"Widely used" settings that motivate the use of trains

[hAndrew]

Hi, having launched the rocket in Factorio on default game settings for the first time a few months ago, and taken a break, I'm getting the itch to return to Factorio!
To help me, I was wondering if anyone can suggest game settings that meet all three of these constraints?

I would love settings that:
1. Motivate the use of trains. (I nearly, but never, found them expedient in a regular game on default settings through to rocket launch).
2. Represent a challenge, in the sense that I might fail a few times before getting it right.
3. Are not particularly exotic/unique, e.g. clearly by twiddling custom game settings sliders I can achieve the above constraints, but I would like to have settings/goals/struggles that are in common with some reasonable number of other players, to feel part of a common experience. Does that make sense?

Some thoughts I have had:
* For 1., rail world makes sense, but default rail world seems to fall afoul of 2.
* Maybe changing the goal of the game from rocket launch to something else? But what game goal is consistent with 3. while generating 1. and 2.?

Thanks for any ideas!

[5thHorseman]

As a train lover:

"Rail World" default.
Ores farther apart, can make them richer and/or bigger to compensate if you want.
More water, to limit what you can do in any area so you have to build small factory sections.
No cliffs. Has nothing to do with trains I just hate cliffs.

[jodokus31]

- X science per minute
- Railworld with biter expansion on
- Railworld with resource frequency to min = 17%
- Railworld with no or very far oil in preview, in order to explore
- "Get on track like a pro" Achievement
- "Theres no spoon" Achievement
- "Lazy Bastard" Achievement

[Theikkru]

Try these changes from default:

• Reduce all resource densities to 33%.
• Reduce all resource frequencies to 50%.
• Double enemy expansion minimum group size (to 10).
• Halve enemy expansion maximum cooldown (to 30 min).

Reducing density, especially, will force you out of the comfort of the starting area in search of bigger resource patches, and having to rub shoulders with the bugs more will make sure you don't get sloppy with your expansion technique. Depending on how much of a challenge you want and how broadly you define "settings/goals/struggles that are common", cranking up pollution and enemy difficulties further towards Deathworld levels may be warranted.

[Serenity]

Just decrease the resource frequency. Railword is still pretty generous so you can go even lower. To compensate increase the richness, so ore patches last some time and you don't need to make new outposts all the time

One thing to keep in mind with the default railworld preset is that it doubles the evolution time. This is not necessary at all and makes biters even more of a joke. The standard evolution time is just fine. You can easily play railworld with somewhat more aggressive biters

The best thing is to generate a few worlds and reveal the area around the player:
https://wiki.factorio.com/Console#Revea ... the_player
Maybe increase the game speed to make it faster:
https://wiki.factorio.com/Console#Change_game_speed

That takes some time, but you get a feel for the settings and what you like

[MEOWMI]

Factorio is pretty hard to "fail" at, so point 2 is a bit difficult, but suffice to say, if that's the case, I don't think you would want anything less than deathworld. In fact, deathworld settings could combine quite interestingly with some inspiration from train world like Serenity suggests. Definitely don't turn off biter expansion, but whether you want to increase expansion rate is up to you.

That would give you above average resource patch distances which heavily encourages trains (believe me I've used belts for quite long distances previously) and much more dangerous biters and require more focused effort to acquire new resources.

Maybe even up enemy base density by a notch from there or something, just for good measure, as deathworld is usually pretty manageable if you play thoughtfully, even with the added challenge of more distant ore patches. Maybe also make sure to play on a map with a desert start, so you don't have the convenience of forests! Dense forests in particular are extremely good at absorbing pollution thus mitigating biters attacks, and this is a factor that's very seed dependent and thus very RNG based. If you don't mind harder recipes, the marathon preset also provides additional challenge.

Finally, I don't know if it's of any help, but my 2nd playthrough (no wiki or guide use) was a desert deathworld and I was never even close to losing, but it did still present a fun challenge. The only playthrough I gave up on due to stressfulness was a desert deathworld marathon (I think I just don't like the harder recipes) and thinking about it, to me that would fit criterion #2 quite well. Add in inspiration from trainworld... and I think that should fit the bill.

[Qon]

I'm currently playing with a Rail World + Death World mix setting, resources at RW and biters and evolution at DW, with RW starting area to actually have some resources to start with. At first I also used Armoured Biters mod. But after getting to behemoths I had to swap to land mine defence to handle them cheaply enough. And then it wasn't harder to defend, just made expansion more time consuming. So at that point I turned AB mod off. I don't regret using it at first though, it just stopped providing any difficulty or value at the point my factory is at now.

But I'm enjoying it. A lot of time has been spent with combat though. Behemoths at chem science. But that is not a big issue if you use rocket launcher to snipe nests and then run back to mine field (and use capsules when you get them) to wait for retailation to die off, then repeat.

[astroshak]

I don’t mess with Death World level of biter settings, but I routinely turn ore chance to the bare minimum, 17%. Even then I still get a lot of patches.

I also set both water size and frequency to the max. This gives me huge lakes and oceans. My last game even had me on a large island, large enough it was not apparent from the starting preview.

Do those, add in whatever biter settings you want to use, and have fun.

[astroshak]

EDIT - Sorry, did not realize (not sure how it happened) That I’d double posted.

[mmmPI]

3. Are not particularly exotic/unique, e.g. clearly by twiddling custom game settings sliders I can achieve the above constraints, but I would like to have settings/goals/struggles that are in common with some reasonable number of other players, to feel part of a common experience. Does that make sense?

It does make sense but is difficult to judge what you would consider exotic .

Maybe it's too much on the exotic factor, but there are maps with limited height OR width. That's a parameter from the world gen.

The incentive for trains is that if you want new ressources, you can only go straight in biter's land untill you find them which makes the map a very thin long line instead of a medium square.

You may need to start over a few time before you figure out a solution to the logistic constraint of tight space, or maybe to find the perfect size. 32 tiles is thin, 100 tiles is too big (imo).

There are many examples that you can compare/connect with all over the internet, "ribbon world" they call it, not that it's particularly popular, but it's there and has been for a while, so many people gave it a shot at least once .

[Skev]

I've played with a bunch of different settings trying to achieve the same goal of making trains feel 'right', and I'd say that some of the above suggestions don't go far enough.
Resource patches are so gigantic compared to your needs that turning them down by the suggested amounts won't necessitate trains until you're well past launching rockets (it takes less than half a million iron/copper to research that far). I'd suggest cranking up the technology price multiplier as well.
If you don't just want a sandbox and find the interaction with the aliens adds to the game, I wouldn't play on rail world either, unless you turn expansion back on like jodokus31 suggested. With enemy expansion off, it's easy to clear problem areas and defense becomes too easy. It's depressing to build up great defenses and then have them never fire.

My last game was set to 50% frequency, 50% size, 50% richness for all resources, 8x technology cost (plus 4x evolution from time, no solar/nuclear/efficiency modules/electric furnaces). It's a good challenge and you really do need the trains about as soon as you can research them. The only downside is that you can't really go full mega-base, the travel and scouting times to get huge amounts of resources take too long.