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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:Honestly I'd play Factorio mod-free for your first playthrough--the above ones don't change anything about the gameplay. I disagree. Start out vanilla and when you find poo poo that adds friction in a way you don't like, mod it out.
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Sep 8, 2020 11:04
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I just launched my first rocket in my first play-through and I did it without mods and without really looking at guides besides places where I was stuck (like asking here about trains and signals) and I just tweaked the settings (no biters so I wouldn't have to deal with that annoyance and maybe added some more resources) Will probably try and enable biters in my next game. Next game I think I'll try and focus on trying to understand the bottlenecks in production and figuring out how to optimize the flow of those bottles for the lab. Whenever I needed something I would just throw down a row of assemblies and pass whatever they produce on a belt for the next assemblies. From the discussion in the last pages about copper wire it seems I should consider just doing direct feed-in to the next step in some cases?
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Sep 8, 2020 11:37
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It’s common to mass‐belt things that are used by many recipes, in large quantity, and which are more compact than their ingredients. Lots of things use a lot of copper wire, but it’s less compact than the copper plates it’s made from so it’s generally better to just belt those around, and it simplifies things to move one less type of item. Iron sticks have the same problem of taking up more belt bandwidth than their input, and they’re not even used in that many recipes. Gears take up half as much space as the iron plates it’s made from, so gears are sometimes belted, but some people don’t because they value the simplicity of few moving materials more. Even people who don’t gelt gears generally do belt electronic circuits, which are used in greater quantity, have a higher ratio of compaction, and are more of a pain to make on site (because of the wire intermediary). Sulphur and plastic get belted because it obviates the need to petroleum gas long distances. They’re the two things that need petroleum gas and moving fluids can be a pain, so we can just belt those products instead.
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Sep 8, 2020 12:26
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Also realized way too late that I probably shouldn't just run everything on 1 single belt all through the factory as it never reaches the last assemblies. Feels like I should have realized that sooner...
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Sep 8, 2020 13:38
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refleks posted:Also realized way too late that I probably shouldn't just run everything on 1 single belt all through the factory as it never reaches the last assemblies. No it's better not to realize optimal strategies too early
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Sep 8, 2020 14:00
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I know. That's why I specifically avoided all guides online...
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Sep 8, 2020 14:27
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Collateral Damage posted:Playing without squeak through encourages you to spread your base out and not fall into the trap of building super compact in a game where space is practically unlimited. Unless you're surrounded by giant biter nests that are already spawning mediums and spitters by the time you have red ammo 
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Sep 8, 2020 16:41
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Boba Pearl posted:I'm having biters attacking me and I don't have anything to deal with them besides my pistol, is that normal, or did I get a lovely start? That is a relatively difficult looking spawn. As the other guy said, desert starts are a lot harder in terms of early bugs because no trees means pollution spreads much more quickly. On a desert start I think turrets need to be in your first three techs, on that map probably #1. You can take out bases by building a bunch of turrets and ammo (ammo production should be one of the very first things you automate) and then walking turrets into the base so they can kill it. Burner miners produce horrendous amounts of pollution, so moving to electric mining asap is a big deal. You can view your pollution cloud in the map screen. When pollution reaches biter nests, they absorb it, and spawn LOTS of biters to come attack you. You can also see this happening in the production statistics screen. It's not something that is survivable for very long early on, you have to go out and kill them. Nthing to play without any mods your first playthrough. Factorio is one of the best-designed games of all time and it happens to have mod support. It's not a Bethesda game where it's a disastrous fuckfest without mods.
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Sep 8, 2020 17:04
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GotLag posted:Lua is not the first language to be 1-indexed. Being precious about indices is absurd when you're only going to be accessing values via keys or through iteration structures anyway. I'm fine with LUA and don't care that its indices start at 1. My biggest complaint against it in 2020 is most people don't know it so you're usually better off with no scripting language and just writing code in the program's language. If you really need to expose something in a domain specific way use a domain specific language. Or, if you're just defining things in data, define data and don't allow scripting in it. Hiding logic in scripts is a ticking time bomb and the awful mid-late '00s engines that were all about tons of LUA are dying out for good reason. For a public modding API LUA makes sense because it's tightly controlled, lightweight, and trivial to implement. Khorne fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Sep 8, 2020 |
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Sep 8, 2020 17:04
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Boba Pearl posted:I'm having biters attacking me and I don't have anything to deal with them besides my pistol, is that normal, or did I get a lovely start? Biters are hard to deal with early on when you're getting used to the game. You have a couple of options: - Beeline turret research and build them early. A couple of turrets dotted about your base defend really well against non-big biters. Walled turret clusters with standard ammo should be your standard defense for a long time; try to resist the urge to spend a bunch of effort to wall your entire base until you're at the point where doing so is both easy and cheap. - Favor forest and grassland starts. Vegetation absorbs pollution, and your pollution cloud reaching biter nests is what triggers attacks. - Increase the starting area slider in worldgen. The starting area is basically a zone free of biter nests and resources other than your starting set, so making it bigger means the biters leave you alone for longer. You'll also have to range further out to get new resources, but this is generally not a big problem. - Decrease overall biter density with the enemy bases sliders. This tends to impact the mid and late game much more than the start, though. - Turn off pollution. This means you only trigger biter attacks through proximity or encountering a biter expansion party (if expansion is on). It significantly changes how the game plays. - Turn on peaceful mode so biters will only attack you if you attack them. This also significantly changes how the game plays. People tend to have very different preferences on how much they enjoy the base defense part of the game and how they want biters to work. My suggestion for your first game would be to increase your starting area to 200% so you have time to get to grips with the mechanics, and to turn enemy expansion off to ensure you don't get overwhelmed while figuring poo poo out. I'd avoid the more fully peaceful settings first time through, since they kinda distort the game. Better to decide later. Likewise, don't turn resources way up for your first game since it tends to mean you stay in your start area forever and that's very boring. You can actually change most of the enemy worldgen settings like if biter expansion is on or off while a game in progress, but doing so disables achievements. You'll get a feel for what sort of game you like as you play. If you like the game then next time you make a map you'll have Opinions like "cliffs suck!", "more murder!" and "make trains great!" and you can tweak the settings appropriately. FWIW, I personally play with expansion off and enemy base frequency down since I like biters as an exploration obstacle more than I like them as a base defense instigator. Your mileage will vary.
