I cant even begin to understand how on earth did I already play it 733 hours in total? The game exceeded all expectations god created. There are like 4-5 games on my list that I've played 200-800 hours. The number one is 7 days to die, barely. Second comes Factorio. Well least to say this, I've owned 7d2d for three or four years... But gained 733 hours in factorio over 1 to 2 months. Seriously....My record was like 140 hours past two weeks....
> complains about excessive resourse needs for research > Still using one yellow belt to feed his research crafters There's your problem. It's not a grind, it's a bottleneck; you need to increase production. The factory must grow.
It's funny how the Devs addressed all these problems over the FOUR YEARS since this video was published. With bots, blueprints, and revamped science recipes, re-balanced trains (now far superior to belts,) and much expanded military have fixed basically all these problems. Factorio's problems were lack of polish and lack of content breadth, not lack of depth.
I think there's actually a fairly strong case that belts are better than trains as they are basically free over long distances, whereas trains need to do speed calculations every tick and have to worry about pathing.
The flamethrower is basically the newest forest destroyer. I used oil (the flamethrower ammo) to clear trees to make space for pumpjacks. What could be more environmentally unfriendly?
I know. Since the moment I started I was hating trees. The real reason I pushed on the oil was for the fuel. Aslo, it is kind of unfortunate that it leaves some trees behind while the shotgun doesnt
+Sushi Cat Yeah I learned that the hard way when I decided that I would burn down all the trees within a 2 mile radius. Fortunately I used the flamethrower turrets to protect my base from the massive invasion.
I do that, it is so fun. I love burning everything. I've even burned my own factory just to see how well my bots could fix it. That is me late game, I become so bored I destroy my base.
Interesting how basically all the flaws mentioned here we fixed by two simple fitures - bots and blueprints. You are not supposed to unlock big generator, you are supposed to build you own!
I've heard of it and it didn't sound interesting but I decided to watch the trailer. Half a minute into the trailer I paused it, instaled the game and played 7 hourd straight
@Jimmy he isn't though. My medium sized factory needs trains as much as I need air. Trains are faster and you can get mire rpm from them than belts. Belts are good for the main factory to spread materials around.
Heldermaior I mean, you're right in most senses, which makes you right in general, Trains are good for efficiency and long distance transportation. Though they're absolutely not needed, within the time it could take you to make an efficient route, a belt could've already gotten materials over without using any other non-related materials.
Jimmy Belts are only practical until you run out of resources in your vicinity, unless you are content with rebuilding your factory every 10 hours when it comes late game.
he's not though becasue once you expand and run out of rescourses in the near area trains become both cheaper and faster than having a belt line of 10000 belts from your rescourse patch to your factory
SurfinZerg and you can reuse train tracks of other trains to go even further with way less extra cost, and trains can carry many more different resources without having to create complex and slow sorting machines
6:50 The reason why trains are better than belts is because of throughput. The belts can carry 13.33, 26.67 and 40 items per second. Since mining drills can mine 0.525 ores per second (0.65 for stone), it doesn't take much to compress one belt. Since belts require 1.5, 11.5 and 31.5 iron respectively, it would be most efficient to use the slowest belts across long distances. Since it takes 25 miners to almost compress one slow belt, we are going to need a lot of them for large outposts that can fit around 200 miners. With 200 miners, you will need 8 lanes of belts just to transport the resources to your base. In this case, it will cost you 12 iron PER TILE to transport your resources (bear in mind that this is the most cost-efficient way to transport resources by belt) Now, let's see how trains work instead. 2 rails require 5.5 iron (and 1 stone). Since rails are 2x2 tiles, we need 1.375 iron and 0.25 stone per tile instead. Of course, we will need to factor in double rails and rail signals, so let's say that rails are 4 iron per tile (just to average things out). Even with all of this, it is still cheaper to use rails than to use 3 of the slowest belts (4.5 iron per tile). And you might argue that trains are complicated to set up, but if you're just transporting resources from an outpost to your base, it doesn't require any complex signaling. In fact, you might even run a single railroad to your outpost, which would only cost you 1.375 iron per tile.
rail is also a lot easier and faster to lay than transport belts if you use the green arrow. I hate having to lay transport belts huge distances, but rail takes no time at all.
Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that. Even creating a 4-lane main bus with 4-wide lanes for your base is extremely time-consuming. This is tedium is why I usually tend to rush for construction bots in my games XD.
@@Timmytimmy123123 I'd argue that creating a main bus is kinda pointless. You have four-fold increase in logistics cost, and you aren't using it. I build big bases, just consuming the material.
Yeah it would be cool if there was some kind of light story content or just small details that point towards you being the bad guy in this scenario, cause you kinda are
@@someguywhocanfly I mean, I don't really feel it's necessary. You're an alien in this world, who proceeds to burn down forests, extract and burn water, mine its minerals and annihilate the native population that dares defend their territory. You being the bad guy in this scenario is kinda implied.
@@gebdemedici I mean it's not exactly subtle, but more details would be nice. Like the aliens ramping up to attacking, like just getting in your way at first, and then you start killing them in order to expand, rather than immediate hostility from them. Maybe attempts to communicate? And you just ignore it
It sounds like you didn't use blueprints to build your factory, if you did it would make expanding very easy, you don't actually need some of the things you suggested, like factories with claws - you can just make a blueprint for it. By using them in late game it's pretty easy to automate even rocket production eithout the need to really afk to send a rocket. Increasing the scale of prosuction you actually start needing the trains as you have to get resourses from a very far away and enemies don't actually attack rails and power poles on themselves. This all leads to different late game designs in terms of both mining and production, which you seemed to miss unfortunately. Also the circuit networks definitely deserved mentioning. While you can play without them they allow a veery presize controll over some production lines.
My most recent factory launched a rocket in less than 15 minutes. I was honestly surprised. I had finished checking everything to make sure it was running properly, noticed that the solid fuel was the bottleneck, and was starting to get serious about scoping out a new oil outpost, when it completely the rocket assembly.
+Yonkage, I basically expanded my factory by eliminating bottlenecks. Low on iron? Expand it two times! Now I'm low on plastic, expand it two times as well!
Jumped from you Witness review to the Darkest Dungeon one, to this one, and I must say I really like your style. You now have a new subscriber. I mostly agree with your opinion on Factorio and the final suggestion you made would be a great addition to the game.
Fabricio BaconB maybe you should include your wife in your game time. if she never held the same interests as you , why did you be with someone that isn't similar to you personality wise (no disrespect at all to you or your wife).
0.15 just dropped; it's amazing and has some of the things you've asked for here. They added the Railworld world type which has very large and rich but infrequent resource deposits which motivates train usage, and biters do not expand to new bases. Infinite science expands the endgame and makes rockets part of upscaling instead of an arbitrary end goal, balancing makes dealing with aliens less tedious, new content like uranium, etc. etc..
do you know when 15 will be "official"? I have the game and am still playing 14. I can play 15 if I opt into a beta version, but I feel like I'm missing something, no one says its in beta, everyone acts like it's the primary version now.
The reason everyone acts like it's the primary version is because it already feels polished af. I don't think you'll regret booting up 0.15 the next time you start a new world. :) But nah I don't know when it'll be official.
Shady Klawz the problem with this is that somehow the devs find bugs anyone i know ever noticed - in my about 500 hours factorio i have had exactly one major bug and 3 crashes - all of them caused by mods. But somehow the devs still find bugs
One thing to note is that the 0.15.0 Experimental release removed the stark Magic Blue Science Potion cliff. It's now a smoother difficulty progression, from Red to Green to Military to Blue, then higher tiers still.
