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FCE has a jet pack and a Build-to-me feature that allows you to point your building gun at a distant spot and it will build a line of boxes straight to you from that spot so you are not always building it block by block like minecraft or terraria. You can point and build a row of conveyors from the horizon to yourself with one click.
But i agree that 3D builders are hard for some people who are not used to it and 2D is more accessible. The benefits of 3D outweigh this for me however. Like From the Depths vs. Airships ... one is 3D vehicle building and the other is 2D vehicle building ... the 3D one is more difficult but more rewarding. FCE is only like 3 dollars on a sale so try it out.
If you want to see your whole base you can just fly above it. FCE is a lot less graphical then Satisfactory so you can see your whole base below you. The draw distance is based on your PC performance.
Cubes are not cubes apparently. And you need 3D dimensions to do what I can in two ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel
I will take that as a win and call it a day. [/quote]
1) You do realize how pixels work right? they are squares but when you look at them all together they look like television. Being able to manipulate your factory to a more minute degree by placing every voxel gives you more creative control.
2) It is impossible to to 3 Dimensional processes on a 2 dimensional plane. The most you can to is an illusion of 3 dimensions (like running conveyors underground but they are really just clipping through each other) Go read Flatlands it is a good book and it can be an introduction to how dimensions work mathematically.
That's how it is.
Can you go play FCE please, or do some work or anything. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory
Every building in Factorio,Dyson Sphere Program, Satasfactory,Factory Town,Automation Empire,Assembly Planter,Automachef,Mindustry,Infinifactory,Production Line or FCE is a Vertex
Every belt or pipe or train is an Edge.
Therefor: They are comparable irrespective of how those Vertexes are represented "point, square, hexagon the bestagon, cube, hypercube"
You could argue that the having a 3rd dimensions would make the task of flattening that graph easier E.G. The Königsberg bridge problem would be easier if he could fly.
Therefor: The solution space grows with a "Square–cube law" relation to available dimensions. More dimensions more working solutions easier game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feasible_region
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square–cube_law
The Main difference is in the QoL and Stability and near exponential base growth. Factorio has tended towards Computer Aided Design with its BLUEPRINTS and Robots and the others are still Manual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_design
https://www.britannica.com/science/Konigsberg-bridge-problem
Computer Aided Design Aims to make things faster more precise and easier for the end user to accomplish more in a given time frame as someone is paying for that time.
Where as Satasfactory is fine with its users spending hours placing foundations. FCE having a build line functions seams nice.
https://youtu.be/mgfwwqwxdxY
Yep ... not everyone likes the same things as you ...
Dear OP,
I don't believe you understand the depth and complexity that Factorio brings. Ski3ros's post was exactly on point. All your points are correct, or would be correct, assuming your assumptions are valid. But they are not, and stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of the Factorio gaming experience. Since you are so intent to learn about what Factorio has to offer, allow me to provide you my own summary of some of the innovative breakthroughs and fundamental reorientation and changes in your playstyle if you try a full playthrough.
Bear in mind this is a game about automation - process design and logistics that are arranged in as complex a manner as possible. Here are some of the "eras" you might find yourself in. This is not a representation of "official eras", just some musings of my own.
1) Manual Efforts (The Basics)
Here you set up your drills, furnaces, and maybe some assembly plants. You're largely manually moving resources around yourself to where they are needed.
To succeed: you must learn and understand what basic components are required to make more advanced components.
To advance: you wonder whether there's a better way, to automate all of this.
2) Belt Automation
Here you're now automatically mining things that use belts to take things to where they're needed. Maybe you have electricity, maybe not yet, that's its own mini-era as well.
There's a great sense of accomplishment in terms of making your factory automatic. If you walk away from it, it continues itself indefinitely.
To succeed: you must make your factory automated such that it runs on its own without any input from you.
To advance: you must ascend beyond the simple designs thus far; it's no longer a matter of just doing more of the same, that's not enough
3) Oil
The oil processing stage is unlike any other, and trying to do the same things you've done before will result in failure. All of a sudden you have to manage fluid dynamics, extra outputs and learn to manage your loads. If you don't innovate enough, your fluids will back up and your factory (at least the next-level advanced portion of it that relies on oil) will grind to a halt.
To succeed: you must learn to balance the various fluids between petroleum, light oil and heavy oil such that your factory can produce what it needs for advanced components
To advance: you must yearn to set up a sort of "hyper-automation", where if you leave your factory to run in the background for days (not that you would), would it eventually grind to a halt due to fluid shortage? Is there a way to set up fool-proof designs that safeguard against this?
