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Stick Insect
Oct 24, 2010

My enemies are many.

My equals are none.




Factorio is a game where you are dumped on an alien planet and have to single-handedly prepare everything for the arrival of the colonists. You have to do it all by yourself, but, as the name implies, this game is about factories and in this game you build a factory of your own design to automate most of the work involved.

You start by mining resources such as coal, copper and iron ore, and then convert those into something more useful like iron plates. You turn those into gear wheels and then convert the gear wheels into conveyor belts, working your way up a tech tree towards more complex products, until you finally are able to build the Rocket Defense structure that allows the colonists to land safely.

The challenge is twofold. The first part lies in the hostile environment; you are surrounded by an alien life form referred to as "Biters". Their number, and their aggressiveness are directly related to the amount of pollution you produce. Luckily, the tech tree is full of weapons you can unlock to keep those angry natives from destroying your factory. The other part is the factory itself. As your factory grows, you will run into bottlenecks and supply problems, so you need to expand and optimize.

In fact, you'll have to go on the offensive and destroy some of the Biter spawns to obtain the rare Alien Artifacts, which are needed to research the more advanced technologies in the tech tree.

In terms of game-play, it's what you get if Minecraft and OpenTTD had a baby. You start on a randomly generated map with some basic tools and crafting skills, and you have to work your way from there, taking care not to die from local wildlife or your own stupidity. Later on, you will encounter bottlenecks and run out of raw materials, requiring you to expand and optimize.

Factorio started its life through an IndieGoGo campaign, and is currently alpha/early access. It is developed by a team in the Czech Republic.

It's "alpha" or "Early Access" but the core gameplay is great fun and pretty solid already. The developers set high standards for themselves, which is why they didn't consider themselves ready for early access on steam until February 2016. The game is quite stable and bug-free. The core gameplay hasn't really changed much in the past two years, most updates have involved better graphics, fixing bugs and improving performance. There's even co-op multiplayer now! ETA for the finished game has been changed on multiple occasions, so it's really difficult to predict.

Here's two trailer videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR01YdFtWFI and another https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVvXv1Z6EY8.

Try the demo here: http://www.factorio.com/demo/stable



It's very playable already and I consider it great fun myself. This is one of those games that I can get lose myself in, completely losing track of time.

You should get this if you enjoy building complex things of your own design, and then leaning back to watch them work. Dealing with enemies is an extra, optional challenge. You can turn that off and just build a factory, if you like.

It's extensively moddable, and many mods exist to improve the game, add an extra challenge or vastly overhaul the gameplay.



It's in alpha so it's definitely not complete. Dealing with enemies can be a bit repetitive and grindy. The devs are aware of this and adding new weapons to the game. Since I've bought this game, I've seen new enemy types, power armour and a tank being added to address this problem. A walking spider tank and a a flamethrower are currently being developed.

I personally would like to see a more extensive end-game. By the time I can build the Rocket Defense, I still feel like expanding the factory even more.



It's 20 EUR or 21.50 USD directly from the developer. You also get a Steam key: http://www.factorio.com/buy
It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. I think this is the only way to get a DRM-free version.

You can also buy it directly on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/427520/

Or get it via Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/factorio_storefront but I think you just get a Steam key.

The developers are currently looking into giving Steam users access to a DRM-free version on the game's website. Not sure if that'll work out, if DRM is a dealbreaker for you, just buy it directly from the developers.



The most basic and important ones you need to know: You move your character with the WASD-keys. E opens the crafting/inventory screen. Space fires your current weapon. Alt toggles an overlay letting you see what an assembly machine is producing. P gives you insight into your power consumption.

Right click to build, left click to remove a structure. R to rotate a structure. You can rotate after placing too. F to pick up stuff from the ground. Q to clear your hand again.

:siren: Press ALT to toggle displaying what a factory produces, and what's inside boxes. :siren:



WARNING: Screenshots in this section are pretty old and the game looks a lot better now.