I feel like this needs a new video once the game releases. There is quite a lot more to point out and comming. Blueprints, robots, beacons, flamethrower, nuclear power and mods are all already ingame, boosting the endgame experience and extending the gameplay length. this video does not talk about any of these features. maybe because the player might think they are only side features which can be tapped into as optional content, and that belt factories is the main way to build your factory. This conclusion is easy to get into because you learn for dozen of hours how to build and protect your factory with belts. You maybe dont expect that to change later in the game. Espacially when starting to try to incorporate beacons into your belt builds you are usually forced to redesign many of your designs. You technically can redo your entire base for increased productivity and efficiency. Same with roboports, logistic networks and logistic robots. They open up a complelty different playsstyle with does not require the use of belts all together. Furthermore, the ability to use blueprints + personal construction robots to help you to place large amount of entities at a faster pace was also not mentioned. the endgame you present in the video is far from the accual endgame, even thought the endgame IS still flawed (just for different reasons). the video sadly barely touched all of the accual endgame gamemechanics. And on the use of trains: Once ressource fields run out, you have to venture further out (espacially if you the set the ore richness to low). it is easy to underestimated the possible sizes of lategame factories. people build crazy factories with so much material throughput that they just have to use trains, otherwise they wouldnt be able to archieve such throughput. espacially if the final value you measure your factory with is "how many rockets can i launch each minute consistently". of course you dont need trains if your factory is still small or medium sized. Furthermore, trains are less update-heavy than belts. Eventually the game will run slower. Hardcore players want to create gigantic factories to the point where they start to min-max their computer performance based on how the game has been coded. edit: 8:39 The power armor provides personal roboports which allow you to let construction robots place entities for you. You can create blueprints and plop them down whereever you want and the robots will do the job. No need to place every single building or belt in the endgame anymore. 9:21 There is a building FOR the upgrade cards: The beacon. It does provide new ways to design your builds, which is mostly interesting if you like to play your games efficiently. If feel like this review was made with the mindset "This is early access, therefore it must be a simple game still being slowly developed" "If the factory works why bother changing it, i just want to finish the goal: launching a rocket" The game has great depth when you start looking at the mechanics of single entities, but i feel like this has been dismissed or might no be possible to be explored in just 100 hours. Thats why people are able to spend thousands of hours in the game and still enjoy it greatly!
@Puppet Yeah, it feels like he just played the game because he got a free copy and could not be bothered to experiment with what the game offers and instead just ran with the given goal of launching the rocket. Anyways, this guy seems to go downhill for a while now anyways. The more I watch of him, the more lazy and pretentious he accually seems to be :S
Blueprints would allow most of the automation you wanted, and personal roboports on your power armor make clearing the forests super easy. Even back then. With the new additions that are in the game, flamethrowers and setting an entire forest on fire makes it super easy (albeit it will make greenpeace show up). Also most of your complaints are addressed by mods, but I never feel that is a real solution. Plus you can get a rocket super fast, I did it sub8 hours and speed runners manage less than 2 hours. However I do agree the end game is weak, and the general thrust of your argument is correct.
Yeah, mods are never actual solution. It's basically "Yeah, game has issue which needed someone else to fix it". You really should not need a mod just to enjoy the base game.
But the base game is enjoyable for what it is trying to accomplish. And who would criticize the devs to implement the ability to mod their game by everybody? Afterall, most games who are modded still have a great playerbase and lifetime. Just look at Skyrim or Minecraft.
One of the flaws you mentioned (to paraphrase): "the endgame is about doing tedious things instead of solving problems, since the amount of research required is astronomical and you're better off leaving the game running as opposed to expanding your factory to make it research faster" - and you said that it isn't worth the trouble, but you never said why! Now, I understand that constant expansion has diminishing returns, but that doesn't mean there isn't always something to do. Things could always be faster. You always have something bottlenecking your factory, so that other things aren't working at their full capacity. It's a constant balancing act, and I think that's what you failed to appreciate during the late-game. You restate how the end-game feels like a grind to "stretch out the game in its unfinished state" due to massive resource requirements, yet you give the impression that your factory lacked scale since you claimed that trains didn't serve a purpose that transport belts couldn't satisfy. I will make a point that you should Google some discussions about trains vs belts, because trains do serve a purpose. Simply put, I think the flaws you observed about Factorio's endgame are a result of a lack of scale and micromanagement to improve your factory's efficiency, speed and overall complexity. I understand that you don't find launching the rocket a satisfying conclusion to the game - that's a fair assessment on the rocket itself - but I think the enjoyment on launching the rocket isn't the destination, but the journey you've taken to get there. As you know, it's a humongous task to launch a rocket, so finally being able to do it is a reward in and of itself. This is my opinion though, I respect your opinion that the rocket launching procedure feels anticlimactic.
Making your own optimized exact ratio blueprints and keeping them tilable and then making blueprints of 16x16 tiled smaller blueprints so that placing blueprints goes even faster ... that's almost another god-tier fun subgame.
"Factorio should be feature complete by the end of this year." *posted in February 2016* Thank the Emperor that Kovarex and others are still running strong.
I've put 500+ hours into this game (pre-steam obviously) and it's amazing. Obviously some people won't like it, and yes, the end game is flawed, but compared to most AAA titles I have purchased this is vastly superior.
This review was for a version of the game a while ago, since then there's a bigger scope to the end game with there being a use to launching multiple rockets. That being said the endgame, whilst being MORE interesting is not interesting enough. I usually start again with a different challenge or harder settings rather than continue past 150 hours of one map. I'm just up to 1000 hours on my Steam copy and I've definitely done more than that before too... I said this to a friend who played the game (about 100 hours before stopping) and I think it's worth saying to you. If the end game felt like a grind because you were taking a long time to finish it... why weren't you expanding your base to make it quicker? You know, literally the thing you spend the entire game doing. Building a factory, then building more factory. Then refining the design, adding modules etc...
I wasn't too sold on this guy's "armchain developer"-ing, until he proposed making the Player revealed at the end to actually be a Von Neumann machine. That's fucking brilliant!
what hooked me was the fact that when i started it i wasn't planning ahead so everything seemed inefficient, but after checking the tech tree i saw, "smart inserters", this could fix my problem, but then i ran into issues with items being everywhere so i needed an easy way to get stuff around, so again i looked into the tech tree and found "logistic bots", so i spent all of my time gunning for those bots and the logistic techs behind them, always thinking "just one more tech and the system will be perfect and i will have everything" but it wasn't perfect, i needed to more but i was running out of space with everything so close and intertwined, so i looked again at the tech tree and found a tech i missed on the way to logistic bots, "construction bots" which could deconstruct and construct from a blueprint. After rebuilding my factory i realized that my setups weren't optimal, the ratios weren't right, so that where i decided that i needed to restart and make a factory that is right and planned out from the beginning with the right ratios. I did better the second time, but there were always better setups, always more optimal ways to do it. 1000 hours later i think i need to restart from the beginning again, my train network is using loops and loops are shit.
I have to admit that while the review part of the game was nice, the after review part sounded at least a little bit whiny. Yes, Factorio could use a better endgame, but when you think about it, the devs are really just trying to add features right now as well as polish. Just think about how many years Minecraft took before it had any meaningful semblance of an endgame. At least Factorio has a goal to work towards right now (launching a rocket into space) whereas other games have not done that. Also, I think you're the only person I've heard complaining about the polish that the dev team is putting in. The fact that they care so much about their game, and by extension their playerbase, is really important. Polishing what they have is making the game look nicer and function more efficiently, and I think it's great that they're doing this as they go along rather than getting all the way up to a pre-release and doing it all at once. It's very neat and tidy and goes a long way to make Factorio a better game. Finally, one more little detail that did bug me is how you talked about trains. Trains are MUCH more efficient than belts for transporting resources over long distances. To have a belt even come close to how efficient trains are, they would need to move resources many times faster than they already do and have a higher throughput. This would mean having 12 or 16 belts (or more depending on how big your trains would be) bringing your resources in, and depending on how far away the mining or production site is, that could become prohibitively expensive very fast. Trains may seem expensive but the truth of the matter is that they are very good at what they do, and are much easier to defend than a main bus.
