Improving replayability

[Val]

<tl;dr> No matter how randomly generated a map is, it doesn't have enough influence on the gameplay, making the playing of each map too similar </tl;dr>

When I first started playing Factorio, I was amazed, and spent many hours building my first factories. However, after starting a third game, a horrible thought occurred to me: I started losing interest in it. Far from being a critique of the game (I still think it's an amazing game, and I didn't regret buying it), I intend this post to show some issues which might be useful in improving replayability.

What happens if I start a new game as not a complete beginner? Independent of how the map is generated and where the resources are,
- I first make a starter base, with the resources available nearby. It is guaranteed that at least a little bit of every resource is around the starting location, and this is a good thing, as it would not add much to the gameplay if I have to spend a lot of time running around at the very beginning.
- This starter base is enough to make building materials and the first very basic research topics
- After this, if the location of the starter base is not the most optimal, I search for a large, unobstructed area, preferably having oil and some water nearby, the main point is that it should be a large land area.
- To this large area I import iron and copper plates via train from the largest mineral deposits I can find.
- After that, I build almost the exact same factory I built on my last playthrough, with at most very minor optimizations.

I think you can see the problem. No matter how the resources are placed, the properties of the map have almost no influence upon the actual gameplay, besides which directions do I build my rail tracks and at which choke points do I build my turrets. This makes every game look exactly the same.

Another big problem is, that almost everything I produce directly contributes to either research or the end goal of the game. And everything is produced from the very limited variability of raw materials. Even with mods which add more types of ores, it's still the same: The same factory, using the same resources, is building the same things, in every game.

I would like to point out how this problem is solved in the following two games:

Transport Tycoon. A game which is cited as one of the influences in creating the railway system. There are various industries, and not every industry is required to make progress in the game. The spacing and placement of towns and industries in a randomly generated map leads to different choices and different transportation networks in every game.

The City Building Series. For those who are unfamiliar with this series, it was a series of late 90's /early 00's games such as Caesar 3, Pharaoh, Zeus and Emperor (citing the most influential games in the series, all using the same engine). These games can be compared with Factorio, because they focused on the extraction and refinement of resources via production chains, but as they were set in pre-industrial times, the resources were transported by workers on carts, instead of on conveyor belts. The end goal of these games is usually either to build a city being able to support a certain population size, or to stockpile a certain number of resources.
However, not every raw material type is present on every map, and not every building is enabled. This means that you can produce some types of wares, and you have to import the raw materials (or even the end products) of other types of wares. Different trade partners also import and export different types of goods. This means different production chains have to be planned for every game. Imagine if this wasn't the case: each of your games would be played exactly the same, only the raw material extraction sites would differ for different maps, the rest of your city will be exactly the same in every game. This would make the game boring very soon.

These games have a huge replay value even today, despite most of them being over 15 years old.


Solution proposals for Factorio

1. There could be a larger variety in the producible goods, some products but especially research packs could have multiple paths leading to them (just like the "food" items in medieval city-building games can be made from different paths, agriculture, livestock, etc.)

2. There could be different end goals, or at least end goals with different, randomly generated raw material requirements.

3. There could be more types of raw materials, and some of them randomly absent from the map. The only way to acquire them would be to trade for them. Either human settlements, or aliens different from the biters/worms (which would remain an aggressive fauna) could have bases on the map, far enough from your starting location, which would provide trade. I mean something completely different from the merchant building. The base should occupy a fairly large area, you should not be able to build anything inside that area, but at the edge of the area there could be a trading station so you can build a train station and inserters. Each such base should have a very limited number of resource types which it would sell and buy, and the resources it buys should be different from the very basic items now producible in Factorio. Instead, there should be different types of "consumer goods", each type requiring vastly different production chains. This means, that depending on what resource types are mineable on the map, and what types of consumer goods the different bases/settlements are trading for, our factories would greatly differ in every game. The basic resources needed to go through the early game should be available, but after that, not everything should be producible on every map. Even without trade, we could make this idea to work: Either different game-winner items would be randomly generated as a goal, or some high-end building materials required for the end-game items could have different methods to produce them, each requiring different production chains, not all of them available on every map (or available only at very large distances from the starting location - so a choice has to be made).

4. With trade stations, a rough economy could be simulated in later versions, depending on supply and demand. The availability of a trade should not completely diminish to zero (just like how the oil wells are implemented) but a trading post should also not provide an unlimited amount of trades/day. Later in the game you should explore to find more trading partners.

5. The only item currently not acquirable through mining and production is the alien artifact. As an in-between before fully implementing something like #3 or #4, there could be a possibility to trade for alien artifacts instead of looting them. This could satisfy players who want to play in a pacifist way, but the main focus is not on the introduction of trade itself, but on the variety of the tradeable items: different trade goods should require vastly different production chains and raw materials, some of them maybe randomly missing from the map (either the raw materials, or the buyers for these items), so that in every game you will be required to build a different factory.