You probably want to start with coal-powered electricity. Do some mining and tree cutting by hand in order to get what you need to build a few Furnaces and Burner Miners. Mine Coal, Iron Ore and Copper Ore, and smelt both ores into plates. You'll be running around to keep everything supplied and running.


Pre-electric mining using burner drills. This setup dumps the ore right into the furnace, but you must supply both burner and furnace with fuel yourself. The furnace will keep running as long as it has fuel and less than a full stack's worth of whatever it is that you're smelting

Build an Electric Mining Drill, have it mine Coal onto a belt and have that belt feed a Boiler. The Boilers turn water into Steam which Steam Engines turn into electricity. Start the Boilers off by putting some coal in them manually.


A power station, enlarged once to meet capacity. Design probably sub-optimal

With electricity now available, set up a Science Pack 1 assembly line to feed your Laboratories. Science Packs are used by your Laboratories to unlock new things in the tech tree.


A factory setup for Science Packs 1 and 2

From here on it's up to you. You can build some armour for your character and attempt to take down a Biter spawn. Or you could research Railroads and have multiple smaller factories all over the map. Maybe you'd rather have flying drones move stuff around and help you destroy spawns. Or you could get a Car and do drive-by shooting.

Once you've got your Laboratories going, it's probably time to start worrying about the Biters. Build your defenses up, plop some guns down and make sure they're supplied with ammo. Put some walls around your guns so the Biters can't get to them. Be sure to check up on the walls often, the Biters will eventually grind them down.



A central bus design is a good way to keep your factory organized and easy to expand.

Belts have two sides. You can have different things on each side to save space. Inserters will always place an item on the furthest side of the belt. When taking items from the belt, it will only pick an item that an assembler or furnace can actually use and leave the rest.

You can plop down more advanced assembly machines on top of others, and it'll keep the settings. Similarly, you can rotate an inserter just by highlighting it and pressing R.

You can use a chest and lock some of its item slots from use, by clicking the red X and then clicking up to where you want to block slots.

Driving a car is a great way to inadvertently destroy your factory. When you build your factory, make sure you have room to move around and place some lights so you can see where you're going as you're zipping around in your car.

A train doesn't need a loop to reverse if there's an engine on each end. Only the front engine powers the train and uses fuel.


Example of another power station. Of course I couldn't manage to take a screenshot without damaging both the car and an electricity pole.

If you just want to build a factory and not worry about the Biters, you can turn them off completely when you generate a new world. There's even a sandbox mode which disables the player character and just lets you build without running around.

The Blueprint mod lets you save and share blueprints, if you see people sharing large strings of random letters, it's for this mod.

This section could go on forever. Check the official guide and wiki if you want to learn more.



Official guide: http://guide.factorio.com/
Official wiki: http://www.factorioforums.com/wiki/
Official forums: http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/ (a good place to find mods)
Dev blog: https://www.factorio.com/blog
Roadmap & Changelog: http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3
Tech Tree tool: http://davemcw.com/factorio/tech-tree/
Evilreaver's legacy game Let's Play: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3642000 (needs Archives)
The Factorio font (free): http://www.thenorthernblock.co.uk/fonts/sylar-stencil/

Stick Insect fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Apr 24, 2016

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Lord Windy
Mar 26, 2010
This looks amazing, I'm going to get it the moment I get home. At $13~ or so I can justify buying it even if it ends up being utter crap.

Brackhar
Aug 26, 2006

I'll give you a definite maybe.
This game was awesome when I played it in early alpha. How much content is there right now? When I last played there were three story missions and that was it.

Stick Insect
Oct 24, 2010

My enemies are many.

My equals are none.
One of the more recent additions was Oil, for which you need pipes to move around and silo tanks to store it in.

The "campaign" is no more than a bunch of missions to get you used to the interface. After that you should generate a map and see if you can safely tech up and build the Rocket Defense.

Right now the developers are working on multiplayer, hope we can play with that soon.

Brackhar
Aug 26, 2006

I'll give you a definite maybe.

Stick Insect posted:

One of the more recent additions was Oil, for which you need pipes to move around and silo tanks to store it in.

