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I bought it last night and played for about 5 hours and can't wait for my work day to end today to get back into it. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. Factor

I bought it last night and played for about 5 hours and can't wait for my work day to end today to get back into it. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. Factory building with a dash of colony sim mechanics. My only criticism is that the tutorial is a bit lacking and basically info-dumps a lot of "what" without a lot of "why". If I didn't have experience with other factory building games, I'd probably be completely lost. It'd be nice if the game guided you more through the first couple tech tiers. It was also a bit frustrating at first with how expensive conveyer belts are, but then I had a light-bulb moment where I accepted that this is not Factorio/DSP/Satisfactory, and that I don't NEED conveyer belts everywhere. In the early game, trucks are cheap and can easily handle the load until I've got steady production of Construction Parts II. The Recipe window is REALLY nice. I love it! It makes planning so easy! My only request would be to make it so you can click on a product and have it take you to the recipes involving it. I also really like the design choice to not have to lay power lines everywhere. In other factory games, it's such a chore and not at all a fun mechanic. Looking forward to seeing how the game evolves over time.

iliketrains 4y ago
Aww, thanks! We heard lots of feedback about tutorials and it is our priority to improve them. > My only request would be to make it so you can click on a product and have it take you to the recipes involving it. Try right-click! > I also really like the design choice to not have to lay power lines everywhere. Haha, this was removed due to time constraints. We were thinking to have it introduced in some lightweight fashion, like substations that cover large area, but this is still in "thinking" phase.
- munk-a 4y ago
  Power tends to be interesting when it can be used for logic control - having some trigger that causes a portion of the industry to go dark to focus on some rarely used portion - too many games throw power in just because it's everywhere in factory sims. As you continue to develop the game I'd suggest you make sure the features you add are always accompanying some interesting feature expansion - one thing that always struck me as odd in Satisfactory was the inclusion of combat - you, the player, interact with enemies only when exploring the world and it adds relatively boring stress - it isn't and doesn't try to be combat focused (like factorio where the factory exists, for a long time, solely to better defend the factory) instead it's a smattering of FPS gameplay in an otherwise unrelated feeling game. So, you need to sort of choose between gameplay or simulation focused - EU4 might be an example you're familiar with where the earliest iterations were strongly focused on simulation with flavor events driving most of the gameplay... and, over time, it has shifted to focus more and more on fair mechanisms - it still has very rich feeling flavor, but the flavor is always secondary to the gameplay. Choosing to focus on either mechanics or flavor and seeing the other as a bonus that will enrich the experience is extremely valuable. Congrats on the game! I've played maybe five hours of it last night and look forward to learning more of it.
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    Oh yeah, was never a fan of Satisfactory's combat. Did they ever make it optional? I really wanted to enjoy Satisfactory, but found the first-person perspective made factory building tedious. I know they've made some QoL changes like adding a grid to make it easier, but...meh. It's a beautiful game, but so far DSP has been my favorite factory builder, but gimme another dozen hours and I'll decide how CoI compares in the longer game.
    - munk-a 4y ago
      It has slowly become more optional - there's a bit that's necessary near the beginning with your weak little zapper... but if you've played before it's pretty easy to rush guns quickly enough that you never really have to seriously worry about it. It becomes a non-factor really quickly... and if it were like factorio (and they could destroy portions of your base) it'd be even worse since it's so hard to figure out what little components are missing in Satisfactory.
      - GauntletWizard 4y ago
        Among the design decisions that Satisfactory made meaningless by poor balance, Weapons is solidly middling. It would make sense if you had to clear areas of enemies to unlock the ability to build on them, and/or if higher-tier weapons were required to defeat higher-tier enemies (the kittens). As it stands now, it's such a non-mechanic - You get Xeno Basher and are more or less set until enemies are made completely meaningless by rifles. They've just reworked the system and it's even more meaningless by the addition of new ammo types and cool things to do with them, which I hope is a precursor to making you use those ammo types. There is the potential and even promise of such - See the "Crab Battle" trailer. What really bothers me about Satisfactory is how inefficient rails and other modes of transport are compared to just running a long conveyor of advanced products. If you compact even two tiers onsite, a single T2 conveyor can handle a large area's worth of resources. Capacity and throughput for trains are limited by their limited input slots, too. Nested hub and spoke factories make a lot more sense than trying to ship everything raw to a central location, but all of the tier upgrades are around shipping more further.
- imdsm 4y ago
  As Tynan (RimWorld) said in his book, show, don't tell. Walk players through a tutorial without them realising its a tutorial. Look at Oculus First Steps for a great tutorial that doesn't feel like one.
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    Portal has the best tutorial in game history.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
april_22 4y ago
Also looking forward to how the game will progress over time!

