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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3019 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 10, 2023

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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What are some obscure job tasks that might make for fun video games? We all are aware of the zillions of programming, train-routing, and bridge-design games. But what about parking-lot design? Guide-rail design? Curb-ramp design? House design (as a game with targets to be met, rather than as a goal-free sandbox like The Sims)?

I want to see an oil-refinery sim. Like factorio but with capitalism. And you have to tune the control system so that nothing explodes. I know sim-refinery was prototyped, but it never got released.

Maybe it was the horrible fluid system, but a lot of factorio players used to consider oil refining to be really unpleasant work. Not even just a difficulty barrier for newbies, but something even the big team megabase builders drew straws for having to do.
That said I would absolutely love a refinery sim, so maybe it just takes autism beyond autism.

Weird. I played a few rounds of cooperative Factorio, and I had to actively fight with others for the right to set up the refineries. Maybe that's just because I couldn't bear to have it done by someone who refused to touch the logic circuits rather than because it's inherently a more enjoyable part of the game, but it also didn't ever feel any worse than, say, cooking conveyor belt spaghetti or setting up rail stations or copy-pasting walls & guns.

Wait, what.

Horrible fluid system ? ..what ?

Apart from being a cpu hog, the fluid system is beautiful. Nothing as satisfying as getting an eight stage cycle of fluid refining with lots of flaring off to the side, all in the service of making rocket fuel or turning cellulose into napalm in service of turning the enemy crispy.

The recent rework made it better, but remember when any fluid contamination in a pipe would run through the whole system, and you had to chase down the errant bit of water by tearing up all the pipes? And pipes would automatically join when placed next to each other even if they had different fluids in them?

Yeah, I remember it. Mild annoyance.

Maybe it was the horrible fluid system, but a lot of factorio players used to consider oil refining to be really unpleasant work. Not even just a difficulty barrier for newbies, but something even the big team megabase builders drew straws for having to do.

Really? I looked up a tiling blueprint for the refinery itself, and that taught me everything I needed to know for unlimited scale from that point on. I'd heard newbies complaining it was too complicated, but it's really, really not.

It was much harder before blueprints and bots, IIRC. And that was back in the dark days when belts decompressed from turning corners

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