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Addicting and dangerous. When I was in the thick of it my nights were restless as my brain continued to spin on my factory and various ideas for its refactoring
by karpathy 6y ago
Addicting and dangerous. When I was in the thick of it my nights were restless as my brain continued to spin on my factory and various ideas for its refactoring. I also suddenly can't not see our global economy and its gradual automation as a massive ongoing MMORPG game of Factorio. The end state then becomes as clear as the state of my final factory - we'd feed raw renewable energy into the system and automatically manufacture an abundance of all goods that people desire. Maybe they all just pop out of the automaton and we gradually lose ability to understand it, fix it, improve it, etc. Depressing. :)
- akozak 6y agoIt's sort of that way today, except there are disempowered wage workers powering it all and not-so-clean energy.
- Meph504 6y agoA large element of factorio is that as you scale up, you generate more pollution, and then slaughter the native population of the planet because they try and stop you from destroying their world. It's an aspect of the game I think most doesn't seem to give a lot of thought.
- pm90 6y agoI think this is the most brilliant aspects of the game. Throughout history, colonization has always required the demonization of the colonized people. Savages, barbarians, white mans burden etc. Now a typical factorio player would be aghast for murdering humanoids to take over their resources ( or maybe they wouldn’t? Could be an interesting mod!). But we know those slimy brainless insects are just reactive monsters. But even more... if you play the game, the early waves of the natives can actually do a lot of damage if you aren’t too careful, and can even kill ya. So the game instructs you to absolutely hate these creatures and to fear them. And when you finally build a base large enough to defend itself from hordes and hordes of natives, you feel rather proud, rather than feeling aghast at the carnage. There is a visceral hatred the game has taught you for these “enemies”.
- m463 6y agoI haven't gotten that far. you can make a lot of the stuff cleaner. I think mining makes pollution, I don't know if the modules will curtail that. But I don't think nuclear or solar+accumulators generate pollution.
- avalys 6y agoWell, let’s not get carried away here. The “native population” are bugs and worms and there is no indication in the game that they’re sentient.
- Waterluvian 6y agoI hear you. I agree. But I also see the concerning potential for ignorance and parallel to new world problems. They look different. They’re inferior. I don’t see any sign of high intelligence.
- avalys 6y agoIs this something you struggle with when you find ants in your kitchen?
- Meph504 6y agoIf ants were able to determine that you and your efforts were causing pollution, and could understand that it was you doing it, then organize in mass to attack you to stop it, and when their efforts weren't effective evolve new forms of themselves solely to stop you, I certainly think I would give pause when seeing them in my kitchen, wouldn't you?
- roel_v 6y agoThere is no indication in factorio this is what's happening. Maybe they just instinctively attack pollution because it smells bad to then without knowing higher level implications of it.
- fallenasleep 6y agoThey aren't actual animals that we have to approach scientifically; it's better to look at them through a literary lense. I personally assumed they were intelligent. I thought the game was making an attempt to draw parallels to the way real life colonialists dehumanazed the native people. You could definitely read them as being more inspired by scifi aliens like the zerg, though. It is a very common trope for zerg/flood/bugger style aliens to be initially percieved as lacking higher intelligence, but twist they're actually as smart or smarter than humans. But that's not necessarily the case in factorio (afaik, I never got to the endgame). If they aren't intelligent, how does that cast the player's actions? I guess it puts you more in the role of being harassed by wolves?
- vbezhenar 6y agoI'm walling spawners with a 8-squares thick wall. Now they can't spawn resistance forces and will just absorb pollution.
- louwrentius 6y agoI've clocked ~2300 hours on this game. It's called 'cracktorio' for a reason. The scaling up is so fun. When you launch your first rocket, that's just the start. The goal is to build an enormous base, to try and launch a rocket every minute or even faster. It requires elaborate multi-lane train/rails networks to sustain a base like that and it is awesome. But you can build your bases any way you like and use any technology you want.
