I'm new I have a few questions =)

[StoneLegion]

I had an insane blast today playing the demo. I actually went ahead and streamed it and in fact made some new friends but also put it onto Youtube. I got a few people from my community into the game one of them even went ahead and bought the game. On top of that I originally posted a couple questions for my Demo Let's Play on Reddit.. This is the first reddit page that did not tell me to google it but also was wonderful to give me tips and hints etc and super friendly.

I now have the full game and play a solid 3 hours of the game on stream. I plan on actually starting a Let's Play Series tomorrow when I wake up including streaming at the sametime. Here is that broadcast btw:
http://www.twitch.tv/stonelegion/b/565773947
Here is the map: http://stonelegion.com/kane/biggg.jpg

So I have a few questions. There is way to many and I'm sure I can search but hell I'm going to do it anyways!

1) I guess this is the most important question so I will ask it first. What mods would you recommend that I have played the game 3 hours already + the Demo. I did basic automation and assembly or would you suggest playing the game for 24+ Hours or even more before adding any mods. Maybe there is some recommended quality of life or just improvements to making the game work better that might not alter the entire game etc. Just tell me what and why and I will love you forever.

2) Is there an end game or game over? Does it force you to quit the game like sort the demo missions when playing Sandbox mode or I guess it's just called New Map. I saw this on Reddit and I cried a little worried that there might be an ending. http://imgur.com/a/4KmUZ

3) What is the performance like with the game? I hear it is multi threaded and works really well. Just wondering what is some the biggest worlds that people have had and time put into a world. Any information tech wise or not just be fun to read about it.

4) http://i.imgur.com/vjiiHq0.jpg Noticed the Map Generator settings. I was a bit confused on Terrain segmentation and starting area size.

5) When planning and working on my Let's Play Series I want to be playing this map for many days, if not weeks... (few hours a day) What Enemy Base settings would I want? I hear you want to setup some higher numbers or it gets boring. I hear you can easily defend yourself but when you scale a lot larger that is when you gotta micro manage your defences better. Could you give me a really good balance and advice what settings do what and how hardcore is it?
I want more of a challenging game down the road but not to challenging where it ruins the fun but also where I don't end up being bored.

6) Besides destroying an Enemy base and getting the Alien Tech is there anything else to find out the world that adds some interesting play? I hear you can find massive size ore nodes. How big can they be?

7) Anyway to fix Mini Map Rendering bugs?
http://i.imgur.com/DUo7muU.png As you can see the Mini map only rendered the 1 conveyor belt and not the rest etc. Seems to be stuck or something.


I'm sure I have more questions but I must sleep my brain is failing. I really would like to run some mods and keep the gameplaying going forever and add some kind of challenge with the AI

Thanks!

[havvy]

I'd suggest adding in the Flooring and DyTech mods, and possibly some of Bob's mods. I'd also keep the DyTech inserters out, and use the More Inserters mod.

There is an end game in freeplay mode, but it's something you have to actively do and doesn't touch the rest of the game, so don't worry about it.

[-root]

1) I guess this is the most important question so I will ask it first. What mods would you recommend that I have played the game 3 hours already + the Demo. I did basic automation and assembly or would you suggest playing the game for 24+ Hours or even more before adding any mods. Maybe there is some recommended quality of life or just improvements to making the game work better that might not alter the entire game etc. Just tell me what and why and I will love you forever.

Finish the game first before adding mods. There are quite a few things you need to know how to do in the vanilla game before you ad mods.

2) Is there an end game or game over? Does it force you to quit the game like sort the demo missions when playing Sandbox mode or I guess it's just called New Map. I saw this on Reddit and I cried a little worried that there might be an ending.

There is an ending of sorts. Its mostly a placeholder at the moment and that is "rocket defense". It does trigger a bit of a biter rush, but its nothing challenging. Most players when they get to that stage just don't trigger the landing and continue to play on.

3) What is the performance like with the game? I hear it is multi threaded and works really well. Just wondering what is some the biggest worlds that people have had and time put into a world. Any information tech wise or not just be fun to read about it.

There are people with 100+hrs in factories. My lets play took about 35 or something. 30 or 40 hrs in the average for a playthrough. Performance is very good for the most part. Generally its only when you get a squillion logistics bots that things can start to lag out.

4) http://i.imgur.com/vjiiHq0.jpg Noticed the Map Generator settings. I was a bit confused on Terrain segmentation and starting area size.

