Factorio Forums

I'm saying this because i was at the bar today, and i was discussing with strangers some of my favourite things in life outside music , which is Factorio and my cat. And they called me "team rocket", like in the pokemon show.

It made me question my life choice on my way back

Industrialization of alien planets and the extermination of all native fauna & flora, for the sole purpose of building an “interstellar” space platform which can’t even get past the System’s edge without serious damage from the planet-destroying calamity which previously befell the Engineer’s civilization (and which was quite possibly caused by the Engineer themselves)… there are a few hints that we are not working for Captain Planet.

"Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun."

eugenekay wrote: Wed Jun 25, 2025 1:14 pm Industrialization of alien planets and the extermination of all native fauna & flora, for the sole purpose of building an “interstellar” space platform which can’t even get past the System’s edge without serious damage from the planet-destroying calamity which previously befell the Engineer’s civilization (and which was quite possibly caused by the Engineer themselves)… there are a few hints that we are not working for Captain Planet.

I take that as a yes, you have already wondered if you were the bad guy, and even found an answer for yourself, you may be feeling some guilt somehow x), so that was not totally weird as a question in the first place. Now i'd like to note that in pokemon the good guy force his enslaved creatures to fight till they pass out for fun or for money, there's no such thing in factorio, you're not there to have fun or money, only to try and survive and escape the planet on which you accidentaly landed while trying to piss off the least amount of other life form ! Isn't that something everyone more or less has to do ???

I take from what i read from you ( which can be biaised on my side) that you are not necessarily seeing any inherent "bad" in "owning" a cat, it's mostly the "making rocket" part that is problematic. Not in itself, not the "goal" of making rocket to go to space but what i feel is the "method" to achieve it, the whole extermination of native fauna and flora thing.

So the more ethical way to play would be to try and avoid this to the maximum, and just escape the planets without providing the biters with any kind of evolution if possible ?

angramania wrote: Wed Jun 25, 2025 4:54 pm "Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun."

That's exactly what a bad guy in denial would say !

I mean in factorio, no problemo x), but it was one of those rare occasion where i wasn't interacting with someone else thru factorio, and i'm not carrying rocket launchers or flamethrowers irl , so i just laughed, it's on the way back when i thought, ah time to play with the cat and launch some rockets, that i was hit by the realization that maybe that's exactly what the bad guys in the pokemon show are thinking all day, making rockets and playing with their cat. Having recovered some weaponry didn't make those question go away , i cannot gun them down. Thanks you for asnwering the question by the way ! It made me realize that it's not because in the pokemon show the bad guys are obssessed with rockets and cats that it means being obsesessed with rockets and cats makes you a bad guy. For example some people can think that as long as you have gun the question don't apply, and that's just one situation

As an American I have an ample supply of Fireworks - which my cats love to chase… So by no means am I against the industrial exploitation of video-game creatures: they are in fact the best source of Rocket Fuel in the game! I just wanted to make sure that we are all aware that Yes, there are definitely some anti-Environment gameplay elements to be found. Whether you find these themes meaningful or annoying is largely a matter of intepreptation.

I think the Demolishers are cute. I like to keep one of the Small ones in a “Zoo”, and let it snack on passing Logistic bots. There are MANY ways to play the game.

eugenekay wrote: Wed Jun 25, 2025 11:33 pm As an American I have an ample supply of Fireworks - which my cats love to chase… So by no means am I against the industrial exploitation of video-game creatures: they are in fact the best source of Rocket Fuel in the game!

Cats chasing fireworks ? I can't believe that, i think they would be scared of the noise. And Jelly is not a creature to me. More "made of plant" in the game. I can not follow you there x).

eugenekay wrote: Wed Jun 25, 2025 11:33 pm I just wanted to make sure that we are all aware that Yes, there are definitely some anti-Environment gameplay elements to be found. Whether you find these themes meaningful or annoying is largely a matter of intepreptation.

That is not really my question : "Do you think the character in factorio engage in a moral activity ?" is not the same as "do you ever feel the bad guy playing factorio, or explaining factorio to other people ?" .

