Just bought the game; What were Your first impressions?

[Josephstock95]

Merged with existing thread --daniel34

This game is SICK. I can't stop playing. When I'm not playing I'm planning. Can't wait for final version.

[Otterbear]

The possibilities are endless,...Wait,...THERE'S MORE!...and MORE...and MORE!

(Gets up off the floor)

So long outside world...

38 hours in and I've lost the ability to blink!

*Now to figure out how to use conveyor belts to mow the front lawn. *Perhaps a few more bots.

[GeekTheory]

WHY. DOES. THE. STEAM. ENGINE. HAVE. NO. ELECTRICITY. FLOWING???

I'm sure most players have had that moment

[Stan K]

I love this game!

The best thing for me is the ever changing scale on which you are working, continuously automating what you did a minute* ago by hand. Mining manually is quickly automated, next the conveyor belts, and all other machines are prepared for you. All the way up to not actually building anything yourself, but blueprinting it. Simply awesome.

I did miss some of the functionality, only to find it once roaming around on the forums here. "How to open the Production statistics?" "Just press P". Until I read that, I did not know there even was a production overview, and at this point I'm starting to wonder what other functionality I have yet to discover. I'd say I expected having a small button on the UI for each of the otherwise hidden functionalities (alt, t, esc, m).

*Not actually a minute, more like hours that pass without having noticed them

[CharlesMerriam]

I bought the game earlier this week. It has potential, but I'll be putting it aside as just not 'fun' after a little bit. Sorry.

The controls are hard. I know you feel like you researched which controls to use, but if everyone has the same problems, then there is a problem.

* Items in the toolbar keep jumping around unless I am very careful. Even when I "lock" an item to a slot, it disappears back into inventory often. This can be especially annoying for combat.

* There is a lot of annoying fiddling. If I want to make a line of furnaces, I want to cut and paste a region. This means the furnace, conveyer belts pickers, and power poles. There is a hint that maybe this exists, but I haven't been able to puzzle it out. Instead I find myself moving constantly because I can't place power poles more than a few squares away from my character.

* Seriously, I can't run through a forest?

* Combat is both boring and dexterity bound. Try to put out a turret. Wait, the turret has no ammunition because no one ever wants a turret to be ready to shoot. Try again. Whoops, ammo dropped out of slot three and is back in the inventory. Ok, load it. Do it again. Oh, no! I've got a hundred rounds for my pistol in case my machine gun runs dry I want to shoot one round at a time instead of reloading. Where did it go? Can't I split my ammo into blocks of say, 25, so I can use all my turrets?

* Finally, I guess I stop seeing the point. The hundredth time I need to add a picker, I start glazing over. I could try growing bigger and bigger, but one fiddly bit at a time? It seems like I need about 8,000 furnaces to supply for enough labs that I can get through the tech tree in under a day.

[Mackowatosc]

Items
Same think for the pump , you have water everywhere ! Why are you need to use the pump for much pression , if your machine are just next to your pipe .

You need pumps for other fluids, not just water. Ever tried pulling crude oil from a really long distance?

[Mackowatosc]

- Definitely needs something to consume goods in the end game. Don't know what, exactly. Maybe more bigger projects that require more of the goods being produced?

Do what I'm trying to do right now - get an auto-rocket-launch mod, and try to build sustainable 10 rocket launches per minute factory I can guarantee you will have plenty of production requirement :>

[masterjx9]

I bought the game earlier this week. It has potential, but I'll be putting it aside as just not 'fun' after a little bit. Sorry.

The controls are hard. I know you feel like you researched which controls to use, but if everyone has the same problems, then there is a problem.

* Items in the toolbar keep jumping around unless I am very careful. Even when I "lock" an item to a slot, it disappears back into inventory often. This can be especially annoying for combat.

* There is a lot of annoying fiddling. If I want to make a line of furnaces, I want to cut and paste a region. This means the furnace, conveyer belts pickers, and power poles. There is a hint that maybe this exists, but I haven't been able to puzzle it out. Instead I find myself moving constantly because I can't place power poles more than a few squares away from my character.

* Seriously, I can't run through a forest?

* Combat is both boring and dexterity bound. Try to put out a turret. Wait, the turret has no ammunition because no one ever wants a turret to be ready to shoot. Try again. Whoops, ammo dropped out of slot three and is back in the inventory. Ok, load it. Do it again. Oh, no! I've got a hundred rounds for my pistol in case my machine gun runs dry I want to shoot one round at a time instead of reloading. Where did it go? Can't I split my ammo into blocks of say, 25, so I can use all my turrets?

* Finally, I guess I stop seeing the point. The hundredth time I need to add a picker, I start glazing over. I could try growing bigger and bigger, but one fiddly bit at a time? It seems like I need about 8,000 furnaces to supply for enough labs that I can get through the tech tree in under a day.

THIS!

