Does this game get harder?

[dondada]

I just automated blue and black science and have fifteen labs going all the time. First time I've ever made blue or black science in a game. Aliens have been completely nonexistent for most of the game. My pollution is so low that they don't seem to be spawning. Do things suddenly get crazy as I continue to advance?

[NineNine]

Not really. It's a building game. The challenge is whatever you want it to be. Megabasing (building a huge, factory, capable of producing and using thousands of science per minute) is a fun challenge.

If you want harder without building a giant factory, then feel free to tweak the settings (less resources, more biters, etc), or install one of hundreds (thousands) of free mods to make it more difficult.

[dondada]

All good, thanks. I figured it was going to take a mod and that it was intentional. Great base building game but I figured I had reached the plateau and wanted to be sure.

[Tertius]

The game isn't about fighting enemies. They're entertainment, but not supposed to be a real threat. The game is about building a factory and solve the logistics and constructing challenges connected with that. The base game is somewhat easy, while the Space Age dlc has more of these construction challenges but not really much more enemies.

If you want to focus on fighting enemies, create a new map and tweak the settings that increase frequency and growth of the enemies. There is also a preset ("Deathworld") that increases enemy activity.

[coffee-factorio]

Go into a map preview and reseed till you see a desert. That allows pollution to spread much more aggressively.

[angramania]

Even without SA(space age) first 4 science packs are just warmup. It is not even quarter of a game. Each of the next two science packs requires twice more than first four combined. After that there is final challenge in classic and just beginning in SA. So yes, game will became much more complex and a bit harder later.

If you want fighting biters from the very beginning then deathworld preset is enough to lose this game a few times before even getting green science. And of course there are several mods which make deathworld look like walk in a park.

[dondada]

Even without SA(space age) first 4 science packs are just warmup. It is not even quarter of a game. Each of the next two science packs requires twice more than first four combined. After that there is final challenge in classic and just beginning in SA. So yes, game will became much more complex and a bit harder later.

If you want fighting biters from the very beginning then deathworld preset is enough to lose this game a few times before even getting green science. And of course there are several mods which make deathworld look like walk in a park.

When you say twice more what do you mean? I see I have purple and yellow science left to do, but the amount of resources I have available should be sufficient even if they were 10x more than all the science that I have previously done amounts to. It seems like all that I have to do is build a few production lines to automate those lines and then wait for research to finish?

I might have played the game wrong...

[Nosferatu]

https://wiki.factorio.com/Science_pack

The first 4 combined use 25 iron and 10,5 copper.
The next 2 will use 85 iron and 70 copper.

So your next lesson the game wants to teach you is scaling up - a lot.

I think normally the starting resources will not carry you past the rocket launch. But it's close.

Also you don't wait for research to finish. You use the time to build more and more and more.
The game does not need to end once the rocket is launched.

PS: If the biters won't visit you. Get a tank and go out and play

[dondada]

https://wiki.factorio.com/Science_pack

The first 4 combined use 25 iron and 10,5 copper.
The next 2 will use 85 iron and 70 copper.

So your next lesson the game wants to teach you is scaling up - a lot.

I think normally the starting resources will not carry you past the rocket launch. But it's close.

Also you don't wait for research to finish. You use the time to build more and more and more.
The game does not need to end once the rocket is launched.

PS: If the biters won't visit you. Get a tank and go out and play

I think I took too much time in the beginning of the game designing a scalable solution and took all the fun out of it.

[coffee-factorio]

I think I took too much time in the beginning of the game designing a scalable solution and took all the fun out of it.

The difficulty scaling in the game is exponential as angramania pointed out. So you can get to a point where there's a huge spike in difficulty that you catches you off guard even if you did a lot of research before hand and are talented. And modders balance around that. Biter HP and damage works the same way as science, you need to meet those with more than twice as much effort for each tier.

If that doesn't scare you. Consider putting time limits on yourself. Because stress will cause you to make mistakes and react more extremely to your environment and time pressure just naturally makes stress.

[dondada]

I think I took too much time in the beginning of the game designing a scalable solution and took all the fun out of it.

