Factorio - Sci-fi factory building, management and combat

[Chrill]

You all post rave reviews of this, such as "Bye life". I might even have to join in. I like the factory and management side of this, not so much the alien invasion idea.

You can disable alien attacks, and there are mods to get the alien artifacts you need for some things without having to fight aliens for it.

Thanks, Drury and Transportman. I guess this is a must-test then!

[Zhall]

I just got back into it after trying it about a year ago after hearing about it here.

Now that there is multiplayer it is pretty amazing.

The Factorio wiki mentions Openttd repeatly when referencing the signal system, as it was borrowed from openttd.

I haven't tried the trains yet, but I can't wait.

[Drury]

http://i.imgur.com/lh2DyrO.png

Not my screenshot, but something I think might be fun to do on my main save. Trains aren't perfect, but you can couple/decouple them and manually drive them so even if this doesn't make much more sense than OpenTTD (automatic 3-car trains is all you'll ever need, you can put anything into the one type of car available) you at least have the fun of sorting your stuff into trains the proper way.

[Zhall]

Tip: If your multiplayer server stops working, reset your modem and router, the p2p handler leaves bad packets along the line and clogs the ports.

[Drury]

Apparently they brought an OpenTTD modder aboard, I wonder which one of you

gentlemen

that would be.

[robo]

Version 12.20 is stable now. I'm still learning the game.
The chain signals can be quite tricky sometimes in situation like on the screenshot, but I solved all problems somehow. The (chain-)signals are definitely harder to understand compared to locomotion.
Both systems have advantages and disadvantages. If you take locomotion, the use of signals is always clear, but there are situations where trains block each other. Locomotion solves this problem in the way that trains can turn backwards automatically after a short waiting time, but you always get some "lost" trains (which can be part of the fun sometimes).
Factorio is different. Trains simple stop if they block each other, but there are advanced (chain-)signals to avoid these situations. The pathfinding is improved, something which can get in conflict with signals. Sometimes you can see trains that can't reach their destination and stop, although the track before them is free and signals are green, but they suddenly move again if you find the problem somewhere on the way to their destination. Usually you need only to replace some signals or change the tracklayout
The map I currently play is manually painted with the editor and quite small (512x320), after I finished all the aliens on the islands with a tank I can now develop my railroad network and the rocket station.

[lobster]

As most of you probably know it's been recently released on Steam, currently sporting the highest rating of all games. The latest release seems pretty stable as well, and the base version includes the scenarios previously only available to one tier up.

Also, it's still amazing fun to play. I've recently been watching some series on it (aside from playing it myself) and can recommend for one the Four Fellows Factorio series with Steejo, Shen, Arumba and Bentham - which really is hilarious from time to time.

[Drury]

Somebody built a wye out of necessity/stupidity, but it looks sexy

https://gfycat.com/InsistentInexperienc ... lbutterfly

[lobster]

That looks really good actually, although this really is a matter of using dedicated trains or multipurpose ones. But I love the tightness of the design.

[Transportman]

Might be to prevent other trains from using it as a turning point or detour if some tracks directly ahead are blocked.

[Dave]

I've got this on my laptop but the creaky bugger - now 6 years old - sounds like it's about to take off if I do anything complicated! I do like the game though.

[Transportman]

Version 0.13 has been released earlier this week. I have not yet have the time to try it, but the list of changes is impressive.

[Drury]

So many train changes, this is amazing. They added TTD-type wait orders for trains, so they can wait for a specific load and such. Circuit network is completely new and awesome, you can connect rail signals and train stops to it and have pretty much a full control of the whole logic, you can make for instance rail crossings that open and close gates when trains go by. They changed the train graphics, now they have actual swiveling bogies and the actual railcars open and close when being loaded and unloaded, they're also spaced out correctly according to grid so train stations are much easier to design and work identically both horizontally and vertically. There's a new train GUI, also TTD-style, where you have a list of trains showing their positions on the worldmap in real time, and when you click them it gives you that TTD-type train window where you see the actual train cruising and various tabs with details on it. from where you can also recolor them with RGB sliders. Rail building is much better now, they ditched the rail curve piece as a separate item and now you just click and point where you want the rails to go, and they curve themselves to get there. They also added a new type of inserter, stack inserter, that can pick up 12 items at once and put them down on the belt in one go, meaning you can load and unload saturated blue belts in real time, a huge buff for trains. Stack bonus also applies to regular inserters in this fashion as well, buffing them also. Trains are also faster I believe, and can take rocket fuel now, which depletes very slowly.

And that's all just trains, they added all sorts of cool stuff like achievements, server list, mod portal, reworked flamethrowers, flamethrower turret, balanced early/midgame science, landfill... The changelog is like 300 lines long, it's crazy.

EDIT: Oh of course, that's not all for train features. When you build train stops, it shows you where exactly will the train stop, and where the railcars will go, so you know exactly where to put your inserters, this also shows up when you have an actual inserter in your hand. And similarly, when you build signals, it shows you both all available spots for them, and where the trains will stop at them.

[ISA]

V453000 is working on Factorio. He is the one who can give some insight probably whats up in newer version.

[Sylf]

Oh hell...

[Drury]

Oh hell...

How to still get 100+ hours out of the save:

Mine out all the copper.

[Dave]

I think I can top the above!

[Sylf]

Goal: catch 100 fish.

[Dave]

As you will have seen I've ventured into freeform for the first time. I don't really enjoy the combat element of the campaign but understand you need the alien artefacts you get from enemy bases to craft the very advanced stuff late on.

This lot grew up very much on an "as needed" basis, so it's very messy. I've rationalised the power lines with the metal poles and changed a few things, but I'm enjoying it. Next is rationalising the research production.

I never got far into the campaign due to my total ineptitude at fighting the biters, so enjoying finding out new bits of tech and research to fiddle with.

[Drury]

Here's a tip, if you're looking for any: You only need two belts for the labs. You can connect one belt to the side of another to have all it's items on only one half of the main belt.



Kinda like this. Might want to still keep some space for the second belt since there are 4 types of science packs.