How pros approach the game?

[Harb42]

Hi guys, my fellow factory builders!

How do pros approach the game? How do they design new things? Do they plan, calculate then execute? Or do they just play by feeling? When I see other guys, for example Nilaus, he just casually do stuff which works. No efforts, no struggle, just do this and that and <paff> it works.
I am new to this open world, builder genre games. I have a lot of gaming experience in my hand, so I am definitely not lost. Has my megabase too which I should be proud of.
However, I am not satisfied. I am still struggling, I always feel "Ok I solved this, the 'thing' is automated, now the next step... and I am stuck again." I feel that the game is "difficult". I usually feel that the stuff I did is ok, but for going larger my current designs are not good enough. I started to think in a modular way in some manners. The most basic example is the train rail blueprints. Miner blocks, smelter blocks, ~ 1k X science/min block. Recycler blocks, tileable fusion reactor, etc. I want to do my big 'explorer' ship to collect Promethium, it is around 40k space platform blocks. I started to design it, but it is very slow. I already spent hours for the front defense, thrusters, collectors, how many building do they need, where should they be, etc etc. I am not satisfied, I feel it should be ready to go. Another example is Fulgora's recycling facility. It is of course not freely scale-able, a new block would need some manual work too. I don't know its exact capabilities, how much more can it handle, where is the true bottleneck, or how to run it maximum effectiveness!
I started to use calculator mods which are a huge-huge help, I don't have to second guess the overall actual productions and consumptions.

So my main question is: how do you/pros play the game? How to play this game efficiently? Do you use Excel sheets, draw on paper design, just sit and think how to solve issues? Do you create diagrams? Do you measure stuff? How much do you plan ahead? Do you provision new areas where you intend to build new buildings? ~ preplace it with power poles, substations, and roboports for automated building?
All of this will be routine stuff if I play enough?

I am really interested in your experiences! Not in actual advises, but your personal gameplay, insights, thoughts!

[eugenekay]

"Pros" ?

Wait, you guys are getting Paid to play this game? Where do I sign up?

For each new "Process" or "Challenge" that exists in Factorio I follow the same basic steps:

• Build a Spaghetti mess that barely does the job
• Create a Train "City Block" module that does the same job, but with a bit of Scale using existing train input/outputs.
• Iterate the design in a new City Block as-needed, optimizing for Space / Quality / Throughput / One-Machine / Power Efficiency - or just leave the #2 design in-place forever. If it works, it works!

There are many small design tricks that you can learn with time, such as Underground Belt Braiding, long/short inserters, Lane merging & splitting, Power pole spacing.... the Circuit Network and "Set Recipe" lead to infinite complexity malls with only one machine. But reading about all of these is no fun! Just go play the game, build it wrong a few times, and enjoy the Learning.

Good Luck!

[Tertius]

When I see other guys, for example Nilaus, he just casually do stuff which works. No efforts, no struggle, just do this and that and <paff> it works.

You're seeing just a tiny part of the story. He does streaming for a living, and he does nothing else than playing the game. He does practicing, and practicing, and even more practicing while not streaming. He tries stuff he intend to stream later. He invests most of his time with the game, while you're probably just playing casually during your free time. With that much practicing (and failing many times, you just don't see this) he collects all the knowledge required to perform a flawless, elegant stream in the end.

So don't compare yourself as a casual gamer with a professional streamer who exclusively streams one or two games.

Instead, love what you do on your own. Try yourself at a slow pace, don't rush, take your time and investigate all the game mechanics.

How you approach the game depends on how your brain works. There are people like myself who do a lot of planning and working things out in a lab environment before going on a real map. Other people just place buildings without plan, connect stuff on the spot and constantly improve and rebuild their factory.
There's no harm in building a spaghetti base with no visible concept. You learn what works and what doesn't work. How to use all the different inserters and belts, when to use bots and when to use belts or trains. In my opinion, there is no wrong approach, just be open to try alternative approaches if you feel you should do better.

Personally, I plan and design factory parts in map editor mode. The rate calculator mod is essential for me. I set a goal (some given output), then build a production line that's able to produce this from raw ingredients in map editor, blueprint it, then build it on the real map. Sometimes, I create tables and spreadsheets, but that was when I understood less of the game. Today, with Space Age, it's difficult to create a static spreadsheet because the ratios all change all the time due to new production buildings, modules, quality.

[Premu]

I believe there quite a lot of types of players out there:

- "Spaghetti"-builders who expand without a bigger plan in mind and try to control the chaos as it grows.
- Planers with dedicated goals, who set down production lines with the correct ratios to reach their goal
- City block builders which are something in between - they have their prepared generic city blocks which they stamp down, but they expand until their CPU can't take it anymore.
- Speed runners who typically are also very well prepared, but with a completely different goal - to get to the "win" screen as quick as possible
- The creatives: for example people who'd rather want to play Doom, but somehow don't know Dosbox, so they create Doom in Factorio.
- Multiplayers: These might just use Factorio as an excuse to hang out with friends.

And everyone might add personal challenges on top. So - feel free to do whatever you like.

[Amarula]

Welcome engineer!
I think of Factorio not so much as difficult, as rich... rich in complexity, in depth, in possibilities.
So general insights and thoughts...

