First time playing this game, on the Steam Deck! Died on tutorial 3. Optimization tips for controls?

[npatel1127]

So I just started playing this game, i'm loving the gameplay but I am SO SLOW. I don't know if its just that I have not figured out the controls yet or if there is some tweaking i can/should do.

I tried the officlal controls as well as some controls i found on reddit that are more so to emulate a mouse/keyboard (Zirbs controls). I actually like the latter ones more but i still feel so slow.

I died on tutorial 3 because of how slowly I was playing so I need some advice I think to be more efficient.

[Tertius]

May be it's not a matter of the steam deck and controller usage, but the requirement on splitting your actions between building and defending and properly use your weapon with the limited ammo.

Personally, I didn't worry too much and stopped playing the tutorial at this point and just started the main game, the freeplay scenario. And being too disrupted by biters even there, I stopped playing the first map and created a fresh one, this time turning off enemies in the map settings. This way I was able to just concentrate on the building aspect of Factorio, and I reached the goal to launch a rocket.
Many players play with enemies off according to quite some comments in the forum, so don't be afraid to do this as well.

Then, in my next playthrough, I kept enemies enabled and added research to military technology to be able to defend, and I was successful with that.

Even today, after more than 3 years of playing, with 3800+ hours according to Steam, I never finished tutorial 3.
(I guess I can manage it with all the knowledge I have today, but I just don't feel like it)

[Panzerknacker]

I started playing the game with mouse/keyboard controls and I had an absolute blast playing those 5 tutorial missions. I can highly recommend playing them first before trying a Freeplay scenario. Also, contrary to what Tertius suggest, I always play with biters enabled (which the game defaults to) because it must be default for a reason. It is not a problem at all dieing, that's simply part of the game. You learned something and get up again or load, and go at it again. You can even restart a mission sometimes with the new knowledge and you will see that you do way better with what you learned the last time.

Nowadays I play the game always on the Steam Deck, usually hooked up to an external monitor and keyboard/mouse. Sometimes I play it on the go, with the built-in controls, but only to do some experimenting with setups and stuff like that. For serious playing, like when I want to be at my best, it just does not work for me with the gamepad. Especially combat is difficult, stuff like turret creeping I find totally impossible. The game was made for mouse/keyboard and the gamepad controls came after, unless proven wrong I can't really believe it's possible to play on the same level with the gamepad.

I use the default controls because I never bothered to spend time improving them. I think that's the job of Wube and imo they could have done a better one there, especially since they have the game also available for the Nintendo Switch which is even more limited regarding the amount of buttons it has.