Is it just me or is the factory a hassle to use?

[Michel Baie]

Title.

Granted, I'm only in military tier 3 but given the UI and the (uneeded?) complexity / lenght of that crafting stuff for what seems debatable usefulness, I simply end up not using it.

[archmag]

It becomes easier with scripts I think. Complexity is an important part of the factory that makes it interesting to me. I enjoyed messing with it when I played the game, will certainly use it after the game is out of EA when I start playing again.

[Michel Baie]

Nyeah...
Pretty sure there's a way to keep up the complexity without that cumbersome UI TBH.
There's a lot of extra steps, the "limitations" put in your crafting gird are just an extra way to put stuff behind factory tiers, the crafting gird itself is only good for obfuscating costs and is a waste of a skill point to bypass some of the bull (and even with the autofill it's still finicky), the inventory is a big fat mess, there's a general lack of screen real estate because of those two elements (and even then the inventory itself doesn't have enough space), so more important buttons and features lack space or are just small icons because of it...

Frankly, it could be better, this UI doesn't make sense. This isn't minecraft.

I would start by getting rid of the crafting gird (while keeping the stuff behind their proper tiers) and inventory gird, then have the inventory displayed by items icons tiered (as example, all tiers of plates near each other for a quick look at what you have), clicking on items would show directly the costs in a tooltip with a "craft" button to click, and here you go : same grind, same complexity, less hassle.
Parts would be part of that new inventory display too, so to get rid of one layer of reciepe navigation.

Of course, that make that autofill skill useless but it could be replaced, like if you're lacking an item for your craft you could unlock a skill to pay the raw material cost of the item instead of having to look it up.

All that also probably make place to permanently display your factory chain somewhere (say, a column in the left, where you could see what you have, what's lacking, what tier your stuff is and the possibility to craft what's lacking / upgrading them by clicking on the corresponding machine).
So that's two layers of reciepe navigation down, you're left with the fabricators. And at that point they could follow the same road. Inventory in the middle, fabricators on the right as a result of your work, click on them to display reciepe and craft button to make more.

That's just an idea obviously, I'm not The Great UI Master nor willing to throw a tantrum about that, but I really feel like the factory could be made more pleasing to navigate and use.

[Imp0815]

It just needs simple auto crafters.
Assigne a Worker to the factory for Crafting.
Press a button next to an item and assigne that worker to crafts for you. each tick is a places item in the crafting grid and/or the crafting action.
You can que items based on factory tier.

[MertM]

Autocraft will arrive. But for now there are scripts and can produce things way easier. Got my first exotic producer in couple minutes with that script. Go to guides section.

[Michel Baie]

Originally posted by MertMesecikli:

Autocraft will arrive. But for now there are scripts and can produce things way easier. Got my first exotic producer in couple minutes with that script. Go to guides section.

If somebody when through the hassle to write a script, I guess it's commonly admitted the factory is an annoyance.
I'll check the guide section, thanks :)

[Michel Baie]

... holy crap. Beside my facility AI not being clickable, the video tutorial makes it really feels it's remplacing an headache with another headache.

♥♥♥♥ that ♥♥♥♥, I'm doing without the factory. Let's see how it goes.

If I want a game with multi-level crafting I'd play Factorio, Satisfactory or Dyson Sphere Program.

[MertM]

Well you won't get far then. T5 producers are must at some point. Just add all scripts to HQ and use example script and edit to what you need that's simple as that.

[Michel Baie]

Originally posted by MertMesecikli:

Well you won't get far then. T5 producers are must at some point. Just add all scripts to HQ and use example script and edit to what you need that's simple as that.

"simple"
Again, I'm stuck at step one (AI button not working) and a tutorial pointing me to the wiki (but not telling we why the button isn't clickable).

I get you're trying to help here, and I'm sure you're giving me the best solution right now.

Still, that part of the game is messy and quite chaotic, and I don't want to bother jumping through those hoops for that game. Again, there's better choices for that type of gameplay, choices that offer better gameplay, more depth, and better UI.

So since it's apparently a necessary part, I'll simply go the other logical way : give up.
I'll keep an eye on the game tho, as it's still early access and stuff can change during it.

Regardless, thank you for your answers.

[MertM]

You activate AI "mode" with F4, Then activate script with assigning a key at impulse section. But it is up to you of course.

[SpeedyBrain]

In my playthroughs I have never used the Factory until the very end of the current game.
It's not really needed, but makes it easier to get resources in the mid game then tower testing. The next update is going to change a lot of this since there are many things that boost resource gain during tower testing.
Having said that, the Factory is not complete as some important parts of it are missing. (like the crafter) Matt also wants to improve the UI in the future.

Especially since you're only at military tier 3 I would suggest that you take a look at the game again after the military perk update as that is a massive early- to midgame change.

[MemyselfandI]

Please add a button to take everything you can produce at once from the crafting grid. Like, when you upgrade ore dust, not having to click a couple hundred times would be very much appreciated.

[spin0481]

Originally posted by MemyselfandI:

Please add a button to take everything you can produce at once from the crafting grid. Like, when you upgrade ore dust, not having to click a couple hundred times would be very much appreciated.

IF you hold the shift button while collecting from the crafting grid it will collect all of the items instead of just one at a time. hold shift and right click.

[MemyselfandI]

Thanks! That's a godsend!

[Faerador]

Originally posted by spin0481:

IF you hold the shift button while collecting from the crafting grid it will collect all of the items instead of just one at a time. hold shift and right click.

This should be better advertised, SERIOUSLY. I played for a month before I figured out shift-click would take the maximum allowed. This is one of the biggest problems with developing a game through the EA channel. As complexity builds from the older systems, new users get left behind on a lot of things. You need better documentation or tutorials for a lot of your systems, period.

[raven0ak]

at moment biggest problem of factory is that you cant splice exact number of material out of stack and have to spend most of time weeding small enough amount out of it to not end with overstock on parts