Factorio Forums

Factorio reminds me a lot of Super Energy Apocalypse, a game that was designed to teach people about energy production. It's a very similar in concept (tower-defense-ish, with a focus on managing all the different stuff that can go wrong in your production pipeline, with pollution making bad guys stronger)

Main difference was SEA was designed as an education game first (with a lot of attention paid to, say, how much energy coal produced vs solar panels vs nuclear power in the real world), whereas Factorio is designed as a game-game first.

I'm curious a) if SEA was an influence or just parallel evolution, and b) how much research the creators have put into the energy tech tree. I get the sense that I'm learning *something* (i.e. I assume the way the game forces you to process oil and deal with excess Light and Heavy oil or else production halts is based on *something* real), but not sure which parts are based on anything real and which are just based on fun game balance.

It reminds me a little of Global Effect, an old DOS game.

Nobody has ever played that though. It was Sim City, basically, but where you had to be eco-friendly.

ledow wrote:It reminds me a little of Global Effect, an old DOS game.

Nobody has ever played that though. It was Sim City, basically, but where you had to be eco-friendly.

I played it, but never got far. Too tough for me.

Still have the box and game.

The devs tend to do many things different than the rest of the world. I think thats sad.
Its a great game nontheless!

Raemon wrote:Factorio reminds me a lot of Super Energy Apocalypse, a game that was designed to teach people about energy production. It's a very similar in concept (tower-defense-ish, with a focus on managing all the different stuff that can go wrong in your production pipeline, with pollution making bad guys stronger)

Main difference was SEA was designed as an education game first (with a lot of attention paid to, say, how much energy coal produced vs solar panels vs nuclear power in the real world), whereas Factorio is designed as a game-game first.

I'm curious a) if SEA was an influence or just parallel evolution, and b) how much research the creators have put into the energy tech tree. I get the sense that I'm learning *something* (i.e. I assume the way the game forces you to process oil and deal with excess Light and Heavy oil or else production halts is based on *something* real), but not sure which parts are based on anything real and which are just based on fun game balance.

the game gives a nod to realism, but does not match things up to real values of raw materials. the math of how things work is accurate though (energy conversions, etc), but the roots are not.
for instance, a very basic question is "how much is 1 ore", the answer in game is 8MJ worth.

Coal generates 10,000 BTU per pound. thats approximately 10.5 MJ so each unit of coal is about .8 pounds ish.
petroleum is about twice as good as coal for BTU generation. 1 gallon is 145,000 BTU, which is about 6.3 pounds, so if we divide by 0.8 to get coal value, its 18,412 BTU per 0.8 pounds. this is about 19.5 MJ. solid fuel in game uses 20 petroleum, but is only 25MJ. (solid fuel should be about 375MJ at that rate of consumption)

so... real terms, fake values. and real (lossless) conversion of energy.

I said to myself: "well, one thing that's definitely fake is the sulfur thing. Convert petroleum gas, a hydrocarbon, into sulfur by adding water?"

But I checked Wikipedia and apparently that's actually how you get sulfur. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrodesulfurization

So, that's one thing I learned.

HurkWurk wrote:

Raemon wrote:Factorio reminds me a lot of Super Energy Apocalypse, a game that was designed to teach people about energy production. It's a very similar in concept (tower-defense-ish, with a focus on managing all the different stuff that can go wrong in your production pipeline, with pollution making bad guys stronger)

Main difference was SEA was designed as an education game first (with a lot of attention paid to, say, how much energy coal produced vs solar panels vs nuclear power in the real world), whereas Factorio is designed as a game-game first.

I'm curious a) if SEA was an influence or just parallel evolution, and b) how much research the creators have put into the energy tech tree. I get the sense that I'm learning *something* (i.e. I assume the way the game forces you to process oil and deal with excess Light and Heavy oil or else production halts is based on *something* real), but not sure which parts are based on anything real and which are just based on fun game balance.

the game gives a nod to realism, but does not match things up to real values of raw materials. the math of how things work is accurate though (energy conversions, etc), but the roots are not.
for instance, a very basic question is "how much is 1 ore", the answer in game is 8MJ worth.

Coal generates 10,000 BTU per pound. thats approximately 10.5 MJ so each unit of coal is about .8 pounds ish.
petroleum is about twice as good as coal for BTU generation. 1 gallon is 145,000 BTU, which is about 6.3 pounds, so if we divide by 0.8 to get coal value, its 18,412 BTU per 0.8 pounds. this is about 19.5 MJ. solid fuel in game uses 20 petroleum, but is only 25MJ. (solid fuel should be about 375MJ at that rate of consumption)

so... real terms, fake values. and real (lossless) conversion of energy.

Gotcha, thanks.