Me, watching this video in 2020 hearing "The developers estimate that the game should be feature-complete by the end of the year." Video was released 4 years ago. Only took three years more... :) I love the game throughout the whole time.
Necro reply but it was "feature-complete" as in the main body of content was finished at that point, they just improved and fleshed out a lot of concepts more
The idea of making a clone to research upon sounds amazing. It would also tie in with the making of the rocket, as its purpose is to deliver the clone to a new planet.
If you do not play on peaceful I would definitely recommend starting in an area with large forests and chopping down as little as possible. This will delay the alien attacks as trees are by fare the best at absorbing pollution.
Plus I found using efficiency modules really are worth considering, because it keeps the attacks way down, saving ressources for fending off the aliens.
Started playing it today and I could see myself putting 100 hours into it. The controls are super intuitive and it runs very well. The gameplay is just plain satisfying.
Yay! Re: Afraid of them not delivering. I think I they adressed this, they wanted the game to be basically polished and playable before they added features, sort of the reverse of the normal alpha-beta-release process. This was because they wanted Factorio to be ready for steam/have rapid progress leading up to 1.0 without getting bogged down with optimization, polish, etc, the sort of dev hell that DayZ got stuck in.
I took the complexity a whole other step. I worked out the optimal ratios for crafting science packs (necessary to research new things) all by myself by paying attention to the crafting times to create the intermediate resources while wasting as little time as possible. This led me to discover that one gear factory is sufficient to supply 5 Science Pack 1 factories, for example. And for the record: 13 refineries (supplied by 13 pump jacks and 1 crude oil storage tank for runover) supply 5 sulfur factories with petroleum (a storage tank for leftover petroleum) which supply 2 sulfuric acid factories which supply 25 battery factories (ya really), but basic oil processing also supplies light and heavy oil, which allows 14 solid fuel factories for heavy oil (and 2 storage tanks, one for heavy oil and another for a factory that processes left over heavy oil into lubricant which needs its own storage tank) and 23 solid fuel factories for light oil and one last storage tank for leftover light oil. That’s the optimal setup that crafts every drop of crude oil as fast as possible, according to the crafting timing. This is on top of a base setup that doesn’t use conveyor belts for much, because conveyor belts don’t get resources from point A to point B as fast as keeping everything compact/piped together and abusing inserters and chests, and feeding the chests with material manually. Why do this? So that when you unlock robotics later on, robots can do the manual transfer of goods for you, so you don’t over complicate your base with conveyor lines and don’t have to worry about early factories in a conveyor line hoovering up the conveyor belt resources and leaving the further factories bare. Conveyor belts are only useful when crafting time-intensive products like Science Pack 2, because the initial factories take so long to process the goods that later factories can be supplied without any supply disruption (by the way, 2 inserter factories and 2 transport belt factories can supply 48 Science Pack 2 factories. Ya, really.) I could have looked up those ratios myself (maybe I’m off somewhere, and inserters introduce a small error in processing as it takes a 1/2 second or split second to move materials, which is faster than a belt but slower than the “assumed” instant timings for the ratios I worked out). However, sitting down, working out the math, then building it and seeing the end result is unbelievably satisfying. It feeds into the addictive nature of the game; it’s not just that you automate X so you can craft new materials that allow you to automate Y, it’s that there’s an underlying mathematical logic to the whole thing that can be studied and exploited to the player’s benefit. That is what makes Factorio so unbelievably fun for so many people, and why it takes so long: you’re doing what engineers all over the world do every day: figure out the math to make X product using Y materials. Real-world engineers need a preliminary step, though: figure out Z requirements and B environmental conditions that Y materials must have and can survive in, in order to satisfy C problem the engineer is attempting to solve. It’s awesome that Factorio taps into a part of this process, and it makes me wish that the environment affected materials as well: iron rusts, copper tarnishes, petroleum evaporates, uranium radiates, etc., and that rain and winds could cause damage to structures over time, and that different environments have different structural considerations (crafting solid foundations specific to swamps/sandy areas, constantly repairing stone and asphalt paths in snowy areas because of frost heave in the ground, designing pipes with flexible supports that can withstand earthquakes (Wouldn’t that be terrifying if it existed in Factorio?), on and on and on. The focus the game has on its “Make X and Y to build Z” aspects is a great foundation, but to become legendary it must expand its environment and factor in real-world physics to drive aspects like decay and environmental damage. This would sell Factorio’s world as more of a “living ecosystem” than simply a manufactured game world to play around in, which would greatly improve the game experience. Make of my thoughts whatever you will.
You said tanks are better to take down enemy bases than Lazer Turrets? have you tried making a simple blueprint with turrets surrounding a light pole and having your robot building them for you? It is the most OP thing ever
in the screens he shows, he researched the techs, but I didn't see any roboports or anything. I think he ignored that system, which is really unfortunate.
Robots aren't actually all that late really... But if you don't know how useful they are, you wouldn't put much effort in to getting them as soon as possible. They'd just be another gadget of unknown use you might try out at some time. Players who do know about them will often times prioritize getting them and will be deploying them some time in the mid game already. The cost isn't really all that relevant as you can just make that up and then some with the increased expansion made possible by them.
How they are not late game? They need the last science pack available (besides space/gray science which is the end game). First time playing you perhaps need all techs available to use them
oh trust me my first factory looked like the spaghetti monster in the trailer... and no when the research starts to get too long, you expand, at least I do
Like you I discovered this game before it was put on steam, and I fell in love with it. I'm glad to see someone take the same level of love for a complicated game like factorio. Thank you
That last idea about making a clone and going to a new plant is so cool, it would retroactively turn you into one of those self-replicating drones and would bring up some cool questions about your origins
It seems like an okay an idea to use the/a train to carry rocket parts to a construction facility, then be taken to a silo. Though I only have the demo, it can use the trains to be a bit mandatory. And how about an armored train, decked out with MGs, and (light) cannons of sorts?
Well trains are harder for the biters to damage while a belt need constant protection by walls and if one bit breaks you ahve to walk all the way to find it and then go back
It's trivial to manipulate the settings to force a large train network. I prefer small but very dense ore patches. In order to get a good enough ore throughput for endgame, you need 6-8 ore patches being mined (and brought in by rail) all at once.
the best way to describe this game in my opinion is the Feed the beast minevaraft mod packs you start off with small scale automated systems that make you cobblestone, stone, lava, and sand, and build your way upto automatically growing and cutting down trees, sivving for diamonds, etc etc
Your view of the endgame is a bit off, I think. The materials needed to produce rockets and sattelites are expensive, sure....but at that point in the game it should be a drop in the bucket of your production. You're offloading your resource problem onto the game itself. Also: Trains can haul more items at faster paces over medium-long distances, so while they may not be necessary, they are extremely valuable if you plan on building big.
I now have almost 600 hours in Factorio and never thought of buildings or endings like you mentioned and tough the video is already pretty old its great
Some great suggestions. I do think having more biomes with unique resources would be the way to expand it. Right now there is very little reason to use trains and is more about just giant supply lines. I haven't played the game much in the past year, but I do hope they polish up the end game instead of having it be super grindy like it was.
