I started playing Factorio again after a fairly long break from it. I played it a bit in 2018 and while I didn’t progress very far in the tech tree, I really enjoyed it. It’s a deep game and describing it is tough because it can be played in so many different ways.
At its core, you’re a stranded space explorer on a world with exposed natural resources, not unlike Earth. Your crashed ship provides you with a few basic tools and raw materials and your task is to gradually build up your manufacturing capability until you reestablish space flight again. Along the way, you work through various ages of technology - coal and steam, steel and petroleum, etc. Getting through these various stages is no picnic. Each level of technology requires more and more resources and in order to move forward, you have to find ways of automating resource extraction and complex material production, like steel girders and plastic blocks. And then there’s the natives.
Oh yes, this world is inhabited. In fact, it has a healthy population of indigent life split between 3 species; Biters, Spitters and Worms. These aliens are peaceful at first, but as you start to generate more pollution, it spreads and starts to affect them in 2 ways - it royally pisses them off AND it makes them evolve and get stronger. Eventually they start attacking you and your infrastructure and the game takes on a whole new strategic dimension that forces you to include military research and development in your gameplay.
This game is not easy. It tries to give you some basic concepts via tutorials, but really, it expects you to figure things out for yourself. Fortunately, there are a ton of resources on the Web that you can use to help you out when you get stuck. One way to work through it is to look up the materials needed to build the next level of tech and then gradually build each one. Below is a list I found on Reddit that suggests a path forward. It’s not bad, but you’re going to have to find your own path.
Suggested Strategy
- Electricity
- Iron + copper plates automation
- Green circuits automation
- Red and green science
- Oil processing
- Red circuits
- Steel automation
- Blue science
- Oil products cracking (Look here when you get to this point)
- Sulfuric acid
- Batteries (component) and solar panels + batteries (product) for solar electricity generation shift
- Bots
- Military and purple science
- Processors (blue chips)
- Yellow science
- Modules
- Space science
- Uranium processing and uranium based products
- Nuclear reactor
- Mega base projecting)
Play Log
Below is a log of how the game has revealed itself to me.
Day 7: Regroup
- Built some solar panels and powered all the pumpjacks for oil with them. Won’t pump at night, but I have enough storage (I think) that it won’t matter.
- Going to mess around with some trains. I really dislike this centralized factory. Would prefer to have small separate factories that I I can tune individually. Will see if I can make that work.
Day 6: Plastic
- Need plastic in order to make blue science packs
- Built a chemical plant to create sulfur from petroleum gas
- Created red circuit board assembly line
- Rebuilt automated assembly lines for:
- Red science packs
- Green science packs
- Red circuits
- Blue science packs
- Research blue science
- Research “all of the things” (Red, Blue and Green tech)
- Added 6 more steam engines and 3 new boilers to meet power demands.
Discovered a few places that caused slowdowns in production.
- Iron plates were running low which caused a ripple down chain reaction. Fixed by reducing the amount of steel I was producing and replacing the stone burner smelters with steel furnaces.
- Green and red circuit production needed to be balanced and increased in order to supply enough blue science packs.
Day 5: Oil
- Explored the map to hell-and-gone to find some oil fields. Finally found a couple to the North of my main area. (Note to self: Next time, recon the map first and find an area with all resources kinda close)
- Got a small steel plate production line set up. I need it to build some of the tech that I’ve unlocked.
- Built a couple pumpjacks and set them up on the oil-field. Setup 5 to start.
- Built some medium power towers and strung power lines out from Factory to oil field
- Built a BUNCH of pipe (straight and below ground) and built a pipeline from oil-field to Factory
- Want to build red circuits and that requires plastic. Plastics are under the Oil Processing tech tree.
- How do I make plastic? (In a Chemical Plant with coal and petroleum gas)
- How do I deal with the oil? Where do I store it and how do I turn it into petroleum gas?
- Need to make brick
- Need some storage tanks
- Need a refinery
- If I want some pumps, will need to automate some engine production.
Day 4: Research
- Completed all the research tasks I could do with Red and Green Science packs
- Tore down the science pack automation. It was sufficient to get this far, but struggled to keep up with 10 Labs running
- Rebuilt the Iron and Copper extraction areas.
- Replaced Burner drills with electric ones
- Straightened belt runs to smelters
- Added stone smelters to create more iron and copper plate
- Added a couple more boilers and steam engines in anticipation to having more power load
Day 3 :
- Decided to scrap my game and start over. This time I have a plan.
- Started Producing Electricity
A. Gather the resources needed to produce steam
1. Automate coal production
2. Automate iron prodiction
3. Automate iron plate production
4. Automate copper ore extraction
5. Automate copper plate production
Can all be done with coal as fuel. In fact, given that the burners all consume coal initially, I think it makes sense to have extraction - plate production done by coal.
Day 2 :
- Completed a couple areas of Research, but it’s still a bit opaque to me. Didn’t realize that completed Research goes to bottom of menu, but there are still items in them to do.
- Realized that in using the Mod for Daytime-Only, I screwed up my ability to earn achievements
- Realized that I need to turn enable the setting that allows for a Research Queue.
- Did lame coal and iron mining that isn’t sustainable, but gave enough resources to start Research.
- Got electricity from a steam boiler.
- Started a new game in V 0.17 with a mod to turn night time off.
- Reinstalled V 0.16. Played it for awhile, it’s ok, but the new graphics in 0.17 are really nice. And I miss the new hot-swappable inventory menu. Got through making electricity with steam and scrapped my game.
Day 1 :
- How the hell do I play this game again? The mouse doesn’t move the character? How do I harvest a tree for wood?
- Played the tutorial in V 0.17. What the hell is this Compilatron thing? Time to just play in Sandbox mode.
- Figured out how to have a self-feeding burner drill.
