Stages of Factorio gameplay

[NotRexButCaesar]

Over the course of my Factorio gameplay, I have noticed that there are some distinct stages of the game as the player progresses in skill and knowledge.

As a quick overview, I see in myself these (including but not limited to):

1. Learning mechanics stage. The player figures out how inserters/belts/power/assembling machines work.
   Goal: make a factory.
2. Learning strategies and principles stage. The player figures out how to do things well. They design smelting, circuits and other "blueprints". They learn to not make sushi and to use more than one of each machine
   Goal: make a factory that you can leave alone without things breaking
3. Intermediate stage. The player advances to the later sciences and learns how to use fluids/make expandable designs. They likely use trains for the first time. The player unlocks robots
   Goal: progress through technology
4. The "beat the game" stage: the player "knows how to play", and tries to launch a rocket/get some achievements. The player might learn ratios or use calculators here if someone else didn't spoil things for them earlier.
   Goal: beat the game
5. The "get good" stage: the player learns how to play well. They can set up red and green science quickly and have some blueprints that allow them to expand quickly.
   Goal: gain skill
6. The "set your own goal" stage. Some players may stop playing here, others might play overhaul mods. Some look into large megabases, while others might develop their blueprint library. I find that I like the optimization puzzle of Factorio the most fun, so I like to design blueprints.
   Goal: have fun
7. The workflow optimization stage: players here try to speedrun the game, or may create blueprints to make construction faster and less involved. They may create mods to make the game more fun for themselves.
   Goal: make the game more fun to play

Have any of you experienced similar progression? I am interested to hear what others have seen.

[DaveMcW]

I am on step 1 out of 12.

[blazespinnaker]

I am on step 1 out of 12.

I agree with the list mostly. I might add scenarios somewhere (rocket rush, DW marathon, wave defense, rail world, etc). Maybe a stage 0 where you put the game aside until it came out of beta.

I dunno if the last phase goal is "make the game more fun", I'd say the fun is implicit enough already. Mods are really a function of gameplay, imho, and I'm not really personally sold on using them beyond that.

[starlinvf]

All the stages are the same thing though..... the only difference found is in how effective the player's designs are.

[NotRexButCaesar]

All the stages are the same thing though..... the only difference found is in how effective the player's designs are.

Factorio is, in large part, a game about design and design optimization.

[SKKiro]

I actually did pick all of the above options. At some point I really wanted to try the game in different ways.

Some of the achievements in this game promote exactly that. And this is one of the rare instance where I actually wanted to speerun said game. As a result I'm done with all the achievements (last one for me was the final green circuits achievement which was a total slog to go through) and I'm just now playing in my own ways instead of going for simply making megabase factories bigger and bigger.

[coppercoil]

...instead of going for simply making megabase factories bigger and bigger.

Bigger is not simple. If you build x10 factory, your old blueprints won't work
x2 is not worth it, that's true.

[GrumpyJoe]

I still remember my "set your own goals stage" from early 0.16

Some YouTuber I followed did the Lazy Bastard run and I wanted to try that.
Taught me a lot about automating everything.

A few thousand hours later, with a detour doing overhaul mods, "speedrunning" (<8h)and writing my own little mods, I went back to vanilla and finally completed my last steam achievement, produce 30M GC, which could not have been done whole playing with mods.

And I would definatly split these experiences into segments of their own (as someone above disagreed to that)

[mergele]

I started Factorio playing multiplayer with some friends. They knew a bit about the game already and halfway through vanilla got to uncomplex for us so we look at mods and I never looked back. In all these years, I have never launched a rocket.

[evileye.x]

Stage 8 - Krastrorio 2
Stage 9 - Space Exploration

[Mskvaer]

Nice list. I'm sort of between 4 and 5. I have about half the achievments, and honing skills to do the <15 h. I'm a solo vanilla kind of player.