List of playstyle Challenges

[Radioactive Pretzels]

I love experimenting with different limitations or rulesets for Factorio. Like the "Lazy Bastard" acheivement for using a minimal number of pocket craftings.
A lot of the possible rules are just self-imposed, not a mod or even acheivement, but they're fun.

Bentham (youtube Let's Play superman) loves these kinds of limitations, as do I. They go deeper than just changing assembler recipes or costs.

Is there a list of such "challenges" on the forum? If not, it would be fun to make such a list. It doesn't matter if they become official achievements or not, it's just interesting to see ideas for new playstyles.
Typically the rule will be "Launch a rocket, but you can't do this or build that normal Factorio step."

My favorite self-limited game rule has been "Green/Blue/Purple science assemblers can only be built on top of dead Biter bases." It changes your base design to require long distance logistics of many types of items.

"No Bots" or "No Trains" or "No Solar power" are obvious options though not particlularly game-changing. Similarly, combat limitations "No lasers, no flames" could be options, but again also aren't really game-changing.

"No Belts" is pretty radical! It's been done before by others. Midgame is the hardest, but once you get bots the logistic system takes over and it becomes more like standard Factorio again. The long handled inserter chest chain is your friend!

One I'd like to try (that's likely too hard) is "only Burner inserters". That's going to be very difficult, probably by making every belt a mixed coal+item split belt. This may be easier if combined with the (independent) extreme idea of a Train Bus where items are moved between assemblers by a train, not a belt.

Any other ideas for playstyle challenges? They don't need to be official, and often you can just apply the limitations to yourself to experiment. I enjoy the way you have to rethink production when your regular Factorio solutions are suddenly blocked.

If any of the ideas are good, they might be interesting as an official Factorio achievement (like Lazy Bastard) or mod (to enforce a limitation so you don't have to stay alert and accidentally build the restricted item or whatever).

[Hannu]

I have had the rule no beacons after I tested them first time. In my opinion they are just insanely overpowered in my playstyle.
Typically I limit usage of modules too. Typically I use only level 3 productivity modules, but I am not absolutely strict. If some bottleneck assembler sits in the hard place I put speed module in it. Normally I use speed modules in pumpjacks too, at least during the middle game before I have time to make 20 oil production stations.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Of course the Lazy Bastard achievement is a good example, but if you want to do it "properly" you won't use any item that hasn't been produced by your main factory (so no plonking down temporary assemblers).

I saw an interesting stream once of someone who refused to cut down trees as much as he could help it, and had put himself on a small peninsula. The geographic bit of course depends on your map but he had a very cramped factory. I would recommend this challenge for people (such as myself) who get stuck in the habit of building a linear factory every game.

I don't tend to use beacons anyway. Descryant pointed out in one of his videos that there should never be a reason to use speed modules, your factory should be properly designed in the first place to allow expansion. The only modules I use are efficiency in my furnaces and productivity in all my oil production and derived components.

[ssilk]

Mods can add own achievements. I think that's the right way to go.

[Radioactive Pretzels]

I saw an interesting stream once of someone who refused to cut down trees as much as he could help it, and had put himself on a small peninsula. The geographic bit of course depends on your map but he had a very cramped factory. I would recommend this challenge for people (such as myself) who get stuck in the habit of building a linear factory every game.

Oh, that's a great one. Simple idea, but with real conseqences! This is exactly the kind of challenge I like.

In fact the "don't cut trees" rule has two different consequences. As you say, it limits dense base layouts, though of course you could just build in mostly-empty desert.
But the other half of the challenge: can you launch a rocket with the limitation of cutting down only a SINGLE tree? You'll need one to make a power pole for your first science and assembler, but that's the only time you HAVE to use one. It's only 3 research steps to get to Electric Energy Distribution 1 to get the all-metal medium poles. The "Lone Tree" acheivement!

[Radioactive Pretzels]

"No pipes" is a winnable limitation. Probably not very interesting consequences though.. you'd have to use storage tanks to "connect" all the fluid users. So more annoying than interesting.


