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Mayveena posted:You mathy people are so funny! Dude, I don't like digging up my own past here, but I dropped out of my university engineering program because I couldn't hack it with the math. I am not a "mathy person". My oil plant is the only place in my entire Factorio base that is correctly ratioed and solely because it's the only part of Factorio that straight-up seizes and stops working if you don't get close to the ratios. I'm not coming at this from an "optimize all the things, inefficiency is a sin" perspective. You are reading things into my comments that I have not said. quote:Uh, this is math. I don't want to figure all this poo poo out! Okay? You don't have to. A steam engine will run on 2:11:18 or whatever weird ratio that doesn't look at the math whatsoever. It won't be as resource efficient but it'll power your base just the same as a 1:9:18 would. If you're fine with "good enough" then I don't think you're going to be clawing for every shred of efficiency you can find, and if you do want to do that then... it's two division problems, "120/6" and "6/3". It's been a long time since I tutored but I think that's... fourth grade in most US curriculum? Maybe third? This isn't messing with modules and stacking positive and negative multipliers. (gently caress trying to ratio modules. Nightmare.) quote:
quote:Now you're going to say 'well these games aren't for me' but they are!! I love them even though I hate doing the loving math. My son won't play Factorio but he will play Satisfactory with me where he does all the loving ratios and setups and I go and find alternate recipes. Pleaae enjoy these games the way you like to enjoy them. I just don't see the benefit to cutting the establishing parts of Factorio that give a very easy to learn curve for its mechanics (and that all later mechanics are built on) for the sake of "less math" in a part of the game where no math is necessary to succeed. e: jacked up formatting SkyeAuroline fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Feb 17, 2021 |
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Feb 17, 2021 18:44
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As someone who is allergic to even the simplest ratios I'm capable of playing Factorio with or without blueprints or bots because it's fun! I'm currently making belt spaghetti by routing lime, clay bricks and something else into a machine to make things and it's a horrible mess that's all mine and it owns. I can see that some people get into Factorio to "solve" it but I don't, I am here to make factories that make items in the least efficient way possible and it's great. Well, I try to make things more efficient but that's not always possible. Also, and here's my actual dissent: Mayveena, there are mods to let you start with construction robots all powered up and ready to go from a personal robotport, so you can make buses and blueprints to your heart's desire. It's Faster Start, IIRC.
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Feb 17, 2021 18:58
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I think the steam mechanics in Factorio aren't very clear.
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Feb 17, 2021 19:27
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It's not the easiest - in fact power is by far the most difficult thing to derive in the game with no exterior input. For boilers, you need to make the assumption that every step of power generation is lossless, see that a steam engine consumes 30 steam/second, which equates to 900kw of power output. Then you look at a boiler and see that it consumes 1.8mw of power and assume that water and steam units are 1:1, so it takes 60 water/second. Once you know that any doofus can divide the 1200 water/s output of the offshore pump by 60 to get the 20 boilers it supports. If you do make those assumptions it's easy enough to verify them as long as you have sufficient load, but it's not a great system. Solar and nuclear are worse, requiring far too many assumptions to reasonably expect a player to solve on their own. Everything else in the game, if you're struggling to figure it out you just aren't trying. It's all really simple ratios like X:1 and 3:2, until you start getting into modules, at which point you either do a bit of math or just build until the ratios work.
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Feb 17, 2021 19:38
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Factorio is definitely a little obtuse and opaque to a newbie. It's no Dwarf Fortress, but it's not the most user-friendly example of its genre out there. That being said, my big complaint with Factorio is just how MUCH of everything you need. 100+ miners to feed into a couple dozen smelters to feed into a dozen or so assemblers, all to produce enough of an intermediate part that the rest of your factory isn't totally starved of it. DSP feels a lot more lenient in that regard; three miners will produce 12+ ore per second, which is enough to feed a dozen smelters that produce way more iron or copper plates than you'll need for quite a while. Basically, DSP is much smaller (amusing, considering the relative scope of the games) for what feels like the same relative output.
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Feb 17, 2021 19:51
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I hate looking at blueprints for Factorio because it's like getting a Sudoku with all the numbers filled in, but yeah all the power stuff sucks.