I recently bought factorio and just finished the game. I don't agree with you on the end-game issues. I didn't feel the game was a grind. I had no problems launching the rocket within less than an hour from when I placed the building, without knowing what resources I would be needing to launch the rocket. I already had quite a lot of resources incoming. I have constantly increased my flow of resources, constantly removing bottle-nacks and constantly expanding. I had 4 blue belts of iron, and 2 with copper, and they were flowing freely and nearly fully saturated, not backing up. Maybe your review is outdated, since I've been playing 0.15 and it looks quite different. Robots & blueprints make expanding on-demand resource production & building huge rail networks quite manageable. Regarding trains... sure, you can place down a belt, but keep in mind that belts aren't cheap compared to rails. I started of with belts, but I went to trains when all resources nearby were depleted and I had to cover huge distances for resources. I launched my rocket at 50 hours. Not very close to the 15-hours achievement... :P
Hey, I don't know if you'll see this comment, but Factorio is about to release its 1.0 version soon (factorio.com/blog/post/fff-349) . They've updated a lot of graphics, refined the GUI, and made a LOT of improvements over the last few years. I can wholeheartedly recommend giving it a second look if you have the time!
the game as really changed a lot since this video. though it's still changing somewhat, i hope when it has it's first 1.0 release you're gonna get back and redo the review and talk about what changed for the btter, for the worst, and how the game now is
The flamethrower story: so onetime I was angry at trees because they took forever to clear, I fired my flamethrower into them and they caught on fire. All of my walls were destroyed because the fire killed them. Remember, trim the trees away from your wall before you burn them!
Trains are extremely useful if you can use them correctly. I find them most useful to carry my self over large distances, and they're typically better then belts for large factories as you can separate each system, that way in case one gets attacked(At this time I'm assuming it's very late game and pollution is super heavy) the whole factory doesn't get destroyed.
The tree clearing thing is really simple if you have personal roboport. I wonder if roboports and logistic network were not available when this was made. The logistic network fixes a lot of tedium in my opinion. Thank you for this review.
This game has been in my wishlist for a long time I am not sure if it is out of early access or not, but I will surely buy when it is published. Not sure how "defining" it is. It looks like a more elaborate and fleshed out "idle" game. Though this one isn!t actually idle. But idle games also have the idea of "making the game do things for you" by unlocking things and automations. But of course there is usually not much to do in an idle game and they get boring fast as there is no real goal. So maybe Factorio IS a genre defining game as it is more than just a crafting game and more than just an idle game...
Levene Gál i would say that factorio is more or less kidding at most aaa titles out there - cause it contains more longtime motivation and runs more smoothly and stable (IN ITS BETA PHASE) then more or less any RELEASED game since Tetris. Version 1.0 (release version) should come in summer 2018 afaik, but already with the actual version 0.16 its worth a lot more then the 20 bucks it costs
I bought the game a while ago for $20. You get addicted from the start. The game is worth WAY more than the current price of $30. I have played 430+ hours and not a single minute was spent being bored. Also, it has multiplayer support and mod built-in mod support to top it off!
One thinh you completly ignored are all of the great mods the game has, which adress some of the issues with the game you mentioned. RSO spreads resources out, so trains become mandatory, bob's mods adds new versions of everything in the game, and there are so many other great mods, it's hard to even know them all.
I fucking watched this exact video like, a year ago, and I was like "wow this guy sure knows his shit, too bad he has too little views", and completely forgot about it since I got hooked on Factorio, and couldn't remember the name of this vid to subscribe. Then I watched your No Man's Sky vid a week ago, subscribed, and "REFOUND" this vid. Genuinely happy that your vids and channel are getting the recognition they deserve, you almost always capture the gist of a videogame in your reviews -too bad about your wrong opinions on Dragon's Dogma though- Keep it up!
You can output from drills directly into furnaces. Coal drills can also power each other (and I see you discovered this later.. and later again also the first one). I believe that factorio would be better with something to explore - random ruins, other factions, rare resources (the current worldgen is exceedingly dull). Originally, the developers were firmly against this but they seem to have come around a bit so let's see.
Hit me hard with that Galifianakis gif... It was exactly what I was doing. Reminds me of the the fun I used to have with the Tekkit mods. Can't play yet tho, just got addicted to Diablo 3 so gonna have to wait 200 hours to get bored of that first.
I was on the fence for this one. I'm huge on discounts and for anyone else looking to buy it on sale, it won't be for a long time. This review was my tipping point. I've got a good 19 hours now :)
About the rails: yes they are a bit more complicated to set up, but you they are much more fun when you like complexity (and I think many of factorios players like complexity) and you really need them later. They take far less resources and far less space.
Dude,you make a 10 minutes video and it feels like an hour... IN A GOOD WAY. Your commentary is just so brilliant,your reviews are well done,explain the game well and aren't anything like most reviews which are generally just whining for no reason or praising a game for no reason.
If I could make a suggestion - You should do more of these 'mini' reviews and space out the more lengthy ones - I'd love to hear your thoughts on games like rimworld and slime rancher.. Seems like it'd be less of a workload and still keep content flowing.
meh factorios okay, i only played like 800 hours. not too addictive
lmao ikr
I cant even begin to understand how on earth did I already play it 733 hours in total? The game exceeded all expectations god created. There are like 4-5 games on my list that I've played 200-800 hours. The number one is 7 days to die, barely. Second comes Factorio. Well least to say this, I've owned 7d2d for three or four years... But gained 733 hours in factorio over 1 to 2 months. Seriously....My record was like 140 hours past two weeks....
lEatchalk q
Meh i only have a couple thousand hours. Not too addictive.
i have 1100 hours on this game XD
> complains about excessive resourse needs for research
> Still using one yellow belt to feed his research crafters
There's your problem. It's not a grind, it's a bottleneck; you need to increase production. The factory must grow.
GROW!
Fukin hell, the last bit madr it feel kinda.. Cultish... Im not disagreeing.. Because the factory must grow
@@endorneyodera4366 You have no idea, go to r/factorio Its all a cult. The factory must grow!
*The factory must grow*
The factory must grow.
It's funny how the Devs addressed all these problems over the FOUR YEARS since this video was published.
With bots, blueprints, and revamped science recipes, re-balanced trains (now far superior to belts,) and much expanded military have fixed basically all these problems.
Factorio's problems were lack of polish and lack of content breadth, not lack of depth.
"Lack of polish and content" while being in early access. I mean yeah, what do you expect. It's great now.
I think there's actually a fairly strong case that belts are better than trains as they are basically free over long distances, whereas trains need to do speed calculations every tick and have to worry about pathing.
The flamethrower is basically the newest forest destroyer. I used oil (the flamethrower ammo) to clear trees to make space for pumpjacks. What could be more environmentally unfriendly?
I know. Since the moment I started I was hating trees. The real reason I pushed on the oil was for the fuel. Aslo, it is kind of unfortunate that it leaves some trees behind while the shotgun doesnt
It's a feedback loop on biters tho. The fire raises pollution causing more biters causing more fire.
+Sushi Cat Yeah I learned that the hard way when I decided that I would burn down all the trees within a 2 mile radius. Fortunately I used the flamethrower turrets to protect my base from the massive invasion.
I do that, it is so fun. I love burning everything. I've even burned my own factory just to see how well my bots could fix it. That is me late game, I become so bored I destroy my base.
I love this, this was so me when getting my first flame thrower. Even better, I still do it now.
Two words: Automated drones. That stuff changes the game in a significant way
I agree
drones are the most significant thing in the game.
Factorio is finally getting its 1.0 release this Friday. You should do that review. :)
I think he's too busy doing the witcher 3 video still
Interesting how basically all the flaws mentioned here we fixed by two simple fitures - bots and blueprints. You are not supposed to unlock big generator, you are supposed to build you own!
I think mods should've been brought up. Bobs mods and dytech add unheard of levels of additons and complexity, that are completely free to the player.
I think DyTech is discontonued, Bobs mods is insane. Angels ores make it insaner.
I'm actually playing bobs mods with angel's ores, currently 30 hours in the map, I think I'm gonna restart on harder settings
Add SpaceX, CHMOD, and 10x Harder then ;P
or you could develop your brain and not have an issue with bob's mods
mine was a joke too
I've heard of it and it didn't sound interesting but I decided to watch the trailer. Half a minute into the trailer I paused it, instaled the game and played 7 hourd straight
You don't need trains? My sweet boy, you are so wrong...
