal, and it's really hard to talk about because there's basically nothing like it, but man: if this kind of thing is your bag, it's gonna coil around your brainstem and never let go.

Ima gon keep this one.

And yet somehow you always find the wrong way, science can't explain it

I subscribe to the "yo momma" school of Factorio.
Ugly, yet functional.

I disagree because yo momma, unlike yo spaghetti-oh factories, flawlessly operates at scale.

But like yo momma, there's always a way.

But somehow also attractive yet useless.

And, ultimately, never producing anything of actual, real, value

DON’T TALK ABOUT MY LIFE LIKE THAT.

Three more hours disappeared in a blink last night as we made beautiful automation happen. This game is so simple but manages to pose challenges that are just so enjoyable to conquer. And gives you such leeway in how to approach them.

I think a large part of the magic is the tightness of the reward loop, and (as I've said over in the other thread) I think this is similar to Stardew Valley. At any point in time, there's always half-a-dozen things that very obviously need fixing, and dozens more if you pause to think about it. Small bits where things aren't running smoothly, or new expansion that's needed, or a new way to tackle an old problem, or some obsolete bit of base to clean up. And completing any one of those tasks usually only takes a few minutes. And feels good. And then you're only a few minutes more from feeling good again and wait why is it three in the morning now.

Raargh. I've been trying to purchase this for my father-in-law for his birthday.

He's not terribly technically minded, so I just about managed to get his Steam name from him, only for it to transpire that that's not the ID you need in order to find eachother on Steam. Not even sure either of us have profiles, just have Steam usernames. Back to square 1.

So I purchase a code via ebay, hoping to to email it to him for activation, only to be told it can only be distributed as a Steam gift. Get a refund, very nice ebayer all told, AAA+++ would recommend.

Now, is there anything obvious I'm missing?

It's his birthday today.
I can't talk him through the process of connecting our steam profiles, let alone creating one.

Any other options that spring to mind?

Have just checked the Factorio website and it seems I can buy from there. Sorry for wasting your time reading the above, though I hope you enjoyed observing the technically feeble-minded.

Get him to install TeamViewer, man!

Make sure you don't accidentally get him to install ManViewer, Team.

Eh, that might be his thing.

Ha, that would blow his mind

Maybe, but it makes tech support 10,000 times easier.

I've struggled with this in the past. A guy I work with gave me his Steam ID but I can't find him anywhere. I did read something about not being able to view someone's profile unless they'd spent over a minimum amount of money, but I've no idea if that's true or not.

I read that too. I think it's down to your steam username being different to a Steam Community profile - and you have to actively create that profile, which looking at my profile page, doesn't look like I've ever done. It is that profile that you send gifts to and from.

So my father in law are likely profile-less Steam users passing eachother like ships in the night.

Ultimately, it's been a right pain in the arse, but I've now purchased from the maker directly, set him up on his own Factorio account, activated the purchase, and sent him the login details.

The Goat Simulator Devs announced Satisfactory at E3. It looks like a blatant 3D version of Factorio, with more than a soupçon of No Man's Sky. It looks like it could be amazing.



http://www.satisfactorygame.com