0.17 Campaign Observations and Commentary (Handcrafting, Cliffs, and a sidenote on difficulty)

[The Phoenixian]

After playing the new campaign I thought I'd give some observations. Mostly things I haven't seen others mention already.

Lazy Bastard-Lite:

This thing right here is the main reason I'm writing this topic. The crafting-in-inventory technology and everything that comes before it.

I may be a veteran, but I wouldn't call myself a super great Factorio player. I often focus on building up my science facility... and forget about setting up machines to build the machines I use to build my factory. Lacking the ability to craft intermediate parts by hand and being physically forced to build assemblers? Was very good for breaking bad habits. To the point where I'm honestly sad it ended as early as it did.

I would love to see more of this. And I'd honestly love to see it go further if possible (No handcrafting of tier one machines may be impossible for logistical reasons, but straight up not being able to hand-craft red belts, fast inserters, or assembling machine 2s for instance.) Be it in the campaign or even in freeplay, if such a thing could be finagled into existence.

Cliffs:

It bears mentioning that the cliffs in the campaign are beautiful, in a way that they kind of aren't in the procedurally generated freeplay. Part of it is just hand-crafting and intentional to the design, but I think it's worth specifically noting the way the late-map base's southern cliffs are tied to the changes in biome.

I like cliffs in general, but I think having cliffs break up terrain features, rather than passing through them, really makes them work a lot better, visually.

Difficulty:

I wasn't quite blind going into the campaign, as I had FFF#284 open while I played it alongside it, but I didn't have too much trouble with it. Mostly used local cliffs and chokepoints as improvised walls. I died once when I forgot to refill some of my turrets right at the end (yes, by hand, like a chump. Like I said: Veteran, not Expert.) but I never felt super pressured to build more ammo beyond what the objectives menu itself asked of me, having had two machines running off about half my iron smelting capacity. Ended up with about 4.5k kills at the end after about four hours or so of gametime.

[abregado]

Lacking the ability to craft intermediate parts by hand and being physically forced to build assemblers? Was very good for breaking bad habits. To the point where I'm honestly sad it ended as early as it did.

Actually, the version just before 0.17 release had no hand crafting the entire time, but we were concerned that new players would expect it to be like that in Freeplay.

I do cringe every time i see a tester reach the second area and queue up a lab. "Why is this taking so long?" they ask, and then they realize that they have queued all the intermediates. Strangely, people just accept this as the new norm and dont get that they can automate small stockpiles of intermediated. *cries*

Humans are not made for an easy life

[The Phoenixian]

Actually, the version just before 0.17 release had no hand crafting the entire time, but we were concerned that new players would expect it to be like that in Freeplay.

I do cringe every time i see a tester reach the second area and queue up a lab. "Why is this taking so long?" they ask, and then they realize that they have queued all the intermediates. Strangely, people just accept this as the new norm and dont get that they can automate small stockpiles of intermediated. *cries*

Humans are not made for an easy life

Well, if you decide to just resolve that dilemma by putting it in freeplay, you have my support.

Seriously, I'm honestly considering the merits of modding it in for my own personal use and just putting five or so of the key tier 2 handcrafting recipes --- and a couple intermediate items if I can figure out how to make it work --- behind one or two techs. Despite having no capacity to code.

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Also, since you guys wanted campaign screenshots, I found the folder for them: Though I might mention that scripts-output being behind Appdata is not obvious, given the number of Factorio folders that exist (though I do have more than most, as a pre-Steam player.) Would it be possible to have the request for the screenshots at the end of the campaign write out the filepath?

Figured I'd share them here since it provides a prop to better contextualize my own experiences RE: Difficulty.

It turns out that cliffs are an fairly strong defensive measure, particularly when used to extend the path of a biter attack as much as possible. Which ties in well with the fact that the aliens will prioritize attacking military structures over production and logistics structures.

demo_17_1_16542_a.jpg (3.19 MiB) Viewed 1935 times

demo_17_1_16542_b.jpg (2.84 MiB) Viewed 1935 times

demo_17_1_16542_c.jpg (2.87 MiB) Viewed 1935 times

Also one of my own, since it turns out I built outside the space you were expecting me to use.

0.17 NPE western guns.png (2.16 MiB) Viewed 1935 times

[abregado]

moving this to outdated as we just pushed a new version.