iliketrains 4y ago

Aww, thanks! We heard lots of feedback about tutorials and it is our priority to improve them. > My only request would be to make it so you can click on a product and have it take you to the recipes involving it. Try right-click! > I also really like the design choice to not have to lay power lines everywhere. Haha, this was removed due to time constraints. We were thinking to have it introduced in some lightweight fashion, like substations that cover large area, but this is still in "thinking" phase.

munk-a 4y ago
Power tends to be interesting when it can be used for logic control - having some trigger that causes a portion of the industry to go dark to focus on some rarely used portion - too many games throw power in just because it's everywhere in factory sims. As you continue to develop the game I'd suggest you make sure the features you add are always accompanying some interesting feature expansion - one thing that always struck me as odd in Satisfactory was the inclusion of combat - you, the player, interact with enemies only when exploring the world and it adds relatively boring stress - it isn't and doesn't try to be combat focused (like factorio where the factory exists, for a long time, solely to better defend the factory) instead it's a smattering of FPS gameplay in an otherwise unrelated feeling game. So, you need to sort of choose between gameplay or simulation focused - EU4 might be an example you're familiar with where the earliest iterations were strongly focused on simulation with flavor events driving most of the gameplay... and, over time, it has shifted to focus more and more on fair mechanisms - it still has very rich feeling flavor, but the flavor is always secondary to the gameplay. Choosing to focus on either mechanics or flavor and seeing the other as a bonus that will enrich the experience is extremely valuable. Congrats on the game! I've played maybe five hours of it last night and look forward to learning more of it.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  Oh yeah, was never a fan of Satisfactory's combat. Did they ever make it optional? I really wanted to enjoy Satisfactory, but found the first-person perspective made factory building tedious. I know they've made some QoL changes like adding a grid to make it easier, but...meh. It's a beautiful game, but so far DSP has been my favorite factory builder, but gimme another dozen hours and I'll decide how CoI compares in the longer game.
  - munk-a 4y ago
    It has slowly become more optional - there's a bit that's necessary near the beginning with your weak little zapper... but if you've played before it's pretty easy to rush guns quickly enough that you never really have to seriously worry about it. It becomes a non-factor really quickly... and if it were like factorio (and they could destroy portions of your base) it'd be even worse since it's so hard to figure out what little components are missing in Satisfactory.
    - GauntletWizard 4y ago
      Among the design decisions that Satisfactory made meaningless by poor balance, Weapons is solidly middling. It would make sense if you had to clear areas of enemies to unlock the ability to build on them, and/or if higher-tier weapons were required to defeat higher-tier enemies (the kittens). As it stands now, it's such a non-mechanic - You get Xeno Basher and are more or less set until enemies are made completely meaningless by rifles. They've just reworked the system and it's even more meaningless by the addition of new ammo types and cool things to do with them, which I hope is a precursor to making you use those ammo types. There is the potential and even promise of such - See the "Crab Battle" trailer. What really bothers me about Satisfactory is how inefficient rails and other modes of transport are compared to just running a long conveyor of advanced products. If you compact even two tiers onsite, a single T2 conveyor can handle a large area's worth of resources. Capacity and throughput for trains are limited by their limited input slots, too. Nested hub and spoke factories make a lot more sense than trying to ship everything raw to a central location, but all of the tier upgrades are around shipping more further.
imdsm 4y ago
As Tynan (RimWorld) said in his book, show, don't tell. Walk players through a tutorial without them realising its a tutorial. Look at Oculus First Steps for a great tutorial that doesn't feel like one.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  Portal has the best tutorial in game history.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

april_22 4y ago

Also looking forward to how the game will progress over time!