@Jimmy he isn't though. My medium sized factory needs trains as much as I need air. Trains are faster and you can get mire rpm from them than belts. Belts are good for the main factory to spread materials around.
Heldermaior I mean, you're right in most senses, which makes you right in general, Trains are good for efficiency and long distance transportation. Though they're absolutely not needed, within the time it could take you to make an efficient route, a belt could've already gotten materials over without using any other non-related materials.
Jimmy Belts are only practical until you run out of resources in your vicinity, unless you are content with rebuilding your factory every 10 hours when it comes late game.
he's not though becasue once you expand and run out of rescourses in the near area trains become both cheaper and faster than having a belt line of 10000 belts from your rescourse patch to your factory
SurfinZerg and you can reuse train tracks of other trains to go even further with way less extra cost, and trains can carry many more different resources without having to create complex and slow sorting machines
6:50
The reason why trains are better than belts is because of throughput.
The belts can carry 13.33, 26.67 and 40 items per second. Since mining drills can mine 0.525 ores per second (0.65 for stone), it doesn't take much to compress one belt. Since belts require 1.5, 11.5 and 31.5 iron respectively, it would be most efficient to use the slowest belts across long distances.
Since it takes 25 miners to almost compress one slow belt, we are going to need a lot of them for large outposts that can fit around 200 miners. With 200 miners, you will need 8 lanes of belts just to transport the resources to your base. In this case, it will cost you 12 iron PER TILE to transport your resources (bear in mind that this is the most cost-efficient way to transport resources by belt)
Now, let's see how trains work instead.
2 rails require 5.5 iron (and 1 stone). Since rails are 2x2 tiles, we need 1.375 iron and 0.25 stone per tile instead. Of course, we will need to factor in double rails and rail signals, so let's say that rails are 4 iron per tile (just to average things out). Even with all of this, it is still cheaper to use rails than to use 3 of the slowest belts (4.5 iron per tile). And you might argue that trains are complicated to set up, but if you're just transporting resources from an outpost to your base, it doesn't require any complex signaling. In fact, you might even run a single railroad to your outpost, which would only cost you 1.375 iron per tile.
rail is also a lot easier and faster to lay than transport belts if you use the green arrow. I hate having to lay transport belts huge distances, but rail takes no time at all.
Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that. Even creating a 4-lane main bus with 4-wide lanes for your base is extremely time-consuming. This is tedium is why I usually tend to rush for construction bots in my games XD.
@@Timmytimmy123123 about main bus - its much easier and faster to create it with personal roboports and blueprint. like 20 times faster.
@@Timmytimmy123123
I'd argue that creating a main bus is kinda pointless.
You have four-fold increase in logistics cost, and you aren't using it.
I build big bases, just consuming the material.
Holy shit this game took a dark turn fast. That alien part caught me completely off guard.
? This game is a drug. Dont play it!: Im for real.
Yeah it would be cool if there was some kind of light story content or just small details that point towards you being the bad guy in this scenario, cause you kinda are
@@someguywhocanfly I mean, I don't really feel it's necessary. You're an alien in this world, who proceeds to burn down forests, extract and burn water, mine its minerals and annihilate the native population that dares defend their territory. You being the bad guy in this scenario is kinda implied.
@@gebdemedici I mean it's not exactly subtle, but more details would be nice. Like the aliens ramping up to attacking, like just getting in your way at first, and then you start killing them in order to expand, rather than immediate hostility from them. Maybe attempts to communicate? And you just ignore it
It sounds like you didn't use blueprints to build your factory, if you did it would make expanding very easy, you don't actually need some of the things you suggested, like factories with claws - you can just make a blueprint for it. By using them in late game it's pretty easy to automate even rocket production eithout the need to really afk to send a rocket. Increasing the scale of prosuction you actually start needing the trains as you have to get resourses from a very far away and enemies don't actually attack rails and power poles on themselves. This all leads to different late game designs in terms of both mining and production, which you seemed to miss unfortunately. Also the circuit networks definitely deserved mentioning. While you can play without them they allow a veery presize controll over some production lines.
I think those bluebrints came after this review. He reviewed game in February, and game has changed quite a lot since.
Blueprints have been in the game for a over two years, but from his views on rails, I see how he may not use them or drones.
My most recent factory launched a rocket in less than 15 minutes. I was honestly surprised. I had finished checking everything to make sure it was running properly, noticed that the solid fuel was the bottleneck, and was starting to get serious about scoping out a new oil outpost, when it completely the rocket assembly.
Good to know trains are useful. I love trains. Going to start this game tomorrow
+Yonkage, I basically expanded my factory by eliminating bottlenecks. Low on iron? Expand it two times! Now I'm low on plastic, expand it two times as well!
Jumped from you Witness review to the Darkest Dungeon one, to this one, and I must say I really like your style. You now have a new subscriber.
I mostly agree with your opinion on Factorio and the final suggestion you made would be a great addition to the game.
I've been avoiding Factorio. The min/max syndrome is strong in me. I almost fucked up my marriage playing mount and blade....
Fabricio BaconB maybe you should include your wife in your game time. if she never held the same interests as you , why did you be with someone that isn't similar to you personality wise (no disrespect at all to you or your wife).
John Rodrigues i did. We played divinity original sin together
nice :D
"Mount and Blade"
I see you aren't aware of Mount and Blade's endgame
"Other qualities"
So boobs.
this game is fucking heroin.
"I highly recommend it!"
Too bad I can't experience it IV.
it's true. too bad i'm already addicted to heroin alcohol and porn though. It's really gone downhill.
When I saw the trailer clip my jaw fucking dropped, Christ... I might actually give this a try, maybe
0.15 just dropped; it's amazing and has some of the things you've asked for here. They added the Railworld world type which has very large and rich but infrequent resource deposits which motivates train usage, and biters do not expand to new bases. Infinite science expands the endgame and makes rockets part of upscaling instead of an arbitrary end goal, balancing makes dealing with aliens less tedious, new content like uranium, etc. etc..
do you know when 15 will be "official"? I have the game and am still playing 14. I can play 15 if I opt into a beta version, but I feel like I'm missing something, no one says its in beta, everyone acts like it's the primary version now.
The reason everyone acts like it's the primary version is because it already feels polished af. I don't think you'll regret booting up 0.15 the next time you start a new world. :)
But nah I don't know when it'll be official.
Supposedly the official release is going to be once 0.16 is released and the bugs are squashed and whatnot. Then 0.16 will become official 1.0.
Shady Klawz the problem with this is that somehow the devs find bugs anyone i know ever noticed - in my about 500 hours factorio i have had exactly one major bug and 3 crashes - all of them caused by mods. But somehow the devs still find bugs
One thing to note is that the 0.15.0 Experimental release removed the stark Magic Blue Science Potion cliff.
It's now a smoother difficulty progression, from Red to Green to Military to Blue, then higher tiers still.
I feel like this needs a new video once the game releases. There is quite a lot more to point out and comming.
Blueprints, robots, beacons, flamethrower, nuclear power and mods are all already ingame, boosting the endgame experience and extending the gameplay length.
this video does not talk about any of these features. maybe because the player might think they are only side features which can be tapped into as optional content, and that belt factories is the main way to build your factory. This conclusion is easy to get into because you learn for dozen of hours how to build and protect your factory with belts. You maybe dont expect that to change later in the game.
Espacially when starting to try to incorporate beacons into your belt builds you are usually forced to redesign many of your designs. You technically can redo your entire base for increased productivity and efficiency.
Same with roboports, logistic networks and logistic robots. They open up a complelty different playsstyle with does not require the use of belts all together.
Furthermore, the ability to use blueprints + personal construction robots to help you to place large amount of entities at a faster pace was also not mentioned.
the endgame you present in the video is far from the accual endgame, even thought the endgame IS still flawed (just for different reasons). the video sadly barely touched all of the accual endgame gamemechanics.