The "campaign" is no more than a bunch of missions to get you used to the interface. After that you should generate a map and see if you can safely tech up and build the Rocket Defense.

Right now the developers are working on multiplayer, hope we can play with that soon.

Ah, cool, they didn't even have random maps when I last played. Great!

Archer2338
Mar 15, 2008

'Tis a screwed up world

Stick Insect posted:

One of the more recent additions was Oil, for which you need pipes to move around and silo tanks to store it in.

The "campaign" is no more than a bunch of missions to get you used to the interface. After that you should generate a map and see if you can safely tech up and build the Rocket Defense.

Right now the developers are working on multiplayer, hope we can play with that soon.

That sounds interesting enough for me to re-install after liking it a lot when I got it last year. I do remember the monsters being waaay too numerous/strong early game, forcing me to turn them off completely. Did they address that yet?


OP, I think they released a gameplay preview or something like that in one of their recent blog posts -- might be a better representation of th game than the trailer you have up?

Stick Insect
Oct 24, 2010

My enemies are many.

My equals are none.
I've added the link to the preview vid in the op. It's a good 50 minutes though.

They desperately need to make a new trailer, the one I linked still shows the red chevrolet car.

When you start a new game, you can set the amount, size and "richness" of enemy bases. No idea what "richness" does. There's also an option that prevents the enemies from attacking you first, so you can take your time to get ready to face them.

Moridin920
Nov 15, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
Decided to check this out, having quite a bit of fun.

I set it so the biters won't attack me before I attack them so I can figure poo poo out. Right now I'm enjoying riding around on the conveyor belts.

Took me a minute to figure out that I can use inserters to grab stuff out of smelters.

Stick Insect
Oct 24, 2010

My enemies are many.

My equals are none.
The new trailer is out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yDZM0diiYc

This one conveys a lot about the game without using any words at all. It's definitely better than the first one, helped by the fact the graphics have improved a lot since then.

Although I thought the accented English from the first trailer was rather charming. "...Are you creative and playfool?"

Stick Insect fucked around with this message at 06:24 on May 1, 2014

Wipfmetz
Oct 12, 2007

Sitzen ein oder mehrere Wipfe in einer Lore, so kann man sie ueber den Rand der Lore hinausschauen sehen.

Stick Insect posted:

The new trailer is out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yDZM0diiYc

This one conveys a lot about the game without using any words at all. It's definitely better than the first one, helped by the fact the graphics have improved a lot since then.

Although I thought the accented English from the first trailer was rather charming. "...Are you creative and playfool?"

Whoa. Those new forests look pretty.

Edit:
The whole game is pretty now.

Wipfmetz fucked around with this message at 09:26 on May 1, 2014

Crimson Harvest
Jul 14, 2004

I'm a GENERAL, not some opera floozy!
Oh dang this turns my crank. Once I get some money I'm totally on board.

Nanpa
Apr 24, 2007
Nap Ghost
Okay wow, the demo was pretty fun, although short. I'm pretty tempted to get the full version, especially if multiplayer is on the way

Drone_Fragger
May 9, 2007


I need to update this again, I built a gently caress-off huge fortress with a mega refinery in it and a clunkily working production chain. Sadly it was completely crippled by my poor design skills (I only used single belts for basic materials like copper and iron plates so they got super clogged up). I also had a shitload of lasers to murderate everything :getin:

Bettik
Jan 28, 2008

Space-age Rock Star
This suddenly came onto my radar from a few different places today and it looks amazing. Like some kind of perverted cross between Transport Tycoon and the Tekkit mod in Minecraft.

Time to get my :spergin: on, for sure.

Crimson Harvest
Jul 14, 2004

I'm a GENERAL, not some opera floozy!
Either I am very, very bad at this, or it takes a long rear end time to play the second campaign mission. 3000 copper and iron, 1500 steel, 50 solar panels, and 2500 piercing ammo magazines later, it's finally over. This took me seven hours and it was amazing the whole time.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


I'm addicted. The game absolutely blows up in complexity REALLY fast, though.

