Factorio

IT BEGINS

Factorio is the defacto factory-building game by Wube Software. After your ship crashes on a planet, you must harvest resources and research technology until you can build a rocket to escape. In the meantime, the Biters living there are most displeased with your encroachment, and reasonably seek to destroy everything you’ve built.

Factorio has been on my short list for a while now because I went through factory phase and every time I researched this type of game the answer was always, “Play Factorio.” A lot of people say Factorio is the last factory game you’ll ever need, so I took their word for it and played a few others first, understanding all roads would eventually lead here.

I took the plunge this weekend because I needed something to distract and occupy my mind, and it has been wonderful. The overhead view makes it much easier to build than the first-person perspective in Satisfactory, and the early game balance of building and fending off the Biters (as the local wildlife is known) provides a nice push and pull.

My first factory I expanded a bit too aggressively and my factory was too sprawling with minimal defenses, so when my pollution (I think?) got high enough to trigger recurring waves of Biters I was constantly on defense and felt like I was treading water repairing defenses and manufacturing ammo and couldn’t really catch up.

I love restarting factory games! Starting over with a nice open playfield is really satisfying after I’ve set up a Frankenstein mess out of my control. So I already started a new game. This time, I’m keeping things scaled down and slowly building up defensive pockets. My first map had pockets of the 4 main resources all together. This map has stone, which is vital for defenses, a ways away, so I’m taking a more modular approach.

I’m to the point where I need to double up my power grid, but last time doing that may have been what triggered the increased Biter activity, so I’m gonna focus on solar panels which have zero pollution for now and keeping the current factory chains I have as efficient as possible. I’m overloaded with copper plate, but iron is always needed. I checked the wiki and confirmed copper wire is used in electronics and a few others things, but I’m probably gonna condense and retire about half of my copper setup soon to focus more on iron.

Anyway, this is a very fun game if you like to optimize All The Things, free form spacial puzzle solving, and build manufacturing chains with the occasional hazard break. Researching and unlocking technologies means there’s always something new to push for and try out. The goal of the game is to build a rocket and escape the planet.

On a technical note, you can purchase this game direct from the website and get a DRM free offline version plus a Steam key. They have mod and multiplayer integration through their site, and the whole thing is polished and gives a nice sense of community. The game has tons of starting options and a few different scenario types. You can really get lost in this one, and I plan on it.

Pollution 101

Factorio continues to be enjoyable. I’m very pleased with this little iron plate factory. It ain’t much but it’s honest work, you know? Watching the inserter arms flip back and forth, filling the furnaces and removing the resulting plates, is really dang satisfying.

My pollution is just at the edge of the nearest Biter colony, but it hasn’t been quite enough to induce them to attack. I’ve fortified my 3 structures–power generator, stone mining, and my main base–pretty well, with thick walls and multiple turrets, and I’ve been cranking out ammo so I can load up my turrets.

My production started to slow down, but my ore deposits weren’t exhausted, and that’s when I realized I’m on low power. Pollution is something that happens and you can only mitigate it so much, but I’m trying different things before I set up a second steam engine. I’ve placed several rows of solar panels in my base, but I’m thinking of moving them out to the field and putting them around each power line. My towers are already walled, so I’ll have to rework those but it’s fine.

CAR GET

Today I realized I can build a car.

I built the car. I drove the car. I really enjoyed the car. And then I accidently ran into someone’s nest and was swarmed and they ate the car and then they ate me. #justfactoriothings

So I respawn near my base with nada, and I gotta run around gathering up basic ingredients to build another car, and this time, I loaded it up with ammo. I figure if I accidentally run into another nest, that will buy me enough time to get away.

The biters have begun to occasionally attack my factory, but the turrets mow them down. I put down a ton of solar panels and my base is in a forest, so I guess I’m offsetting enough pollution, despite increased production to avoid upsetting them too much.

I unlocked trains, but have yet to use them. Research is at a pretty steady clip now, but eventually I’m going to have to start incorporating a new ingredient. At that point, I’ll probably need to start a new production line, but I’ll try to set up somewhere that isn’t near any planetary inhabitants.

Oil

I reached a bottleneck because I need to find oil to unlock the next batch of recipes. Oil is purple on the map.

Since I’ve already explored a bit and oil is nowhere in sight, I figure I’m gonna have to stock up on ammo, building supplies, turrets, and other things and head out to establish a new base wherever the oil is. Fortunately vehicles have a big carrying capacity. Shutting down research and funneling resources into supply production will be the order of the day.