And on the use of trains: Once ressource fields run out, you have to venture further out (espacially if you the set the ore richness to low). it is easy to underestimated the possible sizes of lategame factories. people build crazy factories with so much material throughput that they just have to use trains, otherwise they wouldnt be able to archieve such throughput. espacially if the final value you measure your factory with is "how many rockets can i launch each minute consistently". of course you dont need trains if your factory is still small or medium sized.
Furthermore, trains are less update-heavy than belts. Eventually the game will run slower. Hardcore players want to create gigantic factories to the point where they start to min-max their computer performance based on how the game has been coded.
edit:
8:39 The power armor provides personal roboports which allow you to let construction robots place entities for you. You can create blueprints and plop them down whereever you want and the robots will do the job. No need to place every single building or belt in the endgame anymore.
9:21 There is a building FOR the upgrade cards: The beacon. It does provide new ways to design your builds, which is mostly interesting if you like to play your games efficiently.
If feel like this review was made with the mindset
"This is early access, therefore it must be a simple game still being slowly developed"
"If the factory works why bother changing it, i just want to finish the goal: launching a rocket"
The game has great depth when you start looking at the mechanics of single entities, but i feel like this has been dismissed or might no be possible to be explored in just 100 hours. Thats why people are able to spend thousands of hours in the game and still enjoy it greatly!
@Puppet Yeah, it feels like he just played the game because he got a free copy and could not be bothered to experiment with what the game offers and instead just ran with the given goal of launching the rocket.
Anyways, this guy seems to go downhill for a while now anyways. The more I watch of him, the more lazy and pretentious he accually seems to be :S
I love that everything he didn't like, was fix/added/altered/made better by the time space-age cameout
Blueprints would allow most of the automation you wanted, and personal roboports on your power armor make clearing the forests super easy. Even back then. With the new additions that are in the game, flamethrowers and setting an entire forest on fire makes it super easy (albeit it will make greenpeace show up).
Also most of your complaints are addressed by mods, but I never feel that is a real solution. Plus you can get a rocket super fast, I did it sub8 hours and speed runners manage less than 2 hours.
However I do agree the end game is weak, and the general thrust of your argument is correct.
i agree 100%
Yeah, mods are never actual solution. It's basically "Yeah, game has issue which needed someone else to fix it". You really should not need a mod just to enjoy the base game.
But the base game is enjoyable for what it is trying to accomplish. And who would criticize the devs to implement the ability to mod their game by everybody? Afterall, most games who are modded still have a great playerbase and lifetime. Just look at Skyrim or Minecraft.
Moreover a lot of those are under consideration by the devs, and it is an early access game.
One of the flaws you mentioned (to paraphrase): "the endgame is about doing tedious things instead of solving problems, since the amount of research required is astronomical and you're better off leaving the game running as opposed to expanding your factory to make it research faster" - and you said that it isn't worth the trouble, but you never said why!
Now, I understand that constant expansion has diminishing returns, but that doesn't mean there isn't always something to do. Things could always be faster. You always have something bottlenecking your factory, so that other things aren't working at their full capacity. It's a constant balancing act, and I think that's what you failed to appreciate during the late-game. You restate how the end-game feels like a grind to "stretch out the game in its unfinished state" due to massive resource requirements, yet you give the impression that your factory lacked scale since you claimed that trains didn't serve a purpose that transport belts couldn't satisfy. I will make a point that you should Google some discussions about trains vs belts, because trains do serve a purpose.
Simply put, I think the flaws you observed about Factorio's endgame are a result of a lack of scale and micromanagement to improve your factory's efficiency, speed and overall complexity. I understand that you don't find launching the rocket a satisfying conclusion to the game - that's a fair assessment on the rocket itself - but I think the enjoyment on launching the rocket isn't the destination, but the journey you've taken to get there. As you know, it's a humongous task to launch a rocket, so finally being able to do it is a reward in and of itself. This is my opinion though, I respect your opinion that the rocket launching procedure feels anticlimactic.
@randomguy8196 Power armour, energy shields and high level ammo. You'll be burning through bugs so fast they become a minor nuisance at most
Should you play factorio?
YES YES You SHOULD
stop selling cracks, people deserved a life.
No mention of robots and blueprints, things which I liked the most about the game
Making your own optimized exact ratio blueprints and keeping them tilable and then making blueprints of 16x16 tiled smaller blueprints so that placing blueprints goes even faster ... that's almost another god-tier fun subgame.
I don't believe those were in the game when this review was made.
"Factorio should be feature complete by the end of this year."
*posted in February 2016*
Thank the Emperor that Kovarex and others are still running strong.
I've put 500+ hours into this game (pre-steam obviously) and it's amazing. Obviously some people won't like it, and yes, the end game is flawed, but compared to most AAA titles I have purchased this is vastly superior.
This review was for a version of the game a while ago, since then there's a bigger scope to the end game with there being a use to launching multiple rockets. That being said the endgame, whilst being MORE interesting is not interesting enough. I usually start again with a different challenge or harder settings rather than continue past 150 hours of one map. I'm just up to 1000 hours on my Steam copy and I've definitely done more than that before too...
I said this to a friend who played the game (about 100 hours before stopping) and I think it's worth saying to you. If the end game felt like a grind because you were taking a long time to finish it... why weren't you expanding your base to make it quicker? You know, literally the thing you spend the entire game doing. Building a factory, then building more factory. Then refining the design, adding modules etc...
I wasn't too sold on this guy's "armchain developer"-ing, until he proposed making the Player revealed at the end to actually be a Von Neumann machine. That's fucking brilliant!
The part about setting up the steam engine is what made me buy this game all those years ago
Also "I can't see space platforms being added" lol
Space age video when
what hooked me was the fact that when i started it i wasn't planning ahead so everything seemed inefficient, but after checking the tech tree i saw, "smart inserters", this could fix my problem, but then i ran into issues with items being everywhere so i needed an easy way to get stuff around, so again i looked into the tech tree and found "logistic bots", so i spent all of my time gunning for those bots and the logistic techs behind them, always thinking "just one more tech and the system will be perfect and i will have everything" but it wasn't perfect, i needed to more but i was running out of space with everything so close and intertwined, so i looked again at the tech tree and found a tech i missed on the way to logistic bots, "construction bots" which could deconstruct and construct from a blueprint. After rebuilding my factory i realized that my setups weren't optimal, the ratios weren't right, so that where i decided that i needed to restart and make a factory that is right and planned out from the beginning with the right ratios. I did better the second time, but there were always better setups, always more optimal ways to do it. 1000 hours later i think i need to restart from the beginning again, my train network is using loops and loops are shit.
I have to admit that while the review part of the game was nice, the after review part sounded at least a little bit whiny. Yes, Factorio could use a better endgame, but when you think about it, the devs are really just trying to add features right now as well as polish. Just think about how many years Minecraft took before it had any meaningful semblance of an endgame. At least Factorio has a goal to work towards right now (launching a rocket into space) whereas other games have not done that.
Also, I think you're the only person I've heard complaining about the polish that the dev team is putting in. The fact that they care so much about their game, and by extension their playerbase, is really important. Polishing what they have is making the game look nicer and function more efficiently, and I think it's great that they're doing this as they go along rather than getting all the way up to a pre-release and doing it all at once. It's very neat and tidy and goes a long way to make Factorio a better game.
Finally, one more little detail that did bug me is how you talked about trains. Trains are MUCH more efficient than belts for transporting resources over long distances. To have a belt even come close to how efficient trains are, they would need to move resources many times faster than they already do and have a higher throughput. This would mean having 12 or 16 belts (or more depending on how big your trains would be) bringing your resources in, and depending on how far away the mining or production site is, that could become prohibitively expensive very fast. Trains may seem expensive but the truth of the matter is that they are very good at what they do, and are much easier to defend than a main bus.
In ten to twenty years Factorio is going to be like how the original dungeon keeper is now
The old Rocket Silos look so cool.