[UberWaffe]

I'll leave this proposal here.

Proposal: Bring Human Settlers into the Mix
New final objective: Reach a local colonist population, of a certain level of technology and industrial capacity. (Refer to the Homeworld Mod for an idea of what I mean: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 97&t=13730)

Gameplay Mechanics:
Mid-way through the game, the rocket launch silo should already become available, but should not mean the end of the game. Instead, it causes the first of the human settler dropships to arrive, establishing an initial colony near the area from which the rocket was launched.
These colonies would act very similar to biter nests, in that they attempt to expand, and you have no direct control over them.
Instead, colonies demand certain goods and consumables in order to grow. Once a colony reaches a certain industrial and population capacity, they will attempt to expand to new territory.

Replayability:
Since you have no direct control over the colonists, the way in which they expand, or what they demand, or what they aim to do, or just how they go about doing it, all of that can be more randomized between games, 'forcing' differences in playstyles.
Or you could even make the colonists go through several goal changes. Now they are aggressive expansionists, now they want to secure large farming industry, now they want to run around and hug angry aliens, etc.

Possible changes to gameplay:
Higher tier science-packs recipes could require items only produced by civilian industry.
Higher tier recipes could require components only produced by civilian industry.

[Val]

While the Homeworld Mod could indeed improve replayability, it is still a very late-game thing. The first dozen hours or more would play out completely the same. Maybe with mixing it with different ore types, some of which completely absent at world-generation, we could shift the differentiation to an earlier point in the game...

[orzelek]

Any of big conversion mods - bob's, DyTech or 5dim will give you another replay with different conditions - especially for late game.

[Val]

Any of big conversion mods - bob's, DyTech or 5dim will give you another replay with different conditions - especially for late game.

True, but the differentiation is between installing the mod or not installing it, and not within two games played using the same mod.

[imajor]

Very good thread, I completely agree. I like your proposals, but I'm afraid they would change too much things, and I'm not sure if the devs are willing to go that far. What I was thinking about is if the speed of the assembly units would depend on the type of terrain, or somehow the location on the map. This wouldn't really change the way you play the game on different runs, but at least you could not reuse the same optimized blocks on every run, and it wouldn't be a big thing to implement.

Transport tycoon (and its clones) was also a big favorite of mine. I think the big difference between TT and factorio is that in TT the industries which are processing the goods are locked at fix positions (however you could build your own industries, I always treated that like a cheat), so you end up with a complex rail network transporting all different kind of stuffs around, and that rail network was different for each map (since industries were at random positions). In factorio, this is unfortunately not the case, since independently from the random map, you can process ANY resources anywhere. So I usually end up having a huge factory processing everything, and outposts where I mine resources which the main factory run out of. So the rail network is pretty simple, it only transforms raw resources from outposts to the main base. In the latest game I decided to create a different outpost for producing different things, like I will create one outpost, where only green electronic circuit will be produced, and that won't be produced anywhere else. So the train network will be responsible to transport green electronic circuit, and I plan to do this with other material in this game. So I hope to end up with a train network similar to TT, where different railway stations are responsible for the production of different materials. I think this is going to be a fun game, but it would be great if the vanilla game would itself force me to play this way, instead of coming up with my own rules.

[oLaudix]

it would be great if the vanilla game would itself force me to play this way, instead of coming up with my own rules.

It wouldnt. I would hate if I was forced to play like that. I prefer to put everything in one place and build 1 big factory. The difference is in your idea of a game I don't have a choice, but with the game it is now we both can play as we want. You guys want the game to be changed to your liking without consideration of other parties ...

In the end itll still be as devs want it, but reading such inconsiderate posts is annoying.

[imajor]

Relax, these are just some ideas. I doubt that the devs would implement any of these as it is, so it is pointless to be annoyed.

Related thing is that (as many others said) currently the trains are a bit unnecessary in the game. Having small factories producing different materials at high distances would put another need for trains.

[oLaudix]

Related thing is that (as many others said) currently the trains are a bit unnecessary in the game. Having small factories producing different materials at high distances would put another need for trains.

Or just build bigger? I didn't see how trains are pointless if I wanted to make 1 RD per 10 minutes. If you could do that without trains then "teach me senpai". On the other hand if you think trains are pointless then you didnt even played the game, yet you ask for replayability. As for your "many others said", you guys slap factories that produces 1k green circuits per minute, send 1 rocket to space and think you are done. How about sending a 100. How about sending 100 as fast as possible next game. Then a 1000. Every new game i play i build bigger so i need to rearrange and think on layouts. I spend hours on sole gathering every patch of resource i can see to build 300 AM3s or 200 electric funaces or 15k solar panels. Thats where the game replayability lays.

