How do you deal with emptiness after "finishing" the game?

[Fabriken AGI]

Hi!

How do you deal with the emptiness after finishing the main "story/goal" of space age?

I totally respect that one could keep going after prometheum towards the shattered planet etc, and keep on upgrading the infinite techs. Or optimizing the existing factory.
But for me, personally, I just don't see the point in just seeing numbers go up.

Im watching the development of Krastorio for 2.x on github with great anticipation. But i feel lost about what to do in the mean time.

Any recommendations of good mods/modpacks that add more planets and content for 2.x/space-age, that currently have good quality and is not unfinished?

[NineNine]

The game continues to evolve long after you "finish" it. I "finished" it about 3 months ago, and I'm still working on getting to the shattered planet, largely by trying to create Legendary versions of everything. I think the challenges that I've dealt with after I've "finished" it have been more rewarding to me than just figuring out how to get to the solar system edge.

But hey, it's a game, and you do you.

[eugenekay]

There are many different ways to play the game - getting to the "You have Won the Game!" screen is just the first step. Some things to do:

• Try to get All of the Achievements, without Mods. This will require starting-over a few times to get the Time-based challenges
• Build various Space Platforms for different needs.... optimize your interplanetary Logistics to try making everything Locally. Do a "one crusher/Chemplant challenge" build.
• Different map presets add new challenges - combining Ribbonworld and Deathworld is a personal favorite.
• Get heavily into UPS optimization, actually make your factory smaller to get more production in Real-World Time (less machines doing more). This goes nicely with an All-Legendary buildout.
• Various Planet Mods, in isolation or together. Maraxsis and Muluna both work good. rjdunlap has made a bunch that seem to work nicely together; I haven't actually Played-Through using these (just the Map Editor). Or you can just try a Gleba Start
• Nuclear Science gives you something "special" to do on Nauvis. Science Pack Galore and/or Infused Science add a lot of Resource Sinking, but not too much real Complexity.
• Multiplayer! Try joining some random Public games and see what other folks are working-on.
• And now, for something completely different! Take a break from Factorio, try out OpenRCT2 or The Sims. A little time away will give you fresh inspiration for a new goal.

Good Luck!

[quineotio]

How do you deal with the emptiness after finishing the main "story/goal" of space age?

A sense of depression happens after any big project - a sense of loss. You've been invested in this thing for a while, and now it's done/gone. It's like losing a friend. I think the appropriate way to deal with it is to celebrate your achievements. This is best done with other people, but as it's a solo project it's more difficult. Normally a team of people will have a party when a project is complete - maybe you can do something smaller scale, like have some popcorn and a soft drink and watch a movie.

[SirSmuggler]

Take a break. Try a compleatly different game. Touch grass

[MeduSalem]

The same as when I watch a TV series or read a manga and wait for a new season/issue. Move on in the meantime and watch/read something else and check back every other few months if there is some news.

There is no point in dwelling and agonizing about it; it will not make new updates or content happen any faster.

I would recommend trying different ways to play, but most of it would still boil down to doing the same over & over again and eventually just seeing numbers increase, and I can totally understand the lack of motivation to do that because I feel the same about it. It rather becomes work and is not fun because there is no real challenge other than how fast you can stamp down more of the same blueprints.

Also if you feel emptiness already It will only burn you out further if you force yourself.

[adam_bise]

I play with biters

[the_potty_1]

I took a 2 month break, just about to finally conquer the entire bannerlord map for the first time, now there's a game that I restarted like 8 times.

I'm thinking about a factorio playthrough where I only build each thing on the planet most suited to building that thing. I think it lends itself to getting the 'rush to space' achievement, if it doesn't, I might instead start on .. erm, lava planet, with demolishers?

Which planet is best suited to which component is probably up for discussion for the higher tier items, but the red & green science is obviously demolisher planet for the free infinite metal; the entire oil tree goes on the lightning planet for free infinite oil, and .. well research should happen on .. nauvus, which goes bananas once you get science labs from the fruit planet. Stone is free on both metal and oil planet, and .. sulphuric acid is tricky because sulphur is free on lightning, but comes out of vents on demolisher. Hm. But the vents do degrade as they are tapped, same as oil vents. Probably should ship sulphur to nauvus to produce sulphuric acid then bottle and ship to demolisher along with plastic to produce red and blue circuits?

