Idea: a mod which adds a "fatigue/sleep" meter to govern your cracktorio habit.

[adamwong246]

I think it goes without saying that many of us have binged on factorio to an unhealthy degree. My partner is really not happy that I played factorio for 12 hours a day over thanksgiving. Apparently my husbandly duties are more important that securing more copper ore but I digress...

So here is my idea: A mod, which adds a "sleep" mechanic on a customizable schedule.

So let's just presume you need to "sleep" for 1/3 of gameplay, because that's the normal sleep amount for humans. That means for 2 hours of active gameplay, you must enter "sleep" mode for an hour. That is, you must let the game run in the background for 1 hour while you character does nothing at all.

As you actively play, your fatigue meter increases. As it this increases, many game play mechanics degrade. You field of vision becomes limited and darkened. Your movement becomes slower, as does your crafting speed. Basically, everything gets harder and harder until you are forced to throw in the towel and go to "sleep". While you are sleeping, you can do nothing but your fatigue meter recharges. Pressing ANY key will awaken you and you fatigue meter starts to deplete again.

This mod could serve 2 purposes.
1) Make sure you aren't devoting your IRL life to factorio.
2) Force the players to build automated systems which can maintain themselves while you sleep.

Other ideas:
an alarm clock that goes off after your meter refills and which is also tied to the signal network to wake you in an emergency.

[PFQNiet]

Take a lesson from World of Warcraft: do not punish the player for playing too much. Instead, reward them for not playing. WoW (and other MMOs since) does this via a "rested EXP" bonus.

You might implement this in the form of bonuses that you get after a period of inactivity. "Rest" and you get a bonus to movement speed, crafting speed, mining speed etc.. But these should be bonuses, not penalties. As I said above, don't punish the player for playing.

[adamwong246]

I mean, the distinction from a gameplay perspective is nonexistent. It's all in the *phrasing* and the language used to describe the mechanic.

If players perceive themselves as getting a buf from rest, they will react positively.
If players perceive themselves as getting a debuf from fatigue, they will react negatively.

I see no difference but you are right, the players will. So sure, go with the positivity.

And don't forget there is another important angle here: the game should nudge you to automate. So sleep is not just about getting the human users to log off and go to bed, it can encourage your to build a base that runs well, even while you in-game "sleep".

[eradicator]

I mean, the distinction from a gameplay perspective is nonexistent. It's all in the *phrasing* and the language used to describe the mechanic.

If players perceive themselves as getting a buf from rest, they will react positively.
If players perceive themselves as getting a debuf from fatigue, they will react negatively.

That's exactly what happend with Warcraft btw. First they made it a malus. Then players complained. Then they rephrased the stuff and shuffled some numbers so that "full bonus" was exactly equivalent to the prior "no malus" status and suddenly everyone was happy with the exact same system.

As for your proposal i see a problem: It motivates the player to have the game running in background (and thus occupying their mind) for *more* time, not less. Because you're removing the re-entry hurdle of starting up the game and loading a map (a tiny hurdle, but a hurdle nonetheless). Imho a mechanic that forces you to keep the game stopped for X hours would be better but that's not moddable. Also prolonged idling in a running factory might cause biter problems with certain common playstyles.

Hm...in a server context this might be moddable because the server measures the total time you were *not* logged in. But as it's total time it doesn't prevent resting 2 days and then binging 3-days worth of time budget at once.

And lastly... none of this works cross-savegame ofc. So maybe you just start a standbox to design blueprints upfront that help you spend less of your time budget on the main map.

TL;DR: Ask your wife to pull the plug instead. :p