site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1718 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 3, 2025

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.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

My honest review of the Factorio expansion, after getting through (ish) all four planets: I don't like it, and I think it doesn't really feel like Factorio except for Vulcanus.

The good stuff is that elevated rails and Vulcanus really are fun. And some of the stuff the other planets get you is fun (notably mech armor and the electromagnetic plant). Vulcanus in particular they just knocked it out of the park. Interesting new enemies, liquid metal processing is fun as hell, you have multiple (strong) ways to generate power, even the music slaps.

Unfortunately the bad stuff is... every other planet. And also quality (more on that later). Fulgora is really a pain with how cramped your builds are. Even on bigger islands there's not much room, and the need to use accumulators for lightning really cuts that space down further. Gleba combines one of the least fun things in the game (dealing with belts jamming up), and a new un-fun thing (spoiling timers) Bots at least make Gleba manageable, but trying to do a belt base is hell. Then it caps off with the extra kick in the dick that Gleba science both spoils and gives you less science per pack thanks to the timer ticking down as you transport it back to Nauvis. And it doesn't even give you a cool new building which is useful back on the main base like Fulgora or Vulcanus did. On top of all that, the enemies just aren't very interesting. They basically act like biters, except they can cross walls so you need more firepower. The spore mechanic is just pollution under a different name, so there's really nothing interesting going on there. Aquilo makes logistics much harder thanks to needing heat, and it makes bots impossible to use effectively. Not only that but you have to make shit tons of ice foundation (and import concrete) just to be able to have a half decent production setup, both of which are slow. I finally gave up on the expansion when I realized that I would need several thousand concrete+ice (above and beyond what I already did) just to make 60 SPM. Not to mention getting to the more outlying ice islands once my starter supply of lithium brine ran out. I already have spent 270 hours on this save, and I can't really see myself putting in more time to do all that, research the tech needed to get to the solar system edge, and building a ship to do it.

Quality is one of those things which seemed like it would be fun, but wound up not being fun. Just unlocking it makes the interface harder to use (I had to break my deeply ingrained habit of set recipe->hit esc when setting up new buildings), and it's such a pain in the ass the way it's all or nothing. You have to have belts carry only one quality of item or your machines will jam up constantly. Would've been much better if quality ingredients gave an increased chance at a quality result (with full quality being guaranteed as it is now).

Overall, it feels like Kovarex really loves compact belt spaghetti bases and tried to make the expansion push you in that direction as hard as possible. Aquilo is by far the worst with the bot energy usage penalty (probably unsurprising since Kovarex said in the past he regrets adding bots to the game), but three of the five new environments (Aquilo, Fulgora and space platforms) are extremely space constrained. And I just... don't like that. I like doing big, sprawling builds where I make pollution that blots out the sun and I laugh as the biters break on my defenses like waves on rock. Vulcanus is really the only planet of the four that still feels like Factorio (minus the biters part), and it's a shame.

Obviously many people do enjoy Space Age. But ultimately I realized... I just wasn't having fun any more, and haven't been for a long time. I thought about continuing just to finish the game (I am closing in on the end), but ultimately decided to not give into the sunk cost fallacy on this one. I wish that we had gotten more content like Vulcanus (which is honestly incredible, 10/10) and less of the wild divergence from the base game. But c'est la vie.

Not sure how much you read or watched in terms of advice, but some of the things I picked up online definitely helped my enjoyment of the game. I was also playing with another mottizen and it helped that we had some different preferences and playstyles.

  1. Vulcanus - this was also my favorite planet. It's where I ended doing a lot of the quality stuff. It was easy enough to just make giant quality recyclers for getting legendary base metals. I love the ability to sprawl.
  2. Fulgora - this is the drone planet. Whatever kovarex previously said about drones, someone else clearly got to him and convinced him to make a planet that is perfect for drones. Drone malls are the way to go here. Or just dumping things into the logistics network. By end game we had gone through something like 20 million scrap (before counting productivity mining bonuses).
  3. Gleba - the secret here is that you just don't need many buildings period. All the recipes are so damn efficient and productive. I ended up building self sufficient tile blueprints, they'd take in just a few inputs and then produce what was needed and burn all excess biowaste. I thought I'd then need to replicate these tiles a bunch, but when I was done I realized I only needed like three of the tiles for base resources. This is also a planet that benefits from drones, and power is basically free once you unlock the burners.
  4. Aquilo was tough. Tiling builds that connected was the right approach here. Efficiency and productivity modules were very useful. There are some recipes on aquilo that you can burn the end results, it's important to just have them on a loop and things will run themselves. I never needed a ton of space or output on this planet. I was almost done with the game when I tapped a second oil field.
  5. Space - was actually the second most fun for me. I just had to embrace tossing excess crap overboard as a way to balance things. Getting used to the way space logistics worked was a little annoying, but once I had it figured out it was pretty smooth.

Haven't gone looking for tips but haven't avoided them either. I agree with your conclusion that bots help a lot on Fulgora (especially for train stations!) and Gleba. The Gleba paradigm I settled on was to have all inputs produced locally (except metals, raw fruit and bioflux). Then biolabs would have chests request 30s worth of materials + 20ish nutrients, with the chests set to trash unrequested. The output would go to a passive provider chest, with a separate output (filtered to spoilage) going to an active provider chest. The passive provider would also have an inserter placing spoilage into the active provider. With that my buildings wouldn't jam up (unlike with belts), which was worth the power cost of bots. Science packs would be about 10% spoiled by the time I made them (due to lack of ingredient freshness), but I honestly don't see how one could do better.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats