I'm back and on a Steamdeck - anyone else on Steamdeck? Tips/Tricks/Observations?

[mrt144]

Ahoy hoy, I haven't played in almost 4 years and saw there was an OMG Space Expansion!!! and have that on my Birthday/Christmas wish list.

So previously around 2019/2020 I was on a beefy gaming desktop which has given way to a Steamdeck of all things. I've built one base already up to Artillery but I was curious on other's experiences, tips/tricks to navigating some things in the interface. So far the two things I've noticed

1. I made a way tighter base on my first go around, like it could fit on a postage stamp. I think part of that is that its a little cumbersome to make accurate selections and 'plops' when you're zoomed out so I zoomed in tighter, and so everything was built pretty close and tight so I could remain zoomed in. I am going to develop this base into a megabase at 1000 SPM to test performance on Steamdeck but has anyone noticed playing tighter/shorter on Steamdeck vs. their desktop? Are you relying on trains more because of this or nah?

2. I miss being able to 'copy and apply a recipe' and I think I figured out the copy part (there's button guidance on the screen) but how the heck to you apply that to the next building? It's nice for retrofitting and rapidly respeccing of existing stuff.

I'll add onto this thread as things come up and would love any other reports with how you're doing on the Steamdeck.

[Panzerknacker]

Plug it into a external monitor and keyboard/mouse.

Or atleast completely redo the controls.

[TurtleZ]

I've played entirely on Steam Deck for nearly 3 years now. In my experience performance is never really a problem, I only started running into slowdown at about 30k SPM in a mid-tech Space Age megabase. However as you mention the controls can take some getting used to!

I was playing before the built-in controller support was added, so take my comments with a grain of salt, but I've had a lot of success with a custom Steam input configuration and using the mouse and keyboard control setting. There are enough button combinations on the Deck to map each control separately - for example, I have:
- Right trackpad as mouse, with left-click on press
- Left trigger as right-click, right trigger as shoot
- Left joystick as WASD
- Rotate left/right on the bumpers
- Left trackpad as scroll wheel (vertical: zoom in/out, horizontal: increase/decrease tile placement size)
- Directional keys as various blueprint functionality - copy/paste/undo/decon planner
- Left-side back buttons as shift/control
- Right-side back buttons as "modifiers" - hold down to access alternate controls on almost every other button, including flip, cut, redo, blueprint, drop/pick up items, and plenty more space for modded keybinds as well. Also a numpad on left trackpad which is a lifesaver for combinators.

It is quite a long process to build up a control scheme, but now that I have one I'm used to I'm not slowed down by it at all. I've not tried the controller support but it seems pretty clunky, Factorio is very clearly designed with keyboard + mouse in mind.