Etc.

To my surprise, I found some oil fields not too far away from my base, and it’s a straight shot without any biters. I fumbled my way through drilling crude and have a tiny plastics factory going, but I need COAL.... lots of it. So I built a train that will run coal and plastics back and forth, then figured what the heck and set it up so it runs to all the bases.

I refined my barricade factory and made it more efficient. Every now and then I stop by and grab some walls. It’s on a small stone site so eventually it will run out, but for now it’s plenty.

I’m getting more interested in reducing my pollution footprint. I can now craft modules that reduce energy consumption, but to make batteries for accumulators I need SUFUR. So that is the next task. I’m having a little trouble understanding how fluid systems work. I’ll get there.

Solar Panels and Accmulators

I’m currently focused on building solar panel layouts with accumulators and adding efficiency modules to my machines. I’ve set up my oil field production plant so it runs on whatever the solar generates, and I ended up killing my coal factory since I don’t need it anymore. I read the perfect ratio of solar panels to accumulators is 25:21, so I’m shooting for around that ballpark but I don’t care if my factories shut down sometimes.

I greatly reduced my pollution in that quadrant of the map, so I’m looking forward to doing the same elsewhere.

My stone node is getting mined to oblivion, as is my large iron mine, so I’ll have to move those eventually. In the meantime I’m building a second solar panel farm hoping I can wean myself from the 2 steam generators I have set up for that area, and uprooting the miners when the area runs dry.

Research is trucking along and I’m finally seriously looking at how to manage the blue science vails since I’m about to run out of research topics. I’m gonna have to build blue science assembly over at my oil field, since I don’t want to bother with transporting liquids or gas, and ship it back to my research factory. I currently use trains for convenient manual transport, I haven’t actually automated them, but I’m not sure I’ll need to. The way my research factory is set up, vials are parcelled out onto a conveyor belt loop and stacks are trickled out that way.

Blue Stuff

I realized making blue stuff on-site was not a good strategy, especially since sulfur is so easy to move. I managed to squeeeeeze a blue science assembly chain into my current mess of green/red assembly. I’m excited because I am gonna research electric furnaces soon, which will help further reduce my coal reliance, and more efficient modules are next.

I finally exhausted the stone at my wall factory, so I tore everything down and now I’m deciding where to set up shop next. There’s a patch of stone kinda close to Biters, but I have much better pollution mitigation tools now so I can probably set something up without messing up their yard too much. Walls are needed for military science packs, which are primarily used for weapons right now. I don’t really “do” weapons. I have enough turrets to keep Biters from tearing down my research factory or to try to save my bacon if I accidentally ram my car into a next (spoiler: doesn’t work, still die). My first game, I didn’t keep up with weapons or defenses AT ALL and eventually I was getting hit by waves of Biters so often I was scrambling to repair and keep my turrets loaded and didn’t have much time for anything else. I don’t want to wind up in that situation again, but I’m being mindful of my carbon footprint so maybe I can hold off on weapons research a bit longer.

Bottlenecks Ahoy

I’m continuing to refine my factories and prepare for dwindling resources. My factories are definitely improving, but they still require a lot of watching and maintenence when unexpected bottlenecks arise.

My main issue is I don’t have a mechanism to control inserter speeds, which is something that’s really needed in certain areas where 1 resource quickly outpaces the others. For example, I have a research conveyor belt loop that continually sends research vials past all the research facilities.

This is stupid, but it works better than having a series of crates that are connected by inserters because of the way stacking works. If I set up a series of interconnected crates, I can still have scenarios where an inserter adds 200 green vials before it adds 1 red vial. There’s no way to evenly distribute resources that I know of.

Anyway, I’ve researched circuits but haven’t looked into it at all, and I suspect there may be a solution there. Transport belts can send a signal when an item enters the belt, or any items are on the belt, and you can override inserter stack size (but never less than 1) or signal when an item is picked up. There might be some way to slow down a chain of inserters this way.

One temporary fix that will help is expanding to 2 conveyor belts, which lets me hold 4 items in rows. That will help avoid vials getting piled up in weird places. I have more than 4 types of research so eventually this might not work.

Another possibility was using faster conveyor belts. I tried this and so far, it seems to be working.

The next big task is manufacturing purple vials. I have NO IDEA where to start with this. The purple seems so much more complicated than the previous ones. My iron deposit will run out soon, so I need to find a new place to mine and that takes priority.