Terrain segmentation is the difference between the different land types (grass, sand, water etc). High segmentation and you get something like a fractal map. Lower segmentation and the maps are more uniform.

Starting size is the amount of room between your spawn location and the closest biter nests.

5) When planning and working on my Let's Play Series I want to be playing this map for many days, if not weeks... (few hours a day) What Enemy Base settings would I want? I hear you want to setup some higher numbers or it gets boring. I hear you can easily defend yourself but when you scale a lot larger that is when you gotta micro manage your defences better. Could you give me a really good balance and advice what settings do what and how hardcore is it?
I want more of a challenging game down the road but not to challenging where it ruins the fun but also where I don't end up being bored.

"Hardmode" is max settings on all three biter sliders and normal starting area.

You can reduce the resource size or density.

To be honest though, you might not be good enough for a hardmode map right now. It'll take you a bit to learn some tricks and things so that you are able to.

6) Besides destroying an Enemy base and getting the Alien Tech is there anything else to find out the world that adds some interesting play? I hear you can find massive size ore nodes. How big can they be?

That depends on your map settings.

Biggest tip though, watch some other people on youtube play the game (preferably people who know what they are doing) and good luck!

[sbroadbent]

I had an insane blast today playing the demo. I actually went ahead and streamed it and in fact made some new friends but also put it onto Youtube. I got a few people from my community into the game one of them even went ahead and bought the game. On top of that I originally posted a couple questions for my Demo Let's Play on Reddit.. This is the first reddit page that did not tell me to google it but also was wonderful to give me tips and hints etc and super friendly.

Be prepared to spend hundreds of hours on the game, not because it takes that long, but because that's how long you'll probably spend playing it before you realize it

1) I guess this is the most important question so I will ask it first. What mods would you recommend that I have played the game 3 hours already + the Demo.

I would recommend spending a lot of time without mods, mainly so that you get a good feel about how the base game plays and where it lacks so that you can make better educated decisions on the various mods and whether you'd really want them or not. I spent probably 150-200 hours or so without mods

With that said, I might Recommend Time Display. It displays two pieces of information. The Time of Day "in game", as well as how long you have been playing the map. It has no impact on game play. In the case of Time of Day you can tell how long it will be before the sun goes down and how long before the sun comes up, which I check whenever I plan to go Biter hunting, because hunting biters is easier during the game. Otherwise it's just interesting to see how long you've been playing without having to check the save file.

2) Is there an end game or game over?

The "End Game" is called Rocket Defense, which is the goal you're theoretically working towards, but there is no time limit as to when you need to, if ever research and build it. You could play 30 hours before getting Rocket Defense, or 300+ hours and never even touch it. I've personally never got to Rocket Defense, mainly because the End Game isn't interesting to me.

3) What is the performance like with the game? I hear it is multi threaded and works really well. Just wondering what is some the biggest worlds that people have had and time put into a world. Any information tech wise or not just be fun to read about it.

Performance is pretty decent with most computers, though there is the periodic Auto-Save which creates a bit of lag briefly. You can change the frequency of the Auto-Save. It defaults to every 2 minutes, but I have it set to every 10 minutes. You may find though that having a more frequent Auto-save is valuable, especially if you decide to go Biter Hunting and forget to save

4) http://i.imgur.com/vjiiHq0.jpg Noticed the Map Generator settings. I was a bit confused on Terrain segmentation and starting area size.

Terrain Segmentation is how much land/water there is. Try a few test maps with various settings. High Terrain Segmentation will create a land of lakes or a bunch of islands, whereas Low Terrain Segmentation would likely do the opposite. Starting Area size is simply how close the Biters are to you. A Big Starting Area gives you space to build before your pollution starts to aggravate the Biters.

5) When planning and working on my Let's Play Series I want to be playing this map for many days, if not weeks... (few hours a day) What Enemy Base settings would I want?

There are two options. To change the Frequency, which increases the number of Biter Spawner clusters, and Biter Spawner Sizes which increases the number of Spawners per cluster. You could keep Frequency on default, while increasing Size.

This is what Max Biter Frequency and Max Biter Size looks like with Starting Area one size larger:



It's going to be a battle just to get some decent space to build. I was fortunate to build in an area that only aggravates the biters in the north. The south has a lot of trees cutting down my pollution levels.

To start, I'd suggest default settings for Biters. See how you do handling small clusters of Biters. You can always start a new map to try other Biter settings. Small Biter settings can get Boring when you're powerful and can rip through Biter Bases without much problem, whereas Large Biter settings can also get Boring because there's limited tactics you can do against such a swarm. There is a middle ground somewhere that keeps things interesting.

