2023 A.D.: things to try in Factorio after launching a rocket before the DLC arrives

[blazespinnaker]

Here are a few things lately I've personally found engaging and fun after launching a rocket. It's a subjective list, but hopefully some other folks might enjoy trying these challenges as we wait for the DLC to ship. There's likely been some threads of this nature before, but they'll be full of outdated information, so I skipped the necro posting.

I've listed this in order of fun. I've also included what I found particularly compelling and maybe what might turn you off -

Try some mods: my favorite is Space Exploration, Rampant, and Recipe Randomizer. As of 2023, SE and Rampant have been updated with a lot of incredible mechanics and so worth another look if it has been awhile.

• What I found fun about this - These mods can be extremely challenging and require a lot of fresh innovation and puzzle solving that's barely spoiled anywhere. Recipe Randomizer is super simple, but the great thing about it is your factories will guaranteed to be unique and its near impossible to use prior made blueprints - literally impossible to spoil.
• What you might not find fun about this - they can get very very challenging. In particular, vanilla deathworld rampant is nearly impossible (at least for me)

Deathworld Marathon: This is the ultimate modless default settings factorio challenge that every factorio veteran should try at least once. You end up turning off the alerts, because it's pointless. The alerts are perma-on as you're dealing with endless waves of biters that never let up.

• Fun: Challenging PvE - you find yourself wanting to try all the toys. As of 2023, there's been a lot of great factorio forum discussions and YouTube videos to check out after you've completed this and see how other folks have shared your pain.
• Not fun: Challenging PvE - for some folks, factorio is about factories and factories only. Fair enough!

Very long trains: As of 2023, Wube has invested hugely in trains and their mechanics and there are an infinite amount of possibilities here that are fun to explore. For example, try trains with 50 car length. You'll be surprised at the highly stable and resilient throughput.

• Fun: You can use combinators which can free up the requirement having to put certain items into certain cars. Makes your factories much more flexible. Sometimes planning can be less fun and more work than just stream of conscious factory layouts, so this the best of both world: Optimal throughput and ad hoc factorio.
• Not fun: Trains that never clog or crash are infinitely reliable with huge throughput, but they are a bit of a silver bullet. Sometimes too simple and too reliable can get a bit boring. Best to mix with some of the other mods. Combinators can be quirky and rather necessarily Rube Goldberg at times.

Remove all logistics bots: sometimes you want to use logistics to get to all the fun tech. Fair enough, but after you've got all the fun stuff, what's left? Optimize!

• Fun: You can be fairly optimal and ad hoc about this, just look at your robot enabled map and start with the factories that are flying the most bots. Not really required to optimize the high hanging fruit which doesn't fly a lot of bots and looks more tedious than fun.
• Not fun: Hah! It's all fun and but if part of it isn't, just don't do it. Optimizing is what factorio is all about after all. Well, perhaps sometimes belts haven't been more optimal than bots, sadly, so there's that. That said, by 2023, things have fortunately been tweaked in belt's favor over bots.

That's all that's coming to me right now. I'd be very interested in what things other people have fully completed in latest Factorio after launching a rocket and especially why - what in particular did you find so fun and compelling about it? I've tried a quite a lot of other challenges but haven't been able to get into them that much for one reason or another. Maybe I missed something?

[shopt]

You can use combinators which can free up the requirement having to put certain items into certain cars.

I'm a bit confused about what this means. Are you talking about loading items into arbitrary wagons so that the train as a whole ends up with the desired number of items? And then somehow routing everything where it needs to go at the unload station? Or am I missing what you are getting at?

[blazespinnaker]

I'm a bit confused about what this means. Are you talking about loading items into arbitrary wagons so that the train as a whole ends up with the desired number of items? And then somehow routing everything where it needs to go at the unload station? Or am I missing what you are getting at?

Yes, you can read train contents via circuit logic and of course logistic network contents. Use big electric poles to carry network info (and power) long distances. If you're a purist about not mixing items on a belt, you can use direct insert into train cars to help organize things.

[shopt]

Interesting. I've loaded and unloaded with circuit controlled inserters before but each item always had specific wagons and chests that they used. Never thought to try otherwise.