0.17 Campaign Observations and Commentary (Handcrafting, Cliffs, and a sidenote on difficulty)
Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 4:13 pm
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.
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.