Multiplayer server strategy for keeping everyone busy

[bman212121]

Hi everyone,

I'm cruising through some of the threads and documentation for Factorio, but I'm not seeing strategies for multiple players. I'm curious if anyone has done a write up or possibly has ideas or insight into how they handle it.

What I'm looking for specifically is how do servers that have 10+ players actually coordinate between the players. Do you have a designated leader? Assign a pair of people to work on one resource, another pair to work on another? What happens if the player count goes up to 20? It would be interesting to hear from people how they tackle the logistics of the players since there really isn't anything in the game to guide you for this. How do you keep people busy and keep the game going forward without running into issues with resources, production, research, etc? As I type this an in game task list seems like something that could be useful to make sure that everyone can be assigned something, and you can easily see what progress is being made.

[Bauer]

It's like in real life. You need a team leader. I never played with 10 players. Then I guess the team leader just coordinates and doesn't build too much himself. With 3-4 ppl. it's easy enough to coordinate if you have a plan in your head (or on a piece of paper).

Similar question:
I started lately with pvp. Are there strategies out there for pvps?

[Zavian]

I've played multiplayer. In almost all cases it's simpler to just let people choose what they want to build, and then let them build it. It's probably not the most efficient, but it's simple and easy and typically lets people have fun. If you are playing on death world settings then you might need a little more focus on what to build when, to make sure you don't get overrun.

[Zool]

I‘ve played countless multiplayer games in factorio so far.

In my experience, you have a small number of players who have a „big plan“ and just start laying down their blueprints of varying quality ... many of the others will just randomly start building some of the stuff thats planned this way.

There are always some other people who recognise problems in the factory and start solving them „damn, we got little copper, lets connect that field on the left“ or „has anyone automated inserters somewhere ?!?“ and then just build it at a random place.

Then you have people who just got their own plan, and start building a huge jukebox, a dungeon, an independent base or whatever, adding a bit chaos. Or fight their way into the middle of the biters.

And finally, the most annoying sort of people, the griefer. He finds new methods to annoy others every day. Some just randomly mix different belts so the production gets messed up, others connect pipes and screw the fluids, some make trains crash, some just randomly remove stuff ... or in late game use large scale deconstruction planners and atomic bombing.

But all that works surprisingly well together in most of the factorys. In comparison, a team of dedicated players with a common plan will be faster and more streamlined in their builds, but the chaos of random groups still achieving a successfull base has its own charm, and ads much more variance when replaying the game.

[bman212121]

Thanks for the replies so far guys! Sounds like anyone who's played with several people so far just kind of do their thing and hope the others follow suit. We're planning on doing a lan party with 10 or so players all at the same location, so thankfully I don't have to worry about random griefers. I definitely do think some people will probably end up doing their own thing, but there should be enough experienced players that will recognize when things are not happening and try to fix them.

[Angamara]

I think we have a good community on factorio compared to other games.

There are two extremes, the troll and the player who knows better than everyone else.

There is more and more softmod that finds ways to avoid the Anti-Grief or the possibility of tagging players to know who is doing what.