Let say you are a famous actor that decide to play a vilain for free in a show and the profit goes for charity. The activity of the character, the vilain, will probably be despicable, but then maybe the actor will never ever think about being the bad guy, or maybe will think about it and dismiss it right away.

Similarly if you let your computer run all night for the grass to absorb pollution and preserve the trees in Nauvis you are doing the ecology wrong in real life, even though your character doesn't engage in any harmful activity for the virtual world.

The consequences of the actions of a player on the virtual environment in factorio is akin to a movie character dying in a show because of the vilain to me, it's not real. Another example for me , the more i play war game the less i want to actually participate in one for real. It's a bit similar when i play factorio somehow, it constantly reminds me that trees are fragile, and that machines that works are sort of magic sometimes and can be appreciated for that.

I believe where it matters is because what the game contains isn't going to change fundamentally, it's about automation and space, let say like a Tesla is an electric car, but then the people that play the game, or drive the Tesla, can suddenly feels a lot different about what it means for them.

It has happened to me several time over the course of the years with pollution or biters, when i started playing i was peaceful, to learn things, then played with biters, and more and more, and modded to the point where i felt like a monster and bored of the massacre at the same time, so i went peaceful again, but also playing with friends and in random multiplayer, i have not always felt the same about that, even though it's "the same" game about automation and space, with ennemies and pollution.

eugenekay wrote: Wed Jun 25, 2025 11:33 pm I think the Demolishers are cute. I like to keep one of the Small ones in a “Zoo”, and let it snack on passing Logistic bots. There are MANY ways to play the game.

I have made such thing too, even posted this in the galaxy of fame x). You don't think it's crual ? or virtual animal crualty ?

I found my cat in my garage during covid, it was young and super skinny, it was not my cat at the time, so i brought it to the vet who said it had no legal identifcation for owner, i tried to leave a few notes, and ask neighbours but not for long, because it was so cute, now it's been "my cat". Still sometimes i wonder if someones misses it, it wasn't stray cat, maybe they couldn't look for it because of covid, and now it's trapped with me for the rest of its life.

Have you stopped wondering ? or Do you ever wonder ? x)

mmmPI wrote: Fri Jun 27, 2025 4:43 amI have made such thing too, even posted this in the galaxy of fame x). You don't think it's crual ? or virtual animal crualty ?

I found my cat in my garage during covid, it was young and super skinny, it was not my cat at the time, so i brought it to the vet who said it had no legal identifcation for owner, i tried to leave a few notes, and ask neighbours but not for long, because it was so cute, now it's been "my cat". Still sometimes i wonder if someones misses it, it wasn't stray cat, maybe they couldn't look for it because of covid, and now it's trapped with me for the rest of its life.

Have you stopped wondering ? or Do you ever wonder ? x)

I don't think there is any true Cruelty in Virtual War Crime - unless you are explicitly trying to be Racist or Stupid. For example, as a long-time Stellaris player, I strive to exterminate the filthy "Human Empire" simply because of their bizarre external genitalia: positively offensive to a Fungoid species! It is far too silly to be interpreted as mean, especially to pixels on a screen.

That is called the "Cat Distribution System"; it is how they have worked since Ancient Egyptian temples were invaded by tiny tigers. The most recent addition to my home was a Stray who walked in off the Freeway... we fed him, gave him a collar, took him to the Vet, and now he won't walk farther than the Garden.

If the Cat (or the Demolisher) wants to break out of their Cage, they will.

eugenekay wrote: Tue Jul 08, 2025 11:40 pm I don't think there is any true Cruelty in Virtual War Crime - unless you are explicitly trying to be Racist or Stupid. For example, as a long-time Stellaris player, I strive to exterminate the filthy "Human Empire" simply because of their bizarre external genitalia: positively offensive to a Fungoid species! It is far too silly to be interpreted as mean, especially to pixels on a screen.

Is this an example of racism or stupid or both ?