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Feb 17, 2021 19:53
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Factorio is a math text book in disguise. The vanilla game is the A Side problems where you can flip to the back of the book for the answer. Every modpack is the B Side that has no answers, except when you go to the modders discord or cheat off someone else. Seablock is literally chemistry. You make dirt from water thats just science.
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Feb 17, 2021 19:56
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Zurai posted:Basically, DSP is much smaller (amusing, considering the relative scope of the games) for what feels like the same relative output. Of course I'm still buying it the second it's out of EA but you know what I mean.
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Feb 17, 2021 20:08
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KirbyKhan posted:Factorio is a math text book in disguise. The vanilla game is the A Side problems where you can flip to the back of the book for the answer. its like a math text book where you can just ignore all the maths if you want to eg K8.0 posted:It's not the easiest - in fact power is by far the most difficult thing to derive in the game with no exterior input. For boilers, you need to make the assumption that every step of power generation is lossless, see that a steam engine consumes 30 steam/second, which equates to 900kw of power output. Then you look at a boiler and see that it consumes 1.8mw of power and assume that water and steam units are 1:1, so it takes 60 water/second. Once you know that any doofus can divide the 1200 water/s output of the offshore pump by 60 to get the 20 boilers it supports. or just build some pumps, build some boilers, build some engines, then build more of whatever is underperforming (or just build more of the set) e: my point is basically that you can play factorio the way mayveena plays dsp and its fine also Mayveena posted:it's just way easier to build nearly anything in Dyson Sphere than the Factorio/Satisfactory equivalent. You slap it down, slap some sorters on, filter the sorters, and you're good to go. awesmoe fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Feb 17, 2021 |
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Feb 17, 2021 20:19
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awesmoe posted:
The splitter is so powerful. When I pressed the tab button on accident I found you can get fancier configuration of splitters. Thinking about how to hoover up every resource on home planet. Thinking of a 5 belt tall line along the one of the upper lattitudal meridians, with a splitter at each 30 degree slice. Stealing this from a_raving_loon's playthrough. Patched planet gen puts you next to every resource within eye shot. Not worth restarting, but convenient if you do restart.
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Feb 17, 2021 20:38
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Nimby rails is fun but if you're playing with money on it sucks to basically make the tiniest regional line and then wait as you run the clock out until the loan is repaid so you can start expanding on your own dime without debt. Edit: I could charge $69 per trip and $4.20 per km but it's a city metro line and that would kinda break any immersion. frogge fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Feb 17, 2021 |
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Feb 17, 2021 20:49
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frogge posted:Nimby rails is fun but if you're playing with money on it sucks to basically make the tiniest regional line and then wait as you run the clock out until the loan is repaid so you can start expanding on your own dime without debt. You need longer distance routes to make any real money I think. Try something at least 100miles/160km in length with a few intermediate stops, the debt repayments quickly become a non-factor.
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Feb 17, 2021 21:12
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Bough Nebuchadnezzar and refunded it 30 minutes later. The art, the UI is really beautiful. The graphics are very conservatively "nice". The music is pretty drat good. So why did I refund it? Well, the game itself is very sterile, slow and clunky like I am playing something from the late 90s. It's weird, too, because the tutorial is pretty comprehensive and easy to read, the UI gives you a lot of info that you would have to divine from tea leaves in other games but in the end it's just 100% what you'd expect from a game like this and literally not a tiny bit more. I haven't played Pharaoh or Zeus for years now but this is like a hires reskin of those at best. Obviously in 30 minutes I didn't get very far so could be there are some surprises later but I doubt it. The game just didn't grab me with anything except for the aforementioned UI and music.
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Feb 17, 2021 21:37
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Galick posted:To be fair I have way less patience for bullshit game design than I did as a kid. I like games that respect my time way more nowadays. Games can be hard! That's totally fine! But I acknowledge that it's not everyone's cup of tea in this day and age. There’s a difference between “respect my time” and “push stick toward glowy blob, push x” I was thinking of Ghost of Tsushima, where people complained about no quest markers, because the idea of “follow the wind” was too hard, and “literally look for smoke on the horizon” didn’t even occur to them. But you’re right; there are games I adored when I was younger that are just painful to try to play nowadays because the state of design has just evolved too much.
