Release Date: 26/02/2016 (on Steam / in development since 2012)
Played On: Win
Available On: Lin / Mac / Win
Time Played: 121h 42m
Progress: Built a huge factory + launched 35 rockets.
Developer: Wube Software
Publisher: Wube Software
It's been quite a while since I posted about any games, but it's probably because I've spent most of that time playing Factorio. Remember when we were younger and spend hours and hours playing Sim City, because the time seemed to vanish without realising? This is a time vampire if ever there was one, and it's not even finished yet.
I'm not joking when I say that I haven't been playing much else and that Factorio sucked up many hours before I even realised. I slept on it for a long time, as it's been in early access for what seems like forever. Recently though, I heard a few rumblings that it was in a really good state and worth the investment, so I figured it was time to give it a go.
First of all, this is one of those early access titles that is worth playing right now, instead of needing to wait until full release. While the developers are still adding features and killing bugs in the game, there is enough vanilla content to keep you busy for hours upon hours. Not to mention the hundreds of community made mods integrated into the game that extend its complexity and lifespan exponentially.
So it's easy to recommend a game that is currently in such a stable state and is packed with content to explore. I normally stay far away from early access games, as they usually leave me wanting, but Factorio got its hooks in and even if I never play it again I feel like I've definitely had my money's worth.
I can't help comparing it to games like Sim City, as I spent so many hours tweaking my cities without ever realising how fast the hours passed. It rarely happens for me, as I'm usually very aware of how much time I'm spending on a game, or how slowly the minutes are ticking by when I'm not completely invested. So it takes something special to take me unaware and warp any perception I thought I had to time passing.
All of this is to say that Factorio is pretty damn immersive and features enough complexity and depth to extend the rabbit hole beyond that of simple curiosity. However, it never gets so complex as to alienate and bore the player, with a clear path of progression available at all times.
If you're not familiar with Factorio at all, the premise is that you have landed on an alien planet and you must use its primary resources to build a factory and eventually launch a rocket into space.
Although, the process of getting there is far from simple, as there is a very large production flow chart that you need to discover and follow. It's one thing to mine some raw materials and smelt them into alloys, but it's another to then combine them with other materials and process that combination into parts to be combined with other parts to make more complex components and… well you get the idea.
The sheer amount of different production lines available from the start is why Factorio remains interesting for many hours. A lot of available content is blocked by the need to research technologies in the research tree, but even the act of researching new things to build, involves building some complex laboratories and components in order to conduct research.
I can't emphasise enough how well designed the progression feels, as you follow the loop of researching more options and continually building your factory to produce even more products. Initially everything gets transported on belts that snake their way through production lines and machinery. Then railways and trains bring the opportunity of using far away resources that can be loaded on carriages and driven back to base. Eventually you end up covering the landscape with a network of robo-ports so thousands of robots can automatically construct machines and technologies, while thousands more cover the logistics of moving everything to its correct position.
A big part of the challenge in Factorio, is being able to keep up with the demands of some later-game components that you need to build in order to progress. There's no quicker way to learn that your entire production chain is inefficient, than adding on a new line and realising you're nowhere near producing enough components to support this new product.
While the early game is just about setting everything up so that your primary resources are automatically being produced and fed into the system, the late game is all about efficiency. In my factory, I wasn't too worried about perfect efficiency, as it felt a bit like doing maths homework and I was never looking for that kind of experience.
Instead, the game let me brute force my way into expanding my factory to meet any shortcomings that appeared. One of the first things you mine is copper, which unsurprisingly gets used in a lot of electrical components and parts. As I progressed through the game and my factory grew, my copper production was gasping to keep up with the demands I made of it through many different lines. Hence, I was driven to stop progressing in technology, and boost my initial line of copper production.
This system of needing to revisit elements that were made early on in the game, is a nice way to teach you how to plan ahead. If I were to start a new factory in the future, I would lay it out completely different to the way I worked on my current factory. One example of what I would do differently is leave more space for lines to be expanded in the future. I had to tear down my initial copper production and build a much bigger line elsewhere in my current factory, but if I'd left enough room I could have expanded it easily and without too much disruption.