4) Circuitry
Now you can start programming logical rules and algorithms to rebalance your networks. It applies to many aspects of your factories, and is extremely helpful in others such as nuclear power (to avoid wasting precious nuclear fuel). But you might first run into it with oil processing.
It's a medium-difficulty problem to resolve #3 above, oil processing, to produce liquid products in such a fashion that they get used up appropriately. It's a high-difficulty problem to make it completely foolproof and self-balancing, so that there will never be any problems in your factory no matter how the load or supply changes.
Circuit designs allow you to establish rules to accomplish basically anything. But with oil you can safeguard against problems such as too much heavy oil, by setting a condition of "when it gets to be this high, which is too high, convert it into solid fuel or break it down into light oil". Same thing can be done for light oil and petroleum (except petroleum doesn't break down further).
To succeed: you must learn to build a fully automated and self-regulating factory that can manage advanced products that require the use of oil and other liquids
To advance: you must dream beyond the belt, and imagine a 3D version of the world, one where you might be able to transport resources by flying through the air
5) Robots
The advance into robots is a complete and total gamechanger, and there's a reason you'll see on the Factorio forums plenty of debates on belt vs bot factory designs. Bots change the game so fundamentally, that you have to rethink your entire factory design. New opportunities arise to vastly improve efficiencies and automation.
Bots add so many options to the game and offer so many new innovations, that I can't even start to list the possibilities. If you are a smart innovator, the sky is the limit in terms of the things you can do.
To succeed: you must learn to go beyond simple repetition of factory designs, and unlock the full potential of bots
To advance: you must transcend simple processes and think about scale
6) Scalability
Imagine I asked you to make a sandwich, and imagine what your process would be. Now imagine I ask for 2 - probably the same as the 1 sandwich, but you just do it twice.
Now imagine I ask you to make 10 sandwiches, and give you plenty of space. Your process would likely be very different. You might lay out all 20 pieces of bread, butter all of them at once, put all the cheese at once, etc. Rather than constantly picking up and putting down the butter knife.
Now imagine I ask you to make 100 sandwiches, and give you a few people or bots to help. You'd have a butter-spreading bot, a cheese-placing bot, etc.
Each of these are completely different problems, especially once you factor in a number of complexities that aren't well-represented by the "make a sandwich" analogy.
In the same sense here, the game then challenges you to make your factories in a scalable and expandable way. Take rail networks for example. I've built rail networks in my games that work extremely well for the large-scale objectives of my factories. However, they fail at being scalable over even larger distances, since I don't have several of the innovations that other players designed. I have to innovate and rethink my designs if I want to scale my factory even further.
7) Mods
All of the above complexities and "eras" represent meaningfully increasing complexity that goes beyond simple repetition, and requires intellectual innovation and understanding. However... all of the above is child's play when you get into mods. Try to accomplish all of the above, that's quite an undertaking in and of itself. But once you do, and learn about available mods, you will find out that the above complexity is nothing compared to what additional challenges mods offer (like AngelBob).
In Summary
If you just spam drills, just spam the same designs in Factorio, you will fail. Or at least, you will not be able to advance beyond the simplest early sections of the game. You have to innovate beyond mere repetition, deal with increased complexity that is required to advance, and use increasingly complex tools to resolve challenges more elegantly and more efficiently.
This is before even getting into certain other complexities in the game, such as combat with the bugs (the scale-up from melee opponents, to ranged opponents, to increasingly tough opponents requiring a smarter and well-designed mix of defensive armaments).
There is truly a ton of depth to Factorio, and the reviews are representative of how well-designed this game is and how enjoyable it is to the type of person that likes this type of automation, process design, and innovative thinking.
but since Factorio is an endless plane being one dimension does not make the game harder. The challenges you face in factorio are solved in very similar ways since it has only one challenge (biters) ... everything else can be solved by just scaling up the factory. FCe is similar but there are more varied challenges (bugs, hiveminds, underground frozen blobs), also falling off things ... 3D can kill you ...) .
The execution of that solution is where I see Factorio's limits - most solutions tend to push bases towards looking a very similir way. Factorio bases tend to look like circuit boards.
But your reference to computer assisted design made me realize that this is intentional. This what I have been noticing the more I look at Fctorio and it was mentioned in this about the difference between architecture and engineering ..
But that is not accurate as architects need to solve problems and also engineer is ambiguous. This game does not appeal to construction engineers it appeals to computer engineers / programmers. The Sandstorm video also reinforces this as the creativity in that was the programming but the content was unimportant - the video was meaningless while the process of making was the achievement. This theme carries out throughout Factorio - it is the process and labor that matters.
