Just bought the game; What were Your first impressions?

[Ranger_Aurelien]

* Need more things to research. There were many hours with research idle as I worked to get the next science pack automated.
* Biters are pretty dumb. Static D was more than enough to handle anything they could throw at me. However expanding was hard, grindy, and time consuming.

Well, as you get more fluent in the tech tree your research queue will be ahead of the flash production. Btw, you did enable Research queues in the map generation?

I enable it at the start in the Advanced tab:
https://wiki.factorio.com/World_generator

You can also change the Biter growth rates there if you find them too easy...

* Soooooo many train deaths, any chance of rail-crossing signals?
* Combinators are really cute, but insane to debug.

Oh, some others and I were recently experimenting with different crossing systems. You can use combinators to raise gates to protect players when trains approach:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=85051&p=495404#p495404

* Electricity distribution and management is too simple while,
* Fluid distribution is too complicated.

Electricity can become slightly complicated if you want to isolate circuits... I would often have a small priority coal plant whose ONLY function is to provide power to the inserters for the main plant...
Also, as you start to deploy a solar/accumulator system, having a coal system on standby can be useful... (hunting down the LAST steam plant on the grid can be annoying, particulalryy if you are trying for that achievement...)

Fluids -- mainly use pumps to push fluids where you need them most, and know silos can help..

...

[Serenity]

* Need more stuff! Oil processing is .. too small .. I want more things to do with oil !
* No Aluminum? No rare-earth metals from uranium refining ?

I feel like the end game items need some more complexity. For example for low density structures you could have aluminum instead of copper and add some new chemical from a more complicated oil processing system.
Rocket fuel could also do with some extra fluid to make it more of a step up from solid fuel

Unfortunately they recently went the opposite way and dumbed down oil processing. So I doubt anything like that will ever happen. They rather want a more streamlined game

* Soooooo many train deaths, any chance of rail-crossing signals?

Easy to do. Just read a rail signal and if it's red you know that a train is there

The signal placement UI needs a legend to say what the different colored lines mean

The colors by themselves don't mean anything. They are just there to differentiate the rail segments

because its hard to get the range on big spitters

Try the rocket launcher. You need lots of ammo, but they have quite some range

[Durentis]

Electricity can become slightly complicated if you want to isolate circuits..

And also extremely tedious in some cases where you want to isolate rows of assemblers that share beacons because even with the smallest poles it can require manually snipping and reconnecting the wires between specific poles. ...and custom copper wire configurations are not stored in the blueprint when you finish. (I do this in, for example, a refinery where a row of H->L shares beacons with a row of L->P but I want to cut power to the rows (including their beacons) independently when I don't need either L or P. The shared beacons only need power if either L or P are needed but the poles can't connect across the shared beacons or it won't work correctly.)

The poles almost always seem to cover just one tile short for what I would want to use them for too. Like, a single medium pole would be perfect in many cases if it were one tile larger but I need two instead and two small poles work just as well in those cases, are cheaper, and have a smaller visual profile. It ends up creating some annoying pole spam just to catch a few stray tiles in some tight designs. It's like the programmer's off-by-one error carried over into game design.

[ijm]

Well, as you get more fluent in the tech tree your research queue will be ahead of the flash production. Btw, you did enable Research queues in the map generation?

First time through, no, second yes.

You can also change the Biter growth rates there if you find them too easy...

I did. I think the issue is the classic tower defense problem. A good wall and some random wall bits in their way and they mill around in front of the 8 laser turrets in range getting slaughtered. I expected burrowing, flying, and siege up out of range to throw in acid. They also didn't attack infrastructure at all so I could set up with with a blueprint and a couple of clicks. Fun, but not really the kind of automation problem solving that makes the core game so interesting.

Oh, some others and I were recently experimenting with different crossing systems. You can use combinators to raise gates to protect players when trains approach:

See this is what I mean about so much still to learn! I tried a wire to a gate and it failed, because you wire to the wall beside it. Obvious now. *sigh* ty!

Electricity can become slightly complicated if you want to isolate circuits... I would often have a small priority coal plant whose ONLY function is to provide power to the inserters for the main plant...
Also, as you start to deploy a solar/accumulator system, having a coal system on standby can be useful... (hunting down the LAST steam plant on the grid can be annoying, particulalryy if you are trying for that achievement...)

I mean the way power is distributed and manage, with automatic priorities and limitless superconducting (but its copper in a desert!) cables. I switched my whole base to nuclear but water was a long way away, so I kept having water issues. I used switches to isolate defenses from production (I chuckled when I labeled it 'defense grid' ), and to isolate the water pumping system.
However I couldn't find a way to get power statistics into a circuit network. I hooked up a steam tank to get an idea of steam production/useage, but an accumulator unfortunately sees the whole grid so doesn't help much. It would be nice is the 'power switch' also reported the amount of power (and direction) going through it, but alas. Is there a trick? Did I miss something?