Also if your wondering, They've adressed so many of this issues posed. This game Is AMAZING now
Followed your advice.
Now I am addicted. thanks!
if you play long enough and in lower quantity settings for ores you will definitely need trains
Me, watching this video in 2020 hearing "The developers estimate that the game should be feature-complete by the end of the year."
Video was released 4 years ago.
Only took three years more... :)
I love the game throughout the whole time.
Necro reply but it was "feature-complete" as in the main body of content was finished at that point, they just improved and fleshed out a lot of concepts more
The idea of making a clone to research upon sounds amazing. It would also tie in with the making of the rocket, as its purpose is to deliver the clone to a new planet.
When do we get an updated video on Factorio?
Aliens that attack you for industrialising their planet?.. Is there a mod to turn them into mindworms?
If you do not play on peaceful I would definitely recommend starting in an area with large forests and chopping down as little as possible. This will delay the alien attacks as trees are by fare the best at absorbing pollution.
Plus I found using efficiency modules really are worth considering, because it keeps the attacks way down, saving ressources for fending off the aliens.
Started playing it today and I could see myself putting 100 hours into it. The controls are super intuitive and it runs very well. The gameplay is just plain satisfying.
Yay!
Re: Afraid of them not delivering. I think I they adressed this, they wanted the game to be basically polished and playable before they added features, sort of the reverse of the normal alpha-beta-release process. This was because they wanted Factorio to be ready for steam/have rapid progress leading up to 1.0 without getting bogged down with optimization, polish, etc, the sort of dev hell that DayZ got stuck in.
Finally released! Would love to see a follow up video for this game.
I took the complexity a whole other step.
I worked out the optimal ratios for crafting science packs (necessary to research new things) all by myself by paying attention to the crafting times to create the intermediate resources while wasting as little time as possible. This led me to discover that one gear factory is sufficient to supply 5 Science Pack 1 factories, for example.
And for the record:
13 refineries (supplied by 13 pump jacks and 1 crude oil storage tank for runover) supply 5 sulfur factories with petroleum (a storage tank for leftover petroleum) which supply 2 sulfuric acid factories which supply 25 battery factories (ya really), but basic oil processing also supplies light and heavy oil, which allows 14 solid fuel factories for heavy oil (and 2 storage tanks, one for heavy oil and another for a factory that processes left over heavy oil into lubricant which needs its own storage tank) and 23 solid fuel factories for light oil and one last storage tank for leftover light oil.
That’s the optimal setup that crafts every drop of crude oil as fast as possible, according to the crafting timing.
This is on top of a base setup that doesn’t use conveyor belts for much, because conveyor belts don’t get resources from point A to point B as fast as keeping everything compact/piped together and abusing inserters and chests, and feeding the chests with material manually. Why do this? So that when you unlock robotics later on, robots can do the manual transfer of goods for you, so you don’t over complicate your base with conveyor lines and don’t have to worry about early factories in a conveyor line hoovering up the conveyor belt resources and leaving the further factories bare. Conveyor belts are only useful when crafting time-intensive products like Science Pack 2, because the initial factories take so long to process the goods that later factories can be supplied without any supply disruption (by the way, 2 inserter factories and 2 transport belt factories can supply 48 Science Pack 2 factories. Ya, really.)
I could have looked up those ratios myself (maybe I’m off somewhere, and inserters introduce a small error in processing as it takes a 1/2 second or split second to move materials, which is faster than a belt but slower than the “assumed” instant timings for the ratios I worked out). However, sitting down, working out the math, then building it and seeing the end result is unbelievably satisfying. It feeds into the addictive nature of the game; it’s not just that you automate X so you can craft new materials that allow you to automate Y, it’s that there’s an underlying mathematical logic to the whole thing that can be studied and exploited to the player’s benefit. That is what makes Factorio so unbelievably fun for so many people, and why it takes so long: you’re doing what engineers all over the world do every day: figure out the math to make X product using Y materials. Real-world engineers need a preliminary step, though: figure out Z requirements and B environmental conditions that Y materials must have and can survive in, in order to satisfy C problem the engineer is attempting to solve.
It’s awesome that Factorio taps into a part of this process, and it makes me wish that the environment affected materials as well: iron rusts, copper tarnishes, petroleum evaporates, uranium radiates, etc., and that rain and winds could cause damage to structures over time, and that different environments have different structural considerations (crafting solid foundations specific to swamps/sandy areas, constantly repairing stone and asphalt paths in snowy areas because of frost heave in the ground, designing pipes with flexible supports that can withstand earthquakes (Wouldn’t that be terrifying if it existed in Factorio?), on and on and on.
The focus the game has on its “Make X and Y to build Z” aspects is a great foundation, but to become legendary it must expand its environment and factor in real-world physics to drive aspects like decay and environmental damage. This would sell Factorio’s world as more of a “living ecosystem” than simply a manufactured game world to play around in, which would greatly improve the game experience.
Make of my thoughts whatever you will.
Well about that Space platforms.... here we are, Factorio: Space Age soon to be released, finally!!
Factorio is an interactive finite state machine simulator.
You said tanks are better to take down enemy bases than Lazer Turrets? have you tried making a simple blueprint with turrets surrounding a light pole and having your robot building them for you? It is the most OP thing ever
Better as in less absurd.
I've seen gameplay of this before but you were able to sum the game up in a way that makes me desperately want to try it. good job!
Was this review made before they added logistics? I didn't see you using any robots.
Nope logistics was in it
Logistic robots were added years before the steam release, no, he either forgot or purposefully didn't mention them.
in the screens he shows, he researched the techs, but I didn't see any roboports or anything. I think he ignored that system, which is really unfortunate.
Robots aren't actually all that late really... But if you don't know how useful they are, you wouldn't put much effort in to getting them as soon as possible. They'd just be another gadget of unknown use you might try out at some time.
Players who do know about them will often times prioritize getting them and will be deploying them some time in the mid game already.
The cost isn't really all that relevant as you can just make that up and then some with the increased expansion made possible by them.
How they are not late game? They need the last science pack available (besides space/gray science which is the end game). First time playing you perhaps need all techs available to use them
Hi. So Factorio just had 1.0 realase and came out of beta. Will you do new video some time in the future?
This is a great analysis of the game at the time. It would be great to see an updated analysis including the influence of mods.
oh trust me my first factory looked like the spaghetti monster in the trailer... and no when the research starts to get too long, you expand, at least I do
Like you I discovered this game before it was put on steam, and I fell in love with it. I'm glad to see someone take the same level of love for a complicated game like factorio. Thank you
That last idea about making a clone and going to a new plant is so cool, it would retroactively turn you into one of those self-replicating drones and would bring up some cool questions about your origins
And it's version 1.0 now.
It seems like an okay an idea to use the/a train to carry rocket parts to a construction facility, then be taken to a silo. Though I only have the demo, it can use the trains to be a bit mandatory.
And how about an armored train, decked out with MGs, and (light) cannons of sorts?
Well trains are harder for the biters to damage while a belt need constant protection by walls and if one bit breaks you ahve to walk all the way to find it and then go back
Dennis Premoli Seems reasonable, as I can only think Biters can damage trains by physically forced upon it, or more simpler, be ran right over.
It's trivial to manipulate the settings to force a large train network. I prefer small but very dense ore patches. In order to get a good enough ore throughput for endgame, you need 6-8 ore patches being mined (and brought in by rail) all at once.
If you place roboports near train stations, and put repair packs into the logistic system the robots will fix damaged walls and items automatically.
the best way to describe this game in my opinion is the Feed the beast minevaraft mod packs
you start off with small scale automated systems that make you cobblestone, stone, lava, and sand, and build your way upto automatically growing and cutting down trees, sivving for diamonds, etc etc
I think a space age review would be cool after all these years
Best review ive seen! Great job!