Factorio becomes less about building and manufacturing and more about the satisfaction computer programmers get from completing a goal.
I mentioned from the beginning that Factorio's big advantage is scale but it encourages people to follow a set path (circuit boards). I know you can build your base any way you want but for the most part Factorio bases do not really surprise anyone except in their size or level of labor put into them. 1,000 spm .... 5,000 spm ...
Your suggestion to look at Factorio more as a programming simulator than a crafting/
building/survival game clears much of this up. I like FCe because I create spaces and domains and machines that serve a purpose. Minecraft was dumb because the buildings served no purpose - FCE game them a purpose. 7 DAys to Die gave your structures weight and purpose - to not get eaten by zombies. Same thing with From the Depths ... physics based vehicles built from voxels with purpose and weight - and you can actually walk around your constructs in real time and experience the game space.
Factorio has no weight, has no space, and is simply a collection of processes that do what you want them to. And that is why it is a turn off - it would feel incredibly empty to sit back and look at hundreds of hours of work to just make something that I could have seen on youtube. Will your base really be anything different than another? The references to computer assisted design, programming, scale, etc. makes me understand why the answer is no ... no, your base will not be that different from another base. I felt the same way with Farcry 3 ... i eventually just stopped half way through and watched all the cutscenes on youtube because it became just repetitious busy work to beat it ... Factorio looks to be the same.
Factorio is not really a building game at all ... it is just an exercise in programming to reach an end product. Your exercise in factory programming is only slightly different from someone else's but you do not care because you are obsessed with the process and the feeling of making something and the affect it has on their brain. Like ASMR, slime videos, porn, petting dogs, clicker games, match three games, ... it explains the incredible amount of "Factorio took over my life" posts.
So, my final verdict (STFU No one cares about your opinion ... i can hear my wife's voice mocking me now lol) is that Factorio's popularity is less a product of a good game and more a product of a type of person who enjoys these games. It purposefully repetitious, pushes your designs in one direction unnecessarily, lacks real interactions with the gamespace, does not provide a unique experience to the user, and focuses too much on process and less on compelling struggles with game elements.
Thank you everyone for assisting my thought process on this game. A special award goes to ERROR_404 for their honest responses and important comparison between this game and computer programming.
Yes. One of my favourite things in Factorio with friends is show off bases to one another. I will always be astounded as to how a friend might have approached and resolved a problem completely differently from me.
I would even go so far as to say... my own bases are different from each other. Not just as I learn, develop, or try new things. But even as I adapt to different terrains and situations. Depending on how the map generates the world, my base could look quite a bit different.
You repeat this notion a bunch of times, but I'm not sure exactly what you mean. A lot of games are about trying to reach an end product, and have some sort of end game or victory state. That shouldn't detract from the game; in fact, many people would have a game without an end goal.
But regardless, you don't really need an end goal in Factorio necessarily; you can make your own purposes. For example, sometimes I have more fun creating circuit designs that improve efficiencies of certain processes, even though for some that's a waste of time and they'll be comfortable with that inefficiency.
Nuclear power is a good example. I always devise creative designs in my own image that try to optimize fuel usage as much as possible... even if some other players might just waste the fuel and not worry about it.
I'm not sure what this means. Wouldn't it be true of just about any game? You play it for the effect it has on your brain?
And don't forget that different people have different experiences. I personally enjoy Factorio because it challenges my intellect. It gives me a number of tools, suggests an end goal (science production, rocket launch, process efficiency, whatever), and then I try to use the tools as smartly as possible to innovate solutions that challenge my thinking.
Problem-solving, creativity, and innovation is enjoyable for a lot of people, and challenging people to think in that way will develop their thinking capacity beyond just the game usually.
While it is true that this game appeals to certain types of people, while certain other types of people will be turned off, this is too simplistic a conclusion. After all, there are many similar games out there, and if all that mattered was "a type of person who enjoys these games", then you'd expect average engagement spread out amongst all of them - what does one game (Factorio vs. Satisfactory vs. etc.) have over another, to have more players, if all that matters is "type of person"?
I think a large part of Factorio's success is the developers' extremely strong efforts towards designing and polishing the game. The game has been meticulously balanced, reworked, and expanded in a way that appealed to players of this type of game.
In fact, a lot of the developers' efforts stand in contrast to your own objections! That of repetition. People don't like repetition. The developers saw that and introduced tools to eliminate repetition. The use of blueprints and bots enable players to skip the tediously repetitive acts of placing down drill after drill for example, and instead focus on the interesting next layers of complexity.