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Feb 18, 2021 01:02
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You guys are figuring out all these crazy Factorio formulas and im over here like "Wait...you can run out of water from the pumps?!" I actually found Factorio a ton of fun to figure out. Normally I bounce off games that are obtuse or have to steep a learning curve but Factorio is a rare exception where I really enjoy figuring it out. It took me 10 hours to automate green science, but when I did it was the best a video game has made me feel Kinda bummed about the lukewarm reception to Nebuchadnezzar, I was going to buy it if it was well received but it looks like its just ok and i have my hands full banging my head against the wall trying to get to turn 2 in Shadow Empire
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Feb 18, 2021 01:10
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Kvlt! posted:You guys are figuring out all these crazy Factorio formulas and im over here like "Wait...you can run out of water from the pumps?!" It's a couple of weird interactions put together. One, yes, offshore pumps have a cap of throughput, though they can infinitely sustain that cap. Two, the problem I've been referring to, is that pipes have a throughput limit not actually communicated anywhere significantly different from the limit on pumps. It's normal to look at the pumps and go "hey wait, they're only running at 10%, what gives" - the pipe limit is 1200 while the pump limit is 12,000. The latter issue is the root of the limits on most implementations of fluid in Factorio. Only so much you can connect, serial or parallel, in one fluid network before it just stops working on you.
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Feb 18, 2021 01:18
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Kvlt! posted:
Looks like there's no sandbox mode and no scenarios, just a 13 mission campaign, so I'll be holding off on it for now.
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Feb 18, 2021 01:24
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StrixNebulosa posted:As someone who is allergic to even the simplest ratios I'm capable of playing Factorio with or without blueprints or bots because it's fun! I'm currently making belt spaghetti by routing lime, clay bricks and something else into a machine to make things and it's a horrible mess that's all mine and it owns. Thanks! Well I'm enjoying Dyson right now, and maybe my son and I will get back to Satisfactory although his work is ramping up so we'll see. It would be great to have Dyson to also be multi player. Have they said anything about that?
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Feb 18, 2021 01:51
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SkyeAuroline posted:Dude, I don't like digging up my own past here, but I dropped out of my university engineering program I didn't drop out for the same reason from computer engineering, I still took calculus 2 (which I found 100000x easier than any other form of calculus) (inverse equations should be taught first because they make way more sense than regular quadratic equations, for some reason) I also hate programming because having to make functions and wrap your container around said functions is too much like building the top of the pyramid before making the foundation and confuses the poo poo out of me. And this "math" is just basic arithmetic. I tried DSP but something about it felt too grindy even though it was very polished I'm super excited about Satisfactory but I can already see The End and I guess post-game is just being extremely OCD about overkill production lines.
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Feb 18, 2021 02:03
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Kvlt! posted:
Yeah as the guy stanning Nebuchadnezzar it sucks the reception is so tepid. I probably won't have time to play it for a week to two but I'll still get it just because. It stinks that they don't have a sandbox mode, I complained about it in EG and they announced it in EG2 the same day I complained in the thread. Dev, if you are in here make yourself known. If you have any questions on Shadow Empire let me know. I totally fell in love with it, and put 80 hours in the first week. Its a bit more complex than a Paradox Interactive game, but that's mostly the UI. There is a thread here, it doesn't see a ton of posts but there is a discord and many people are active on it. Saros has some vids of a goon mp game going on, and I think some instructional videos. If you like non goon instruction DasTactic and those both should be on youtube.
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Feb 18, 2021 02:08
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Grevlek posted:If you have any questions on Shadow Empire let me know. I totally fell in love with it, and put 80 hours in the first week. Its a bit more complex than a Paradox Interactive game, but that's mostly the UI. There is a thread here, it doesn't see a ton of posts but there is a discord and many people are active on it. Saros has some vids of a goon mp game going on, and I think some instructional videos. If you like non goon instruction DasTactic and those both should be on youtube. Are there any text/screenshot guides to Shadow Empire? I have trouble learning these kinds of games from video.
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Feb 18, 2021 02:14
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GreenBuckanneer posted:I didn't drop out for the same reason from computer engineering, I still took calculus 2 (which I found 100000x easier than any other form of calculus) (inverse equations should be taught first because they make way more sense than regular quadratic equations, for some reason) Yeah, that was the point I was making. I'm not a math person. I struggle with complex math and am averse enough to it that I decided I couldn't spend my life doing that. Factorio is nowhere close to that and "being a math person" is not a prerequisite to playing the game. That's all.