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Sep 8, 2020 17:28
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Khorne posted:Starting at 0 has won, because 1 being an offset is too powerful of a concept for abstract thought even with computers and pointers removed. Even mathematics & physics frequently start series at 0 now, and to some extent this movement started at least 120 years ago (arguably 300+ given Euler was all about starting at 0). Before C or computers. 1 starts are always someone's attempt to be "accessible" but the question is always: accessible to who? You gain nothing and add complexity by starting at 1 instead of 0. No, it's more prevalent because it was an early convention and programmers are nothing if not lazy (well, that and also incapable of distinguishing clever from smart). Khorne posted:I'm fine with LUA and don't care that its indices start at 1. Khorne posted:My biggest complaint against it in 2020 is most people don't know it so you're usually better off with no scripting language and just writing code in the program's language. If you really need to expose something in a domain specific way use a domain specific language. Or, if you're just defining things in data, define data and don't allow scripting in it. Hiding logic in scripts is a ticking time bomb and the awful mid-late '00s engines that were all about tons of LUA are dying out for good reason.
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Sep 8, 2020 18:39
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0 or 1, who cares. As long as it's not JS where it uses the literal string "0".
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Sep 8, 2020 18:43
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KillHour posted:0 or 1, who cares. As long as it's not JS where it uses the literal string "0". One of the most used javascript libraries in the world is called "iseven" which determines if a number is even. Nothing about javascript programming is to be respected
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Sep 8, 2020 18:59
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My favourite thing about JS was leftpad, and all the comments and articles posted in defense of the useless fuckwits whose projects failed because they had outsourced padding a string to someone else
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Sep 8, 2020 19:00
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ikanreed posted:One of the most used javascript libraries in the world is called "iseven" which determines if a number is even. not to be confused with iSeven, which tells you if a number is seven
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Sep 8, 2020 19:03
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To be fair, I don't think I could write an efficient version of leftpad without a liiiiitle bit of extra planning. Unless javascript has stringbuffers and I don't know it. Allocating a hundred strings just to pad one value in a table of thousands of items would be reaching "slows your browser down" territory. Especially if it did live updates But iseven in a 3 data type language that has modulo? Insanity
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Sep 8, 2020 19:07
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ikanreed posted:One of the most used javascript libraries in the world is called "iseven" which determines if a number is even. not far behind is "isodd" which uses "iseven" as a dependency and negates the result lmao
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Sep 8, 2020 19:08
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ikanreed posted:To be fair, I don't think I could write an efficient version of leftpad without a liiiiitle bit of extra planning. It's better and worse than you think. https://github.com/left-pad/left-pad#readme
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Sep 8, 2020 19:11
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GotLag posted:It's better and worse than you think. The source file is magic. https://github.com/left-pad/left-pad/blob/master/index.js
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Sep 8, 2020 19:19
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That's pretty much the algorithm I invented in my head. But still more complicated than literally ONE ATOMIC loving OPERATION.
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Sep 8, 2020 19:23
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Boba Pearl posted:I'm having biters attacking me and I don't have anything to deal with them besides my pistol, is that normal, or did I get a lovely start? One of the biggest things to pay attention to in the early game is that burner miners put out a whole heck of a lot of pollution, and while it is tempting to scale up quickly in the burner phase because the miners are cheap, be very careful of doing so on a desert start because of how little buffer you have before the pollution cloud reaches the biters. Once you've got turrets, you can start expanding much more aggressively, but while you've still just got a pistol and can't clear bases effectively, then it's worth paying attention to the cloud much more carefully and limit mining operations.
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Sep 8, 2020 19:37
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That moment when the map is still "Biter Hell" but the meaning of the phrase is flipped on its head is one of the best things in the game.