As noted, it is purposefully non-repetitive. As soon as something starts to get repetitive, you've already unlocked the technology to allow you to do that thing with the click of a button (almost), and get you focused on new things you haven't done yet instead.
Not the case, as different directions are perfectly valid. Even the debate on belts vs. bots is not yet definitively resolved; different approaches are valid for different purposes and different maps.
Cliffs, trees, water, and opponents (biters) will often define how you expand and adapt to your environment. Heck, in a game I'm playing right now, I'm finding myself expanding in a different direction exactly because of certain cliffs and resource deposits enabling a different approach to the next stage of my factory.
I think ultimately if you went through a full playthrough, ideally without biases or preconceived notions (or perhaps even with them), you'll find it's a rich experience with compelling struggles.
Then, if you go for a second full playthrough, you'll find it's a unique experience between yourself and yourself. So if it's that unique even when it's the same person... how unique will it be when it's different people doing it?
In the end, I've learned to trust Steam reviews. If so many people have tried a game and say it's good, then I give it a fair chance. The (overwhelmingly) positive reviews have always resulted in a positive experience, and me learning to appreciate why it's so well-received.
We are all trying to explain our points, that is human. But I am not here to troll I am using all of you to improve my understanding of Factorio because 30 bucks is more than I want to spend on a game. So this is mostly a very aggressive form of product research.
I read your post Emergent and I hear what you are saying but the progressive complexity of Factorio and the challenge to automate everything as it gets bigger and bigger and the biters get more aggressive sounds appealing but I do not think that my solutions will be very different from someone else's. I know ... the devil is in the details .... but whatever innovation that is required to make your base has already been done by someone else.
I watched this video ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kOxTtgHssk&ab_channel=JD-Plays
Once again the bases look like circuit boards no matter whether you go bots, belts, trains, or hybrid. If I started playing Factorio now I suspect that my base would end up looking the same way, it has a predictable outcome even with all its complexity. 5k SPM ... 10k spm ... .
This goes back to the previous conversation with ERROR_404 .. Factorio is a computer programming game. That is the itch is scratches (a very marketable and wide spread itch among gamers it appears). Computer programming uses very simple small procedures to create something amazing and large .. but the individual processes that are happening in my computer are repetitious and mundane and typical. Factorio asks you to walk through all those mundane small processes (processes that are identical to the million other users) over and over and over again. You solve a problem with input/output and then you just scale it up or move on to the other problem that is also input/output. Someone else has done it and done it to a incredibly giant degree ... 100 rockets a minute ...
FCE is not like that ... I wish more people played it to realize this. Scale is not the goal. It is much more a building game that allows you to create space, to create domains. The world is more discovery based, more dynamic, and larger. The environmental challenges are more diverse. The game has a ton of automation and factory systems but nothing is prepackaged. In Factorio you just plug in the desired product into the assembler, add the resources, and it makes what you want. In factorio your assembler to build something has to be designed by you ... imagine if you had to build block by block whatever happens inside the assembler. It has a higher level of player choice that creates bases that are not merely different shapes but wildly different expressions of that unique player's concept.
Factorio's lbase elements and game mechanics just encourage very similar bases, killingthe bugs requires very similar strats, and in the end Factorio does not deliver a uniwue gameplay experience to its gamers. But they do not care becuase it is all about the process and brain stimulation of repetitious soothing actions. Like ASMR, slime videos, clicker games, and porn.
Factorio's balance is is out of whack ... it sacrificed everything to provide an outlet for for he process of watching things move together in harmony .. like a train set . It hits that one note repeatedly and people who respond to it consider it an achievement of great game design but it is lacking in so many other departments. Automation is not really that much of an achievement in of itself since the game is completely geared for that. Factorio gives you all the tools and then you pat yourself on the back for doing what they designed the game to do.
I believe that. And I respect your opinion and efforts here.
The value of Factorio is in solving the problems yourself.
It is true that, like every game that's been beaten/solved already, innovations and solutions have been devised by others. Factorio enables this on a mass scale even, with the ability to copy over blueprints from others. This cheapens the game, in my opinion, or at least, robs it of the enjoyment I personally feel. Because if you take somebody else's process, you've eliminated most of the point of the game.
It's similar to trying to solve some kind of complex math problem. If you just steal the answer from somebody else, you defeat the purpose of solving it, and won't be able to show your work and logic.
I would venture to say most games suffer from your concern of "has already been done by someone else". Except perhaps fully sandbox games like Minecraft. But even then, when you see the accomplishments of some people in building ridiculous cities and structures, it kind of makes your own unique, creative base a little... lackluster.
