Definitely seems inspired by Big Pharma, which is probably a good thing. Hopefully it feels different enough.
My first thought
@cliffski: You mentioned a tech tree type thing. Are you going to have the game start with 1900’s style “coachbuilders” manually piecing together a car?
These days I mentally compare all of these conveyor belt games to Factorio. It takes a lot to top that beast! But I do hope this turns out well.
As a giant Factorio & FortressCraft Evolved fan - “I’ll be in my bunk”
Oh man. And then make it like Railroad Tycoon / Aerobiz style where I’m competing against a handful of AI/multiplayer competing car companies and that would be so good! :D Quarterly reports where it shows big colorful graphs comparing you to your competitors. OH MAN. Wishful thinking? :P
Out in Alpha for $10 through the humble widget. Looks great so far, excited to watch the progress.
http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2017/01/22/production-line-now-in-alpha-with-pre-orders-omgz/
Wtf no love for this? You had me at “Cliffski” and “car manufacturing”. :D
I’m excited for it, but I’ll wait for 1.0 thanks.
KatherineofSky has a series on the game and she loves it:
And yes her enthusiasm is infectious so I did spend the 11 bucks on the game.
Is the game more than a reskinned Big Pharma?
On one hand I did enjoy Big Pharma so I am interested, but I’m not sure what this offers that replaying Big Pharma wouldn’t.
I have not tried the game yet because I am still busy dying in No Oxygen Included. : )
I only played Big Pharma a bit but my impression from the video series above is that a lot more is going on in Production Line. It reminds me more of Factorio as opposed to Big Pharma (except no alien bug creatures trying to kill you).
It’s definitely not a literal reskin. It’s by a different developer, and using a totally different engine.
Man I hate the indecision. I WANT to play this right now soooo bad, but on the other hand want to wait for the full experience.
In that case play any of the 200+ games in your backlog!
Hey, how does logic enter into the equation? LOL.
Another EA game I picked up recently to dabble in, because I couldn’t resist. The engine is pretty great, tiny and fast. I love where the game looks to be headed, it just needs the inevitable interface polish and content. Hoping for less campaign and more sand box, but with goals.
I promise I’m not her personal promoter, but Katherine of Sky has a Let’s Play of this going for those interested in checking it out vicariously (seriously, she’s the best YT’er though).
I watched her series thanks to this thread, which is what made me purchase the game right away instead of waiting. She has a bright, happy patter minus the overly sweet that is much appreciated.
I have been fiddling around with the latest build.
The hardest thing for me is resource management. The biggest problem is not knowing all the parts that each station needs. This makes it difficult to try to arrange general supply depots where you can select to store the more used parts (such as 4 tires, 8 valves, and so on). People are currently using written lists to know what to select.
I have worked on production lines in real life and the game has one part travelling over a separate resource conveyor. A car needs 4 tires but they are sent 1 tire at a time. In my experience supplies usually are sent on pallets so I would think that you would get 4 at a time. I am hoping that this part of the sim improves (the biggest complaint right now is that what holds up the main car production is the lack of supplies). This is of course a part of the game and its logistics and what makes it interesting. Cliffski is very involved in player feedback and actually rewriting code (resource & resource conveyor issues being the biggest priority at the moment). I am very impressed with Cliffski’s presence on the official forums. I am certain that the resource aspect will improve.
As the game progresses you can choose to research actual car add ons (safety items, brake systems, etc) or put your research into more efficiency (such as breaking down each station into smaller tasks thus speeding up the line). There are a lot of choices and I can see people trying a myriad of options repeatedly trying to build a car efficiently and still producing a profit.
I think the game is going to be great as the actual simulation gets ironed out and QoL helps get added.
How different is this from Big Pharma?