6) Besides destroying an Enemy base and getting the Alien Tech is there anything else to find out the world that adds some interesting play? I hear you can find massive size ore nodes. How big can they be?

There is nothing yet beyond Alien Artifacts from Enemy Bases. Ore deposits mostly depend upon the Resource settings when you generated the map. There is a mod that does overhaul the spawning of resources that increases them the further you go from your starting area.

[OBAMA MCLAMA]

1) I guess this is the most important question so I will ask it first. What mods would you recommend that I have played the game 3 hours already + the Demo. I did basic automation and assembly or would you suggest playing the game for 24+ Hours or even more before adding any mods. Maybe there is some recommended quality of life or just improvements to making the game work better that might not alter the entire game etc. Just tell me what and why and I will love you forever.

There is only one mod i would recommend before you play like.. 20 hours, Faster spilling by Rseding91. This mod is obsolete if you are using a factorio version past 0.10.9 though.

2) Is there an end game or game over? Does it force you to quit the game like sort the demo missions when playing Sandbox mode or I guess it's just called New Map. I saw this on Reddit and I cried a little worried that there might be an ending. http://imgur.com/a/4KmUZ

Don't build the rocket defense if you want to continue.

3) What is the performance like with the game? I hear it is multi threaded and works really well. Just wondering what is some the biggest worlds that people have had and time put into a world. Any information tech wise or not just be fun to read about it.

Pretty good.

4) http://i.imgur.com/vjiiHq0.jpg Noticed the Map Generator settings. I was a bit confused on Terrain segmentation and starting area size

.
As others said.

5) When planning and working on my Let's Play Series I want to be playing this map for many days, if not weeks... (few hours a day) What Enemy Base settings would I want? I hear you want to setup some higher numbers or it gets boring. I hear you can easily defend yourself but when you scale a lot larger that is when you gotta micro manage your defences better. Could you give me a really good balance and advice what settings do what and how hardcore is it?
I want more of a challenging game down the road but not to challenging where it ruins the fun but also where I don't end up being bored.

Challenging is increasing the biters settings. People say (and i agree) that normal resource settings are too easy. May want to lower the frequency to force yourself to explore and get farther resources.

6) Besides destroying an Enemy base and getting the Alien Tech is there anything else to find out the world that adds some interesting play? I hear you can find massive size ore nodes. How big can they be?

Currently, not really. But the further out you go the more resources in the veins.

7) Anyway to fix Mini Map Rendering bugs?
http://i.imgur.com/DUo7muU.png As you can see the Mini map only rendered the 1 conveyor belt and not the rest etc. Seems to be stuck or something.

I don't see the issue, it looks normal to me. But im used to that.

[pyrolytic_tungsten]

1) I personally never took a shine to Dytech and and F-mod. That said there are a few mods I recommend:
-resource spawner overhaul: greatly spreads out ore and the other vanilla resources. Biters are more spread out too.
-Advanced Radars:Really needed for the spread out lands of resource spawner overhaul. Basically radars that cover more area at higher speed but use more energy (energy per sector scanned stays the same)
-Explosive Termites: Extremely effective at tree removal although it feels slightly overpowered. Sure beats using grenades to clear a forest.
-No More Bots: A simple mod that keeps you from accidentally removing bots from mid air when trying to remove something else.
-Resource Monitor mod: Monitors selected resource patches and can notify you when they are running out/depleted.
-Rail layer: It's a train with automatic rail laying capability. Also removes trees in the way automatically.

2) Building the rocket defense and then activating it will end the game with no ability to continue at this time. It's really a placeholder right now.

3) The devs have always had performance in mind. The performance in my experience is fine excluding a known bug or two such as zooming out all the way with the pollution overlay on. Performance is fine in my playthroughs with hundreds of miners, thousands of solar panels/ accumulators, many thousands of tiles of belt carrying thousands of items, a thousand laser turrets, a thousand inserters supporting hundreds of boilers, furnaces, and assemblers, and not to forget hundreds of big biters chasing after you had gone on a nest exterminating run in fast power armor with the combat shotgun (with 20MW power spikes as a hundred+ laser turrets engage the enemy).

4) The starting area is an area initially free of biters (but biters will colonize new nests) and is guaranteed to have a certain amount of all resources. I prefer starting with a larger starting area. Keep in mind that starting the map with higher water settings leads to an increased chance of being stuck on an island.