There's a Let's Play with the self-imposed limitation of using only a single assembler. He's using Bob's Mods so he can overclock the assembler to huge rates, but it's still an audacious attempt!

[Radioactive Pretzels]

Just finished a "challenge" game where I made a single change: green circuits cost 20 iron and 40 copper coil.. OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive. Other recipes unchanged.


This made green circuits precious and made a very interesting and different midgame. Tech research was SLOW and was the main limitation, not assembler cost like I first expected.
Even though biters were not boosted to deathworld, the extended research time made them evolve to be pretty deadly, and I didn't have full damage multipliers on guns, and certainly no lasers. And yellow inserters were too expensive (they use green circuits!) so I had a belt of mixed coal and ammo magazines and used burner inserters to keep my front line turrets supplied.
The iron and copper demand was huge so I ended up having to build trains (no green circuits needed) extending a long, long distance away to where the ore density was high. Keeping these train lines defended was interesting too.

A biter attack wiped out a mining outpost and the cost in green circuits (miners) was painful.

Power was all-steam all the way to the end.. solar and nukes need too many green circuits! But batteries and accumulators need no green circuits.
I had 10 laser turrets (only) which I used at chokepoints for their longer range, and I protected them like the precious expensive jewels they were.

I made some robots, but they were too expensive so I ended up being mostly belted in my factory. A nice change.

Endgame was just building up a big base and the challenge was simply to feed it with enough iron and copper to make all the productivity modules and blue circuits needed for the bottleneck rocket control units. Again it had a different flavor since it needed a ton of iron and copper so it was more about train scheduling all the incoming ore, not about oil (like it tends to be in my other games)

Very interesting... more interesting than marathon expensive recipes since some things like trains or guns and walls were still cheap.

Biggest annoyance was the too-high cost of modular armor components (especially power sources), so I didn't even have faster legs. If you want to try this challenge, it may be useful to mod the armor solar panel cost lower, or make one panel produce 5x power.

[eradicator]

"No Belts" is pretty radical! It's been done before by others. Midgame is the hardest, but once you get bots the logistic system takes over and it becomes more like standard Factorio again. The long handled inserter chest chain is your friend!

I don't do challenges myself but as a mod author i still sometimes think about these. Somewhat recently when the new campaign was really new it didn't have splitter/undergrounds research.

So: "ONLY belts" challenge. No trains, no bots, no splitters, no underground belts. If you want to drive it to the extreme add: only loaders, no inserters, no chests, which should completely break any attempt to build "fake splitters".

[Radioactive Pretzels]

So: "ONLY belts" challenge. No trains, no bots, no splitters, no underground belts. If you want to drive it to the extreme add: only loaders, no inserters, no chests, which should completely break any attempt to build "fake splitters".

Oh, that "only loaders" twist makes this interesting. It's almost guaranteeing a tangled spaghetti mess to get products where they belong. And you can't even make a sushi belt hack to carry rare items. This would be a PAINFUL challenge, but perhaps possible if you plan your layouts very carefully before you ever start building. Which makes it a unique style indeed!
Allowing chests would help a lot since you could (painfully) split and merge and sort items but it'd still be spaghetti hell. That's great!

[coppercoil]

"No pipes" is a winnable limitation. Probably not very interesting consequences though.. you'd have to use storage tanks to "connect" all the fluid users. So more annoying than interesting.

You can use barrels everywhere. This isn't very challenging, so it may be used next to the other limitations to change overall "taste" of the game.

[movax20h]

My personal challenge is usually: no filter inserters, and no priority / filter splitters.

I find them usually unnecessary in well designed factory.

Also no logistic bots for majority of factory. I only use logistic bots to trash raw ore from my inventory back to belt or some logistic chest, and for delivering me some components for building, but they are not used to transfer items between assemblers, trains, miners, etc.

One of the reasons I do not like filter splitters, is that they are available from the start, instead of being some research upgrade. In older versions of Factorio there were no filter / priority splitters either, and I had no problems playing it.

