General Impression

[colonyan]

I haven't still finished the game(yet) but from reading technology list, forum, technology cost and material cost and few game basics, I felt that
game's goal isn't very engaging.

-Game or Simulation?-
I don't know how this game want to be for developer but I felt that current game (2015JAN) gives too much choice such as resource quantity and distribution,
as well as enemy difficulty and other settings at the beginning of the game. It feels more of an simulation than game. (Is it what they are aiming for?)
I think game should provide much limited game setting. This is why. As of creator of game, they must know their game better than anyone else.

-End game goal (Factorio could use more robust and engaging official end game goal)-
Not all people can set their own goal. It is easy to say that goal can be set, but! as of spending some good amount of time, it has to be motivating for people.
So final goal presented by the game has very important meaning.
If we look at current goal, it is some resource automation, gathering and colony squashing. No serious expansion is required as resource is
abundant (res. quantity per single tile) and even can be preset at the game setting!

1 - No real reason to expand. (Other than people who grabs this title with specific mind to start with)
1a-high resource density(in other word, quick mining rate)
1b-uniform resource distribution (basic 6 are everywhere)

2 - Aliens aren't real threat.
2a-No coordination among alien. They work per colony and per distance vs player's presence
2b-As long as pollution do not reach alien colonies, player can leave the game running with most minimum automation possible.
This is by far the biggest concern as of now. Game need to, by its mechanism, must pressure(or give the feel) player to improve the
situation constantly by expanding or increasing production efficiency.
2c-Missile defense and defending mother ship landing is one time event. This can be more used!



My suggestion
(*)1a-Reduce how fast resource can be extracted. Make so that they take MUCH more time to mine than current without adding
faster way to mine. This is to encourage player to expand and look further for more productive places.

1b-Make certain region more abundant in certain resource.

2a-Make alien evolve as player's presence becomes larger. Make them do more organized attack on player's asset. Also give
new toys to DETECT in before hand the attacks. (anyone here knows AI WAR by arcengame?)

2b-Make few different scenarios to the end game. Like...

A-Gravity anomaly is detected through out the space sector of the planet. Player must prepare Gravity Control Center to
guide the mother ship. Which makes aliens very angry through out the process of its preparation and construction...

B-Alien have developed and evolved at an alarming rate and were able to detect the player's goal! The nerve center of alien have
made communication inside out the planet impossible by an unknown mean. Player must look for way to solve this...
Like so. In process, make it so that it take much more than resource accumulation, hitting alien colony and facility building.
In short, make player move around the map more.

2c-2b includes 2c.

* Make so that from any resource patch, it becomes more time consuming to mine as resource are extracted.
First 5% of patch can be extracted as normal. Next 15% of total amount takes 5 times more time to extract per unit of resource.
last 70% of total amount takes 30 times more time consuming and such.

[FishSandwich]

There's a new endgame coming in with 0.12. As for your other concerns, you may be interested in the marathon mod.

[Gregorovitch]

I would comment perhaps you should complete a game to appreciate the extent of the scaling up of production, and therefore resource consumption and throughput, required. I found both the availability of resources and the building of the delivery systems to get them from deposit to smelter to assembly machine to be a significant challenge in my first finished game completed yesterday given you have to do it real time.

In the end resource availability has to be balanced in relation to resource requirements. In the early game iron, copper and coal deposits may seem inexhaustible but needing to make 20,000 red circuits soon dispels that illusion. If you made resources scarcer you would create a huge barrier for beginner players to cross because to cope with that you would already have to be very good at constructing rail networks, loading/unloading systems, efficient buses and so on quickly in real time. As a beginner you are not very good at this, in fact I found constructing my first rail connection to a remote resource deposit was a major learning exercise, and expanding that to a multi-train, multi-deposit network another. If my remote outposts had run out faster than they did, or i was was forced to start building them faster than I was, because of ratcheting back yields I would have found it very difficult to keep up.

As a challenge it seemed to me to be tough but achievable. About right.

[colonyan]

I think my first map was too easy despite everything was on default setting.
Resource patch was large and several around my starting site, no biter colonies around my base.
I estimated resource deposit and if quite suffice as I see much more around.

In short, I think over abundance of resource have put offed my motivation.
Absolutely no response from biters was an disappointment as well.
I will come back later as my interest rise again.

Really, map can be infinitely large and it give no reason to expand? ... I could be much better.
I think controlling players motivation is important too.

Despite that, I really like the game. I have not slept the night I bought to figuring out things to automate basic things.

[Xterminator]

Perhaps you should start a new map, with lower resource settings and high biter settings, that should take care of your issue with no biters and too many resources around you. :p

[colonyan]

I will do that soon...

Edit1: I'm playing around with resource parameter. In deed those are important.
I think everything being uniform throughout the entire map is pretty restrictive on the game play element.
For example, some region could have more rich mineral per patch of resource than other places and such.

[psihius]

Also remember that maps are randomly generated and resources in starting are vary, as do the nearby resources. It's totally possible to get yourself a map, that will make you swet even with normal resources.
Also, it really depends on how long do you wana wait. Because if you really go for it, you need to build big, build a lot and getting resources to where they need to be actually becomes a hude problem. As do the biters, because of humangous polution cloud. And power, actually, too. One of my factories uses in excess of 170MW of power just to keep the lights on, when I have things stockpiled and not producing. When I make an extension and I need a lot of walls, solar panels, accumulators, and all other stuff for a solid heavily shielded big outpost - I get way over 200MW usage. Belive me, keeping that beast fed is not a boring job...
You may think now that an express belt is fast. I think I need at least 5 go get the damn ore into the smelters fast enough and same 5 belts just to satisfy the damn circut production. Not even talking iron, coal and oil products here...

[Gregorovitch]

I think everything being uniform throughout the entire map is pretty restrictive on the game play element.
For example, some region could have more rich mineral per patch of resource than other places and such.

It isn't really uniform. As both myself and psihius have commented, once you get into the huge resource requirements of producing, for example, tens of thousands of green, red and blue circuits the picture changes dramatically. Deposits may exist fairly evenly scattered over the map, but it is the big ones that matter because you need to set 20, 30 mining machines to work on them and with all the effort setting up the trains to transport all that ore you do not want them running dry in five minutes. The big ones are not so common or evenly distributed, nor do you necessarily know where they are if you haven't yet ventured into dangerous territory exploring or have given a lot a radars tike to locate them.

[Gregorovitch]

I think everything being uniform throughout the entire map is pretty restrictive on the game play element.
For example, some region could have more rich mineral per patch of resource than other places and such.

It isn't really uniform. As both myself and psihius have commented, once you get into the huge resource requirements of producing, for example, tens of thousands of green, red and blue circuits the picture changes dramatically. Deposits may exist fairly evenly scattered over the map, but it is the big ones that matter because you need to set 20, 30 mining machines to work on them and with all the effort setting up the trains to transport all that ore you do not want them running dry in five minutes. The big ones are not so common or evenly distributed, nor do you necessarily know where they are if you haven't yet ventured into dangerous territory exploring or have given a lot a radars time to locate them.

[colonyan]

Hmmm. Interesting input. Thank you for sharing that.
Resource distribution is critically important on how it will dictate the play and level of challenge. Game setup is very very important I think.
What about if game's important element (important buildings and components) cost change depending on difficulty setting(If it ever got added)?
I think that could add another flavor.