I played the demo and liked it, but definitely want to see how it grows before I buy it. The demo was mostly set scenarios with “goals” for each one – is this the way the entire game plays? I’m a big RTS fan, but something that always irked me was having to remake a base every scenario. Is it the same for this game? I’d like to play it like I play OpenTTD – slowly evolve and continually tweak a giant network, rather than continually remake a ‘starting network’ that never fully optimised.
Also: I personally just imagined that the guy has some super fancy coal powered space replicator that allowed him to magic up guns, bullets, steam power plants and circuit boards.
That’s how the campaign works but I see it as more of a tutorial. For me, at least, the meat of the game is the free play mode where you start from scratch and just build up your giant factory while repelling alien attacks. That’s not available in the demo but you can get a pretty good feel of how the game progresses from the Let’s Play-videos in Youtube. There’s also a random map generator with lots of parameters to tweak as well as a map editor for user created static maps.
Yeah, I was totally OK with that. I guess it’s just that I feel like I have some sort of proficiency with electronics and microfabrication, so that part offended me, whereas I have practically no experience with guns.
(“Offended” in quotes, I mean, of course I realize that the whole thing is ridiculous, but necessary for the sake of the game. Which is good, so far, don’t get me wrong.)
Years ago I put together and pitched a game concept called “Wonka’s Factory”, which was all about making crazy assembly lines. Still would like to make it, but this looks like it’ll scratch that itch.
Although I’m not sure about the combat… It’s often the achilles heel of sandbox games.
Holy crap. I gave up on the game a long time ago, mainly because I couldn’t get anything 1/10th that complicated to work reliably. That looked fantastic except that the attacking aliens are still too damned fast for a game focused on building like this.
So with the Dark Souls 2 servers down this morning I bought and started up Factorio. I am in heaven - so much to build and optimize.
I still haven’t been attacked in free play despite making some serious headway (at least by my low standards). I have guns, walls, turrets… still waiting.
The more pollution you generate, the more attacks you face. It’s kinda like Alpha Centauri in that regard. If you can control your pollution levels, you don’t have to put up with as many (or as powerful) attacks.
When I was playing the demo, I was getting attacked regularly long before I could put up a turret, so I was dancing around shooting aliens with a SMG. Is this different in the full game, when you’re doing free play instead of semi-tutorial missions?
You would think with everything at normal to generate the level and nine steam generators and a dozen furnaces you would be attacked by now but nothing. So plenty of time to build up whatever defenses you want and get research done.
And yeah, free play is much less aggressive. I think you can probably set something to change that but I am still learning the ropes.
I’ve made the mistake of turning the enemies all the way down a couple of times and it leads to a pretty boring experience. I don’t know about the normal/higher levels, but if you set everything to the lowest settings you’ll be near the end of the tech tree before you have to deal with any serious threat from the aliens.
I hate to say it, but that makes the game sound much more appealing. What I found frustrating about the game when I tried it was that the pressure from the aliens was much too high for me. If you can tone that down to “boring,” surely I can find a middle ground that will work for me.
Okay, i’ve been geeking out on this the last couple of days as well. I also was struck by the delay before any enemies attacked, but eventually (a dozen steam generators, etc) they will start to attack. I have been lazy about building any walls, although I have had an assembly plant cranking them out for awhile. My lone turrets seem to be holding off the things so far.
Just broke through to oil refining, which is quite a paradigm shift–transporting goods with pipes and multiple input/output buildings.
How do I start producing blue research kits? I can’t even find anywhere that tells me the recipe.
I stayed up way too late last night. The aliens started attacking and that started up project ‘wall off the world’ and then project ‘make all the turrets’.
Heeeeelp meeeeeee. I can’t stop playing. My previous love affair with Dark Souls 2? Pfffft.
This is about half of my base. The conveyor belts are getting out of hand but it’s fun to clean it up, kind of like refactoring code. There is always a way to clean something up or optimize it - the belts, robotic arms, and factories are surprisingly nuanced.
The tech tree is just crazy, I am still trying to implement the 3rd tier let alone the fourth.
There is always six million things to do and thanks to my wild over production of everything my research far, far outpaces my ability to implement new production lines.
Apparently other people go out and fight the worms but I like letting them harmlessly bounce of the walls (with the help of a curtain of lead bullets)
