Factorio Forums

I’ve started so many games of Factorio that I dropped within a couple hours because the beginning is so frustrating. I just don’t like throwing down burner miners and shepherding coal around for more than about 5 minutes. What are some ways you’ve found to either make it faster or fun-er?

The best way is to mod in early items to shorten or skip the burner phase. Search the mod portal for things like skip, burner, and starting.

As said there are mods to shorten the start. But even playing normally, the burner phase is over a lot earlier than "4 hours". Building a small automated smelter doesn't take that long.

After you build a first primitive science setup for red and green start working on a make everything factory to produce all the items you need. That way you don't have to handcraft anything.
Some temporary assemblers for things like gear wheels and transport belts help a lot too

There are also mods to get you early forms of bots so you don't have to do as much by hand. Nanobots for example

jrjong wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 12:20 pm I’ve started so many games of Factorio that I dropped within a couple hours because the beginning is so frustrating. I just don’t like throwing down burner miners and shepherding coal around for more than about 5 minutes. What are some ways you’ve found to either make it faster or fun-er?

Everything is there to build your factory in that early phase already automated, maybe you'll find more joy when focusing on that aspect and not on getting as fast as possible through that phase.

For me, running back and forth is very annoying, so I pick a map that has iron and coal close together, close to water, and not too far to copper and stone.

Then I set up iron and copper furnaces and let them get to work. I go do something else while I build up nice big stocks of iron and copper plates. When I come back, I have enough materials to build a nice big power station, set up red and green science (well the green science has to wait until I research it now, but the inserters and belts factories are building up stock), and basically get past the burner stage relatively painlessly.

And if you need something to do while you are waiting, here is some fun reading: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6063

I agree the pre-robot phase can get tiring doing dozens of times on a standard map with no special restrictions.

If you want a challenge there, then you have there is no spoon / speed run, lazy bastard, deathworld, etc.

If I just want to build a big factory a different way, I'll often cheat my way to construction bots. Then with a basic production line it is easy to start building the bigger things with copy/paste, blueprints, etc. without the tediousness of placing hundreds of inserters and power poles manually. You can do it in vanilla exactly how you want without mods, although you might find them easier.

If you go to https://wiki.factorio.com/Items and https://wiki.factorio.com/Category:Technology then go to the specific items internal name then in the chat:

I suggest you try out 2 mods; TinyStart and Mining Drones. The first is especially helpful at the very beginning if you have lots of trees and rock and helps out until you research bots for yourself. The 2nd is really useful early game as it deals well with ores that are v close or intermingled and doesn't need power.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/TinyStart
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Mining_Drones

If you don't enjoy the first phase, then my best suggestion would be to use the map editor. What you can do is throw down a couple of steam engines, an offshore pump, a couple labs, and a couple electric miners. You should be able to belt coal from a miner back to the boiler, so you have a bare bones setup going. Then you would do a save as on the menu and save this as a scenario. When you go into single player at the bottom of the list there should now be an option to play your scenario. This would be a simple way to give yourself a starting base that you could reuse over and over again to start new maps with. Because of the way map generation works after you leave the starting area the terrain should generate a bit different each time, so as you expand each map should be slightly different. I don't know exactly how many chunks are loaded at start, so if it doesn't seem like you really get into big changes then you could simply just remake new maps to play each time if you wanted a bit more variety.

A rocket can be launched within 2 hours.

You don't need to use burner miners any longer than 5 minutes if you don't like that play style.

I found rebuilding bootstrap smelters (invitable) the most annoying part of the start. While l never launched <20 hours and i dont like speedrunning myself, speedrunners helped me a lot in learning to plan ahead my (sub-)goals, improving my flow and thereby my enjoyment.
Still, I like to minimize the use of burner miners just enough to build 2 steam engines and be very critical about the placement of my first 2 smelting collumns, so they can be extended and copied to meet mid game smelting demand (its somewhat slower start, but also less cleaning afterward). Once these two plate belts start to back up, i start to relax.

Get chips running, and keep them running (might even buffer them, as you will run low on them, sooner or later. Steel is another thing you can never have enough of. Waiting is a sign of lacking expansion(disratio).
Plan ahead: Its great to have a bunch of (underground) pipes already made by the time you unlock oil processing.
The thing i usually rush for are ore unloading stations, to make a smooth transition when starter ores start failing to keep up with demand.

Whatever play speed you enjoy, you get the most satisfaction if your progress has a continuous flow in it. The game challenges you here, that's intended by the devs. (mentioning steel, processing units and u235 here) Planning ahead is key. Try new things, find ratios. Use provided tools. Experiment and explore, "optimize" your playstyle.

The more i played the more i realized Factorio is less about the most optimized setup, but more about optimizing the process to reach that set up.

The factory must grow.


*1:55 to be exact

Thats strange, personally i find beginning and midgame interesting and endgame boring I ramp up alien evolution, expansion speed and increase size of alien attack groups, start a new map and try to survive, build base while being often attacked by aliens. That challenge is interesting. In the endgame aliens are no threat and base is pretty much working as intended, not much to do just to optimize and build more of the same.

edit:
Like this scene from "starship troopers":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSGzJ05OWgI

Toshis8 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 16, 2020 9:56 am Thats strange, personally i find beginning and midgame interesting and endgame boring I ramp up alien evolution, expansion speed and increase size of alien attack groups, start a new map and try to survive, build base while being often attacked by aliens. That challenge is interesting. In the endgame aliens are no threat and base is pretty much working as intended, not much to do just to optimize and build more of the same.

edit:
Like this scene from "starship troopers":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSGzJ05OWgI

Yeah, I'm the same way, I enjoy early and mid game but get burnt out late game.

I found that I just can't stand singleplayer, so try multiplayer! It's been a lot of fun for me, I've surpassed 1600 hours at this point and i'd wager less than 100 were in singleplayer for me.

There is always that initial time of the game where you have to hand-feed your burners. It might be fun to figure out how to minimize the hand-feeding by crafting just enough iron to craft belts and inserters to take over delivering coal to the other burners. An experienced player can do this in a matter of minutes.

Nanobots mod.

Makes the smelting columns, aka the worst part of Factorio, once you learn about their perfection, a little less painful.
I wish Factorio had a console command like "yeahyeahIknowthecolumnsnow" that gives you a special blueprint that allows you to place an entire column with one click, as long as you have the mats in your inventory, while still allowing noobs to build their Antedeluvian Tentacle horror smelters (which are fun).

Freaking smelting columns man, click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click.
Aughhhhhhhh.

The OP is a spambot, the thread was plagiarized from https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/dhv4ct/

DaveMcW wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2020 2:35 pm The OP is a spambot, the thread was plagiarized from https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/dhv4ct/

Not so sure, OP also posted something legit on another thread, and has not exhibited other spambot attributes (yet).

Koub wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2020 3:37 pm Not so sure, OP also posted something legit on another thread, and has not exhibited other spambot attributes (yet).

He made a spam edit of the original post text, I just reverted it and banned him. The topic itself has value regardless imo, since so many have posted here.