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Feb 18, 2021 02:18
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StrixNebulosa posted:Are there any text/screenshot guides to Shadow Empire? I have trouble learning these kinds of games from video. Yeah fair enough. Best bet is the actual manual you should be able to get it from the publisher website for free. The first 40 pages or so is world building which is kind of interesting but also just kind of a European Libertarian's space fantasy. At a high level, supply is the most important part of the game. If you are making a new game, you should start with 1 army and the first 4 councils so you can actually interact with the game world in the first 20 turns. You want to nationalize your recycler on turn 1, and then not build anything for a few turns to build up resources. You will want to build a metals source when you can afford one, and then an industrial plant after that. Once those are both online you can pretty safely build any buildings or units you want. Thats the strangest thing about getting used to SE, the first few turns you absolutely want to not build things, you want to stockpile resources so you have more than what the first couple buildings cost. Your army should be used to expand your territory early on. There are 2 types of AI, majors which you will not be able to enter their territory without going to war, and minors. Minors are in three subtypes, nomads/raiders, citystate, and upstarts. City states usually have a resource or two they hoard, and they don't really expand and are good targets to buddy up with. And upstarts can occasionally go to war with you, they attempt to get up to major power level. Expand like crazy, if you run into nomads or random mobs, try to surround them when you fight them to cut off the retreat and they will die. You can get supply when you are within about 6 hex tiles of a road. You want to alternate building supply depots and truck depots to extend your supply on major roads. The last thing that's pretty nebulous is the unit design. I really like it, if has alpha Centauri vibes. If you click on manage>models>design you can check the stats of your units. The two things that matter most are Str. (Strength of )design and Br( literally no idea what that stands for) design. Br can get better over time, but str is determined once when your model is completed. If your infantry, machine gun, or recon is less than 100 br, you want your unit council to make a new line of those in that order of priority. if you spawned with those all 100 or thereabouts, you want to upgrade your existing recon to the next level of armor I think 25mm, that makes it basically impervious to small arms fire And will deal with all early nomad/raiders. I could go on, but that's the highlights for the first 20 turns or so.
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Feb 18, 2021 02:39
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GreenBuckanneer posted:I have EG and never touched it, I didn't realize it was Dungeon Keeper but for Evil Lairs War for the Overworld is a slavish recreation of Dungeon Keeper with the serial numbers filed off, down to having the same narrator. Imp-like workers, trap building minions with gas, tiny farm animals for food, that sort of thing. Had a rough launch but is in a pretty good place now, with Steam Workshop support and a few DLCs including a My pet Dungeon mode.
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Feb 18, 2021 03:13
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Is Banished a finished game? I know a lot of these colony/city building games will come out in early access and not get finished or get pushed into 1.0 without being feature complete and I don't know if Banished is one of them or not.
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Feb 18, 2021 03:24
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FirstAidKite posted:Is Banished a finished game? I know a lot of these colony/city building games will come out in early access and not get finished or get pushed into 1.0 without being feature complete and I don't know if Banished is one of them or not. Banished is a complete game, yes.
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Feb 18, 2021 03:27
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Grevlek posted:Yeah fair enough. Best bet is the actual manual you should be able to get it from the publisher website for free. The first 40 pages or so is world building which is kind of interesting but also just kind of a European Libertarian's space fantasy. Im being 100% genuine when I say I have learned more from this post than the 15 or so hours I have going into the game cold. Thank you!
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Feb 18, 2021 03:27
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Ok, next question: is it worth picking up or are there other games that do what it does better?
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Feb 18, 2021 03:28
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FirstAidKite posted:Ok, next question: is it worth picking up or are there other games that do what it does better? In my opinion, Banished occupies a unique position that no other game has truly touched. There’s nothing out there with the same mix of workers, building placement, survival and the rest. If it interests you, please try it. Also note that it has some massive mods if you grow tired of vanilla.