The difficulty scaling in the game is exponential as angramania pointed out. So you can get to a point where there's a huge spike in difficulty that you catches you off guard even if you did a lot of research before hand and are talented. And modders balance around that. Biter HP and damage works the same way as science, you need to meet those with more than twice as much effort for each tier.

If that doesn't scare you. Consider putting time limits on yourself. Because stress will cause you to make mistakes and react more extremely to your environment and time pressure just naturally makes stress.

I'm too old for time restrictions

I was more trying to understand if there was something I had missed, new types of Biters, or whatever. I understand that as I expand I will attract more of them, but I have a fairly large base and can see the end of the game in terms of research so I was just wondering if I was going to suddenly get sucker punched and have everything go to hell.

[NineNine]

I was more trying to understand if there was something I had missed, new types of Biters, or whatever. I understand that as I expand I will attract more of them, but I have a fairly large base and can see the end of the game in terms of research so I was just wondering if I was going to suddenly get sucker punched and have everything go to hell.

Nope, no more biter pressure. I've always assumed that the biters exist to offer a limited challenge, and to pressure newer players to progress with their research. Once you get artillery, the biter challenge is generally over.

But, in my opinion, the game doesn't really start until after you've launched your first rocket, and then have to figure out how to build a (big) factory.

[Tertius]

But, in my opinion, the game doesn't really start until after you've launched your first rocket, and then have to figure out how to build a (big) factory.

The game has definitely 2 distinct parts: the 1st part is until launching the first rocket, the 2nd part is building a really large factory with continuous automated rocked launches, with factory buildings all crafted with the best tech available. The 2nd part uncovers challenges you would never have thought of, and they're not even explicitly built into the game by the devs, but arise quite naturally.

[dondada]

In general is there a raw amount of inputs to the factory that I should be aiming for to build a "big factory?"

For example, presently I have 4 belts of iron, 4 belts of copper, 4 belts of uranium, and 4 belts of stone coming in. These belts are fed by multiple electric mines at various ore sites with my iron site having 16 mines.

I was planning on approximately doubling this to have a total of 32 belts coming in. Is this enough or not? I was planning on supplying these new lines with rails.

[NineNine]

In general is there a raw amount of inputs to the factory that I should be aiming for to build a "big factory?"

For example, presently I have 4 belts of iron, 4 belts of copper, 4 belts of uranium, and 4 belts of stone coming in. These belts are fed by multiple electric mines at various ore sites with my iron site having 16 mines.

I was planning on approximately doubling this to have a total of 32 belts coming in. Is this enough or not? I was planning on supplying these new lines with rails.

What a "big factory" is is all relative, but I wouldn't consider a factory "big" until it was being fed by large amounts of trains. I would consider what you have to be a "baby factory".

[dondada]

That's totally fair. I've seen some videos on YT of people with "mega factories" ... where do big factories end and they begin? I could see having an interest in building maybe 2 or 3 (or 4) rail lines to new mining sites and scale up to something like 64 belts feeding my factory, but anything beyond that seems a bit much and probably not something I'll have much interest in. We'll see. I'm trying to figure out scaling my assemblers at the moment. At some point I will probably have to learn how to use blueprints, lol.

[angramania]

In general is there a raw amount of inputs to the factory that I should be aiming for to build a "big factory?"

For example, presently I have 4 belts of iron, 4 belts of copper, 4 belts of uranium, and 4 belts of stone coming in. These belts are fed by multiple electric mines at various ore sites with my iron site having 16 mines.

Lets see. I assume that you are talking about yellow belts. The bare minimum science production rate is 45 per minute. To achieve this for all six starter packs without productivity modules or off-planet machines, you need 4 belts of copper, 6 belts of iron, 1 belts of stone, and no uranium at all. So you have too much uranium and stone but not enough iron. If you play classic and want to get the same 45/min for last science pack then you need to add 5 belts of copper and 3 belts of iron.

This is considered small factory. Big factories produce hundreds or thousands of science packs per minute. And usually they have completely different logistic(trains instead of belts, city blocks instead of main bus). Logistic is the main challenge in this game.

I was more trying to understand if there was something I had missed, new types of Biters, or whatever

Evolution will make them much stronger but still there are only biters, spitters and worms. https://wiki.factorio.com/Enemies

[Tertius]

In general is there a raw amount of inputs to the factory that I should be aiming for to build a "big factory?"