LordSaturn
Aug 12, 2007

sadly unfunny

Oh god. Oh god, my weekend. :smith:

Filthy Monkey
Jun 25, 2007

Looks neat, but I wish they had other methods of payment. Amazon payments, or google checkout, or any sort of direct credit card processor. Paypal blacklisted my card after my account got hacked, and there is no way I am touching buttcoins.

Bettik
Jan 28, 2008

Space-age Rock Star

Filthy Monkey posted:

Looks neat, but I wish they had other methods of payment. Amazon payments, or google checkout, or any sort of direct credit card processor. Paypal blacklisted my card after my account got hacked, and there is no way I am touching buttcoins.

Their most recent blog post says they're working on exactly that.

Garfu
Mar 6, 2008

Much like buttholes, families are meant to be tight.
This game is awesome, just picked it up today. Completely enthralled. Only regret is I wish I heard about it later so I could have played the complete game because I know I'm going to get burned out.

Sheng-Ji Yang
Mar 5, 2014


This game is pretty cool. It's like an even more complex transport tycoon.

Fajita Queen
Jun 21, 2012

This is insane. I did the tutorial thing and figured "Oh, okay, it's a decent resource management sim that'll probably get old pretty quickly"

Then I played an actual game and saw the research tree. :stare:

Breetai
Nov 6, 2005

🥄Mah spoon is too big!🍌
Played the Demo a couple of times over, and wow - the design of this game is really, really simple but that means that everything meshes very well and learning the limits of what you can do via trial and error is fun. I avoided looking up tutorials and the like on youtube/online and just kinda hosed around, and then went from "Hmm, I wonder if running a coal conveyer past my steam turbines and having inserters joining them will keep the turbines stocked with coal rather than having to manually fill them" to having a fully-automated assembly line that took iron deposits and converted them into dead Biters by way of Miner->Conveyer->Furnace->Conveyer->Assembler->Perimiter-Conveyer-Loop->Perimiter-Autoguns, all without once handling the intermediary materials myself.

I wish that some of the graphics were cleared up and that certain items like magazines were more visible on conveyers, but I'm going to play the gently caress out of this, I can tell. I think part of the appeal is that yeah, it's effectively a transport and logistics game, but the addition of combat and overarching goals helps it just be more than a stale exercise in optimization.

Breetai fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Nov 23, 2015

Pound_Coin
Feb 5, 2004
£


Yeah, is ammo invisible on conveyers? I had no idea if my similar set-up was working till things got blasted.

Sheng-Ji Yang
Mar 5, 2014


Is multiplayer going to include combat against other players? Because that could be crazy.

0lives
Nov 1, 2012

Played this a couple a months ago, seems like there have already been sizable changes, so that's cool, I'll probably get back into after I'm done with Dark Souls 2.

It's fantastic, I can't believe how many hours I put into it, can't wait to play with my step-dad when multiplayer comes out. I'd really recommend the demo if you are at all even slightly interested, it's what sold it to me, played the demo for a couple of hours and as soon as I was finished I bought the game and dived back in.

Stick Insect
Oct 24, 2010

My enemies are many.

My equals are none.

Sheng-ji Yang posted:

Is multiplayer going to include combat against other players? Because that could be crazy.

Multiplayer is going to be co-op from what I can gather.

A pvp mode would be cool, you'd probably need something like drones that seek out and attack the other player or their base. Make a factory produce an endless stream of them :D

Stick Insect fucked around with this message at 13:01 on May 4, 2014

circ dick soleil
Sep 27, 2012

by zen death robot
I sure love to make potato knishes.

Dominic White
Nov 1, 2005

Once Factorio gets on (and through) Greenlight, the devs really should get in touch with Valve, as there's potential here for a cross-promotional goldmine. All it needs is an alternate player-character sprite that looks like the TF2 engineer.

I mean, who else could it be? Can you think of any other lone hard-hatted figure, capable of turning a handful of metal scraps into a mechanized empire defended by increasingly deadly sentry guns?

