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I enjoy that this was posted to HN. Factorio combines all the fun parts of my day job (algorithms, simple maths, tackling solvable problems) with a fairly quic

I enjoy that this was posted to HN. Factorio combines all the fun parts of my day job (algorithms, simple maths, tackling solvable problems) with a fairly quick reward cycle. It has some very fun scaling challenges at every level of play. For anyone interested in trying it out they have a free and feature rich demo available (either through their site or steam).

hobby-coder-guy 6y ago
Maths?
yboris 6y ago
I absolutely love that there is no cost to relocating your constructions other than the time you spend doing it. This means you can iterate, try different designs, and refactor. No pain akin to many other games' setup where you "sell" a structure for less than for what you "bought" it for.
- MPSimmons 6y ago
  Totally agree. I bought the game after the 1.0 release and unlearning my hesitancy to do a first janky build took a while, but it was very rewarding once I got used to it.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  There's an implicit cost. Time is a factor for the alien evolution. So if you'll spend too much time relocating your constructions, you might fall behind aliens and will spend lots of resources to defend your base. That'll slow down your research and you'll fall behind more. Actually that's the only thing that I don't like in this game, I wish developers would rebalance the game with 0 time contribution to evolution, as I really love to spend lots of time thinking and rebuilding things and I hate that feeling that I need to move faster. I know that it's easy to change coefficients in the game creation screen, but for some reason I don't like this approach and prefer to play the game with built-in presets (also, I think, achievements are disabled with custom game presets).
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    It's really slow, though. If time is a particularly big part of evolution, it means you're barely fighting, so the problem solves itself.
  - garaetjjte 6y ago
    If some setting makes the game more fun for you.. why not change it? I don't get it. Who cares about achievements.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      Only four achievements care about the settings. And two of those are speedrun achievements. And the only settings that matter are turning on peaceful mode or reducing the number of starting enemy bases.
  - nwallin 6y ago
    The 100% achievement speedrun involves setting numerous biter related settings to 0, including both the time and pollution evolution factors. I don't remember all the settings which are changed, but it's a substantial list. Biters are not disabled completely, (one of the achievements involve aggroing the biters with pollution) but they're turned down enough such that they do not actually attack the base. To get them to aggro for that one achievement, you have to actually construct stuff inside of one of their cells.
  - yboris 6y ago
    I've been choosing to play without enemies. Makes for a less-frantic, more-relaxed gameplay. Once I get good at building bases fast, I'll try with enemies to see how I like it.
sharkweek 6y ago
As a non-programmer who occasionally has to write terrible scripts to make my job a little easier, this game is the PERFECT manifestation of why my code ends up looking the way it does. Step one: solve a small problem with a script Step two: scale the solution to the problem to make it repeatable Step three: optimize a part of the solution to improve the process Step four: scratch head at why problem is no longer solved after attempted optimizations Step five: isolate the changes and fix the problem in isolation Step six: put changes into original solution to try and fix what I broke Step seven: Google for answer as to why I can’t get it to work Step eight: copy and paste solution only to make things worse Step ???: remove all changes and get angry that nothing is working anymore Restart
- elihu 6y ago
  I think in the factorio 1.0 release thread awhile back there was a comment about it being weird that the game is fun when it's a lot like the kind of (less fun) work they do in their actual job, or something like that. This made me think about my actual job (software developer at a large tech company), and why is it that it's not as fun as factorio? What's the difference? I think a big part of it is visibility. If factorio were like my job, I'd only see my own small corner of the map. The rest of the megabase would be continuously refactored by thousands of other players, and largely hidden from view. Occasionally problems would arise; sorry, no more red circuits this month, but here's some iron and copper and plastic. We've doubled our rocket control module quota. Various incompatible versions of schematics would be emailed back and forth and posted on wikis, and using them in your own situation would always require some sort of belt spaghetti because their setup is just a little bit different than yours. There'd be occasional high-level directives from senior executives explaining what goal everyone is working towards. Our competitors are launching their rockets on time. Logistics bots would go AWOL periodically. Random objects would show up on the wrong belt occasionally, no one really knows why. How did this fish get here? Every team would have their own opinions about the most aesthetically pleasing way to arrange power poles. At least I can be thankful that my day job doesn't require flame turrets, artillery wagons, and occasional nukes. I wouldn't mind driving a spidertron to work, though (once the pandemic is over and "driving to work" is a thing again).

hobby-coder-guy 6y ago

Maths?

yboris 6y ago

I absolutely love that there is no cost to relocating your constructions other than the time you spend doing it. This means you can iterate, try different designs, and refactor. No pain akin to many other games' setup where you "sell" a structure for less than for what you "bought" it for.

