5 ms·

Factorio is one of a handful of games I really wish I could play more but 1) I don’t spend enough time at my desktop to actually play it and 2) Could work very

Factorio is one of a handful of games I really wish I could play more but 1) I don’t spend enough time at my desktop to actually play it and 2) Could work very well on a tablet so it could be played anywher. Fortunately a lot of games on that list (Civilization VI, Prison Architect, FTL, etc) have been ported to tablets, but I’m really waiting on Factorio and Rimworld. I know these small developers don’t have an infinite budget so I don’t expect anything of them unless it makes sense for their team, but unfortunately it does mean I’m less likely to play them. Which is a big shame because I’m pretty sure I would love Factorio.

dragontamer 6y ago
There's no way a Tablet can give a good Factorio experience. Fundamentally, the user-interface is baked into the game. Every button-click, every key, has a purpose. Lets list the things that you must do in Factorio: 1. Move the avatar -- WASD keys + shoot + weapon select. The combat system includes grenades of various types, auto-firing machineguns, and deployment of various "combat bots". Given the typical tablet gestures (click, click-and-hold, two-finger press, etc. etc.), there's simply not enough gestures to handle all movement and battle commands. 2. Building -- Even in combat, building items is common. I often build power-poles + electric turrets as part of my combat push into biter-land. Buildings can be rotated (4-rotations), shadow-built (you don't place a real building: just a shadow of one. Then a bot places a real one at a later time), or copy/pasted. Given the typical tablet gestures (click, click-and-hold, two-finger press, etc. etc.), there's simply not enough gestures to handle all building commands. 3. Advanced UIs -- #1 and #2 give you an idea of how detailed the controls of Factorio are. But this extends dramatically to all entities in the game. Editing an inserter? That's a custom GUI (inserter filters, inserter stack sizes, inserter direction, inserter-rotation). Building a train-track? Custom GUI. Combinator logic? Custom GUI. Train-scheduling? Custom GUI. ----- Maybe a Factorio could be rebuilt from scratch on the Tablet form factor. But I severely doubt it. Almost every key on the keyboard is bound to a command, all mouse buttons (zoom, scroll, right-click, left click, and more) are bound to commands. And there are even "vi-like" hotkeys for the shortcut bar, allowing you to swap custom items into your toolbelt because we still don't have enough buttons to do things in Factorio. A hypothetical "Tablet Factorio" would have to grossly simplify mechanics, and reduce the number of "modes" the game has. Its hard to tell that all these modes exist in Factorio, because the UI just so naturally teaches you the hotkeys and the buttons to push in all circumstances. But when you break it down, there's "too many modes" to really cram into a GUI. And mind you: unlike Civilization, Factorio is Realtime. Biters are FAR faster than the player in the early game, they bum-rush you and block your movement. Every fraction of a second you waste with controls is another biter that comes up to start nom-noming you. Touch-screen interfaces are just too slow for combat. ------- EDIT: And all of these GUIs interact with each other in "logical" ways. If you want to drive a tank (or even a train) while ordering bots to deploy blueprinted Laser Turrets, you can do that in Factorio. But maybe the biter swarm was stronger than you expected, so you're going to retreat. You disable your personal roboport, swap out for some exoskeletons (+Speed), exit the tank, load a nuclear bomb into the rocket launcher, then run back to your base while nuking the biters who are chasing you. You can seamlessly transition between situations, realtime. All the GUIs of Factorio interact with each other seamlessly.
- tick_tock_tick 6y ago
  I think any tablet port would need to ditch the player character. Everything else I think is solvable you'd play slower but doable.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    The designs in Factorio can get quite intricate. A lot of fine detail-oriented design with the mouse. https://i.imgur.com/yZeqpuo.png https://i.imgur.com/yZeqpuo.png Imagine hooking up a MadZuri loader (Arithmetic Combinator "output = input / -Size". Input is sum_of_chests (Green Wire, isolated to input-side). Output is also Green-wire (isolated to output-side). A 2nd network built out of red-wires on each inserter connected to its private chest, calculating "output - myChest >= 0??").) Configuring such a setup would be... terrible, through touch. No matter how I think of it. -------- With keyboard + mouse, I shift-right click to copy settings, then run down the line to shift-left paste settings across every inserter. But that's because the keyboard has many, many buttons that can map to useful hotkeys. Touch provides... maybe 3 or 4 gestures that work while touching an object? (Touch, touch-and-hold, pinch-zoom, pinch-zoom out, multi-finger touch, multi-finger touch and hold). Between select, settings, rotate, zoom... I think we're already out of gestures before we even got to copy/paste settings (vs copy/paste blueprints vs copy/paste ghost objects). The precision needed to hook up the Madzuri loader would be hell alone on an imprecise touch-screen. Its already kinda difficult with a mouse, even at full zoom-in.
- CobsterLock 6y ago
  there are modes and mods that allow you to remove the character entirely, and you would then play the game entirely with bots from a "god" point of view. i think it would be clunky to port to touch screen but not impossible. I would agree that its an inferior experience, but maybe someone people value the portability of the tablet versus the efficiency of a mouse and keyboard. Also I would say the game doesnt really teach you the short cuts. I found the self discovery not to be great, and i defaulted to looking to guides to understand a lot of the nuanced features. Things have gotten a lot better since the 1.0 launch, but there are still a few tricks like launching artillery on drag instead of click that only extreme power users know about that normal users would probably like.
trm42 6y ago
FTL is available for iOS at least :) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ftl-faster-than-light/id833951143 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ftl-faster-than-light/id833951...
TechBro8615 6y ago
You should try GeForce Now (NVIDIA’s cloud gaming service). It’s $5/month and I’ve got nothing but good things to say about it. It’s perfect for games like Factorio. It used to be perfect for Civ too, but 2K decided that you shouldn’t be able to play their games on unapproved computers, despite buying them on Steam.
- rstupek 6y ago
  So much of factorio is using the keyboard though.. how does that translate to a tablet?
  - TechBro8615 6y ago
    Tablet? I use it on my computer, it’s basically a VM with RDP (not literally RDP as it’s specialized for gaming).
  - commanderkeen08 6y ago
    fwiw I play exclusively on my couch using the Steam controller. Not sure if it’d work with a tablet but it works almost perfectly. The only issue I have is with steering the tank. A LOT of people will say it’s not possible with a controller.
gcatalfamo 6y ago
Sandship is somewhat close to factorio for mobile.