For example, presently I have 4 belts of iron, 4 belts of copper, 4 belts of uranium, and 4 belts of stone coming in. These belts are fed by multiple electric mines at various ore sites with my iron site having 16 mines.

You don't seem to have an idea yet how the ratio of your incoming ore is, if you focus on science production (with space science: includes continuously launching rockets). For example, for power production a single yellow belt of uranium ore is enough for almost all factories, a single red belt of uranium ore is enough for a really huge base, a single blue belt of uranium ore is more than you ever need.

In the base game, you need about the same amount of iron ore and copper ore, slightly more iron. Stone and coal demand is about 20% of iron ore.

Amounts vastly depend on your building design: your input is either wasted or used very efficiently according to productivity. Usually, a big base uses T3 productivity modules wherever possible for the least amount of input (or maximized output for a given input). It's also not clear what kind of belt you mention: yellow, red or blue belt? A blue belt is 3 times as fast as a yellow belt, which is quite a difference in throughput.

You can set yourself a production goal.
Examples:

• Use the correct amount of T3 assembling machines with the proper ratio of 5:6:5:12:7:7 for all science packs, resulting in 75 SPM; SPM=science per minute)
• continuously launch a rocket from a naked rocket silo and produce as much other science packs to consume all the space science with some infinite research (results in about 1 rocket per 6 minutes, which is about 167 SPM - slightly more than 2x the 5:6:5:12:7:7 factory)
• continuously launch a rocket from a fully moduled rocket silo (4 t3 productivity modules surrounded by beacons with t3 speed modules) and use up all the space science (results in about 1 rocket per minute. This was considered a first mega base in the old days - it's slightly below 1k SPM)
• produce 1 full blue belt per science pack (this needs about 2.7 fully moduled rocket silos, resulting in about 2.7k SPM)
• double the previous goal: 2 almost full blue belts need about 5 rocket silos, resulting in about 5k SPM)

Walk yourself backwards from these goals and design a factory capable of producing your production goal.

I recommend you first try the first and second goal. Automate everything so you can watch how your rockets are being produced continuously and the rocket silo is never idle. If you add your current (T1/T2/T3) productivity module and one or two beacons with speed modules to speed it up, or use 2+ naked rocket silos, you can start to produce more.

For the last goals, I built a factory in 1.1 for 2.5k SPM that requires 9x 8-wagon stations for copper ore (9*8=72 blue belts), 10x 8-wagon stations for iron ore (10*8=80 blue belts), 2x 8-wagon stations for coal (2*8=16 blue belts) and 2x 8-wagon stations for stone (2*8=16 blue belts, from which 14 were actually connected).
Uranium ore consumption was about 10/s, so one yellow belt was sufficient for the whole map. Power consumption was about 12.5 GW per 2.5k SPM.

In Space Age, everything is different because there are production machines with built in productivity which result in half to 1/4 of the required input. One 4-wagon train per material, resulting in 4 blue belts, will usually suffice very long, and on most other planets trains are not even required - bases are small here.

[Bömmeli]

In general is there a raw amount of inputs to the factory that I should be aiming for to build a "big factory?"

For example, presently I have 4 belts of iron, 4 belts of copper, 4 belts of uranium, and 4 belts of stone coming in. These belts are fed by multiple electric mines at various ore sites with my iron site having 16 mines.

I was planning on approximately doubling this to have a total of 32 belts coming in. Is this enough or not? I was planning on supplying these new lines with rails.

It depends on the / your definition of "big". My factory consumes 9.1k ores per second, so I would need at least 202 blue belts to feed it. And another 200 or so belts for intermediate products. Some people would call it big (for a vanilla savegame), but I know my goals, so I call it small.

In early stages, there are no problems with logistics. Replace yellow with red belts, red with blue. Then add another blue belt. And another. And some more. Then replace the blue belts with railroads. And add another lane. And another. And some more. You can't do anything else, because there is no more evolution (without mods). My main bus is a 9 lane (one way) railroad, but there are too many trains, so from time to time even with this main bus traffic jams happens.

That's the real challenge. Not the biters.