[imajor]

OK, so here we are again, setting your own goals. That cannot be the answer to everything. I bet you don't even need any new ending? You just set up your own goals all the time? I'm not really talking about me and you. I'm talking about the game in general. You cannot expect all the players to set up their own goals. The whole train system is now available, and it is an amazing aspect of the game. I think it is a realistic expectation, that at some point in the game, you should be building lots of trains, WITHOUT setting up your own goals.

[oLaudix]

OK, so here we are again, setting your own goals. That cannot be the answer to everything. I bet you don't even need any new ending? You just set up your own goals all the time? I'm not really talking about me and you. I'm talking about the game in general. You cannot expect all the players to set up their own goals. The whole train system is now available, and it is an amazing aspect of the game. I think it is a realistic expectation, that at some point in the game, you should be building lots of trains, WITHOUT setting up your own goals.

Because this is a type of a game without real ending? If you want endings play scenarios. Its like asking ending from minecraft. The whole point of this type of games is to build, and thats it. You HAVE to set yourself your own goals for it to be enjoyable. The game is not even finished ...

[imajor]

Well, I guess it is everyones personal taste. I played minecraft, and I hated that there wasn't really a goal, you could just build whatever you wanted. I know some others felt the same, but I also know that a hell lot of people loved it, and it was (is) a huge success. But I would be curious what the factorio devs would say to that.

[Val]

Could we please get back to the original topic?

The properties of the map have almost no influence upon the actual gameplay.

We could discuss whether this is an issue or not, and what possible measures could be taken in this regard.

The two solutions I found so far, are

1. Having items only available through trade. In the light of the previous arguments between oLaudix and imajor, there are players who want unhindered building of anything, and they get replay value out of playing the same game again while trying to beat their self-set records. This means that if this method is implemented, it is most sensible to make it optional, or even in form of a mod. A less-invasive option would be to have items not exclusively, but alternatively available through trade, so that trade would remain optional. The prime choice for such an item would be the alien artifact, for an alternative in the direction of a more pacifistic playing style.

2. Allowing a few higher-tier items to be built from a choice between multiple types of intermediate products. These would require very different production chains and a different ratio of raw materials. So, depending on what type of raw material is more abundant, you could have a different choice of what to produce. As this would be an addition to that game and not change basic gameplay (for example, a second choice for a recipe for blue circuits), it will not annoy users who don't want their gaming experience changed, as much as choice #1.

[deepdriller]

I'm not too sure about trading, after all, it doesn't fit with the backstory of being a scout for future colonization.
Things that could affect gameplay far more could be:
-Different alien species. And I don't mean "here's biters, here's spitters", I mean completely different sets of alien creatures which require completely different defense strategies.
-Different planet properties. Maybe on one planet, there's no oxygen, requiring you to build artificial life support and begin terraforming (using satellites?) On the next planet, high pollution might cause heavy storms or bodies of water to extend in all directions (rising sea levels, anyone?) Yet the next planet might have an ateroid problem, and your base gets occasionally nuked.
-Multiple tech trees. Yes, I know, most mods add several new items or buildings, but I'm talking about differences like day and night. Differences like between Humans and Zerg or CESO and Grekim. This includes differences in how buildings are built or how the incentory works.
Look at how Dwarf Fortress enables multiple playstyles. One map might have a river or be rich in iron and marble, on another map it might RAIN BLOOD AND THE DEAD RISE FROM THEIR GRAVES!

[cpy]

I feel RSO mod is good place to start if you want some challenge, but you'll need some mods too because finding copper and iron is easy, if you need to find that gold deposit for that modules you want it's fun to fight and scout new zones to find it and pray it will have enough of it.

[ssilk]

May have also a look to https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 80&t=13022

[imajor]

-Different alien species. And I don't mean "here's biters, here's spitters", I mean completely different sets of alien creatures which require completely different defense strategies.

I'm not sure about that. This game was always about building the factory for me mainly, fighting the aliens is just the reason why you build the factory. So having more alien species wouldn't really improve replayability for me.

[bobucles]

fighting the aliens is just the reason why you build the factory.

It's kind of the other way around. The way the rules are set up, it is more like the aliens fight back as a resistance to your factory growth. Kind of like the fungus and mind worms from SMAC.

[imajor]

fighting the aliens is just the reason why you build the factory.

It's kind of the other way around. The way the rules are set up, it is more like the aliens fight back as a resistance to your factory growth. Kind of like the fungus and mind worms from SMAC.

I'm not talking about the motivations of the aliens, I'm talking about mine I don't think I would play with this game if it was about the fight, with some base building. But a base building game with some fight sounds really good to me.

[JoeSchmoe]

The main issue with re-playability is not the land, its that assemblers, inserters, belts, etc all work the same way. Once you figure out how to maximize them the first time, there isn't much else to learn and discover.

Transport tycoon is really about the trains, and once you learn how to build stations and junctions, the games are the same, it's just moving different products to different locations. Same with factorio. Same with any game when it really comes down to it. Its just how long have you played until you reach that point.