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Friday Fun Thread for November 8, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Short review: Factorio: Space Age is .. pretty good. It's kinda like Space Exploration mod but somewhat lite & polished.

There's a whole bunch of new mechanics, such as spoilage of certain items on Gleba, grave-robbing on Fulgora and industrially excavating the ruins of an entire civilization and turning it into recycled materials and reusing some of it. Spaceships can't use logistic bots and have only one chest, requiring a whole additional way of building stuff.

Item quality, unlocked by said grave-robbing is a replacement for the upper tiers of materials Bob & Angels used to have. It doesn't seem critical so far, but it's nice to have and makes things more efficient. Might be critical for late game, who knows.

All in all, if you like automation games, this is a worthy DLC for the one that started the genre.

The only downside is, it's not 3d. Why, I can't tell you, seems to me the entire belt-related code could be pasted into a 3d game bc essentially, the belts on a 3d grid are the same as on a 2d grid (if you had infinite belt-types for interleaving).

The only downside is, it's not 3d.

Am I the only one who likes discrete legible units in most of my games? AFAICT, that's what ties together my preference for 2d grids and turn based gameplay.

Do you know what one of the earliest improvements I do in Satisfactory is? I build foundations for my factory, so that it can be grid-based. Same with any basebuilding in Fallout 4 or Valheim: The first step is to build foundations to remove the unique geography and provide a consistent grid, and the second step is to fight with the actual construction because first-person gameplay is a terrible way to translate your thoughts into (virtual) reality.

3d and grid based are orthogonal concepts.

Captain of Industry is both grid based, for building, and fully 3d. They might even add on tunneling (I'd love it).

Vehicles have bounds defined by the grid, but they don't move on it.

the second step is to fight with the actual construction because first-person gameplay is a terrible way to translate your thoughts into (virtual) reality.

You know, I was actually considering going to the forums to bitch to ask for a FPS perspective, or more precisely, being able to zoom in really close and really down - it'd cost them not much because trying to stick another conveyor belt in a big mess of other belts, from a bird's eye view is pretty hard. Despite the snapping code being very,very good!

I mean, I like grids because we're not neanderthals and lacking incredible memory we need things neatly laid out if we're not to keep getting sidetracked looking for stuff. Neanderthals didn't put their stuff in any sense of order whatsoever, suggesting either improbable stupidity (bulk of our ancestors wasn't likely much smarter at the time), or more likely, far better memory. Having to align stuff is a pain.

Am I the only one who likes discrete legible units in most of my games?

Nope. That's my preference too.