What is the goal of building large factories?

[iamdave]

I've tried the demo and I'm not interested in fighting enemies that can kill me and/or destroy things I've built. So, doing some more digging thru the forums & guides, I see that people are building large and (to me) very complicated factories. Some forum posts suggest that this is the main thrust of the game.

For me the building aspect is what looks most interesting. My questions are:

Is there a goal for these factories?

Does one just decide to make a particular widget and go about building an efficient, automated factory to do it?

Is there some end product which, when the factory is complete, you "win" the game or, at least, the scenario?

What would induce one to play the game further once one of these factories was completed?

Some of the achievements refer to "winning" the game. Is this the monster/enemy aspect?

[Jupiter3927]

The goal is to launch a rocket and win the game but lots of players just go for infinite research.

You could build a whole factory just for producing conveyor belts (I did this a few times) and have all the belts you'll ever need forever.
Again, most players go for producing all the things in 1 bigger factory and go for infinite research.

Freeplay games are won by launching a rocket.
Scenario games are completed by completing the scenario goals like have this many iron plates.

Infinite research is unlocked after you win the game and it allows for stuff like faster bot speeds and more mining productivity and more damage dealt by guns and turrets.
Infinite research requires literally thousands of science packs so it's a good resource dump and a nice goal to set for your factories.
I would like to see someone build something that can spit out 1k science packs per minute or something.

Winning can be done with or without enemies on the map.
Winning is defined as launching the rocket and enemies are not required to achieve that goal.
If you do play with enemies on, they're pretty negligeable after you get piercing bullets and a wall of turrets going.
Enemies get easier to deal with as your research progresses.

[J]

At the end of the research tree you build a rocket and fly to space, that is the current goal for the end of the game. It takes a pretty big factory to get there. Personally, after finishing the game I like to try harder difficulties. I am doing a death world now where the aliens are more dangerous and aggressive, so I have to try to keep up a defensive perimeter while researching through the game. The main draw of the game is indeed building a large cohesive factory, for some people, like me, this tickles their brain in a way they like.

[iamdave]

Originally posted by Jupiter3927:

If you do play with enemies on, they're pretty negligeable after you get piercing bullets and a wall of turrets going.
Enemies get easier to deal with as your research progresses.

Hmmm. I tried the 3rd level in the demo again. I lasted 5 minutes or less. Forget trying to get a pump and electricity -- I barely get a mining machine down and a furnace going so I could potentially get a SMG. The difficulty spike is very large from my perspective. I still have to mouse over the little icons in the blueprint menu to see what I can build and, when I need to build some prerequisites, have to go back and figure out how to do that. By then I'm mobbed and soon killed. I really dislike being swarmed by enemies in a game -- it introduces timers and stress which are things that I am not looking for when I play video games.

I am also hesitant to get a game where one whole aspect will seemingly be forever beyond my ability to play it.

Here's a further question:

Is the demo somehow compressed? By that I mean are there intermediate levels in the main game where one is more slowly introduced to the enemies and one can learn how to deal with them? Or is level 3 of the demo the actual level 3 of the game?

[ChillCore]

The demo kinda forces them on you ... normally they only attack your infrastructure when you're poluting their nests or are attacking them first/get too close to them.


The full game has many many map generation configuration options.

- You can tune the game to have the enemies further out so they will only attack much later in
the game (bigger start area).
- If you want you can set them to peacefull so they will only attack when attacked first, or again you're poluting their nests. This allows for destroying them before they ever become a problem.
- You can even disable them completely so you have all the time in the world to do whatever you want and never be bothered by them at all.

If the biters are he only thing 'annoying' you so far I'd say get the full game and you can always refund if really needed, but my guess is you will not refund. ;)

[Killcreek2]

Originally posted by iamdave:

I really dislike being swarmed by enemies in a game -- it introduces timers and stress which are things that I am not looking for when I play video games.

I am also hesitant to get a game where one whole aspect will seemingly be forever beyond my ability to play it.

Absolutely agree, I feel the same way.
Thankfully the biters are 100% optional in freeplay (which is the core game anyway!), or can be set to non-aggressive (will not initiate raids, but will defend themselves if you attack first).
They used to be required for research prior to 0.15, but that was changed with the research update which also added infinite techs for endgame (post-rocket).

