Factorio Forums

Win the game without ever building anything without using a machine (assembler, chem plant, etc.).

The purpose:
1) Challenge veterans who need to switch things up
2) Help everyone get rid of the "I just need a few inserters now, and maybe just a couple of belts.. and just 2 turrets.. oh, and a few more power poles.."
3) Discover that automating things that you would not normally automate may (or may not) be a good idea!

Notes:
Remember that automation of science pack 2 requires Automation 2 (because of inserters that require 3 components to build).
Play the game on any settings you like, but remember that losing is fun!
Making armor and weapons outside an assembly is ok (but frowned upon by real purists of course).
Anything else must be machine built (including wood (you may chop down trees for raw wood), iron sticks, ammo, tools, etc.)
Logistics robots could be extra valuable under these rules.

Post here with your experience if you try the challenge.

IIRC there are a couple of things that cannot be automated right now, like refineries

I saw a similar thread earlier and I think the minimum was something like 20 handcrafted items.

It's a good idea, though there's the possibility of it becoming quite tedious.
The big problem is that in order to get your first assembler, you need to research the technology, meaning you need 10 red science (and therefore 10 gears), a lab and all it's components, a power pole, steam engine, boiler and offshore pump before anything else, and you would have to be constantly moving your one mining drill and furnace around until then unless you wanted to try mining without a pickaxe.
Once you reach a certain point though the problems would disappear, and it would be interesting to see the huge scale of production you would end up with when you have to craft every single item.
With some tweaking (such as a 20 items rule or something similar) it may make for an interesting challenge. I'll look into it and maybe do a video or two.

Thanks for the link Safan. Guess I'm late to the party.

many items cannot be crafted by hand regardless if you have the required materials.

I'm going to give this a shot on my channel (In real time rather than my usual fast forwarding). Expect the first episode on Saturday! If it goes well I might keep going.

Mangledpork wrote:I'm going to give this a shot on my channel (In real time rather than my usual fast forwarding). Expect the first episode on Saturday! If it goes well I might keep going.

When I have originally seen this thread, I was thinking this is just silly. Today, I was watching your video and found the challenge quite enjoyable, thanks. And because I was annoyed how slow you are, I need to do it much faster. I was able to get assembly machine 2 in something like 30 minutes. Currently I am right before setting my oil and blue science, and I already have quite huge production of everything. If you're interested, I can post some figures.

A few ideas I noticed on the way:

• You pretty much need zero coal in the beginning, so you can concentrate your mining drill only for iron and a small amount of copper. Meanwhile you chop trees with your stick . (Even more ridiculous than tree punching.) Not sure how much is wood worse than coal, but you chop it by five and it is quite fast. And you can't mine anything aside stone efficiently anyway.
• When you get your first assembler, you start by making two-three furnaces and a lot of pick axes (maybe even 5-10 would be good). Then you use mining drill for iron only, since it is very slow. You can copper sufficiently fast to keep one furnace busy. And you don't need so many of it anyway in the beginning. (110 copper versus 220 iron for assembling machine 2).
• When you get assembling machine two, you can finally concentrate on growing your production exponentially. Setting electric drills, more assemblers, ... It is a good idea to have some circuits already produced, they do not take much time and you can mine a lot manually when you wait for research.

I'm glad you liked it! I'm definitely not doing things the fastest way, and it'll be interesting to see the clever ways people can tackle the problem quickly (and indeed normal Factorio. We should have more speedruns!)
I notice that until you get the level 2 assembler the challenge is somewhat dull with lots of waiting and manual mining. I think the interesting bit is when you have to build a factory to produce the machinery to build your proper factory, where usually you would just craft them as you went.
Also logistics is a godsend in a challenge like this. I can't wait to get to it!

Anyway, for those who have read the thread and are interested, here is the link to my series playlist.