Your view of the endgame is a bit off, I think. The materials needed to produce rockets and sattelites are expensive, sure....but at that point in the game it should be a drop in the bucket of your production. You're offloading your resource problem onto the game itself. Also: Trains can haul more items at faster paces over medium-long distances, so while they may not be necessary, they are extremely valuable if you plan on building big.
Well his view stemmed from Early 2016, it's improved since then :p.
Although yes, lategame requires going big.
You should come back to it. I've watched a few of your videos, and I'd love to do some co-op with you on this some day.
I now have almost 600 hours in Factorio and never thought of buildings or endings like you mentioned and tough the video is already pretty old its great
Hehe, feature complete by the end of the year 2016... good one past Joseph Anderson, good one.
Factorio announced there first expansion today space age the game has evolved so much since this video
Some great suggestions. I do think having more biomes with unique resources would be the way to expand it. Right now there is very little reason to use trains and is more about just giant supply lines.
I haven't played the game much in the past year, but I do hope they polish up the end game instead of having it be super grindy like it was.
This video made me consider playing Factorio, which I might now! Especially after the Total Annihilation comparison (one of my favorite games)
I think the long range artillery and logistic/construction blocks were a great addition
I recently bought factorio and just finished the game. I don't agree with you on the end-game issues. I didn't feel the game was a grind. I had no problems launching the rocket within less than an hour from when I placed the building, without knowing what resources I would be needing to launch the rocket. I already had quite a lot of resources incoming. I have constantly increased my flow of resources, constantly removing bottle-nacks and constantly expanding. I had 4 blue belts of iron, and 2 with copper, and they were flowing freely and nearly fully saturated, not backing up.
Maybe your review is outdated, since I've been playing 0.15 and it looks quite different. Robots & blueprints make expanding on-demand resource production & building huge rail networks quite manageable.
Regarding trains... sure, you can place down a belt, but keep in mind that belts aren't cheap compared to rails. I started of with belts, but I went to trains when all resources nearby were depleted and I had to cover huge distances for resources.
I launched my rocket at 50 hours. Not very close to the 15-hours achievement... :P
You may think its excessiv towards the endgame, but the compulsion to the need to grow the factory and perfect it just feels so... goooood.
Hey, I don't know if you'll see this comment, but Factorio is about to release its 1.0 version soon (factorio.com/blog/post/fff-349) . They've updated a lot of graphics, refined the GUI, and made a LOT of improvements over the last few years. I can wholeheartedly recommend giving it a second look if you have the time!
the game as really changed a lot since this video. though it's still changing somewhat, i hope when it has it's first 1.0 release you're gonna get back and redo the review and talk about what changed for the btter, for the worst, and how the game now is
The flamethrower story: so onetime I was angry at trees because they took forever to clear, I fired my flamethrower into them and they caught on fire. All of my walls were destroyed because the fire killed them. Remember, trim the trees away from your wall before you burn them!
The factory must grow to meet the needs of the growing factory.
Trains are extremely useful if you can use them correctly. I find them most useful to carry my self over large distances, and they're typically better then belts for large factories as you can separate each system, that way in case one gets attacked(At this time I'm assuming it's very late game and pollution is super heavy) the whole factory doesn't get destroyed.
The tree clearing thing is really simple if you have personal roboport. I wonder if roboports and logistic network were not available when this was made. The logistic network fixes a lot of tedium in my opinion. Thank you for this review.
This game has been in my wishlist for a long time I am not sure if it is out of early access or not, but I will surely buy when it is published.
Not sure how "defining" it is. It looks like a more elaborate and fleshed out "idle" game. Though this one isn!t actually idle. But idle games also have the idea of "making the game do things for you" by unlocking things and automations. But of course there is usually not much to do in an idle game and they get boring fast as there is no real goal.
So maybe Factorio IS a genre defining game as it is more than just a crafting game and more than just an idle game...
While it is in early access I would definitely say that the game has plenty enough content as is. They are basically just polishing the game now.
Levene Gál this game isn't a idle game (as some who has 30+hours) there is almost problems that come up and a 24/7 need for expansion
Levene Gál i would say that factorio is more or less kidding at most aaa titles out there - cause it contains more longtime motivation and runs more smoothly and stable (IN ITS BETA PHASE) then more or less any RELEASED game since Tetris.
Version 1.0 (release version) should come in summer 2018 afaik, but already with the actual version 0.16 its worth a lot more then the 20 bucks it costs
i feel bad if you havent bought this game yet, please do.
I bought the game a while ago for $20. You get addicted from the start. The game is worth WAY more than the current price of $30. I have played 430+ hours and not a single minute was spent being bored. Also, it has multiplayer support and mod built-in mod support to top it off!
Good review. Glad to see you've fixed the mic issues. : )
I blinked and the vid was over
One thinh you completly ignored are all of the great mods the game has, which adress some of the issues with the game you mentioned. RSO spreads resources out, so trains become mandatory, bob's mods adds new versions of everything in the game, and there are so many other great mods, it's hard to even know them all.
My friend and me decided to get the game. We built a huge factory like the one in the trailer.
There's a reason why it's called Cracktorio by us who play it. I have like 300 hours in this, it's fucking addictive.
thats rookie numbers
I fucking watched this exact video like, a year ago, and I was like "wow this guy sure knows his shit, too bad he has too little views", and completely forgot about it since I got hooked on Factorio, and couldn't remember the name of this vid to subscribe.
Then I watched your No Man's Sky vid a week ago, subscribed, and "REFOUND" this vid. Genuinely happy that your vids and channel are getting the recognition they deserve, you almost always capture the gist of a videogame in your reviews -too bad about your wrong opinions on Dragon's Dogma though-
Keep it up!
You can output from drills directly into furnaces.
Coal drills can also power each other (and I see you discovered this later.. and later again also the first one).
I believe that factorio would be better with something to explore - random ruins, other factions, rare resources (the current worldgen is exceedingly dull).
Originally, the developers were firmly against this but they seem to have come around a bit so let's see.
I absolutely hate that you don't have more views and subs, keep up the good work man.
THE FACTORY MUST GROW
Hit me hard with that Galifianakis gif... It was exactly what I was doing. Reminds me of the the fun I used to have with the Tekkit mods. Can't play yet tho, just got addicted to Diablo 3 so gonna have to wait 200 hours to get bored of that first.
I was on the fence for this one. I'm huge on discounts and for anyone else looking to buy it on sale, it won't be for a long time. This review was my tipping point. I've got a good 19 hours now :)
A recent update has changed the UI to some extent. It’s still definitely the same base game, but there are a few new textures.
About the rails: yes they are a bit more complicated to set up, but you they are much more fun when you like complexity (and I think many of factorios players like complexity) and you really need them later. They take far less resources and far less space.
This review is pretty accurate especially the end-game. However how can you not mentioning mod and combinaters?
Dude,you make a 10 minutes video and it feels like an hour...
IN A GOOD WAY.
Your commentary is just so brilliant,your reviews are well done,explain the game well and aren't anything like most reviews which are generally just whining for no reason or praising a game for no reason.
The clone creation new game plus you suggest is probably the best idea i've heard for this game
"I can't see space platforms being added, or being done well enough to be a worth-while inclusion."
the end game of factorio in my eyes is between your first rocket and a megabase
what do you think about robots? didn't see any in your video.
Randall Young
He probably wasn't aware of Bots and how well they facilitate mid-game expansion.
If I could make a suggestion - You should do more of these 'mini' reviews and space out the more lengthy ones - I'd love to hear your thoughts on games like rimworld and slime rancher..
Seems like it'd be less of a workload and still keep content flowing.
jeez, I forgot how the game looked back then. Sure is nice to say that the graphics and sprites are MUCH nicer now.
Very good review and criticism thank you. I wonder if any of the suggestions made it into the game.
this is a great review. glad I found this channel
It's released!