Factorio Forums

So, I don't really use reddit, but I entered the Factorio reddit a few days ago, and found people using the phrase "4/10 contains loops", without any real explanation.
Now, I don't want to start the whole one-heade vs. two-headed, T-junctions vs. roundabouts war (there's another thread for that), but could someone (maybe someone who uses the reddit more?) explain what they mean?

Do they insinuate 4 our of 10 Factorio players use roundabouts / single-headed trains? Is it a joke I'm not getting? Something from a movie, maybe?
Just curious

It's a group of trolls from twitch.tv

Apparently they really like double-headed trains clogging their network and forcing them to add more rail lanes.

I know _who_ writes it (And I don't think they're actually trolls, just really set in their ways for no good reason. Fundamentalists is the correct term for this, I think), I just want to understand them better.

I always assumed the 4/10 (or 10/10 or 11/10) is just the score they're giving, 4 points out of a possible 10.

Boogieman14 wrote:I always assumed the 4/10 (or 10/10 or 11/10) is just the score they're giving, 4 points out of a possible 10.

Ah, I see. That makes a little bit of sense, although it's pretty silly.

A similar "5/10, contains loops" comment by one of the twitch.tv intersection fanatics is what prompted me to start that thread. I thought if they were so adamant that rotaries are the work of the devil, they must have clear operational drawbacks.

That turns out not to be the case. Near as I can tell, it's a matter of mistaking personal aesthetic preferences for objective advantages. Now that I've come to recognize it, it's actually rather irritating.

It's funny because at they same time they champion double-headed trains and terminal stations, which have some pretty serious objective drawbacks, again based on some arbitrary twitch.tv groupthink.

Its just a meme within a few guys of the twitch community, a little bit of a circlejerk/inside joke if you will, and its perfectly fine in that context, and pretty funny.

But recently some people have been thinking that it would be pretty funny to post it on reddit whenever they see a loop-based train line or a train system with loop intersections, and some of the first times it might have been humorous, but like all jokes it becomes old, over-repeated and unfunny very quickly. I think its especially unhelpful on posts by newer players, where they're trying to show off their factories and and for legit advice, and all they get is some joke they won't understand, instead of actual helpful criticisms.

Klonan wrote:...and some of the first times it might have been humorous, but like all jokes it becomes old, over-repeated and unfunny very quickly.

Welcome to Reddit

dgrantos wrote:

Klonan wrote:...and some of the first times it might have been humorous, but like all jokes it becomes old, over-repeated and unfunny very quickly.

Welcome to Reddit

welcome to internet memes

ratchetfreak wrote:

dgrantos wrote:

Klonan wrote:...and some of the first times it might have been humorous, but like all jokes it becomes old, over-repeated and unfunny very quickly.

Welcome to Reddit

welcome to internet memes

Welcome to Internet

This thread 4/10 contains loops!

This thread 4/10 contains loops!

It doesn't have loops quite yet!
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =5&t=14559

NOW it does.

bobucles wrote:

This thread 4/10 contains loops!

It doesn't have loops quite yet!
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =5&t=14559

NOW it does.

Hehe Nice! I mean not nice! Loops are evil!

If money is the root of all evil, and loops are evil, does that mean some of the money goes into loops?

Know your meme, Factorio edition!

It all started here and spread from this very forum into other twitch streams. From there, it experienced the memetic mutation from "5/10 contains loops" to "4/10 contains loops" then spread to reddit. Finally, it spread back to this forum, completing the cycle.

Am I sorry for what I have done? Nope. For the longest time, loops and roundabouts were the ONLY way to do things. Bringing in a little diversity and contention is a good thing. From this, better train systems have been created, and shaking the "established way of doing things" has brought a higher level of creativity and discussion as people try to implement more diverse designs. Yes, there will be trolls. This is the internet, given an ounce of controversy, some will go ham with it for the sake of being trolls.

MadZuri wrote:Bringing in a little diversity and contention is a good thing.

But that's not particularly what you were doing. Instead of creating discussion, you were trying to replace existing dogma ("rotaries are the known solution") with your own dogma ("intersections are the only acceptable solution") with blanket attacks. It'd be one thing if intersections were a strictly superior answer, but they're not. They have their strengths, but also their own weaknesses. Ditto 2-headed trains vs. single-locomotive trains with U-turn tracks at stations, which is actually a separate issue, since you can mix and match the choice of intersection types and terminal types. I've tinkered with all 4 combinations at this point just to see how each differed.

Why do you think, loops are unnessessary?

It contains loops, so that a train can just go whereever it wants to go without using a longer ways, instead of going the complete was back to the mainstation. In that way you can create a train schedule with more than two stations.

That was the direct reply to my original post.

Before I did that, not many here thought it was possible to even have a non-loop or non-roundabout rail system. It was just assumed that was the way you did it. There was a divergence. Here, and on reddit, loops and roundabouts were the way to go. There were many youtube tutorials explaining how to do just that. It was put forth, and repeated endlessly, as the only way to do things. Meanwhile, on many Twitch channels, intersections and double-headed trains were the way to go. I started the meme, and didn't contribute further, outside of explaining how intersections or double-headed trains work when asked. Everyone else did the spreading. It grew past my influence with the quickness. I just had to stand in awe at how the internet works. Certainly, you may have noticed that there actually isn't much difference in the rail systems actually work.