Imho, the demo is not a great example of the main game: solving the logistics puzzles required to build your factory & research new techs is most of the gameplay, dealing with biters is more of a side-game if / when you fancy a break from building.

Here's a further question:

Is the demo somehow compressed? By that I mean are there intermediate levels in the main game where one is more slowly introduced to the enemies and one can learn how to deal with them? Or is level 3 of the demo the actual level 3 of the game?

The levels in the demo, are the same as the first ones of the campaign.

However, the devs are planning to revamp the campaign as part of 0.17, so the demo may also change too (I hope it does).

[Name Lips]

The point in building big bases is the sheer joy of building a huge complicated machine and watching it function.

When you think about it, there's no "point" to most games, really. Sometimes there's an end, and you're working towards that end. But the real pleasure is in the journey, the things you're doing on the way to the end. Obiviously nobody just wants to watch the end cinematic of a game and skip all the gameplay.

Megabases -- and all those fancy mods you can download -- just extend the game. They let you experience the fun part of "building a base" for longer.

But, maybe of more interest to you, the developers have said that the final release of the game will have a more coherent campaign and better tutorials. So there will be a kind of "story mode" beyond the broken, brief campaign that currently exists.

[Radioactive Panda]

Demo should limit up to blue packs and 5 hour playtime. I think that's more than enough for a person to get hooked.

[XYX]

Simply? This game is just brilliant. " Do or do not; there is no try"

[Cypher]

Originally posted by Vikings:

Simply? This game is just brilliant. " Do or do not; there is no try"

This just about sums up Factorio. After doing the stock challenges, it's up to you to restart with a challenge you simply set yourself. Launch a rocket once every minute was popular for a while. Or getting as far as you can with no military science packs. Or no red/blue logistics components.. the options are as limitless as your imagination. It's a true sandbox.

[Eternal]

"What is the goal of building large factories?" was asking myself same, no goal, just pain in the but, and addiction :D

[Jojojay]

every time you build a factory, you realize that there is something (or hundreds of things) you could have done better. you play the game again so that you can make it better. each time you play, you will do better and better.

[Melington]

My personal goal is to build a factory that can support 1 rocket per minute. I tried that at least 30 times now. In ever iteration of the factory I see some mistakes and try to make them better. If the mistake can be fixed with just some rebuilding it's ok. If the mistake is some thing crucial like I forgot to make a green circuit production for my red circuit assembly line and there is no room left to fix it (without tearing down the hole thing) then I start over and try to avoid the mistakes.

The ultimate goal for me is to build a tidy and neat looking factory for 1 rocket per minute.

Best regards

[Hedning]

The campaign functions like a tutorial, meant to teach you different aspects of the game. You may be talking about the battle tutorial. The real game does not work like that. In freeplay attacksare triggered by pollution, so the more you produce the more you are attacked. You can only get overwhelemed if you produce a lot but refuse to produce defenses. In freeplay you play at your own pace and are not forced to do specific tasks, and as others have mentioned you can turn enemy off or tweak them to your liking.

The goal of the game is similar to a city builder: You build for the sake of building, with no other goal. There is a "win condition" of sending a rocket, but this is done rather quickly and to many this is where the game begins rather than ends.

[luziferius]

The initial goal of freeplay is launching the rocket, which is the win-condition, just like minecraft is won by beating the ender dragon.

What you do in the freeplay scenario depends on the goals you set yourself. Many megabase builders settle for an optimisation problem: maximising science units produced per minute while keeping the game speed as high as possible (Which is limited by your computers power.). If you like to go that route and don’t take other peoples »optimal results«, you get an infinite amount of possibilities to sink time.

Or take those combinators, which are essentially powerful logic gates and create virtual hardware. Implement PacMan (just google), build music machines playing songs on button press or design other circuit wizardry.

The game includes some other scenarios, one of which is a type of economy scenario. You get limited space and time and have to earn as many coins as possible by exporting a defined product (dump them into a box).
If you dig the web, you can find other user created scenarios. I’ve seen a OpenTTD inspired one, having pre-built, idle sub-factories spaced out and giving you the task to design and build a working automatic train network to put those into use.