[0.17.1] intro too hard

[Titler]

I just completed the tutorial 0.17.11 and i find that it is too hard or more to say that its overwhelming. Attached is the screeenshot. At around 70% completion the biter attacks are too much for the production/consumption of iron and from that point you can only stall while your backlog of ammo is used up. In the attached screenshot my ammo belt for the right hand side was half filled on half the belt coming into that 70% mark. The left hand side of turrets production could not keep up.

I survived because i stalled the walls destruction with repair packs for the final 10-15% of the science.

This may seem like good balance however i feel like a new player may get "stuck" creating all their iron into ammo and being unable to make science while not producing enough ammo to survive the ever-increasing biters.

This is very good for a scenario type map however I find it unfitting for a tutorial as it doesn't showcase the biters as in the regular open world game.

The parts that i feel are missing for a full tutorial are as follows:
- Biter evolution & resistances
- Better/different weapons to beat resistances
- Oil/fluids production and cracking
- Train stops and signals

Whether you make a single long tutorial with stages like this one or an advanced tutorial as a sequel is up to you.
The oil and trains i find are a large difficulty spike in the game play and should be covered in a tutorial. Personally learning it stalled my progression for the longest out of the whole game comparatively.

The tutorial needs more focus on that increasing production increases pollution which increases attacks. A science per second production goal would be nicer. Advise the player to increase science production per second as its too slow then say that due to increased production the pollution has made more biters attack requiring more defenses. A few medium biters added in would be best.

[dee-]

I know I am "this guy" but you made some grave mistakes in your base that will surely overwhelm the base and yourself as a player.

For example there is too many hand-feeding going on (iron smelting, copper smelting), which binds your time by picking up stuff, running around, the whole production stalls if you are not manually tending it and it does not scale on higher demands. You also lose the overview about what is going on and where, which is even more important if you haven't automated your base.

Also the belt to the right side of turrets is too long so ammo-replenishment will crawl too slow in case of sudden need. Add buffers chests for strong peaks.
Left side's defences are really poor.

All in all it looks like a novice's / first-timer base -- which is totally okay! But the tutorial teaches you some stuff, if you care to listen and reflect upon what when wrong, where you struggled and why (examples see above).

If you do it wrong in the tutorial, you will do it wrong later in the game and that will be even more frustrating when it affects your "baby" you spent so many hours with.
Try again, improve!

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"

[mward]

I cannot be absolutely certain, but I suspect that Titler actually made only one "mistake": he is filling a chest with green circuits and filling another chest with walls! There is nothing in the tutorial to indicate that this could possibly be a mistake: and in a real Factorio game it is not a mistake: there is no such thing as "producing too many green circuits" in Factorio!

As we now know, the biter attacks scale so that 80% then 90% then 100% of the factory output is required to produce enough ammo needed to destroy the biters. If a certain percentage of factory output is being used to produce green circuits and walls, then your ammo reserve will run out that much sooner and you will get overrun.

In my first playthough of the tutorial I was hand-feeding turrets non-stop and kept on getting overrun. Then I reloaded, stopped producing green circuits and belt-fed the turrets and finished the tutorial with no trouble. Note that I didn't "waste" any factory production on walls(!)

[Ormy]

I'm a complete noob to factorio (or at least I was 2 weeks ago when I got the game) and played the intro campaign/tutorial first (this was on v0.17.3).

I found it quite easy (in terms of the biters). I got overrun in the second area because I had no idea how many biters to expect. I went back to my last autosave, knowing what to expect I built more turrets (about 8-10 each side) behind a single-layer wall and fully loaded them with ammo before I completed the objective that sends the biters. After that I managed to sail through the end without much problem with the biters at all.

Once I played freeplay for a dozen hours or so and went back to the campaign (for fun) I gave up quickly after getting annoyed with the lack of underground belts.

Here are the screenshots from my initial campaign playthrough (please excuse the spaghetti belts, this was literally my first ever base, however constructive criticism/feedback is welcome).

[abregado]

thanks for all the feedback about this. Ive tweaked all the attacks and added a lot more warning/build up to the big attack. Please try out the new version and let me know if you think it is more reasonable.