I think it's fair to say that no animal suffers when they are just pixels, so in a way it's hard to find the victim of the cruelty, but in another way you demonstrated quite convincingly to me that there can be some virtual cruelty inflicted on those pixels. This made me think a lot x).

I think what you describe can be understood in 2 parts.

1) doing something on your own that may have symbolic value
2) sharing this

I play a lot of civilization and europa universalis, so i can relate to stellaris and comiting virtual atrocities, but i feel unless you are playing multiplayer or sharing screenshot of your empire to some other humans with actual feelings, no-one will be offended if you act immoraly in those games. It can only be "interpreted" as something as long as you share it, then it can be as offensive as any picture or text but it's not by playing the game that you commit the offending act, the atrocities in the game are not felt by any living creature, only the picture, so you'd be guilty of sending inappropriate pictures, not guilty of mass murder or whatever atrocities are commited in the game.

Like it's not harming the environment to burn forest in factorio as it would be in real life, but if you post (many) pictures of burnt forests to your friend who lost his house to a fire, you may lose a friend or something.

But that's not quite enough somehow to me, you can still wonder if you are the bad guy when you are alone in front of your computer enjoying burning virtual forest. It happened to me with the biters that one day i wondered "why am i doing this already ?" and i played a couple peaceful game afterward because i didn't enjoy the massacrre anymore. Which raised question on its own x) I'm no expert on stellaris ,but i believe you're not forced to exterminate all species that have external genitalia, you've decided to strive for this for reasons that are not my concerns, but in such case the observation can be pretty similar:

Do you ever wonder if you are the bad guy because of what you enjoy doing in video games ? like you could be striving to make your stellaris world a perfection instead of a place of extermination, in a way in factorio, do you sometimes think "i'm enjoying burning nests wayy tooo much, i'm a grown up person i need to do some serious factory things?" i'm provoking, but it has happened to me to think that there was other game more focused on combat that i should be playing instead if i wanted to click fast and see stuff burn as opposed to thinking and building ; that was some days where i realized i spent like 3 hours just driving around and "liberating an area on the map to put wall on a choke point". When comparing to other time i spend on factorio trying to make music with speakers, or learning things in computer science, i have a self jugdment on my use of time, it's two different ways of avoiding real life responsabilites, but one is less worse x)

eugenekay wrote: Tue Jul 08, 2025 11:40 pm That is called the "Cat Distribution System"; it is how they have worked since Ancient Egyptian temples were invaded by tiny tigers. The most recent addition to my home was a Stray who walked in off the Freeway... we fed him, gave him a collar, took him to the Vet, and now he won't walk farther than the Garden.

If the Cat (or the Demolisher) wants to break out of their Cage, they will.

For the demolisher yes if you taunt them ! but for the cat it's different, i live in a flat, he is only allowed in the small enclosed backyard when i go for smoke break, he comes with me when it's not raining, like a dog, i even used a leash at first, he chase lizards and centipede, but i need to open several doors everytime he couldn't escape even if he tries. He did try though , i had to climb on the roof of the neighbour twice from my backyard to get him when he was younger and got stuck. He doesn't have collar but it doesn't mean he's free to leave, he cannot use digicode from the street nor use doorbell, so i don't let it roam around It's more like on those islands where cats were brought in by humans i think x)

There's few people letting their cats roam around a few street away, and they wait in front of the door to get in, it could be of those that wandered a bit further than usual during covid where streets where more calm, i found it in the basement of the whole building, but during lockdown there was no-one else, and it was meowing at nights. I remember he didn't let me touch him with the hand that smell the smoke when he was not used to it, like it was very stinky, but now he seem to no longer care. Which makes me feel bad cuz i no longer either since then.

Maybe it's because i don't have much other things to worry about that i have time to wander about that beyond the initial interpellation in a bar x) But i wondered if the whole "launching rocket to space" could become a dividing political theme in the future, if so then playing factorio would become a moral statement x) I didn't realize such things when i said i was playing factorio to random strangers in a bar that didn't know about it and i tried to explain.