Hi
I am very new to the game, bought it 2 weeks ago, and when i red this post i figured i share my experience on learning the game since i am in the middle of it
So the thing mentioned with the tool tips certainly will help a lot, also what i struggle with is to find out which things are stacking. For example the exoskeleton, if i would not watch youtube videos about the game i would have never figured to use more than one because it is nowhere mentioned that it stacks.
Also the usage of the armor, maybe this was mentioned somewhere and i missed it but i actually needed to figure out how to open the armor menu, right clicking on it wasn't my first intention, i did search for a button.
With which tool can resources be produced, sometimes you see the icon of an assembler when you hover over something, sometimes you don't.
Specially in the beginning i would have needed that information a lot more to know which building i need to produced which resource.
I actually deleted my first factory and started the game again in sandbox mode with everything unlocked to explore all the things before building a factory again.
The in game tutorials, first of all i love the way you implement tutorials. I really hate games which are forcing you to play a tutorial.
This system is really awesome, choose what you wanna see when you need it, I only wish for more of these tutorials.
Also on more basic things, for example when you place down concrete or landfill i have seen in videos that people actually can change the brush/stamp size, how does that work ? I know this is simple to look up somewhere but i did not stumble upon this in game, and this for example i would consider a basic in game functionality which would be explained in a basics tutorial.
Pipes are also something i have a hard time understanding, i assume they work kinda the same like a belt, but on the belt you see when too many things accessing it. On the pipes however i do not know how to plan out things, it happens all the time to me that a connect them to factories and they fill up super slow or don't fill up at all.
When i add another source it usually works then but again i would like to plan ahead these things and do not know quite how yet.
Things i was surprised i need mods for:
When i started to play around with circuit network i was surprised that i cannot access the load of a factory or train wagons i needed to install the mod Inventory Sensor to get that information into the network.
Yesterday i started dealing with Trains and also run into the issue that automating them with the vanilla version is quite tricky, today i will install the mod Train Logistics Network because i believe it will solve the issue.
The only really annoying thing in the game TREES, i installed the mod AAI Miner to have something that helps me with tree's in the beginning, but still trees are so annoying i can't even explain in words, would be really really great if there would be a solution from the beginning so you do not have to waste so much time on clearing out areas, even in the late game i do not feel the solutions given are satisfying. Removing with bots spams inventory and storage full, shooting them still takes time, and nukes are super late. (by the way am i the only who thinks it is a little crazy that nukes are the best way to deal with trees in a game where you build a space ship)
Personal Opinions
One thing i learned pretty fast in factorio is that you have to think big.
Which makes the default reach and build distance pretty annoying to me. So in a video i found this.
/c game.player.force.character_reach_distance_bonus = 10000
/c game.player.force.character_build_distance_bonus = 10000
This drastically changes my gaming experience, I mentioned that i first explored things in Sandbox mode, going back from sandbox and need to stand right next to everything to interact was very painful and not really fun at all.
I most of the time play the game half or fully zoomed out, this is even true from the very beginning on where you need to do stuff yourself, because usually resources are scattered and you have to run a lot, and later the game progresses more and more into a organizing/planning state than an interactive state so it would even be more annoying to be right next to everything since it is really big.
Upgrading Belts,Factories and Furnaces. Would be great if this could be done with the bots instead of me running around like crazy and place all these things because again it feels to me more like a organizing and planning thing later than an actual i have to do this and that, except the biters of course
Interaction with ghost design and bots. I like to plan stuff before I actually place it, in the early stages of the game this is no problem with shift clicking to create these ghosts. Later in the game it turned out to be a bit more difficult since whenever you do that a bot will build it for you, which is not always what i want.
I would really like to have a ghost thing like it is now which will be ignored by the bots and then have a tool that converts the ghost into a task for the bots, basically blueprinting it without creating a blueprint.
With logistic chests i also have one small issue. For example i create repair tools and put the directly into a passive provider.
So if this happens on one end of the factory the bots on the other end need to cross the whole thing to get one repair tool.
I placed requester chests for that, hooked them up with a circuit network and let them request 100 tools and put them into a passive provider chest right next to, the network counts down the request for each item in the provider.
So this somehow works but it generates a loop for some time, of course the provider provides the request.
I can think of 2 solutions.
A quick one, simply add a checkbox into the requester chest "Passive Provide", when checked this chest will provide everything stored in it (and of course it should not provide to itself).
A more complex one would be if you introduce grouping.
What i mean by that, when i select a chest i can assign it to a group. Lets call the group "repairtools" (name doesn't matter could be anything), so in the circuit network you can choose now only items from that group or only items except from that group.
This way you would be able to control which chests can provide to other chests.
Trash, how can I really trash things, by that I mean they are gone forever and i never see them again, not in my inventory, not in any chest not on the ground simply gone, this is something the game really needs i think.
Wishful Thinking
There is the space science pack and also a mod called spacex where you build a space station aso..
Man it would be awesome when you actually could go to space, lets say the space science packs can only be put into a research lab that exists in space and you have to ship up all the other science packs to the space station to keep on researching.
Or certain materials can only crafted in space aso...
This would be so awesome, don't know if it is possible, but still it would be awesome
So here are my experiences and thoughts, if stuff here is already possible and i simply do not know it please go easy on me, again play the game for 2 weeks now so there is a ton of things i do not know about it.
cheers