- m463 6y agoIs that what the goal is? I've had so many goals that I didn't realize were intermediate goals until afterwards. I was thinking the ultimate goal would be to find the edge of the map and wall everything off. (I still haven't met my goal of really understanding rail signals) I also wonder if there isn't more in store. For example, I don't see what paving and reinforced concrete floors are for. Will there be wheeled robots, or (sigh) burrowing beasts that can go under walls?
- trylist 6y agoConcrete makes you walk faster, no?
- Choco31415 6y agoCorrect. The walking speed bonuses are: 30% faster for stone brick, 40% faster for concrete, 50% faster for refined concrete Speed bonuses also apply to cars/exoskeletons making overall travel faster.
- m463 6y agoOh great - now I will wear 3 exoskeletons AND pave the earth. :)
- louwrentius 6y agoAFAIK the game has no edge.
- VikingCoder 6y agoWhy would the people who own the factories just give the output to people? What could people possibly offer, when all the things they're capable of making can be produced at zero cost? I'm not being snarky, this is something I genuinely worry about. I think Universal Basic Income is the only reasonable answer.
- cheez 6y agoYou had the answer yourself. Legislation. Government-run factories for the benefit of the people.
- negamax 6y agoYou mean governments nationalize the factories?
- adamnemecek 6y agoBuild new ones.
- cheez 6y agoeither/or. History is full of these types of tradeoffs. In the completely hypothetical example from above, it would be worth it to figure something out.
- negamax 6y agoI have another theory. Which is that people will beat machines and create and pursue things that we can't even imagine at the moment. I am rooting for human creativity over machines' brute incredible strength. Even if that's not possible, that's what we should strive for
- hvis 6y agoYou could see it in the history of countries that went through a socialist phase (such as Russia): it works, until it doesn't. As soon as there is no personal incentive (or real ability) to improve things, the tech sector starts to stagnate and fall behind the rest of the world.
- philwelch 6y ago> The end state then becomes as clear as the state of my final factory - we'd feed raw renewable energy into the system and automatically manufacture an abundance of all goods that people desire. Maybe they all just pop out of the automaton and we gradually lose ability to understand it, fix it, improve it, etc. This is the premise of E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops”.
- dluan 6y agoFully automated luxury gay space something.
- subcosmos 6y agoThe world trembles as a world-class AI researcher takes an interest in a factory automation game :)
- Buttons840 6y agoEver heard of grey goo? ;)
- endgame 6y agoYeah there have been a couple of attempts, mostly leaning on the "recursive blueprints" mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF--1XdcOeM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF--1XdcOeM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygQSDEmY1Wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygQSDEmY1Wc
- m463 6y agoIsn't that what Musk actually does? Makes the machines that makes the machines. :) Every one who works for him should know that we need to ditch our burner inserters asap and get to ... wait, not solar... solar + nuclear with a circuit to turn it on and off depending on steam.
- CGamesPlay 6y ago> we'd feed raw renewable energy into the system and automatically manufacture an abundance of all goods that people desire Metal isn't renewable. The factory must expand!
- vvG94KbDUtRa 6y agoSo glad you mentioned this I haven't seen anyone else talk about it. I quit playing this game because I couldn't sleep afterward. So weird nothing else has ever affected me like that
- vertis 6y agoAt my last job they liked to play diplomacy online. With 2 day turn times. I ended up quiting the game because I couldn't think about anything else. Trying to work out which of my colleagues would betray me, and what the best position for my units for the next turn. I don't consider myself particularly competitive, but the need to minmax was strong with that game, and the social/diplomacy element was just infuriating.
- ecdavis 6y ago> Trying to work out which of my colleagues would betray me An interesting GDC presentation on a similar subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WMNuyjm4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WMNuyjm4w
- cabite 6y agoLike after long sessions of Tetris or Minecraft, when your brain still processes reality as a patchwork of cubes ?
- ficklepickle 6y agoThis is essentially the plot of the short story "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster. It's from 1909 and is alarmingly prescient. https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machine-Stops.pdf https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machi...