It's this planning and problem solving that really drive the intrigue of Factorio for me, and I qualify that it was like this "for me" because there are many different ways to play the game. In fact, one of the coolest things about Factorio is that just about everything going on in the game can be tweaked to customise the experience to whatever suits the player best.
For my first factory, I wasn't too interested in dealing with the aliens that are living on the planet and hinder your expansion. By default the aliens will react to your presence and the pollution of your machines and attack the factory and the player throughout the game. What's more, as you defend yourself and kill the aliens, they evolve in response and attempt to expand their territory and force you out. It's a neat system and there are plenty of weapons and defensive structures you can build and develop to counter the threat.
Although, I'm not really a fan of the "survival" aspect of these games, so I figured I'd turn alien threat down for my first attempt. Thankfully there was a setting in the game customisation that allowed me to set the aliens to a state where they wouldn't evolve, they wouldn't expand, and they wouldn't attack me unless I attacked them first. This meant that I still had to fight them to clear them out and free up land as my factory expanded, but I wasn't having to constantly deal with attacks while I was working on automation and production.
There are more settings that affect other parts of the gameplay, like how quickly fuel is used by machinery, or the quantity of primary resources available at each node. Finally, when you bring in the added customisation of community mods, the game can really be played in any way you please, which I really appreciate in a single player experience.
I used to do the same with Sim City, where sometimes I'd struggle to balance the economy of my city and tackle natural disasters as they happened. Other times I'd use cheats to give myself infinite funds and turn off disasters, so I was free to focus on designing the best looking city I could think of. This is where a lot of value comes in for single player games, as it really shouldn't be a problem for anyone else if I choose to play one way or another. These days there aren't many games coming out with a lot of customisation or even cheat codes, so it's nice to play something that really allows you to focus on the things you find most enjoyable.
To that end, I really got sucked into the train systems in Factorio. In fact, it soon became a game about building the coolest train set instead of dealing with all that production line business. There's something about figuring out train signalling logic that appeals to me, as I think it's simplistic enough to find a solution, but complex enough to be challenging and require some thought.
Essentially, at some point in the progression of the game, it becomes necessary to start bringing in raw materials from resource sites that are far away from your main production lines. You could use transport belts to carry materials across large distances, but it's a lot faster and easier to build a train network that pulls large amounts of cargo at much higher speeds.
This might be a good time to also point out that you don't have to use trains at all if you decide you're not interested. Using belts actually works fine once it's set up, or you could use a system of logistic robots to transport goods. The game really does let you focus on whatever you choose.
I like trains though, and they're pretty simplistic in Factorio. Basically, you put down a track from one location to another, along with stations at either end, then plonk a locomotive and some cargo cars onto said track and send it on its way.
Each train follows a system of simple commands to remain automated and performing its function. For example, you first set a station for the train to go to and stop, then a condition that will determine when it leaves and goes to the next station in the list. You can use multiple conditions to catch different scenarios, but usually they take the form of: wait at the station until you are full of cargo, then go to the next station and wait there until you're empty, then repeat the process.
At each station the cargo is loaded and unloaded however you see fit and then integrated into the factory as a whole, with the rail system acting as an intermediate conduit for moving resources around. It makes perfect sense when you have network of two stations, but before too long the network will grow and become a complex web of tracks and stations.
If you don't want to cover your map in train tracks, then it's necessary for multiple trains to use the same section of track as they arrive and depart from their locations. Seeing as most resources need to be brought back to the main production lines, almost every train will find themselves on a shared line at some point, and this is where signalling comes in.
The basic premise behind signalling is a series of IF, THEN, ELSE statements that divide the railway network into sections. Essentially with a signal on a track, it looks ahead and asks the question "is there a train on the track ahead" and if the answer is "yes" then it will tell any approaching train to stop and wait until the track ahead is clear. Otherwise the trains will inevitably run into each other, as not all rails are one way and another train might be coming right for you on the same section of track.