I might make a rule that liquids can be produced locally on each planet. Except water on demolisher planet, that production chain is just displeasing. EDIT to clarify, I assume the chemical reactions are actually reasonably accurate, but I would have to include a distillation step before calling the result reaction grade water. This is why we have Bobs & Angels yes, for people who don't drink what comes out of a .. oh. Steam. Condensed to water. Fine, I'd probably drink that.

Other thing is, I really built functional but small on my first runthrough, I think I should scale everything up to something larger. But keeping to the rule of only building on the designated planet, and shipping components where they need to go. Probably need a proper fleet of spaceships to keep all that running. Damn, I really need to keep focus long enough to finish bannerlord first.

Actually what I really want to play again is that story missions mod, it was really good, and I see it's been updated to work with the new factorio engine.

[mmmPI]

To me finishing the game means i have a factory that can live forever without human intervention, it's not really about getting bigger and bigger number, it's about removing what's not longer usefull, making more efficient what could be made more efficient, and prettifiying all the things that were left standing during the game, shooting a few chest and empty drill , making the defense perimeter more standard instead of zigzaggy those kind of stuff, while maybe the science is set to reach a certain level, but when i do that sometimes i have ideas on how i could have made things differently, or new things i want to try, and i put them on a list, once i have enough i start a new game and try to tick some of my list x)

[Eternal]

i cant start new SA ... i tried factorio vanilla... cant play that anymore.... im too lazy to keep tunning the factories.... im stuck in researching forever the research productivity thing... so i dont deal with emptiness.. and other games are boring

[pioruns]

i cant start new SA ... i tried factorio vanilla... cant play that anymore.... im too lazy to keep tunning the factories.... im stuck in researching forever the research productivity thing... so i dont deal with emptiness.. and other games are boring

If every game is boring, even Factorio, stop playing for half a year or so. Go to other forms of entertainment for a while. You will come back with a smile, and every game will be interesting. I did that many times, always works.

[Shulmeister]

I think some players are soooo attached to factorio that even after their game is finished they go on the forum, or when they are at work and can't play.

[trancexpress]

I fill the void with more factory.

[the_potty_1]

Hah, well I started a new marathon deathworld space age run. Then I followed my standard low-pollution play style, minimal production, push solar, factory goes to sleep at night, and at 12 hours, I got steamrolled. Restarted with the same settings, except I set the starting area without biters at 600%. I then built what for me is quite big for a starter base. Only researching what is necessary to get to space, and I've set up an island where I can safely leave my stuff once I get into space.

Factorio_Deathworld_Marathon.png (591.01 KiB) Viewed 627 times

I'm at 89% on the final rocket silo research, but then I still need to launch a stack of rockets to build a platform, and then need 2000 space science to unlock engines, and then head to probably fulgora or vulkanus? But I'm about to finish the iron in my home base, and biters are regularly attacking, and I'm running low on bullets. What a great game :p

[the_potty_1]

Factorio_LeaveNothingButFootprints.png (109.69 KiB) Viewed 542 times

As soon as I finished researching rocket silo, I dismantled my entire base, and carried every single thing to my hidy hole. Starting gun, check. Every single drop of oil or downstream product. I'm more than a little ocd I'm afraid.

Factorio_Thrusters.png (2.95 MiB) Viewed 542 times

I had to initially sneak some iron from that patch to the south, I dismantled everything as soon as the biters got annoyed, then went back twice more. Now I'm getting iron from the space platform, and I brought the entire starting copper patch, so that's more than enough. Once my platform can travel, I'll set Nauvus up as pure research, with all science coming from space, plus construction bots so I can change stuff remotely, then I'll leave until I come back with bio-research labs and a jetpack. At that point I can decide whether to retake some land and build a real wall, or extend this island with landfill. The wall sounds way more fun. Damn, the only place you can mine uranium is Nauvus yes? I'll have to power this all with solar and batteries, and defend with red ammo, lasers, flamethrowers with oil from Fulgora, perhaps some missiles for good measure, huh, I suppose eventually I can drop off some low quality railguns too.