dragontamer 6y ago

There's no way a Tablet can give a good Factorio experience. Fundamentally, the user-interface is baked into the game. Every button-click, every key, has a purpose. Lets list the things that you must do in Factorio: 1. Move the avatar -- WASD keys + shoot + weapon select. The combat system includes grenades of various types, auto-firing machineguns, and deployment of various "combat bots". Given the typical tablet gestures (click, click-and-hold, two-finger press, etc. etc.), there's simply not enough gestures to handle all movement and battle commands. 2. Building -- Even in combat, building items is common. I often build power-poles + electric turrets as part of my combat push into biter-land. Buildings can be rotated (4-rotations), shadow-built (you don't place a real building: just a shadow of one. Then a bot places a real one at a later time), or copy/pasted. Given the typical tablet gestures (click, click-and-hold, two-finger press, etc. etc.), there's simply not enough gestures to handle all building commands. 3. Advanced UIs -- #1 and #2 give you an idea of how detailed the controls of Factorio are. But this extends dramatically to all entities in the game. Editing an inserter? That's a custom GUI (inserter filters, inserter stack sizes, inserter direction, inserter-rotation). Building a train-track? Custom GUI. Combinator logic? Custom GUI. Train-scheduling? Custom GUI. ----- Maybe a Factorio could be rebuilt from scratch on the Tablet form factor. But I severely doubt it. Almost every key on the keyboard is bound to a command, all mouse buttons (zoom, scroll, right-click, left click, and more) are bound to commands. And there are even "vi-like" hotkeys for the shortcut bar, allowing you to swap custom items into your toolbelt because we still don't have enough buttons to do things in Factorio. A hypothetical "Tablet Factorio" would have to grossly simplify mechanics, and reduce the number of "modes" the game has. Its hard to tell that all these modes exist in Factorio, because the UI just so naturally teaches you the hotkeys and the buttons to push in all circumstances. But when you break it down, there's "too many modes" to really cram into a GUI. And mind you: unlike Civilization, Factorio is Realtime. Biters are FAR faster than the player in the early game, they bum-rush you and block your movement. Every fraction of a second you waste with controls is another biter that comes up to start nom-noming you. Touch-screen interfaces are just too slow for combat. ------- EDIT: And all of these GUIs interact with each other in "logical" ways. If you want to drive a tank (or even a train) while ordering bots to deploy blueprinted Laser Turrets, you can do that in Factorio. But maybe the biter swarm was stronger than you expected, so you're going to retreat. You disable your personal roboport, swap out for some exoskeletons (+Speed), exit the tank, load a nuclear bomb into the rocket launcher, then run back to your base while nuking the biters who are chasing you. You can seamlessly transition between situations, realtime. All the GUIs of Factorio interact with each other seamlessly.

