Comment by scubbo
4 hours ago
This is a weird perspective. The middle planets can be approached in any order. And mods allow near-infinite variety - especially those that build on the platform of custom planets.
> there is only one way to do a thing and no room for a player to invent alternatives.
Sounds to me like you are caught up in trying to chase optimization and bemoaning the fact that there's only one optimal strategy. Do a no trains run! Or a no bots run. Or a 1000x science modifier run, or Lazy Bastard, or Death World, or... there are plenty of constraints, both programmed-in or self-imposed, that can push you out of the "standard" optimal strategy.
The system for moving between planets is locked down. It is rockets or nothing. And that system is deliberately designed to defeat scaling. What really killed me was the message saying I was only allowed one of a specific key building on each planet. That was very anti-factorio imho. As I said above, as an indi developer moves forwards they add constraints to focus and guide progression. I simply do not want that. So I disabled all the planet stuff and play like it never existed.
That restriction is needed in some way to prevent that building being a way of teleporting stuff across the planet. They did relax this in 2.1 and allow you to build extensions to that building where you can add inserters and use belts/trains.
you can't teleport things with it. the landing pad allows only withdrawals, not deposits.
yes, one landing pad per planet a really obnoxious restriction I really hoped they'd remove in 2.1, but they did a half-measure instead. their rationale is uncharacteristically misguided, intended to prevent using rockets for on-planet logistics. first of all, it would be a cool option. second of all, that option would be impractical and very expensive both in terms of resources and UPS, so people would only use it in very niche scenarios. it's an overwhelmingly unpopular design decision.
I also dislike that they moved some base game tech to space and other planets to discourage extended stay on Nauvis. which again makes no sense because an extended stay on Nauvis itself makes no sense when each inner planet offers overwhelmingly powerful tech that renders every single assembly line you can make without leaving Nauvis utterly obsolete. not having cliff explosives before Vulcanus, which may not be the first planet you visit, is a minor but obnoxious inconvenience even if you do decide, deliberately or due to inexperience, to stay on Nauvis for a while. artillery being moved there is equally pointless -- the best defense in the game are landmines, and they can be still unlocked in less than an hour. I don't remember what else had got moved, but I do know that if I wanted to build a 10K SPM kilobase without ever going to space, I still could. and even if there weren't these hamfisted disincentives, the #1 advice for noobs would still be "go to space ASAP", because the incentives alone are more than enough.
that all being said, these are my very only gripes with Wube and I played the game for >1000 hours, 200 or so after the DLC came out. except for maybe not being able to choose the output lane for inserters, but that limitation is as old as the game itself, and I don't know whether it's a misguided design decision or simply a limitation of their extremely optimized belt system.
I don't think there's ever been a game I've been more satisfied with. for every game I ever played that seriously, my list of complaints had much more entries than <10 with Factorio. it exceeds even the old Blizzard's level of polish.
I'm going to restrict my commentary to the base game, both because you're deliberately ignoring the stuff in the Space Age expansion, and because I've not yet gotten to the new stuff in the expansion. While the following might sound like a "gotcha!", it isn't:
> I get bored whenever there is only one way to do a thing and no room for a player to invent alternatives.
There is only one way to process iron ore: put it in a furnace. There is no way for the player to invent alternatives. There are only three ways to make electricity, and two of them require you to boil water. There's no way for the player to invent alternatives. There are so many examples of places where stock Factorio permits you only one way to do a thing and prevents you from inventing alternatives.
> The system for moving between planets is locked down. ... And that system is deliberately designed to defeat scaling.
All of the systems for transporting materials are locked down... it's hand-transport, belts, bots, trains, or nothing. Hand-transport's godawful scaling is why you build everything else. Bots are deliberately designed to scale incredibly poorly and belts to scale pretty badly, which is why you're -as it seems like you'd say- forced to use trains to transport materials over very long distances.
> The tech tree become more rigid. Exploration must happen in a more specific order. And then the graphics department takes over, adding more and more objects until a previously huge and open world is a tightly cluttered mess.
That hasn't happened to Factorio in the thirteen years that Wubi has been working on it.