How difficult is this game?

[Gazelle]

I saw a youtube video showing multiple difficulty levels. How difficult is the game on the easiest setting? And how is the ingame tutorial? Is it enough to play the game?

[Wanderer]

The difficulty of the game is in the complexity of the interconnecting systems. The easier difficulty is almost "too" easy, as it removes a few of the more interesting components of the game, as it has unlimited mining, overpowered electric, and you can avoid trading almost entirely. At the same time, it's an excellent starting point while you wrap your head around the rest of it, so I certainly recommend it if you're not familiar with this type of game.

The real difficulty is in efficiently applying interconnected systems and enjoying tinkering with them to get the ratios right, while balancing the rest as you bring in more and more advanced components and completely new industries.

This game, however, is slower than many others in its genre. I won't say it's boring, it's not, unless you're just really lollygagging along. There's plenty to do. However, for games like Factorio or Oxygen Not Included, it's a much slower pace because of the terraforming and learning curves until you're rather familiar with the game, and even then, it's slow paced.

As for the tutorial, it's enough to get your feet wet, but it will not hand hold you. It gives you just enough to show you the tool/idea, and there are many of them, but you have to experiment and go break stuff yourself once you've been given the starting nugget. Autosave is your friend. :)

[Gazelle]

Thanks for your explanation! Game seems interesting but not sure if I like the slower pace. Does this mean that sometimes there is nothing to do?

[Kajsa_Kavat]

Originally posted by Gazelle:

Thanks for your explanation! Game seems interesting but not sure if I like the slower pace. Does this mean that sometimes there is nothing to do?

The tutorial is gonna keep you busy for quite a while.
After that you need to start setting your own goals which might sometimes lead to you having to wait for enough construction parts or smth depending on how efficient your factory is set up.
But you can always use those times to plan new layouts or check if everything runs smoothly. You really shouldn't have any real downtime, especially the first time you're playing.

[Peter34]

The easy mode, Sailor difficulty level, or even turning some of the options to be more easy than Sailor, is a good way to get a "Sandbox Island" that you can use to make Blueprints. It's just that it'll still take a long time to reach the point where you can make most of the BPs, due to having to research the Techs first and clearing a lot of Trees away.

But for someone who knows the game well, Sailor is certainly extremely easy, and I'm inclined to say that there really ought to be one more difficulty level between Sailor and Captain, since Sailor is just too easy. You can create your own in-between difficulty level by starting with the Sailor defaults and making some of them harder, or by starting with Captain and making some of them easier.

I actually do the later. I always start with Captain, but then I choose +80% more starting stuff, as wel as +500% to off-island resources.

[Wanderer]

Originally posted by Gazelle:

Thanks for your explanation! Game seems interesting but not sure if I like the slower pace. Does this mean that sometimes there is nothing to do?

There is a TON of things to do. You're just not going to get to the end quickly.

For example, in Factorio, there's a "There is no Spoon" challenge, which is launching a rocket (one of the end goals) in 8 hour of play. That's pretty much the entire factory built, if missing a few odds and ends and stabilization components.

In CoI, there's a constant yin/yang of build/stabilize/build that flows back and forth. You can't push too hard because one thing or another will slow you down. For example, in straight time, a year in the game is 12 minutes (month is a minute). Each tech tree tier takes ~50 years to complete. At 5 years / hour at speed 1 (which is what you'll use until you're very competent), that's roughly 10 hours / tech tier. There's 6 tiers.

However, you won't notice. You'll be too busy trying to plan your next dig, build your next factory component, figure out if you should be planting another farm or possibly relocating, and ooooh, shiny new trucks!

It's not boring, it's just not an APM game like some others can be. More thinking, less continuous clicking.

[Peter34]

Sometimes I do go AFK for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes, to let stuff happen, let processed materials accumulate. But I always make a save first, before going AFK, in case something goes wrong while I'm away.

This isn't an AFK style game, by any means. It's just that sometimes, you find yourself waiting for a lot of stuff to finish happening.

I play via GFN, so a month or two ago, I got help on Reddit to make an AutoHotKey function to let me bypass GFNs very harsh 8-minute AFK timer. However, I actually don't use it often. Maybe once per 4 hours played, on average, but varying wildly from game to game.

[Kodokuro]

i have tried 5 times to lucnh the rocket and have failed all of them.

factorio and satisfactory fan here