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Sep 8, 2020 21:39
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KillHour posted:That moment when the map is still "Biter Hell" but the meaning of the phrase is flipped on its head is one of the best things in the game. now you gotta put belts down to gather all the alien orbs and farm the crap out of the biters, its what my current base is doing!
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Sep 8, 2020 21:47
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Balsa posted:now you gotta put belts down to gather all the alien orbs and farm the crap out of the biters, its what my current base is doing! The hell old version are you on? Or is that still a thing in Bob's?
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Sep 8, 2020 21:52
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Alien Orbs are a thing in Bobs. Aliens when killed drop colored orbs that are used for advanced research
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Sep 8, 2020 22:22
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I haven't played Bob's since like .16 so I figured they got rid of it when the base game did. Then again, Bob's is basically kitchen sink factorio so I guess it makes sense.
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Sep 9, 2020 00:13
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I just can't crack Deathworld. I have one save where I've researched turrets I can't get enough enough ammo to fight off the hordes. Usually I get stomped before getting turrets researched. It's not like I'm loving around... Six iron miners/smelters, one copper miner/smelter, one stone miner into a box, and four coal miners in a self feeding loop. Beeline for power, lab + 10 science. Somewhere around there get stomped into the ground.
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Sep 9, 2020 00:34
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Increase your starting area size. No sense butting your head against a wall.
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Sep 9, 2020 01:08
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Someone recommended Tiny Start, and honestly, Idk how you play this game without tiny machines that do your building / tree cutting for you. That really should be base
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Sep 9, 2020 01:39
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I used Tiny Start until I discovered construction drones. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Construction_Drones They feel a little less cheaty to me because they have a few limitations compared to flying bots. Look at em go https://thumbs.gfycat.com/AccomplishedGreatCarp-mobile.mp4
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Sep 9, 2020 02:54
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promising carl posted:I used Tiny Start until I discovered construction drones. Construction drones are awesome, but they are a bit "cheatier" than tinystart because of their huge range and complete lack of power requirements. I still use them anyway and don't use tinystart because of that very thing... When I eventually have real construction robots I have to have big power armor and fusion plants so they aren't continuously running out of juice. Also all the speed upgrades!
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Sep 9, 2020 05:21
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Construction Drones are the worst of both worlds, cheaty by the numbers but with infuriating quirks that real construction robots don’t suffer from.
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Sep 9, 2020 05:53
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Platystemon posted:Construction Drones are the worst of both worlds, cheaty by the numbers but with infuriating quirks that real construction robots don’t suffer from. And if you are doing multiplayer, they will take and put into other people's backpack. its funny as poo poo when you resource bomb someone 
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Sep 9, 2020 14:06
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Fuzzy Mammal posted:Increase your starting area size. No sense butting your head against a wall. yea the higher difficulty game modes and some mods can give you unwinnable starts. no shame in doing something that guarantees you get to actually play the game
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Sep 9, 2020 14:24
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little munchkin posted:yea the higher difficulty game modes and some mods can give you unwinnable starts. no shame in doing something that guarantees you get to actually play the game I still have nightmares about the last bob/angles run I tried to do
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Sep 9, 2020 14:27
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Construction Drones are my favorite mod, TBH. I don't mind the early burner phase as much as I hate the part where I have to place every single object by hand. It's tedious to build anything you need multiples of, like smelters, one object at a time. Place furnace. Place inserter to put in resource. Place inserter to put in coal. Place inserter to pull out resource. Put belts down to reach the inserters x3. Put up power poles. It's like 8 clicks per stone or steel furnace, and you need a couple dozen of them before you get to bots. You can reduce that by a couple clicks if you put ore and coal on the same belt, but still. It sucks after the first few times you do it.
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Sep 9, 2020 14:47
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The real trick is that what's fun the first time you play factorio and what's fun on future runs are very different. Factorio's start is almost perfectly balanced to incentivize figuring out automation at a small scale if you're still learning to play. It's extremely tedious if you know in advance how much you're going to need to scale up.
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Sep 9, 2020 14:52
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ikanreed posted:The real trick is that what's fun the first time you play factorio and what's fun on future runs are very different. Agreed! I wish there was a built-in Advanced Start where you start at the Bots phase, though.
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Sep 9, 2020 15:07
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ConfusedUs posted:Construction Drones are my favorite mod, TBH. I don't mind the early burner phase as much as I hate the part where I have to place every single object by hand. It's tedious to build anything you need multiples of, like smelters, one object at a time. Yeah this is how I started to use them. Kinda midway through setting up smelting columns and starting my belt is when the bots came out. There's otherwise far too much clicking.
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Sep 9, 2020 15:25
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| # ? May 24, 2024 11:08 |
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Mod request (that may or may not exist): Sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference between ghosts and real objects. A mod that colors ghosts to make them more visible would be amazing. Bonus points if they were colored differently if the logistic network can satisfy the request to build them or not.
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Sep 9, 2020 19:54
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