People who generally don't like resource-management games except this one: What makes factorio different?

[Noitatiox]

I'll be honest: most resource management and automation games bore me. But, while I don't play factorio too much, in the times I do play the game it casually sinks several hours of my day.
I'm interested in hearing what made factorio unique to people who don't like/play much other resource management games, if at all.

[Hollowpoint]

Most games typically involve assigning workers/ machines, and leaving them to their devices. While this game does that, it's extremely more involved because you not only have depleting resources, but have to manage the movement of the resources to specific places, how fast it happens, and how much. The Factory MUST GROW.

[Morphic]

Personally, it's the blend of Logistic "puzzle solving" combined with a hostile threat(Biters). The isometric "StarCraft" graphics is icing on the cake for me.

Usually games like Banished, Anno, Opus Magnum etc. hold my interest and are fun for a while.... but then I quickly grow bored. I like twiddling around building stuff and trying to be generally efficient about it. However at some point I'm just building/tweaking just for the sake of it and, IMO, that isn't fun. Having a threat like Biters makes it so I can't become entirely complacent and it also gives me a nice diversion for when I'm getting bored with building/tweaking. Too bad the Biters aren't that impactful/interesting since they get boring/tedious too lol.

(Would love to see a game play like StarCraft and Factorio fused. Recruit marines but you need to automate ammo production etc. lol.)

[Fel]

In most of these games you have to do the most with limited resources, space and/or time, factorio is fine with letting you take your time, expand as much as you want and bring resources from further away (depending on your map settings you might need to content with bitters for some of that but still).

There is very little randomness involved (map generation, bitters to some extent and that's it, no events, no random machine failures), there isn't a magical resource called gold/dollar to buy/sell things with and no competitors (just you and maybe bitters if you play with them enabled).

Also, mods for factorio offer a lot more than just nice looking things and cheats, with the support for mods as one of the things they constantly work on (they do fix bugs from vanilla code that could never impact vanilla players and add functions for mods very frequently) we have access to quite a wide array of things to pick from, for those that want to customize their experience.

[goddling]

This is more of a logic game unless you just want to shoot bitters.
Making complex systems is not needed to win the game.
People Chose to as it is FUN for us.

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

Originally posted by Morphic:

(Would love to see a game play like StarCraft and Factorio fused. Recruit marines but you need to automate ammo production etc. lol.)

May your armpits be infested by the fleas of a thousand camels.

Starcraft is ♥♥♥♥, always has been, it was ♥♥♥♥ the day it was released as there were already better game sout at the time, like total annihilation. Fusing it with Factorio woudl bring nothing to factorio that Factorio doent alreay have.

You want units, try the robot army mod et al.

[DarkFire]

Thinking about the games I play the most, both here on steam and elsewhere, my favourite genres are shooters, military flight sims and RPG's. Construction games, city builders etc have always felt far too much like work rather than fun for me. I'll admit that I was very resistant to buying Factorio for a long time and took some serious convincing from a friend who already owned it. But, when I started playing it turned out to be huge amounts of fun.

Why I enjoy it so much when really it belongs to a genre that I literally couldn't care less about? Hard to say. I do enjoy an engineering challenge. Factorio also has a really well done difficulty curve, particularly with the recent changes to basic oil (that was a serious difficulty spike), and the game contains just enough combat so that in moments of peak frustration charging off in my tank to slaughter xenos is a nice bit of stress relief. The wonderful music (not at all what I was expecting, but awesome) and the charming graphical style are the icing on the cake. After playing the demo for a day or so I happily bought the game. To be honest I think it's very cheap at the price.

[Morphic]

Originally posted by Shadow Raider:

Originally posted by Morphic:

(Would love to see a game play like StarCraft and Factorio fused. Recruit marines but you need to automate ammo production etc. lol.)

May your armpits be infested by the fleas of a thousand camels.

Starcraft is ♥♥♥♥, always has been, it was ♥♥♥♥ the day it was released as there were already better game sout at the time, like total annihilation. Fusing it with Factorio woudl bring nothing to factorio that Factorio doent alreay have.

You want units, try the robot army mod et al.

Geez, calm down. I didn't say make Factorio into StarCraft, I said I'd like to see another (read: separate)game combine elements of Factorio with StarCraft. Besides Supreme Commander is superior to TA in every way.

Games like The Red Solstice, Wargame series, Cossacks, SupCom, etc. have Ammo gameplay. It would be nice to see a blended RTS that requires the player to actually be cognizant of base set up and resource management ... other than "hurr durr I saw X youtuber do this!" and proceed to plop structures wherever and spam Y unit. IMO, it would open up more tactical/strategic options to hamper your opponent.

The Wave Defense scenario in Factorio kinda touches on this. You have to quickly set up production lines of critical items, like Iron Plates and Ammo ... while also setting up some defenses. Take too long (or simply be bad) setting up Production and the Biters kill you quick. Take too long defending and you run out of ammo and die anyway. :D

But I digress ... I hope the OP pardons this post since it was in response to your overreaction.

[AlabasterSXS]

Originally posted by Shadow Raider:

Originally posted by Morphic:

(Would love to see a game play like StarCraft and Factorio fused. Recruit marines but you need to automate ammo production etc. lol.)

May your armpits be infested by the fleas of a thousand camels.

Starcraft is ♥♥♥♥, always has been, it was ♥♥♥♥ the day it was released as there were already better game sout at the time, like total annihilation. Fusing it with Factorio woudl bring nothing to factorio that Factorio doent alreay have.

You want units, try the robot army mod et al.

Starcraft classic is great and Korean legends still stream epic 1v1 matches.
TA is great for different reasons, despite the path-finding bugs when you try to move 200 units.

Any game that successfully fuses with factorio would be a real treat, especially if you can travel to different planets and moons and deal with NPC or persistent MMO situation.

[DanaScully]

Mods! I got rather bored or should I say "done" with the game after about 300 hours. But there are well-polished and frequently updated mod packs that add so much more complexity aka fun to the game. Plus, you can tweak the difficulty to your liking. And the progression is quite satisfying. The only actual competition in the game is you. How well you can build your structures, optimizing lay-outs, even optimizing in terms of optical aesthetics pleasing every aspect of any type of OCD. There is always more to be done, more to be improved.

And probably the most interesting factor: You can automate almost everything. Once you have the basics down and move on to something absolutely not needed for "winning" the game - the circuit network - a whole new playing field opens up.