Automation games are usually my jam, but I bounced off Factorio pretty quickly. The automation part I got really into. I wanted to keep things as efficient as possible, but then I kept being interrupted by fauna attacks and I kinda hated the disruption. It didn’t help that various defense systems like turrets and the like needed their own supply chain for ammo, so I had to drop everything, start working on that, monsters started attacking my base on another location, rinse, repeat. You get the idea.
I am aware you can turn off the attacking fauna, but that feels like turning off an integral part of the game, so I dunno.
My brother is currently way, WAY into it, though, so I might give it another shake in the future.
The latest one I tried out was Oddsparks which I think is fantastic but I bounced off it because the rail system is a bit underpowered compared to what I’m used to in Factorio and Satsfactory.
In a very real sense, the game is only intended to be played in the manner that makes it actually fun for you.
The fauna is an integral part of the game only in the sense that the pollution produced by your machines makes them angry and makes them evolve, and a lot of work has gone into balancing the pollution/evolution rates to provide a sort of tension and pressure that adapts to how fast you are progressing. If you care a lot about experiencing things “as the devs intended them” then I understand not wanting to cut off an entire system and set of mechanics. In that sense, dealing with the attacking fauna without completely stalling or falling apart is one of the first hurdles you are “meant” to struggle with.
There are intermediates between keeping the attacking fauna and removing them: you can disable their expansion, you can make them only attack when damaged, and you can tweak the numbers that determine how your factory’s pollution affects them. You can also change the amount of “safe space” the game forces the map to give you around where you spawn - this alone can be the difference between the early game being anxiety-inducing or quite relaxed. These can only be done at map generation (unless you don’t mind using console commands to change things on an existing save/map).
Without changing any map settings, it’s not immediately obvious how many options you have to address the problem in-game, but here are some pointers if you ever do give it another try:
trees will absorb pollution, preventing it from reaching biter nests. They can absorb a decent amount but will eventually die and stop absorbing. Starting in a forest can be a bit more cramped than in a desert but at least you don’t have to fend off as many attacks early on.
avoid overproducing just to fill up buffers - you probably don’t need to have 2k green circuits sitting in a chest as soon as you can make them. avoid emitting all of that pollution until you actively need those items.
try to set up defences before they are needed. You can build a new production line first to know what space it requires, but set up walls and turrets before you turn it on. This should help prevent you being interrupted by attacks on undefended machines.
researching damage upgrades gives you more damage output per unit of pollution produced, helping keep the balance in your favor
only a nest that is exposed to pollution will send attack parties. You can toggle displaying pollution in the world map (now called “Remote View”) and proactively clear out nests before the pollution his them. You’re essentially choosing between proactive defensive efforts vs reactive efforts.
reloading a previous save to change your approach without restarting an entire game is totally legit and nothing to be ashamed of.
At the end of what I would call the early game, you unlock even more options.
efficiency modules reduce the pollution a machine emits. They also reduce the amount of electricity the machine consumes, which will indirectly lower your pollution by making you burn less coal
solar power is a great way to lower the amount your factory is polluting once your panels and accumulators are already made. Making enough to power your whole base, however, takes a lot of steel and other ressources, whose refinement emits pollution. So don’t expect solar power to automatically fix your fauna problems - it’ll take a little bit of thought
laser turrets do away with the need to produce ammo and get it to the front lines, though the spikes in power consumption they cause keeps them from being a total, immediate fix. Similar to solar power, you’ll need to plan a bit.
flamethrower turrets are much easier to supply than gun turrets, and can be waaaaaaaay cheaper depending on how much crude oil you have available to you
Finally, you could also first play the game through once without the fauna to get familiarized, and then do a second run with them activated. in my experience, it’s a lot more fun to deal with them once you know your way around the other mechanics.
I’m just glad the length of my response didn’t intimidate you. Factorio is really one of my favorite games of all time, top personal contender for “if you were stuck on a desert island and could only bring 1 video game with you”, so it’s easy to ramble far too long about.
You can tune the biters and make them spawn less, tech up slower etc.
IIRC you can also use the Rail world mode and turn the settings as if they are Normal mode since any cleared space will not respawn biters.
You can also turn up the resource richness and size so you have to expand less and then every now and then clear out an area. I used to be a bit turned off by the biters but now I’ve leaned into it and have have blueprints for making laser perimeter which kinda automates a lot of the biter handling.
Maybe you just need a mindset shift where the biters are another automation challenge instead of it being an intrusion. I really hope you get to enjoy this game, I can’t anymore since I have a baby now but I hope you can. I’ll for sure start again as soon as time allows.