MPSimmons 6y ago
Totally agree. I bought the game after the 1.0 release and unlearning my hesitancy to do a first janky build took a while, but it was very rewarding once I got used to it.
vbezhenar 6y ago
There's an implicit cost. Time is a factor for the alien evolution. So if you'll spend too much time relocating your constructions, you might fall behind aliens and will spend lots of resources to defend your base. That'll slow down your research and you'll fall behind more. Actually that's the only thing that I don't like in this game, I wish developers would rebalance the game with 0 time contribution to evolution, as I really love to spend lots of time thinking and rebuilding things and I hate that feeling that I need to move faster. I know that it's easy to change coefficients in the game creation screen, but for some reason I don't like this approach and prefer to play the game with built-in presets (also, I think, achievements are disabled with custom game presets).
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  It's really slow, though. If time is a particularly big part of evolution, it means you're barely fighting, so the problem solves itself.
- garaetjjte 6y ago
  If some setting makes the game more fun for you.. why not change it? I don't get it. Who cares about achievements.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Only four achievements care about the settings. And two of those are speedrun achievements. And the only settings that matter are turning on peaceful mode or reducing the number of starting enemy bases.
- nwallin 6y ago
  The 100% achievement speedrun involves setting numerous biter related settings to 0, including both the time and pollution evolution factors. I don't remember all the settings which are changed, but it's a substantial list. Biters are not disabled completely, (one of the achievements involve aggroing the biters with pollution) but they're turned down enough such that they do not actually attack the base. To get them to aggro for that one achievement, you have to actually construct stuff inside of one of their cells.
- yboris 6y ago
  I've been choosing to play without enemies. Makes for a less-frantic, more-relaxed gameplay. Once I get good at building bases fast, I'll try with enemies to see how I like it.

sharkweek 6y ago

As a non-programmer who occasionally has to write terrible scripts to make my job a little easier, this game is the PERFECT manifestation of why my code ends up looking the way it does. Step one: solve a small problem with a script Step two: scale the solution to the problem to make it repeatable Step three: optimize a part of the solution to improve the process Step four: scratch head at why problem is no longer solved after attempted optimizations Step five: isolate the changes and fix the problem in isolation Step six: put changes into original solution to try and fix what I broke Step seven: Google for answer as to why I can’t get it to work Step eight: copy and paste solution only to make things worse Step ???: remove all changes and get angry that nothing is working anymore Restart

elihu 6y ago
I think in the factorio 1.0 release thread awhile back there was a comment about it being weird that the game is fun when it's a lot like the kind of (less fun) work they do in their actual job, or something like that. This made me think about my actual job (software developer at a large tech company), and why is it that it's not as fun as factorio? What's the difference? I think a big part of it is visibility. If factorio were like my job, I'd only see my own small corner of the map. The rest of the megabase would be continuously refactored by thousands of other players, and largely hidden from view. Occasionally problems would arise; sorry, no more red circuits this month, but here's some iron and copper and plastic. We've doubled our rocket control module quota. Various incompatible versions of schematics would be emailed back and forth and posted on wikis, and using them in your own situation would always require some sort of belt spaghetti because their setup is just a little bit different than yours. There'd be occasional high-level directives from senior executives explaining what goal everyone is working towards. Our competitors are launching their rockets on time. Logistics bots would go AWOL periodically. Random objects would show up on the wrong belt occasionally, no one really knows why. How did this fish get here? Every team would have their own opinions about the most aesthetically pleasing way to arrange power poles. At least I can be thankful that my day job doesn't require flame turrets, artillery wagons, and occasional nukes. I wouldn't mind driving a spidertron to work, though (once the pandemic is over and "driving to work" is a thing again).