5) I've played on settings with more frequent and larger nests. Sure you need to spend more on defenses but large numbers of laser turrets won't fail you assuming they don't run out of power and you have good walls. With large bases before fast power armor it nearly requires turret creep to expand. I've found I like playing with the less frequent nests that the resource spawner overhaul mod gives you.

6) Ive seen ore bodies with 100k-1M ore (vanilla and rso) but I've always played with less frequent deposits with greater sized deposits. Don't forget about oil deposits too since you are often short on oil. Otherwise there isn't really anything else useful.

7) I don't think that can be fixed at this time. It will appear fine on the big map if sufficiently zoomed in but it doesn't try to do any anti-aliasing with the map at this time My understanding is that the renderer is skipping over tiles when it is drawing due to the scaling so some single tile features may get missed. It never really bothered me.

[Xterminator]

So I'm not gonna answer each question because some would just repeated answers of what everyone else said. But here is what I can tell you... :p

Personally I would wait a bit before using mods. I can guarantee that you haven't learned or experienced everything in the vanilla game so far. I spent about 45-50 hours playing vanilla before I added any mods. Now I play with like 6, including Dytech, Roadworks, Explosive Termites, and Resource Monitor. But except for something like explosive termites and resource monitor, I would wait a while to get any because a lot of them change the game pretty dramatically.

The "end game" is getting rocket defense. And once you place it and activate it, there is I think a 15 minute countdown and then the game is "finished" and you can't play anymore on that playthrough. So a lot or most people just never build it or place it.

Performance in my opinion is pristine. I have never experienced lag issues except when the game autosaves. There is a good bit of lag for 2-3 seconds while it autosaves,but luckily you change how often it does that, as other people have mentioned.

For difficulty settings... If you really want a challenge maybe turn 1 or 2 of the biter settings up 1 notch, but until you really learn how the game works I wouldn't make those too difficult otherwise you will just get overrun. And aside from killing the biters to expand your base and get artifacts, there isn't much else out there. But at this point the main purpose of the game is either just get to end game as quickly as you can, or just optimize and endless expand your factory and perfect it, while fighting off biters.

It is an epic game and I'm glad your enjoying it, I'm sure you will enjoy it even more the more you play!

[luffy]

So for mods the best mod in place currently is dytech.
You can also use floors mod and maybe bob's ores.
That are the main mods F-mod isn't updated but there are user-updated versions.

[Blackence]

It took me well over 30 hours to use and understand everything in the vanilla game. If you like optimizing things, you may even need more time than that. I was proud when I mastered automatic production of red science packs. Then I was even more proud when I got green science packs automatically crafted. Then it took me a few days to get oil set up correctly. Then I thought "wow, now I think I have played through most of the content…" WRONG! Turns out I had to learn about logistics bots. And constructions bots. And efficient train usage.

And since I played on peaceful mode, I had not even even looked into combat at that time.

So I recommend against using content-adding mods until you have used all of the content from the base game.

Since this seems to be a "recommend your favourite mod" topic, let me emphasize one suggestion that was mentioned multiple times already. If you like trains and having a challenge that is not only "fight a few thousand biters using combat robots", the "resource spawner overhaul" mod is great. It will give you some small iron/copper/stone/coal/oil fields near your starting area. But that will only be enough to get some basic research going and for crafting some rails and trains. You will be forced to build a car after some time and scout the wider area for more resources. It's not just walking 20 seconds like in the base game. To make up for this, the far away resource fields have a lot of resources in them. Since laying rails is not very user-friendly in the base game as of now, I recommend using the automatic rail laying machine when you want to give the resource spawner overhaul mod a try. Remember to play the base game first, though. And if you hate trains and want to focus on combat, I think you'll want other mods.

[StoneLegion]

I played today for I think 15 hours or so straight. I not only steamed it but also recorded 25 Episodes for Youtube and am uploading it.

I decided no mods at all I also went ahead and maxed the biters settings and boy its easy I guess to hold them off with lasers but there is also a lot of maintenance trying figure where their main routes and such are so you can keep them away overtime.

my entire base now has walls / turrets set around the walls. I have researched almost everything in science 1 and 2. Next things is automating some advance chips and processors and then slowly get science 3 automated.

I'm still needing to try and learn robots I have not built any.. Trains not fun with my map because there is just to many biters around my base almost shoulder to shoulder.

Thanks for all the advice so far