Also, aim for 100% roboport coverage so you can automatically rebuild everything that gets destroyed. Then you can clear out something, paste a perimeter wall and continue on with factory stuff.
I always turn the enemies off. I just want to automate. But the tech tree existing for weapons and being useless really bugged me so I got really in to Dyson Sphere program. But enemies have been added there too.
The combat system in DSP is not as disruptive as the one in factorio, and it isn’t as “integral” to the game as the one in factorio either. Once you get rid of the darkfog bases in your planet they will mostly leave you alone unless you’re unlucky; if that minimal interaction sounds annoying, turning them off entirely has little consequence.
I have a universe with the dark fog swarms turned on, and I’m at the point where to get to the most critical rare materials I need to eliminate them from around the stars they’re orbiting. I’m bottlenecked in producing the fleet to help me take them out because I don’t have any of the stuff on that planet. I got them 99% eliminated before I had to retreat but by the time I got back they were mostly rebuilt but I was still a ways off from fully resupplied.
So I gave up and went back to a peaceful universe. I found a planet tidally locked to its star and got to the point where I was literally just waiting while swarms and swarms of Dyson structure components launched. Like I literally left it running and watched a movie more than once.
So I stopped playing and am really in to planet crafter now but I’m getting towards the end of that. …I think. Honestly I thought I was towards the end more than once already.
Dang, so you had run out of resources on your starting system? Or were you really counting on some rare resource from the system that the dark fog was orbiting?
Specifically it was stalagmite crystals and unipolar magnets. Those were probably in different systems but both were pretty heavily guarded. My home system was pretty much dry of basic materials, I think I had a handful of mines still going on one of the planets. But I couldn’t produce graviton lenses fast enough to keep up with the demand for raw materials.
Usually I load machine gun turrets manually. And use them mainly to clear nests early in the game. Later, when I get my hands on oil, I build perimeter with walls, flame and laser turrets. Connect pipes with oil and connect electricity. That do the trick.
Turn these biters of or set them to peaceful mode. I bought the game in beta and disliked the biters, like you i just wanted to build in my own pace. Some years ago i heard about the option of peacefull mode and got hooked so hard to this game.
I never played factorio but it probably makes the satisfying efficiency feeling even more satisfying when there are beings trying to destroy it and getting destroted themselves no?
I dunno. I feel like diverting resources to defense systems, necessary as they are, makes the factory less efficient than anything, but that’s just me.
You could always play with mods. One of them adds pollution scrubbers, which you can surround your base with to make sure biters are never prompted to attack in the first place. I have several hundred hours in one save that has a metaphoric wall of filters that has yet to be attacked outside of a few instances when I was expanding.
Out of curiosity and just for the novelty of doing it, I found another mod that made a combinator device which would output the current pollution for the chunk that it was contained within. Using that, I set up a whole system to turn on the exact number of scrubbers I needed to prevent any pollution from leaving my base. Never actually implemented it because it was wildly impractical, but it was a fun project just to see if I could do it.
Automation games are usually my jam, but I bounced off Factorio pretty quickly. The automation part I got really into. I wanted to keep things as efficient as possible, but then I kept being interrupted by fauna attacks and I kinda hated the disruption. It didn’t help that various defense systems like turrets and the like needed their own supply chain for ammo, so I had to drop everything, start working on that, monsters started attacking my base on another location, rinse, repeat. You get the idea.
I am aware you can turn off the attacking fauna, but that feels like turning off an integral part of the game, so I dunno.
My brother is currently way, WAY into it, though, so I might give it another shake in the future.
What other automation games are you into?
The latest one I tried out was Oddsparks which I think is fantastic but I bounced off it because the rail system is a bit underpowered compared to what I’m used to in Factorio and Satsfactory.
In a very real sense, the game is only intended to be played in the manner that makes it actually fun for you.
The fauna is an integral part of the game only in the sense that the pollution produced by your machines makes them angry and makes them evolve, and a lot of work has gone into balancing the pollution/evolution rates to provide a sort of tension and pressure that adapts to how fast you are progressing. If you care a lot about experiencing things “as the devs intended them” then I understand not wanting to cut off an entire system and set of mechanics. In that sense, dealing with the attacking fauna without completely stalling or falling apart is one of the first hurdles you are “meant” to struggle with.
There are intermediates between keeping the attacking fauna and removing them: you can disable their expansion, you can make them only attack when damaged, and you can tweak the numbers that determine how your factory’s pollution affects them. You can also change the amount of “safe space” the game forces the map to give you around where you spawn - this alone can be the difference between the early game being anxiety-inducing or quite relaxed. These can only be done at map generation (unless you don’t mind using console commands to change things on an existing save/map).
