Gallery: http://imgur.com/a/msejo (main base), http://imgur.com/a/Le0kX (outpost and blueprints), http://imgur.com/JnZLfkz (oil outpost) [(how) can you add images to an existing album in imgur?]
Main mods: RSO, ScienceCostTweaker, FARL, Foreman
Design ideas:
- 4 tile wide concrete roads through the base with brick lining, separating the factory into "districts" with separate functions
- The factory was in the corner of a landmass, with numerous lakes, so I tried to build "with" the terrain, looping the belts around the central lake as a main bus
- Iron, copper, steel and green circuits go by belt, all else (except local) by bot
- "Planned organic growth", ie add stuff as needed, keep a general design, but in general no re-ordering
- No solar power. I wanted pollution to see if I could get biters to become serious. I couldn't (see below)
Mistakes/Challenges:
- Train network is a mess, the central station is too small and the central roundabout is a stupid choke point.
- Never enough power
Post-mortem:
- First of all, this game is really fun. Planning and optimizing the factory is a nice puzzle, and the interface is remarkably intuitive and powerful. Interestingly enough, the game really reminds me of the classic "settlers II", where you also had manufacturing chains, connected by road rather than belt, and the trick was to set everything up so logistic chains did not cross as haulers were pretty stupid (just like belts
). - My first serious game was vanilla. This game, I used (and really liked) RSO for forcing me into outposts, and FARL to make that less painful. I also like the science cost tweaker, I feel the vanilla game is much too fast, and I like the dedicated components for the blue science, making that a real challenge.
- I had lots of fun with blueprints. Making new outposts becomes quite easy: FARL to the location, build roboport + chest and unload base material from the train, plunk down a perimiter of walls, put down the station with blueprints for each side, put down a 4-4 combinator blueprint, put down 4 lines of mining modules and connecting the mining lines to the combinator to the station. Still, after making a couple of outposts this way it does become sort of boring, mainly because there is no real danger.
- Inventory Management is kind of boring (although trash slots help a lot!). Some technology to increase inventory size would be much appreciated, maybe an armor module?
- The combat is not the most fun part of the game. Tanks are fun in the mid game, but in the end game I feel that the only way to beat the biters is to use laser turrets, which are completely OP. My tactic for clearing bases was to bring big poles to a screen away from the enemy base, plunk down a substation + lasers + walls ("attack blueprint"), lure the enemies into the trap, make a first run to poison the worms and lure more biters, and then move in myself, shotgunning everything that is alive and relying on 2 portable fusion + 4 shields + 2 exoskeleton + 4 personal lasers and some bots to keep me alive while I kill the base. It is a shame that you get access to the laser turret pretty early, and that you don't need anything else to defend your base until the end. More military progression would be a very nice addition.
- Related, the end game is anticlimactic. By that time I have a functioning base, so it was a matter of building some more assembly lines and waiting for 10-20 minutes to produce enough of everything. A massive biter attack would at least add some suspense, although I expect that they would all just be lasergunned anyway.
I will probably take a factorio-break, maybe until the next version, and then try out some of the mods that enhance that combat / make the end game more difficult. I was thinking of natural evolution and the warfare mod, any other suggestions?