There are reasons to go afk, but should there be? The game is fun as is, and I feel like I've got my money's worth. But I feel like it could be way better. Once you've gone through the process and understand the game, it becomes way less interesting. There just aren't enough tradeoffs, and really not that many options. Yes it's fun figuring out how to make stuff and connect things up, calculate the ratios and get things running the way you want. But then after you've done it and understand what you're doing, it's a solved problem and busywork.Zavian wrote:There are situations where you might want to leave the game running whilst you are afk. eg spaceX whilst doing some of the long (250,000 flask) FTL researches (assuming you have decided you don't need/want to expand your base any more), or playing seablock whilst waiting on more landfill/resources during the early stages.
I WANT to play more, but it feels like I've seen all the fun the game has to offer.
There are a bunch of concepts that aren't explored very thoroughly. For example modules are completely unnecessary. Why bother with speed when you can just add more (cheaper) assemblers? Why add efficiency when you can just add more power? Why add productivity when you can just expand? Doing something like I suggested above where power becomes more/less efficient the closer it gets to capacity, would make efficiency more important. Maybe there's a long lead up time to increase the amount of boiling water, so steam engines have a lag before they reach the desired power (and a lag to power down) Would incentivize running the factory at a constant speed. Making assemblers wear out or require consumables would make productivity important (maybe you could make them wear out slower by running them slower). And you'd have to balance speed of production with the need to replace/repair your machines.
Maybe instead of the assemblers wearing out, you could have different types of internal components for assemblers that wear out over time. So perhaps you have a circuit module that increases productivity of circuit making assemblers. Maybe certain items require specialized modules. Maybe you can upgrade the modules to tweak the performance of different aspects of the machine. Maybe you can get built in inserts, or larger capacity for holding items, or the ability to connect directly with other assemblers without the need for inserters. Maybe you can group a bunch of different specialized assemblers together to make new designs possible.
Maybe there could be high quality versions of some items that require high quality components. For example, you use a specialized assembler to make a high quality green circuit, that takes longer to make an costs more materials. It functions exactly like other green circuits, except that if you use it to make a radar, the radar uses less power, or has a longer range, or scans faster. Basically it'd be a way to trade speed for quality.
Even stuff like being able to adjust the timing of inserters. Maybe you can, for example, reduce the capacity of an inserter to increase the speed it moves. Like, ways to get into the details of how individual buildings work and tweak them.
I'm just throwing ideas out there. I suggested more analysis and diagnostic tools in another thread, I think they might help too. Stuff to worry about after you've built a factory and it's running, and/or more late game, and/or more customization. So basically, more to do that isn't building stuff, more reasons to build more stuff, or more ways of building stuff.
