Factorio Forums

Has anyone tried this before?

Challenge is to see how little 'play time' it takes to launch a rocket. The catch is that you're allowed to run Factorio in the background for as long as you want.

Different ways of measuring playtime could be used, I suppose, such as number of 'actions' (craft something, put some structure down, etc).

In general though, I guess it's probably best as just something to challenge yourself over and rules aren't really required, make them up as you see fit.

I remember there were some smallest factory challenges, and this I suppose is a bit like that. But simpler.

My cost function is as follows:

1. Time when factorio is in foreground
2. # of items crafted

Only context switch to factorio once per day

I heavily weight 1 but 2 is is something I'm trying to minimize as well. The issue is that 2 and 1 are competing goals. Less hand crafting requires more time to play. Belts and poles are the biggest problem so far. Having a map with patches close together and piping in water is perhaps a better approach.

I originally thought about doing it with just one assembler and flip it as required. But I think that will be pretty fiddly and would require a lot of context switching to factorio versus just laying out the recipes with some master buses is better, with the goal never to make something more than once. Requires a lot of belts though so, auto build that into a chest is reasonable.

It requires some rethinking for sure. Things like buffer chests aren't required, as the only goal is just zero stoppage. I am in peaceful mode, ofc. It might work in enemy mode as the pollution would be very minimal. But biters are very fiddly and seem kind of contrary to the concept of the challenge.

I might try the one assembler approach next. Will need to calculate out all the reqs for everything for launching a rocket, which could be interesting. Might compromise a bit and only do the one assembler for higher level products. Certainly don't want to store 100K copper wire in chests.