4 ms·

This game is kind of the opposite of micromanaging, though I can understand why it would seem like it is. There's an old joke about golf "The goal of the game

This game is kind of the opposite of micromanaging, though I can understand why it would seem like it is. There's an old joke about golf "The goal of the game is to play as little of it as possible," which is also very true for factorio. As you advance through the tech tree, previous things you did manually you'll automate more. There's an achievement called "Lazy Bastard" that forces you to do a bare minimum amount of manual work.

rstupek 6y ago
well not exactly minimum amount of manual work, just a limited amount of handcrafting. you still have to lay out and place things down yourself (until you get robots)
kevincox 6y ago
Although let's not kid ourselves. Lazy Bastard is way more work then just playing normally :D
- mtnygard 6y ago
  It's a very particular definition of "lazy".
- mdaniel 6y ago
  I believe that's true of all the achievements -- I'd guess that's why they're "achievements" (although I believe some games include normal game milestones as achievements just for the dopamine hit)
- bregma 6y ago
  It is playing normally once you've done it once. You level up as a player after you've mastered it.
canada_dry 6y ago
> achievement called "Lazy Bastard" One my very first bosses noted the reason he felt I was an exceptional programmer was that I had managed to automate everything at the office from time reporting to doing performance reviews.
- rednalexa 6y ago
  Out of curiosity as I too would like to automate the tedium of things like a perf. review - how exactly do you automate those 'one-off' per year tasks that fall more in line with spending more time maintaining the code for that task than time saved automating. I have had some success with certain tasks in the very high-frequency category, but almost no successes with anything that has a cadence higher than a month (always relevant.. https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/)
  - canada_dry 6y ago
    > how exactly do you automate those 'one-off' per year tasks These were quarterly reviews. Basically I had it copy/paste verbatim the BS from the previous review. This worked for everything except accomplishments. These were 'completed' tasks (from my time reporting) for the reporting period copied into that section.
  - nullc 6y ago
    I partially automated performance reviews at one place. I wrote weekly status updates, important accomplishments I marked with asterisks. For the annual reviews I just had a script that loaded a TeX template from the past review then populated it from the flagged entries in my weeky reports. Then I'd just edit it down a bit, tweak the language and sent it out. In theory I could have probably gotten away with sending the autogenerated one at least after I'd refined the usage some. I did it this way because it's always hard to start writing a performance review. But I found it a lot easier to start with a bunch of stuff I did and restrict it down to the relevant stuff. I was tickled when they later updated the job description for my role and used the text from my performance review. I guess since I didn't have to spend much time populating it I managed to completely optimize the level of corporate-speak in my narrative. :)

rstupek 6y ago

well not exactly minimum amount of manual work, just a limited amount of handcrafting. you still have to lay out and place things down yourself (until you get robots)

kevincox 6y ago

Although let's not kid ourselves. Lazy Bastard is way more work then just playing normally :D

mtnygard 6y ago
It's a very particular definition of "lazy".
mdaniel 6y ago
I believe that's true of all the achievements -- I'd guess that's why they're "achievements" (although I believe some games include normal game milestones as achievements just for the dopamine hit)
bregma 6y ago
It is playing normally once you've done it once. You level up as a player after you've mastered it.

canada_dry 6y ago

> achievement called "Lazy Bastard" One my very first bosses noted the reason he felt I was an exceptional programmer was that I had managed to automate everything at the office from time reporting to doing performance reviews.

rednalexa 6y ago
Out of curiosity as I too would like to automate the tedium of things like a perf. review - how exactly do you automate those 'one-off' per year tasks that fall more in line with spending more time maintaining the code for that task than time saved automating. I have had some success with certain tasks in the very high-frequency category, but almost no successes with anything that has a cadence higher than a month (always relevant.. https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/)
- canada_dry 6y ago
  > how exactly do you automate those 'one-off' per year tasks These were quarterly reviews. Basically I had it copy/paste verbatim the BS from the previous review. This worked for everything except accomplishments. These were 'completed' tasks (from my time reporting) for the reporting period copied into that section.
- nullc 6y ago
  I partially automated performance reviews at one place. I wrote weekly status updates, important accomplishments I marked with asterisks. For the annual reviews I just had a script that loaded a TeX template from the past review then populated it from the flagged entries in my weeky reports. Then I'd just edit it down a bit, tweak the language and sent it out. In theory I could have probably gotten away with sending the autogenerated one at least after I'd refined the usage some. I did it this way because it's always hard to start writing a performance review. But I found it a lot easier to start with a bunch of stuff I did and restrict it down to the relevant stuff. I was tickled when they later updated the job description for my role and used the text from my performance review. I guess since I didn't have to spend much time populating it I managed to completely optimize the level of corporate-speak in my narrative. :)