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Feb 18, 2021 03:38
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Annnnd onto the wishlist it goes, I'll see how cheap it is during the summer sale. Thanks for the rec 
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Feb 18, 2021 03:49
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Kvlt! posted:Im being 100% genuine when I say I have learned more from this post than the 15 or so hours I have going into the game cold. Thank you! Absolutely happy to help. It's pretty daunting but at the same time there's not a ton of feel bads if you play a map for an hour or two and start a new one. It's got a great explore vibe in the 4x verbage. Again there is a thread around here somewhere I'm not able to pull it up since I'm mobile posting, and a discord in the OP. I have a feeling the grognard crowd could have some fun with Soviet Republic there is so much fiddly stuff to poke and prod with. I can't wait for houses the biggest turn off to me right now is that you can only build society style concrete boxes. While awesome, I gotta have some houses or something to break up the skyline.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:00
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As a non-math person, I confess I also don't have a problem with Factorio math. I basically just build things, and when something stops working I find out what it is not getting enough of and try to build more of that, which ultimately ends up going back down line to trying to produce yet more iron or copper plates. (This does not count for petroleum, for which I just said gently caress it and built in the ratios of the factoriocheatsheet, because I do believe petroleum stuff is unnecessarily confusing.) I have much more of a problem with the engineering side of things that is required. Right now, for example, I am struggling to come up with an automated Kovarex system to feed my nuclear reactor. I think to the extent there is any issue with math, it is that rather than doing X per second, it would be easier to just say building X needs an input from Y number of buildings. But that is pretty neatly resolved by, again, factoriocheatsheet. Which again, I don't even think is needed, as you can always just feed something more until it is glutted.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:08
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Do you want Kovarex advice, or are you figuring it out for yourself?
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Feb 18, 2021 04:11
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Yeah I never really worry about ratios in games like Factorio. If I need more of something I build more and if I seem to have too much maybe I'll delete something. Usually I end up with the right ratio just by fiddling.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:13
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Yeah I kind of agree with that statement. It's not the math I have a problem with in factorio or dsp, it's just kind of getting the layout right to keep feeding things or sending things along. I don't have this problem in Satisfactory because you can just keep building higher and higher. But I always end up with sort of inward spiraling messes, and by the time I get whatever finished product I wanted elsewhere, whelp it's in a circle of nonsense and only a single crazy serpentine belt can get it out. Im just starting the yellow researches in DSP, but I'm not sure I see the need for a vast multistar cluster. Im nowhere near running out of resources on my base planet, and I have so much silicon and titanium on another planet in my system I'm pretty much set. Obviously I still have a bit to go but it feels like i hit the mid/end game way sooner in dsp.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:15
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SkyeAuroline posted:Do you want Kovarex advice, or are you figuring it out for yourself? Still want to figure it out for myself, but appreciate the implied offer and will pop back in if I can't get it figured out. I have something half working now with some circuits to leak stuff to the reactor once the brighter green uranium goes over a certain level (so I don't use up my seed stock), it's just kludgy and not fully automated yet.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:16
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SlyFrog posted:Still want to figure it out for myself, but appreciate the implied offer and will pop back in if I can't get it figured out. Sounds solid. Either here or the Factorio dedicated thread if you need advice (not an outright solution unless specifically asked for), I watch both. What's that circuited one look like?
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Feb 18, 2021 04:23
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SkyeAuroline posted:Sounds solid. Either here or the Factorio dedicated thread if you need advice (not an outright solution unless specifically asked for), I watch both. What's that circuited one look like? For unfortunate reasons I'm away from home for a bit, but when I get back I will post it.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:31
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FirstAidKite posted:Ok, next question: is it worth picking up or are there other games that do what it does better? Banished is very much the baseline grandfather of survival strategy. Niche in its own. Also occupies an odd space in that it is finished finished. Devs out and like yeah it was 10ish years ago but for small dev simulators like this that is hella rare for the Big Name OGs of the genre. I dunno, I bought it, never played it, but I have played many of its children. The pretenders to the Banished throne never seem to break beyond. So idunno, what do you think Banished is?
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Feb 18, 2021 05:09
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banished is good enough to spawn a small subgenre of banished-like games what makes banished work is the graphics and atmosphere. it is a one dev game made by a dude who works in the games industry as a graphics guy. so a professional-amateur game. punches way above its weight in terms of visuals gameplay wise it is slow yet tense. as a village plate spinning simulator, there isn't too much to keep track of, but gently caress up anything and people die because winter is frostpunk harsh i think the most promising banished successor is ostriv, but that game is plodding along in early access. banished was released entirely complete and has years worth of mod scene stuff to pick up
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Feb 18, 2021 05:19
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