[Resom]

I just finished the game for the first time. Pretty freakin awesome if you ask me. I am excited for the new tweeks in 13. should make game play a little better overall.

The only thing that I would really say kinda stunk was fluids, and lack of steam. As a thermo/fluids guy it may have been more annoying for me than normal. Out of curiosity is there any plan to change fliuds? I know there are some mods that do but it seems as though they are limited by the original code.

I mathematically planned out a system to make it work better, like adding flow restricting pipes (a smaller pipe) to split flow like a belt splitter does, and adding steam... I don't know maybe it is too much to ask for, but it would be nice.

Anyway, great game. I am going to work on playing with more mods.

Thanks a bunch

[sivistojko]

Hello all, first and foremost I would like to express my gratitude to the devs. and others who made this game possible. This is a great project, very fun, playable, enjoyable...with lots of potential.

So far, with around 40 hours of game play, I would say that I'm having a blast.
I'm a Dwarf Fortress veteran and Factorio seems a lot like it in various ways. But in comparison to the DF, Factorio lets you improve, re-build, re-invent. This leads me to the best part of the game which is -- you can spend all your time in one game only. If you don't like something, if you mess up, you don't have to start over from scratch. You can simply re-build or move over and build more like I did. It's beautiful.

Once I had everything going well, it starts to feel stagnant drastically since there's nothing in particular to do except to min-max the base functionality. Just building the rocket left my itch unscratched. I never actually intended to build a rocket because I knew it is a "formal" end of the game. I feel I want more of it, more tiers, more options, more stuff to build, more technology to research....In other words, the need for end game is very strong and getting stronger.

Overall, the game feels very polished, If I didn't know I would never say it is in early access on steam.

[Proxy]

First Impression... was something like:
"k, i got Belts and theses Inserters... so i can move stuff from A to B. neat. and this Assembler which is like a Worse version of me in terms of Crafting, and is Larger than me. one might think because of it's Size that it can Crafter better or Faster than me, but nope... it should be fine thou"
10 min. later. "yay, Semi-Automated Red Science, maybe i can get the belts Automated too! "
10 h later. "Dammit, East Oil is out and the Biters are getting Stronger. i need freakin' Batteries to make more Turrets!"
today: "FTB FTB FTB FTB Technic ATL, oh hey a new FFF, FTB ATL FTB FTB FTB Technic"
man, i really need to Intensively play this again... but after some time the Game Starts lagging when i zoom out xD

[Calebrj]

WOW.

and..... How do I get the biggest factory? (getting there, about the size of my starting minimap at the beginning, so maybe about 50,000 tiles)


PS: I think (I'm probably wrong) that I started out on more hours than any of you. I played for 68 hours and 32 minutes straight, then I fell asleep. After stopping my stopwatch, of course.

[FORTHELOLZ]

selected no starting zone. died in 7 seconds.

[wahming]

Once I had everything going well, it starts to feel stagnant drastically since there's nothing in particular to do except to min-max the base functionality. Just building the rocket left my itch unscratched. I never actually intended to build a rocket because I knew it is a "formal" end of the game. I feel I want more of it, more tiers, more options, more stuff to build, more technology to research....In other words, the need for end game is very strong and getting stronger.

We all agree with you. But if you're looking for more variety of current gameplay (tiers, ores, etc) as opposed to new gameplay concepts, Bob's Mods will do that for you (check out the mod section). Say bye bye to your next week of free time.

[Stevepunk]

Why do I need to control a man in an RTS game?
Why can I only build next to him?

Eventually I got over this and agreed that a main character with direct control can ground you in the world similar to the X3 games.

[Walsy]

My first impression went something like this:
"ok, this is a little confusing, but I think I've got it."
"oh, I can automated this? cool!"
"OMG this game is AWESOME"

[daniel34]

Why do I need to control a man in an RTS game?
Why can I only build next to him?

Eventually I got over this and agreed that a main character with direct control can ground you in the world similar to the X3 games.

Start a new game in sandbox mode (Play --> Custom scenario --> base/sandbox).
You don't have a character there, you control the camera with WASD and you can build everywhere.

[BULIGO]

I heard about Factorio actually by a fellow player playing Stardew Valley. The irony eh?
BTW i always wonder how people claim to have 'finished' an esentially open-ended game. There is no finish line, so can't be 'finished'.
Well to each it's own i guess. Or, whatever rows your boat
As for me, one of the erm..game tresholds is to reach 200 hours of gameplay per single map. Yeah, addicted beyond salvation.

[brunzenstein]

Why do I need to control a man in an RTS game?
Why can I only build next to him?

Eventually I got over this and agreed that a main character with direct control can ground you in the world similar to the X3 games.

Start a new game in sandbox mode (Play --> Custom scenario --> base/sandbox).
You don't have a character there, you control the camera with WASD and you can build everywhere.

This and more regarding starting has to be explained somewhere

[xR1C0x]

Map Strings code off