In other news, I do still plan to finish that bannerlord game, but my new laptop just arrived, and once I've set up my dev environment, I promised to set my existing rig up for my daughter with a new ssd and some extra ram, which is all sitting here ready to go. I really need to not play 600 hours of factorio right now :p

[the_potty_1]

So I forgot I need an extra 4000 research to discover a second planet. I had to sneak out and mine another ten chests of copper and 26000 oil. I added efficiency modules so I could ninja-mine right next to an alien spawner. Then I built the worst spaceship possible, and had to scrape together enough blue circuits to actually launch myself into space. The ship blew up the first time I tried, so I started manually throttling ice to the engines to slow down. At some point when fuel runs out you continue drifting to the destination planet, so I removed the engine and added back iron harvesting, smelting, and bullet production. I arrived at fulgora with around 700 bullet magazines left, from the original 2000. However, just sitting idly in orbit, the bullets were being used faster than I was producing them, and I'd only brought one smelter. So I dismantled the entire platform, dropped everything down to fulgora, and blew up the platform. So it's like playing the start on fulgora mod, except it's taken 48 hours of hell to get here, but on the plus side, I can still get the 'rush to space' achievement :p

[Neutronium]

I have a few hundred hours in my current save, with the goal to megabase and get all prod research to level 30. After getting everything legendary and hitting a ceiling in terms of setups/items, the game honestly became boring and felt more like a chore to play and do stuff. The climb was much more fun than 1.x gameplay to reach that point, but once you do, its pretty much the same core game but with faster machines. I really, really wish the game included completely new techs, items, unlocks deeper into the postgame so there is something truly exciting to work towards if you want to truly go big. I get the reasons why it wasn't included though. All of this takes time/effort/money to develop, and would admittedly be content that 98-99% of the people buying the game would never touch. So of course their time is better spent building and polishing the things that the most people are experiencing and interacting with.

I get there are mods that try to address what I'm talking about, but with a few exceptions (like Space Exploration) either the quality isn't there, or if using multiple mods they don't merge together in a congruent, clean, cohesive way. It is what it is though. Maybe someday when AI gets sophisticated enough and the game becomes open source (which Kovarex has said he wants to do eventually), we can create large new expansions that address this and add a whole new universe of new content that all comes together as a whole.

[meganothing]

I have a few hundred hours in my current save, with the goal to megabase and get all prod research to level 30. After getting everything legendary and hitting a ceiling in terms of setups/items, the game honestly became boring and felt more like a chore to play and do stuff. The climb was much more fun than 1.x gameplay to reach that point, but once you do, its pretty much the same core game but with faster machines. I really, really wish the game included completely new techs, items, unlocks deeper into the postgame so there is something truly exciting to work towards if you want to truly go big. I get the reasons why it wasn't included though. All of this takes time/effort/money to develop, and would admittedly be content that 98-99% of the people buying the game would never touch. So of course their time is better spent building and polishing the things that the most people are experiencing and interacting with.

I get there are mods that try to address what I'm talking about, but with a few exceptions (like Space Exploration) either the quality isn't there, or if using multiple mods they don't merge together in a congruent, clean, cohesive way. It is what it is though. Maybe someday when AI gets sophisticated enough and the game becomes open source (which Kovarex has said he wants to do eventually), we can create large new expansions that address this and add a whole new universe of new content that all comes together as a whole.

In a meta kind of way we are getting this as Wube seems to look for a new kind of game to develop. Which means a different core game and different "machines" even if they eventually might operate on mana and ley lines (@Wube: Think about it, ley lines seem like a good idea for making a different kind of puzzle even though the general concept has already been used by civilization-type games at a basic level) .

Factorio was, in a way, perfecting the mechanisms of a factory-game in its first implementation and my (limited) imagination fails to see a way to extend it beyond its current state without lots of rehashing of the same concepts on new worlds with new enemies and resources. Repetition on some level seems unavoidable.

I hope for some mods having some new ideas or gimmicks. There surely will also be mods that simply increase complexity by way of intermediate products so it would cross the line to grind for many players. But I doubt we could get any kind of postgame that could rival what we already got in the base game and space age.

[Neutronium]

Yeah. And even though the interest is certainly there from the fans for continued development/iteration, Wube evidently has little/no interest in this and wants to move to other ideas. Kindof a disappointing end to the game but it was a fun time playing since 2016 and following along with its development.