I just picked this up on Steam for $20; it’s pretty much my first crafting game.
I’ve played a few hours now and it’s both slow (gathering) and fast (critters attacking).
The graphics are decidedly mid-res, but there’s enough detail to distinguish stuff.
I can tell that the way you have to build stuff is going to mean some really complicated conveyor belts, power grids and distribution schemes; I look forward to my own Rube Goldberg-esque factory/warehouse world emerging.
Damn you! I just burned most of a weekend on this game. I hadn’t even heard of it before.
It’s reminiscent of another game that I put way too much time into–Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Basically, that plus crafting, plus monsters that attack you. A great combo!
It’s definitely a load of fun setting up distribution networks and such. They go a pretty good job at encouraging experimentation to find the optimal layouts. I wish they had a few more features–a right-angle robot arm would have come in pretty handy, for instance. But I was able to come up with some pretty sophisticated networks nevertheless.
This one is definitely in the queue for me after I finish all of Infinifactory.
I have no idea if I am playing this game correctly or well.
I have several iron and copper and coal sites that I am mining and I’ve built conveyor belts to bring everything to one location. I have a single lab powered by a steam-powered electrical generator. I mostly am researching the shit out of things.
I tried fighting some monsters but got killed pretty quickly (that’s the part of the game that moves fast, to me); thank “Bob” for autosaves.
I just got it but haven’t played it yet. I’ve been keeping half an eye on it for a long time, and decided to buy it when it arrived on Steam. I note that the game’s website has been around quite a while and has useful/interesting things on it like game guides. Speaking of which:
Looking though the online gameguide, I note two things. First that higher pollution levels both attract the monsters and cause them to evolve into more powerful forms faster. And second, the game recommends setting up static defenses around your base to deal with them early on, before you get better weapons.
Thanks for the links, Der Trihs; I admit I’ve been brailling my way thru the game.
I don’t have a problem with monsters right now. My base is quite far from any colonies; I went and sought them out, thinking to try my new submachine gun and piercing bullets. Alas, I was overcome in seconds.
I have built walls, gates and a couple of turrets at my base, in case the critters come calling.
I picked it up this weekend as well, fun so far but little frustrating when you’re building without any real plan because you need stuff right now rather long term efficiency, it comes back to bite you when your battery maker needs both copper and sulfuric acid and your copper smelters and refineries are at opposite ends of the base.
A central smelter is probably a good idea and at some point you’ll want rely on trains(just don’t stand on the track when you have trains running, it’s bad for your health :o) for long range transportation, though I’m not sure at what point the conveyors become impractical.
Having multiple labs really speed up research, in particular if you set up some automatic lab pack production, the guide Der Trihs linked has a nice basic setup for the red and greens ones.
Fighting critters on foot is dangerous, fortunately we can build tanks which makes the critter killing business slightly less hazardous.
I’ve had this on my wish list ever since this thread, but I got so bored yesterday that I paid full price. I’m about 6 hours in and really enjoying it. I picked up Big Pharma a couple of weeks ago, but I’m enjoying this much better (and Big Pharma’s a fine game; we just didn’t gel). I love the free-form aspect of it.
Heard about this from the maker of Stardew Valley. It’s rather impressive. There’s a lot I could say about it, but it’s basically just the kind of game that I’m most interested in. While there are enemies to fight, it’s not really the focus, which is building things. You can make the goal whatever you want, although I have basically stuck to the default of “launch as many satellites as possible”, which entails slowly grabbing more land and resources from the natives, and automating as much of the details of the building of the launch rockets as possible.
Trains aren’t all that hazardous to your health - if you have well fortified power armor. I never bothered with trains until I had some heavy duty shields in mine, and trains basically deal no damage to me. However, they will total a car immediately, and often come rushing in out of sight from a long ways away. I’ve lost several cars to trains I didn’t see coming, and now have a backup car in my inventory at most times so I don’t have to walk from some absurd distance if my car gets smashed up.
The one thing I don’t really like about the game is that it has the same type of inventory limitations that are found in other RPGs, one that artificially limits you in terms of a number of stacks of items, but allows you to carry a very large number of assembled train locomotives on you at the same time. The only game I’ve found that doesn’t do this is EVE online, where your cargo hold can contain any number of different things, limited only by the “physical space” that it takes up, and the issues with cargo hold size are pretty central to the game. I just don’t find it very immersive that I can haul around a ton of heavy large objects, but have limited inventory space determined by the type of item. EVE is evidence that you absolutely don’t have to do things that way, and yet practically every game does.
Took a break from Elite: Dangerous to mess around in Factorio. Had some false starts due to not trying the tutorial first but now have a nice little base at a huge iron deposit and a modest coal deposit. Three steam engines with two labs along with several electric miners and inserters. Got my first car last night.
Is there any way to see what map seed I’m on? Would have liked to revisit one of those false starts. Spawned in a heavily wooded area with a huge coal field nearby and little else; my first burner miner was a wood-powered coal harvester.
In a bit of recursive posting, this thread definitely needs a link to HMS Irruncible’s victory thread; it’s a pretty impressive feat.
DO NOT UPDATE they changed everything and it’s awful now
What did they do?
A look through the Steam discussions suggests that the biggest change people are railing against is the change to the quickbar slots - they are now shortcuts to your inventory rather than an inventory slot in their own right.
They have also changed the science recipes, which means that current saves will no longer work the same. You can still get legacy versions through Steam downloaded, so even if you’ve updated you can go back.
It is still Early Access beta. Expect things to change. They have changed before.
When I loaded up some of my maps, a lot of the reasearch I had was just… gone. I had to re-research a lot.
Also… biters suddenly got bigger, more aggressive, and spawned more/larger bases. Basically I can no longer rely on running over nests with tanks, I need to research/use all the military options.
The inventory UI changes are a little confusing as well. The icons are smaller, it’s more complicated, harder to find things.
Before, it seems like the enemies existed just to put a little pressure/distraction on you, so that it’s not purely a building game. Now it seems more like a bug-fighting game and I’m not so keen on that aspect.
So you beat the game and they made it tougher for the rest of us? Thanks a lot 
Some game developer was spying on my tank rampages and decided I was having too much fun.
I checked out the trailer on youtube and it started off interesting, then shot straight past cool to awesome, but then nosedived into heartbreaking when it got to the massive pollution riling up the local fauna who mobilized to fight back only to be ruthlessly mown down by trains. Sad panda.
The player is clearly the villain in this game.
This is the big one for me. The UI changes I got used to in a few minutes; eh, whatever. But the new recipes mean some serious changes to my base. I fixed up a couple of them (blue and black) without too much trouble, but purple and yellow are pretty damn different.
I was building up a pretty serious base–one that could launch a rocket every few minutes (maybe once a minute)–but this is pretty demotivating.
On the contrary, quite motivating for me to maybe get back into it, although I did happen to stop after being unable to truly cope with the scale of the changes the last time they drastically reworked the science system. Maybe they actually improved it so you didn’t need to feed god-awful amounts of copper coil into one machine. I don’t remember the exact requirement, but it seemed really silly.