Practice! Once you have built a basic circuit line a thousand times, you will have internalized the ratios and what works. Provided that you didn't just grab someone else's blueprint and copy it, I mean design your own. There are hundreds of items in Factorio and it is going to take hundreds of hours to get practice with all of them so using them comes naturally, but yes it will become routine.

Experiment! Try different ways of building that circuit line, in Factorio there are so many different ways you can do things. I know I have a strong tendency to do things the same way, and so I push myself to do things differently - at least try it, and if I go back to my tried and true design it is because I satisfied myself that it was better. Space Age has been great for this because using foundries and EM plants and all the other new toys means the old ways just aren't the best any more.

Study what others have done. Not necessarily go as far as you can on your own, but once you have the basics, peek at other bases and other designs. Especially for complex combinator contraptions, dig into what other mad engineers have done, and figure out how and why it works.

Make mistakes! Allow yourself to make mistakes, laugh at yourself, encourage yourself because admitting, and learning from, and enjoying mistakes is the best, and some say the only, way to learn. My own personal Factorio super-power is running out of power and it seems like there is no end to the ways I can crash my power supply - I have even done it on a fair sized base with hundreds of nuclear reactors. Oh Aquilo will your lights ever stay on?

When something should be working, but isn't, try explaining it to someone else. There is nothing like getting the issue out of your head to at least give you a chance of seeing what is wrong. And you can always come here to the forums to do that, we can understand and appreciate the issues, and are delighted to help our fellow engineers.

[mmmPI]

I feel like with a lot of experience, you know when you can play by feeling, and when you need to calculate things, or how to get things done with minimum planning/math. You can play in a way so that you don't have too much things that worries your mind, make things that do no need any human intervention, and wont fail, and won't need be fixed later.

When you DO need to calculate and have diagrams, the more experience you have, the faster it goes, because you know which tools to use and how, be it a webcalculator specific for factorio, or a graph made in third party tool or a mod to help plan the factory.

That's a good tool for sure.

All of this will be routine stuff if I play enough?

You can never tell, don't forget that some "pros" are not only "players that played a lot" but also were extremly talented in the discipline already when starting, or have the ability to move their fingers much faster than you and me, or to keep track of huge amount of things in their head at the same time, similar to sport a little, practice is very important of course, but every pros practice a lot, and there's still champions that no-one can match. Don't set yourself up for a disappointment x)

I have played more than 10000 hours and there's still many things i am not able to do in the factorio game, but i learned how to make things that are not really useful for the factorio game, like machines that plays music, or over-engineered train station systems, i feel like discovering all those things people makes is interesting, it doesn't improve my skill in the game , more my "knowledge", makes me feel like i'm "experienced" when i can choose amongst different options i have already tried and know their pros and cons, it could become a "routine" i think, to have to "choose a solution" rather than "finding/making it". This i feel the most when discussing with other players, the more they know about the game, the faster it is to mention "solutions" that both of us know, and it makes for more efficient/faster communication in game. It makes me "feel experienced" too when over time there's less and less of those "solutions" players mention that are totally new to me. It feels like when i join a random multiplayer server, i can identify/recognize "everything" how it works, which was the choice made. Even when seeing a mess of combinator, the question one may ask when one have seen many similar are different than when it's the first time someone sees the same thing. This is how i feel things can be "routine" with "lots of time played". There's less and less original simple things to discover, so it's time to dive in the more and more complicated/niche things to not have such "routine" ^^

I think this is how pro-active player approach the game

[MEOWMI]

For me, by far the best way to make a fully optimize build and understand how it works is the editor. Nothing beats jumping into the editor and making a build and then testing it with the options to speed up the game.

Prior to this, it may be that additional calculations are needed for me to optimize the build, for that purpose I use tools like Foreman 2 and YAFC, but there are plenty of other tools if the build doesn't involve lots of interdependent recipes.

But when I just want a build that's functional, I just improvise on the spot. You get better at it with time.

[quigonquinn0]

The "pros" are just that, professionals. Playing this game is their job. You wouldn't compare your baseball skills to an MLB player, or your driving skills to an F1 driver. Don't put that pressure on yourself as a gamer, either

The pros have magnitudes of more play time than any of us casuals will. And the professional streamers play a ton off camera. Just like an actor rehearsing for a TV show.

For me, personally: I made a few play throughs of the game running spaghetti messes, inefficiencies, and just barely scraping by. This got me a good idea of what I'll need later on.
I then went back and used online tools like recipe calculators to build a ton of blueprints in god mode/ map editor. I have since then done more focused but relaxed playthroughs. Having a personally made BP for just about everything allows me to focus on playing each save's uniqueness. Expanding, dealing with biters, finding resources, playing with trains, etc. As I go, I tweak my BPs as needed.
I do also use BPs from content creators sometimes, intertwined with my own. I'd say about 5% of my BPs are from others. I especially love KoS' BP books.
I did this with vanilla years ago, and am still in the early stages of this with SA, since so much of the game is new recipes.
I enjoy playing to the individual save, and I enjoy making really refined and efficient BPs, but I don't usually enjoy doing both at the same time. So this works for me.