The only point where I really like having filter splitters is in uranium sorting. Which is literally a single splitter in the whole factory.

Priority splitters are sometimes useful when you want to inject random ore back to belt from player trash slots. You want to insert them back on belts as quickly as possible, so the chest that is requesting this ore does not fill up. But in reality I never had an issue with it.

[foamy]

So: "ONLY belts" challenge. No trains, no bots, no splitters, no underground belts. If you want to drive it to the extreme add: only loaders, no inserters, no chests, which should completely break any attempt to build "fake splitters".

Oh, that "only loaders" twist makes this interesting. It's almost guaranteeing a tangled spaghetti mess to get products where they belong. And you can't even make a sushi belt hack to carry rare items. This would be a PAINFUL challenge, but perhaps possible if you plan your layouts very carefully before you ever start building. Which makes it a unique style indeed!
Allowing chests would help a lot since you could (painfully) split and merge and sort items but it'd still be spaghetti hell. That's great!

You can actually build sushi belts without the use of inserters (or splitters). Belts themselves are circuit entities, and that's sufficient. I use just such a system to drive my labs, as well as module assembly.

[eradicator]

So: "ONLY belts" challenge. No trains, no bots, no splitters, no underground belts. If you want to drive it to the extreme add: only loaders, no inserters, no chests, which should completely break any attempt to build "fake splitters".

Oh, that "only loaders" twist makes this interesting. It's almost guaranteeing a tangled spaghetti mess to get products where they belong. And you can't even make a sushi belt hack to carry rare items. This would be a PAINFUL challenge, but perhaps possible if you plan your layouts very carefully before you ever start building. Which makes it a unique style indeed!
Allowing chests would help a lot since you could (painfully) split and merge and sort items but it'd still be spaghetti hell. That's great!

You can actually build sushi belts without the use of inserters (or splitters). Belts themselves are circuit entities, and that's sufficient. I use just such a system to drive my labs, as well as module assembly.

Got pictures of that? As far as i can imagine without splitters guaranteeing equal mixing you'd have to let the target belt run at very low capacity (or on a timer) because otherwise the belt content would block sideloading. Without chests you also have no way to filter left over items and thus no way to compensate a wrong sushi balance, which should be especially bad for labs because their consumption depends on the current technology. So in any case a sushi belt without splitters should still be more annoying/difficult than one with splitters.

[mudcrabempire]

The "Do not destroy biter bases" challenge. Including worms, but you probably need to turn off biter expansion.

[foamy]

So: "ONLY belts" challenge. No trains, no bots, no splitters, no underground belts. If you want to drive it to the extreme add: only loaders, no inserters, no chests, which should completely break any attempt to build "fake splitters".

Oh, that "only loaders" twist makes this interesting. It's almost guaranteeing a tangled spaghetti mess to get products where they belong. And you can't even make a sushi belt hack to carry rare items. This would be a PAINFUL challenge, but perhaps possible if you plan your layouts very carefully before you ever start building. Which makes it a unique style indeed!
Allowing chests would help a lot since you could (painfully) split and merge and sort items but it'd still be spaghetti hell. That's great!

You can actually build sushi belts without the use of inserters (or splitters). Belts themselves are circuit entities, and that's sufficient. I use just such a system to drive my labs, as well as module assembly.

Got pictures of that? As far as i can imagine without splitters guaranteeing equal mixing you'd have to let the target belt run at very low capacity (or on a timer) because otherwise the belt content would block sideloading. Without chests you also have no way to filter left over items and thus no way to compensate a wrong sushi balance, which should be especially bad for labs because their consumption depends on the current technology. So in any case a sushi belt without splitters should still be more annoying/difficult than one with splitters.

You use single-lane sideloading, circuit-limited, as so:

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... ushi_belt/

The real challenge is the lack of underground belts, TBH.

[Radioactive Pretzels]

Several people messaged me asking what mod I used to do my interesting Pricy Green Circuit challenge.
Changing recipes is straightforward, I just used this forum post as a guide. Have fun!