Fluids -- mainly use pumps to push fluids where you need them most, and know silos can help..

My concern here is that, even with a more than solid knowledge of fluid mechanics, I couldn't figure out how many pumps and tanks and where, without resorting to web resources and detailed descriptions of the underlying implementation. I found several dev-blog posts that were very interesting, but this is about first impressions, yes? The need to break the 4th-wall to solve the problem felt like cheating, was more frustrating than interesting, and just didn't have the same 'fun' resolve as solving other puzzles in the game (which is what makes it such a kick-ass game!). From the look of other forum posts I think the dev's might be tired of hearing about fluids!

[ijm]

* Need more stuff! Oil processing is .. too small .. I want more things to do with oil !
* No Aluminum? No rare-earth metals from uranium refining ?

I feel like the end game items need some more complexity. For example for low density structures you could have aluminum instead of copper and add some new chemical from a more complicated oil processing system.
...
Unfortunately they recently went the opposite way and dumbed down oil processing. So I doubt anything like that will ever happen. They rather want a more streamlined game

I think I mean more automation content not necessarily just more stuff or more complexity. For example, I get why they only have two metals: simply adding Aluminum like the other two, just requires the player to cookie-cut another smelter. However aluminum or, better yet, titanium can be refined by electrolysis, which here could be schematized to require sulphuric acid into an electric furnace. Now one cannot just reuse the a previous one-size-fit-all smelter design but has a new design puzzle to plan and solve, and so having the resource adds something other than grind.

Try the rocket launcher. You need lots of ammo, but they have quite some range

.. but but but... I kept hitting trees ... and bushes ....

[Hannu]

The poles almost always seem to cover just one tile short for what I would want to use them for too. Like, a single medium pole would be perfect in many cases if it were one tile larger but I need two instead and two small poles work just as well in those cases, are cheaper, and have a smaller visual profile. It ends up creating some annoying pole spam just to catch a few stray tiles in some tight designs. It's like the programmer's off-by-one error carried over into game design.

I agree this. Range of medium poles should be larger. I would prefer 13 x 13 so that i can put powerpole between every other wagon in railyards but even 1 tile more (9x9) would be significant improvement. I do not see what interesting game mechanics or challenge spamming ugly poles everywhere give. It devs think balancing, poles could be more expensive, but practically their cost is completely negligible after first wooden poles.

[Pi-C]

Try the rocket launcher. You need lots of ammo, but they have quite some range

.. but but but... I kept hitting trees ... and bushes ....

Do you know that you can use <C> (unless you've changed the default setting) to choose a particular target?

[Jap2.0]

Try the rocket launcher. You need lots of ammo, but they have quite some range

.. but but but... I kept hitting trees ... and bushes ....

Do you know that you can use <C> (unless you've changed the default setting) to choose a particular target?

Space should only hit enemies too, if that's what you want.

[Ranger_Aurelien]

See this is what I mean about so much still to learn! I tried a wire to a gate and it failed, because you wire to the wall beside it. Obvious now. *sigh* ty!

I prefer my design as it will protect the user while the train approaches, and the other user's suggestion that disables the train area which can cause pathing problems for trains as well as will not work on chain signals...

However I couldn't find a way to get power statistics into a circuit network. I hooked up a steam tank to get an idea of steam production/useage, but an accumulator unfortunately sees the whole grid so doesn't help much. It would be nice is the 'power switch' also reported the amount of power (and direction) going through it, but alas. Is there a trick? Did I miss something?

You can get the % capacity on accumulators. Here is an example to act on them:

https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Circ ... ok#Latches

I'm sure I ran across somewhere bridging two logical power network using accumulators (they have a maximum transfer speed), and you could use switches to isolate the sub-network if specific accumulators drop below a threshold...

But to your pentultimate question I do not see a way to query the whole network. But really what are you trying to track? If you have any solar+accum on the network (even a few of each) if the solar drops below, say, 20% at any time it should set off alarms.

Btw I consider nuclear a "phase2" power solution with all solar+accumulator being end-game...

Oh, if you have having problem pumping water to your nuclear plant, have you considered using trains to move the water?

My concern here is that, even with a more than solid knowledge of fluid mechanics, I couldn't figure out how many pumps and tanks and where

Well, my tip about fluids is to use pumps to create "priority" areas that need them out of the source, first. Then any overflow you can use for the next product.

I use pumps all over for a few reasons -- reminds me which way fluids are going, as well as acts as a diode to allow only one-way.

From a refinery, there are a few logical flows to me to convert the ouputs and convert

Refinery > heavy oil > pump > HO silo> pump> lubricant plants
From the HOsilo, a simple pipe to "convert to light oil" plants > pump > to LO silo

Refinery > light oil > pump > LO silo> pump> fuel cube plants
From the LOsilo, a simple pipe to "convert to petroleum gas" plants > pump > to PG silo

Refinery > petroleum gas > pump > PG silo> pump> plastic & acid plants

I find my factories have a huge demand for plastic for circuits.