Without changing any map settings, it’s not immediately obvious how many options you have to address the problem in-game, but here are some pointers if you ever do give it another try:
At the end of what I would call the early game, you unlock even more options.
Finally, you could also first play the game through once without the fauna to get familiarized, and then do a second run with them activated. in my experience, it’s a lot more fun to deal with them once you know your way around the other mechanics.
I did not expect to get such an in-depth response, holy shit. Thank you! Saving your comment for when I get around to giving Factorio another whirl.
You’re welcome!
I’m just glad the length of my response didn’t intimidate you. Factorio is really one of my favorite games of all time, top personal contender for “if you were stuck on a desert island and could only bring 1 video game with you”, so it’s easy to ramble far too long about.
We all want you to enjoy factorio maaaan. This game is magic.
Yup, I seem to have severly underestimated the enthusiasm people have for this game.
You can tune the biters and make them spawn less, tech up slower etc.
IIRC you can also use the Rail world mode and turn the settings as if they are Normal mode since any cleared space will not respawn biters.
You can also turn up the resource richness and size so you have to expand less and then every now and then clear out an area. I used to be a bit turned off by the biters but now I’ve leaned into it and have have blueprints for making laser perimeter which kinda automates a lot of the biter handling.
Maybe you just need a mindset shift where the biters are another automation challenge instead of it being an intrusion. I really hope you get to enjoy this game, I can’t anymore since I have a baby now but I hope you can. I’ll for sure start again as soon as time allows.
Also, aim for 100% roboport coverage so you can automatically rebuild everything that gets destroyed. Then you can clear out something, paste a perimeter wall and continue on with factory stuff.
I always turn the enemies off. I just want to automate. But the tech tree existing for weapons and being useless really bugged me so I got really in to Dyson Sphere program. But enemies have been added there too.
The combat system in DSP is not as disruptive as the one in factorio, and it isn’t as “integral” to the game as the one in factorio either. Once you get rid of the darkfog bases in your planet they will mostly leave you alone unless you’re unlucky; if that minimal interaction sounds annoying, turning them off entirely has little consequence.
I have a universe with the dark fog swarms turned on, and I’m at the point where to get to the most critical rare materials I need to eliminate them from around the stars they’re orbiting. I’m bottlenecked in producing the fleet to help me take them out because I don’t have any of the stuff on that planet. I got them 99% eliminated before I had to retreat but by the time I got back they were mostly rebuilt but I was still a ways off from fully resupplied.
So I gave up and went back to a peaceful universe. I found a planet tidally locked to its star and got to the point where I was literally just waiting while swarms and swarms of Dyson structure components launched. Like I literally left it running and watched a movie more than once.
So I stopped playing and am really in to planet crafter now but I’m getting towards the end of that. …I think. Honestly I thought I was towards the end more than once already.
Dang, so you had run out of resources on your starting system? Or were you really counting on some rare resource from the system that the dark fog was orbiting?
Specifically it was stalagmite crystals and unipolar magnets. Those were probably in different systems but both were pretty heavily guarded. My home system was pretty much dry of basic materials, I think I had a handful of mines still going on one of the planets. But I couldn’t produce graviton lenses fast enough to keep up with the demand for raw materials.
Usually I load machine gun turrets manually. And use them mainly to clear nests early in the game. Later, when I get my hands on oil, I build perimeter with walls, flame and laser turrets. Connect pipes with oil and connect electricity. That do the trick.
Turn these biters of or set them to peaceful mode. I bought the game in beta and disliked the biters, like you i just wanted to build in my own pace. Some years ago i heard about the option of peacefull mode and got hooked so hard to this game.
I never played factorio but it probably makes the satisfying efficiency feeling even more satisfying when there are beings trying to destroy it and getting destroted themselves no?
I dunno. I feel like diverting resources to defense systems, necessary as they are, makes the factory less efficient than anything, but that’s just me.
You could always play with mods. One of them adds pollution scrubbers, which you can surround your base with to make sure biters are never prompted to attack in the first place. I have several hundred hours in one save that has a metaphoric wall of filters that has yet to be attacked outside of a few instances when I was expanding.
Out of curiosity and just for the novelty of doing it, I found another mod that made a combinator device which would output the current pollution for the chunk that it was contained within. Using that, I set up a whole system to turn on the exact number of scrubbers I needed to prevent any pollution from leaving my base. Never actually implemented it because it was wildly impractical, but it was a fun project just to see if I could do it.