tick_tock_tick 6y ago
I think any tablet port would need to ditch the player character. Everything else I think is solvable you'd play slower but doable.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  The designs in Factorio can get quite intricate. A lot of fine detail-oriented design with the mouse. https://i.imgur.com/yZeqpuo.png https://i.imgur.com/yZeqpuo.png Imagine hooking up a MadZuri loader (Arithmetic Combinator "output = input / -Size". Input is sum_of_chests (Green Wire, isolated to input-side). Output is also Green-wire (isolated to output-side). A 2nd network built out of red-wires on each inserter connected to its private chest, calculating "output - myChest >= 0??").) Configuring such a setup would be... terrible, through touch. No matter how I think of it. -------- With keyboard + mouse, I shift-right click to copy settings, then run down the line to shift-left paste settings across every inserter. But that's because the keyboard has many, many buttons that can map to useful hotkeys. Touch provides... maybe 3 or 4 gestures that work while touching an object? (Touch, touch-and-hold, pinch-zoom, pinch-zoom out, multi-finger touch, multi-finger touch and hold). Between select, settings, rotate, zoom... I think we're already out of gestures before we even got to copy/paste settings (vs copy/paste blueprints vs copy/paste ghost objects). The precision needed to hook up the Madzuri loader would be hell alone on an imprecise touch-screen. Its already kinda difficult with a mouse, even at full zoom-in.
CobsterLock 6y ago
there are modes and mods that allow you to remove the character entirely, and you would then play the game entirely with bots from a "god" point of view. i think it would be clunky to port to touch screen but not impossible. I would agree that its an inferior experience, but maybe someone people value the portability of the tablet versus the efficiency of a mouse and keyboard. Also I would say the game doesnt really teach you the short cuts. I found the self discovery not to be great, and i defaulted to looking to guides to understand a lot of the nuanced features. Things have gotten a lot better since the 1.0 launch, but there are still a few tricks like launching artillery on drag instead of click that only extreme power users know about that normal users would probably like.

trm42 6y ago

FTL is available for iOS at least :) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ftl-faster-than-light/id833951143 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ftl-faster-than-light/id833951...

TechBro8615 6y ago

You should try GeForce Now (NVIDIA’s cloud gaming service). It’s $5/month and I’ve got nothing but good things to say about it. It’s perfect for games like Factorio. It used to be perfect for Civ too, but 2K decided that you shouldn’t be able to play their games on unapproved computers, despite buying them on Steam.

rstupek 6y ago
So much of factorio is using the keyboard though.. how does that translate to a tablet?
- TechBro8615 6y ago
  Tablet? I use it on my computer, it’s basically a VM with RDP (not literally RDP as it’s specialized for gaming).
- commanderkeen08 6y ago
  fwiw I play exclusively on my couch using the Steam controller. Not sure if it’d work with a tablet but it works almost perfectly. The only issue I have is with steering the tank. A LOT of people will say it’s not possible with a controller.

gcatalfamo 6y ago

Sandship is somewhat close to factorio for mobile.