Where it gets confusing and complex is when you have a large section of track that is used by a bunch of different trains, all coming from a bunch of different locations. This is when chain signals need to be used so that you can cover multiple sections with a single signal. A chain signal doesn't only look at the track ahead, but it looks at the next signal as well. If the track ahead is clear, but the next signal says "stop", the chain signal will also show "stop" and prevent any trains from entering. This is essential in complex networks where multiple trains pass through multiple sections to get where they're going.
As you can probably tell, I really enjoyed focusing on the train systems and figuring how to best use the complex logic of signalling and track configurations. However, the same could be said for other systems in the game, like the robots who can fly around and move materials from place to place.
Once you have researched robots and are producing all of their components, you could do away with transport belts altogether and purely use robots to run logistics in your factory. I ended up with a combination of robots and belts throughout my factory, as I only used robots when I needed a resource that was only available in an awkward location so it was easier to have a robot pick it up and fly it over to where I needed it. I suspect that most factories would be built with a combination of all of these elements, as they have unique strengths and make the entire experience more interesting.
Then we get to the mods available for Factorio, which offer even more customisation options and gameplay enhancements. It's a credit to the developers that they have supported modding from an early stage in development and made it easy for players to find and install any mod they like. In fact, there's an option in the main menu that will take you to a mod browser and allow you to select and download anything that takes your fancy… and there are hundreds and hundreds of them to choose from.
I immediately downloaded a few quality of life mods that I'd heard of from other players, just to make the gameplay experience more enjoyable and easier to navigate. After completing the campaign goal and launching a rocket into space, I also installed a popular mod called Helmod, which basically does all the maths for you so you can setup more efficient lines.
The main gameplay loop in Factorio involves taking a resource or component, and feeding it into a machine to produce a different product. Advanced products take more components than simple ones, but the premise remains the same. It gets difficult though when you are trying to efficiently produce something that has any number of steps preceding the production of the final product. This is where mods like Helmod come into play.
When you select a product in Helmod, it then tells you how many components and/or resources you need in order to produce X amount of the product over Y amount of time. For instance, maybe I want to produce 20 robots every 5 minutes. Helmod will them tell me how many materials I need to produce in order to achieve that goal. It will also tell me how many machines I will need to produce that many in that amount of time. What's more, I can click on any of these components and the mod will tell me how many of its materials need to be made in order to satisfy the goal.
It gets a bit complex at times, so it's a relief to have access to a mod that basically crunches all the numbers for you. I love how clever and creative people can be when they make mods, and this is the perfect game to support them, as they definitely improve the game experience and extend the life of the game exponentially. Hence, I can't thank mod makers enough for taking the time to make something cool and share it with everyone else, and I have to acknowledge developers who build systems for their community to use and mess with reliably and easily. It's a fantastic relationship between developers and players, which I will always support in any game, but especially in these kind of games that rely heavily on delivering a customised experience.
Factorio might still be in development, but there doesn't seem to be a lot left to do, which means it's a great time to jump in. There's nothing worse than loading up an early access game and immediately knowing that you're probably going to abandon it thanks to that undercooked feeling, but Factorio has none of that.
Of course you have to like problem solving and the goal revolved around building efficient production chains and networks, but if that sounds interesting to you, this game will no doubt deliver. Just grab a few mods on the way in to make life a bit easier - there are a lot of useful forums and wikis online to help you figure out what will work best for you.
There's a whole lot more that I could say about Factorio, but it would just be about little details that add to the complexity and depth of the experience. Suffice to say that there is a whole lot of game here to get stuck into, even though it's still in active development. I spent about 120 hours on my first factory, and I'm already planning on how to best start out with my second.
It will get under your skin and steal time like a vampire, so just remember to look at the clock every now and then. It's too easy to lose track of everything when a game draws you in so wonderfully.