On the fence about purchase.

[Apollysis]

I was all for getting this game until I played the demo. The problem is not the gameplay, my problem is I ran out of coal. Guess I was having too much playing. My question is are there any renewable resources? In these kinds of games I always love being self sustaining and I am afraid that in Factorio I will build an awesome facility only to run out of resources and have to go out and find more constantly.

[eddyvegas]

In the sandbox game, the starting parameters are extremely flexible. Set your starting resources to Large and Plentiful, and you'll be set for a good long while.

[undeadnightorc]

As far as I know there is no resource that is infinite. Iron, copper and coal eventually run dry and you have to go elsewhere to find new sources. Oil doesn't totally disappear, it just starts to trickle to almost nothing.

Later on as you climb up the tech tree you will be able to create solid fuel out of oil. You can also tech to electric ovens that require no coal at all. Also, the map is infinite in size (like in Minecraft) so there will eventually be coal elsewhere and thus some players get trains to haul distant ores to their base (or establish new bases at a new site).

As eddyvegas mentioned, you could change the game settings to give you massive resources but in time they too will run out. Having a self sustaining base that you can leave running for hours on end is very unlikely, unfortunately.

[Garm]

There is renewable energy (solar panels) as well as renewable "coal" for burning purposes (oil byproducts)

Rocks, iron, copper, and coal for crafting purposes is not renewable, You can however set up world generation in such a way that nearby resources would last you a very long time.

[Apollysis]

Thanks for all the advice. It is much appreciated.

[GewaltSam]

While you will run out of resources eventually, it can take a long time. I play around with freeplay options right now, and if you set the resource richness to high or very high, you can let your factory run for hours without it shutting down. Even if that happens, you should be fine; as long as there are no nests attacking constantly, the factory simply shuts down until you feed your belts with new stuff to burn in your ovens (that looks awesome by the way - seeing a huge offline factory come back to life again ).
If you plan it right, you can be set for a veeeery long time. Just get new mines in advance, and build a good train system that brings those resources back to your main base.

If you are one of those "builders" in other RTS games who builds a huge base just to run out of stuff at the end, then trust me: that was not factory. Fighting against spare resources should be the least of your problems, even if you need to go build some new mines from time to time. Not that big of a deal though; in my last playthrough i cranked the resources up to very high, and I have to say, i got a bit bored. I nearly started anew after a few hours just to create a map with smaller nodes.

Go buy it! You won't regret it

[Apollysis]

Thanks for all the advice. I went ahead and bought the game. Loving it so far though coal seems to be pretty rare.

[Aarkreinsil]

If you don't mind installing a few mods, there's a nice treefarm mod with which you can automate wood and charcoal production

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=44&t=522

It might not be super efficient, but it's definately renewable.

[Ric]

Coal is not nearly as important or required in the same abundancy as copper/iron.

Once you advance a little you can make solid fuel out of Oil which is way more efficient than coal. I now use a mix of this & a small amount of coal to heat my burners which are the only thing that need to burn fuel into the mid game & beyond.