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> One thing notable about Factorio's game mechanics is that crafting is idempotent What do you mean by this? You craft a thing once, you have one thing. You cr
by beesbuzz 6y ago
> One thing notable about Factorio's game mechanics is that crafting is idempotent
What do you mean by this? You craft a thing once, you have one thing. You craft it again, you now have two things. That doesn't sound idempotent to me.
- 7777fps 6y agoI think idempotent wasn't a good word but I think the idea being described is that crafting is acyclic. For example Copper Wire + Iron = Green Circuit. There's no recipe chain that takes in Green Circuits and produces either Iron or Copper Wire. So once produced, you need to find a higher function for your products. You can't 'unmake' through a cyclic recipe. Contrast that to ONI's water cycle, where clean water gets made dirty then cleaned again. So ultimately in Factorio everything is leading toward the only resources that get destroyed - Science, Rockets, or Coal (or other energy types).
- pmoriarty 6y ago"There's no recipe chain that takes in Green Circuits and produces either Iron or Copper Wire. So once produced, you need to find a higher function for your products. You can't 'unmake' through a cyclic recipe." There are Factorio mods that will give you access to recycling machines that will let you get back the ingredients that went in to making whatever it is that you put in to them. So Factorio's recipes can be fully cyclic, if you want.
- notthemessiah 6y agoOops, was thinking about composing arrows on crafting graph, not the action of crafting and the consequent inventory, and that was needlessly confusing. I should have simply said that it's non-invertible.