Garfu
Mar 6, 2008

Much like buttholes, families are meant to be tight.
This is going to sell like Starbound and Terraria. It's going to be huge. It's really good they didn't put this on early access too early.

Dominic White
Nov 1, 2005

Garfu posted:

It's really good they didn't put this on early access too early.

Why good? They seem proud to have sold 10,000 copies, but they could have sold ten or twenty times that if they'd put it up on Greenlight just a couple months back. It could be up there in the best-sellers with Kerbal Space Program and Prison Architect.

Carecat
Apr 27, 2004

Buglord
It's got mechanical appeal but it doesn't have the stylistic appeal to really take off. The mid 90s 2D look isn't a popular one. Bought it because it's a great idea well executed.

Carecat fucked around with this message at 18:45 on May 4, 2014

Pound_Coin
Feb 5, 2004
£


Efficient assembler layout is making my eye twitch.

Sumac
Sep 5, 2006

It doesn't matter now, come on get happy

Bettik posted:

This suddenly came onto my radar from a few different places today and it looks amazing. Like some kind of perverted cross between Transport Tycoon and the Tekkit mod in Minecraft.

Time to get my :spergin: on, for sure.

I played the demo two days ago and bought the game 20 minutes later for the same reason: it takes my favorite parts of complex factory setups in modded Minecraft and the coolest parts of OpenTTD. The fact that it looks so much like the old Command and Conquer games is a huge plus too.

Garfu
Mar 6, 2008

Much like buttholes, families are meant to be tight.

Because when it does finally come to steam it will be a complete game which will drive the sales.

Retro42
Jun 27, 2011


When it gets Greenlit (and it will) I'd kill for workshop support. Modding in Factorio has so much potential.

Mercury Crusader
Apr 20, 2005

You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!
I like what I'm seeing, but after Minecraft and Towns, I'm reluctant to buy into anything that's still in an alpha or beta stage.

Morphix
May 21, 2003

by Reene

Carecat posted:

It's got mechanical appeal but it doesn't have the stylistic appeal to really take off. The mid 90s 2D look isn't a popular one. Bought it because it's a great idea well executed.

It's not bad but it's boring and cluttered. It'd be nice if they added some colors to it, it kinda looks lad a bad Starcraft mod.

Fajita Queen
Jun 21, 2012

I definitely agree that the art direction is kind of bland. I really like it, because I grew up on Command and Conquer, Dark Reign, and other similar games with a really bleak, grimdark environment, and it definitely fits the setting and such of this, but it will really hurt sales in the long run because modern gamers are used to more color in everything that isn't FPS games.

Or I could be wrong and there are hundreds of thousands of people just like me eagerly waiting to spend all their money on this. :shrug:


E: I have a gameplay question. Do biter spawners only send stuff after you if you have them shown on your map, or are they hostile based on distance from you automatically? Also, what's the point of Radar in either of those situations and why is it under the military tab?

Fajita Queen fucked around with this message at 20:40 on May 4, 2014

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Retro42
Jun 27, 2011


The Shortest Path posted:

I definitely agree that the art direction is kind of bland. I really like it, because I grew up on Command and Conquer, Dark Reign, and other similar games with a really bleak, grimdark environment, and it definitely fits the setting and such of this, but it will really hurt sales in the long run because modern gamers are used to more color in everything that isn't FPS games.

Or I could be wrong and there are hundreds of thousands of people just like me eagerly waiting to spend all their money on this. :shrug:


E: I have a gameplay question. Do biter spawners only send stuff after you if you have them shown on your map, or are they hostile based on distance from you automatically? Also, what's the point of Radar in either of those situations and why is it under the military tab?

Biters are Eco-terrorists. The hostility level is based on pollution. More you make, the more aggressive they get. Too much pollution and they evolve into tougher versions. It's a great concept where you have to balance high performance, high pollution factories with more spread out, slower factories.

The radar scans sectors over time, revealing more and more of the map. It shows deposits and any biter nests. It also shows incoming blips of attacking biters. However that is a feature that will probably get some much needed love during the multiplayer addition.

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