YMMV, but this is a broad stroke about how the flow can work... : )

[Ranger_Aurelien]

My concern here is that, even with a more than solid knowledge of fluid mechanics, I couldn't figure out how many pumps and tanks and where

Ok, pictures, 1000 words, etc:


Here is a sandbox with micro scale to show the flow for pipes. In a real factory they'd be screens apart and be dozens of cookie cutter units in a row...

The flow nicely comes top-down with the logic starting at the top with heavy oil, with the priority being to make green lubricant, and any overflow is allowed to slip into the HO>LO assembler... and so on.

Note if you're planning to use a pump near a silo it's best it be attached to the silo:
https://wiki.factorio.com/Pump#Throughput

[greyguy1012]

i'm right at the refinery stage too. no idea what to expect.
but unfortunately i got attacked for the first time so my research priority has changed to say the least.
and i'm on the latest stable on steam so i don't have the advantage of the more complete tutorial.
but it's so much fun just doing things your own way.

[Serenity]

i'm right at the refinery stage too. no idea what to expect.

Refining was simplified a while ago. Simple oil processing now only outputs petroleum gas. So you can deal with red circuits, blue science and some other stuff without worrying about anything backing up.
The puzzle is still there in advanced oil processing, but it comes a bit later when you want light oil for solid fuel and heavy oil for lubricant.

[ijm]

My concern here is that, even with a more than solid knowledge of fluid mechanics, I couldn't figure out how many pumps and tanks and where

Ok, pictures, 1000 words, etc:
...

My oil set up was fine. It's the extremely long water run to keep the reactor turbines functioning that was the issue. Once I grokked that the current implementation behaves like a level aqueduct system in hydrostasis, and not incompressible fluids in a pipes, designing and planing became much easier. My 'first impressions' issue is the graphics are pipes and pumps, and not medieval aqueducts and bucket waterwheels. (and that I had to go outside the game for info to figure it out)

[Koub]

[Koub] I'm OK discussing Factorio on a Factorio forum, but this is getting very off-topic from the "first impressions" isn't it ?

[MrLumie]

Guess it's time for my first impression review.

This game gets me. As a software developer, I sit all day in front of a monitor (actually 2) and spend my time trying to design and build systems that on top of getting the job done are also intuitive, reasonably optimized, easy to expand, and are pleasing to look at in general. Then I get home and do the exact same thing in Factorio. What does that even say about me?

And the best (or worst) part is that I continuously find myself 'playing the game' even when I'm not. Like I'M sitting on the bus, or working, and I can't help but think about how to design certain elements of my factory. Oftentimes I sit down to play with an already fully mapped out design plan in my head (which inevitably fails the second I actually try to build it). So far I have 28 hours put into the game on Steam, but with all the 'off-line' planning and whatnot I've probably dedicated 2-3 times as much time for this game already.

Now what I don't like about the game is that it's oftentimes a bit limited in certain ways. I understand that most of these 'limitations' are there to make a game somewhat more challenging and force to player to come up with clever solutions, but sometimes it still feels bad. Like, I've had this idea in my head for a while about being able to switch the in and out preferences of a splitter with a push of a button once I research circuit networks, effectively diverting the flow of resources to either cycle through or get collected in chests. Then I did research circuit networks and realized that you can't wire splitters up, at all. Of course there are alternate solutions, but none of them are so compact and neat as a simple 'flow-switch' could be. I feel like switching flow directions in splitters is really something that should be available in the game, even though I can see that it's a bit troublesome to figure out a way to allow programming such a highly configurable item as a splitter.

Still, this game is amazing, and it's taking more of my free (and non-free) time than it should be. But I guess that's on me.

[Ambaire]

even though I can see that it's a bit troublesome to figure out a way to allow programming such a highly configurable item as a splitter.

Seems simple with a bit of thought. A splitter could accept 5 inputs, 1, 2, A, B, (item type). 1/2 would be left/right input priority, A/B would be left/right output priority, (item type) would be the filtered item for the output priority.

[MasterW3]

my first impressoins.. they grew as i progressed thru the game.
it needs this.. oh it has that.. i need to be able to do this and that,, found a way to make it work.
the game pretty much kept up with what i needed.. needed a better description of purple red, blue etc. chests

a fantastic game that has much more than you will need... and with mods, even more indeed.
just needs a way to paint belts and stuff..
i want this are to be red... SPLAT!
i need this area to be blue.. SPLAT!!
a coloring mechanic for items.. a trim that can be painted..

lost within my little world, fighting bigger and badder nasties...
what do they eat?
where is the widlife?
did they eat it all?
do they eat eachother?
i'm starving .. fish? really? that's all i can eat?
i need a steak...

great game, nothing more to say.