Factorio Forums

Hello,
after playing through the missions(easy), I thought I would give you a feedback on my thoughts about it. It contains some spoilers so if you haven't already played through you might want to play first and then read later
Tutorial:
I think this is very well done, you get a step by step explanation of the basic concepts without (in my case) leaving any questions about the topics covered.

Mission 1(Research):
The first mission introduces you to research and (on easy) you can concentrate on building up your lab and learn about the different science packs. I think the length of the mission felt right and you learned a lot about handling of transport belts (for dffferent resources and so on) so this Mission was realy good.

Mission 2(Trains)
The first par of the mission was to research Train Networks (I think thats what its called ) This expands the things learned before so this was fun to do.
As soon as you have completed the research you are tasked to collect a bunch of supplies for which you need to set up the train network. I would have prefered a little more help here. If I wouldn't have seen some videos about the trains I'm not sure if I would have managed to build the network. Things like trains can't drive backwards automatically and the usage of signals are not that self explaining I think, espacially if you haven't played a game like transport tycoon or derivatives )
Overall I still liked the mission very much and also the length was good.

Mission 3(Capsules/Fighting)
In this mission "all" you have to do is to destroy the enemy base and recover a computer. This mission was my least favorite. You have enough resources with you, so all you di is build a small base to produce capsules and rockets and march in the base and destroy stuff. Sounds in the first moment like fun, but what I don't like about it: You get no explanation how to use the capsules, my naive aproach was to select them and try to "build" them so left clicking in the world. The next thing which admit is also my mistake is that they where in slot 6. So I tried pressing the "6" button.. I of course have found out now that you have to press shift + 1 but never the less I think the only place to find these information where tips and tricks but I think this would have been more usefull as text in the game.
The other thing I don't like about the mission is, that it is extremly short compared to the rest of the missions. I would have expected, that after you get hold of the computer, the map bounds expand and you have to build a base and I don't know do some stuff with the computer...
So in short: Fighting nice, rest not so much...

Mission 4(Science Packs 3/AlienSciencePacks)
This mission was back to the roots, you have to build a base defend it and research a technology to continue. I can make it short this was very nice length was good and well nothing "unexpected" you couldn't handle with the knowledge of the missions before that.

Things I missed:
-Pollution: The aspect of pollution is as far as I understand very important for the size and strenght of enemy attacks. But no where in the Missions you are informed about this. All you can see is a tooltip over the factories or so..
-Logistics networks: No mentioning at all, also this is very interesting and stuff and I think could be very interesting for a mission.
-Circuit network: Same as above
-Robotic network: Well this is new so I guess there wasn't time to add this, but never the less would be very interesting

Overall the Missions made a lot of fun and I hope you will add more in the future!
I hope this feedback helps you making this game even better then it already is!

If you want to see how I play it you can see it here (German). (Not all parts are yet online. Some of the problems I described are not in the video esp Mission 3, because of stupid deaths and therefore I had to record from the beginning and so my knowledge was higher )

Joda

Hello,
thank you for the feedback, it is VERY valuable, mainly because it is very hard for us to see what is understandable and what is not when we spent thousands of hours with Factorio in mind already

We are aware, that the later concepts need better explanation, and we will try to think about the objections you posted (I put link to this topic into our internal issued called "The main campaign"

We are also planning to make missions concentrated on the "Things you missed", as we believe, that the player should be thought most of the stuff in those missions.
One of the problems I have is, how to avoid the player being frustrated from the need to start all over again with the factory, I'm not saying it is impossible to achieve, but it is hard level design goal.

Unfortunately, we will not find the time to work on it for the 0.9 as we have already more things we can handle in our todo lists, but I hope we will find time to enhance it soon.

I agree with the first two missions, although basic train-ing is fairly simple once you know how to put fuel in the train. You don't need signals for this mission.

I have actually re-tried the 3rd mission a couple of times, failing, and thinking it was way too hard.. After reading this post, I was thinking "what capsules? Rockets how??" What I didn't realize was, you can interact with and loot the wreckage.. (tbh, I didn't even see the wreckage in the small colony next to the starting point)

I feel pretty silly now, maybe a flashing light and a big arrow pointing to the wreckage might help

jeroon wrote:I agree with the first two missions, although basic train-ing is fairly simple once you know how to put fuel in the train. You don't need signals for this mission.

I have actually re-tried the 3rd mission a couple of times, failing, and thinking it was way too hard.. After reading this post, I was thinking "what capsules? Rockets how??" What I didn't realize was, you can interact with and loot the wreckage.. (tbh, I didn't even see the wreckage in the small colony next to the starting point)

I feel pretty silly now, maybe a flashing light and a big arrow pointing to the wreckage might help

Haha, that is important feedback as well )

lordjoda wrote:I would have expected, that after you get hold of the computer, the map bounds expand and you have to build a base and I don't know do some stuff with the computer...

I realy like idea of expandable mission map area (like in Supreme Commander).
I think this could help a lot in making interesting scenarios and probably fix next problem:

kovarex wrote:One of the problems I have is, how to avoid the player being frustrated from the need to start all over again with the factory, I'm not saying it is impossible to achieve, but it is hard level design goal.