One thing you're missing is that by the time you reach that outcome on your own... you will have spent 100-150 (quality) hours. Sure, replaying it doesn't have the same impact (although there are other pleasures to replaying Factorio), but by then you've already extracted your money's worth from the game. Plus there's a veritable treasure trove of mods.
Your complaint could easily be adapted to many, many games, such as shooters, RPGs, etc. They all have predictable outcomes, like in FarCry 3 the story doesn't change, but maybe you can try different tactics or weapons. But you've already identified you don't like FarCry 3 seemingly for that reason.
I can respect your gaming preferences, but do realize that there is a huge, huge market of gamers who aren't bothered by the idea of getting to the same outcome as other gamers may have. And that's just shooters and RPGs, which is already a massive portion of the market. Factorio already offers much greater variability and "unpredictable" outcomes as compared to those linear-type stories.
The enjoyment of Factorio (for me) is coming to your own analyses, conclusions, and processes, not in getting to the end goal. In fact, that's the reason for some of the joke reviews on it, at least the ones I remember before I bought it. People joking about how they forgot they were meant to work towards launching the rocket. If anything, that indicates a far less predictable and linear outcome than most games.
It took me perhaps 150 hours and 3-4 bases before I actually got to launching the rocket. And the rocket launch itself wasn't that important, it was the journey throughout and the joy at automating things intelligently. That is a far cry (no pun intended) from the "predictable outcome" complaint you have and the connotations it bears.
This is true. It primarily appeals to computer programmers.
This is the part that you haven't yet understood. It does not ask you to walk through all those mundane small processes over and over again. It asks you to do it for a little bit (and we can debate if it's too much or too little), and then unlocks you the technology to get away from doing them over and over again and instead to solving the next, more interesting problem.
At the beginning of the game, you have to manually pick up coal from all your miners, and manually insert it into your furnaces. That gets repetitive and mundane. But eventually you unlock technology so you don't have to do that anymore; it gets automated. Now you're focused on assembly processes.
At the middle of the game, you have to keep building assembly lines in logical patterns to set up your automation. That gets repetitive and mundane. But eventually you unlock technology (bots, blueprints) so you don't have to do that anymore; you can just issue orders to your bots and they'll all do that for you. Now you're instead focusing on the next thing.
And so on.
The fact that someone else has done it to an incredibly giant degree shouldn't detract from your own experience. The same way I should be able to enjoy a personal game of Minecraft even though if I look online, people have poured hundreds of hours into meticulously constructed elaborate bases. After all, even if this were to detract, it'd only detract in being aware of this having been done before. And that shouldn't reflect on our judgment of a game - just because someone else has played it really well, doesn't make it not a good game.
And my main point is that by the time you get there, and get to the endgame (e.g. rocket launch)... you've already played a full game's worth of hours and gotten your money's worth and entertainment.
I can respect your enjoyment of FCE and what value it brings. I feel similarly towards other games. Every now and then I get an "exploration" itch, which Satisfactory satisfies (no pun intended) far better than Factorio. Or I get a "shoot accurately" itch, and play an FPS.
Factorio accomplishes creative and innovative process design. It does not enable you to create your own products (except with mods), unless you regard the entire factory itself as the product - i.e. you build block by block whatever happens in your factory.
So I can respect that they fulfill different goals. But do not underestimate Factorio's capability to deliver on a gaming concept very well, being that of automation and process design. It wouldn't be much different to harping on FarCry 3 for failing to incorporate innovative automation manufacturer designs. That's not what the game is about. And Factorio is not about creating your own unique products (again, unless you regard the factory itself or your designs/processes as the product). It's about adapting to existing recipes embedded within game engine (e.g. this much iron for a gear, this much gear and copper for a science) to create efficient automation and process designs.
I've addressed this before. It is far, far from repetitive, and requires a significant amount of design and innovation.
Before I built the base that launched my rocket, I spent a few hours playing the game without playing the game. I planned some initial designs on 5 pieces of papers to figure out how I was going to work out my logistics and production ratios (this is before I realized how much I need to uniquely adapt to the environment). It takes a lot of effort to design an efficient base and is far from "repetitive soothing" - it is analytical soothing.
There are many times I've decided to skip Factorio and play a simpler clicker game (like a solitaire game) because the brainpower required is too high and I had a headache at the time. You really have to think through your factory designs in Factorio and use your entire intellect. I mean, you don't have to, but that's how I like to play, and how everyone I've played with likes to play (can't speak for the rest of the world). That is very, very different from the connotation you ascribe to it as "brain stimulation of reptitious soothing actions" and "like clicker games and porn".
But it is different things to different people. And ultimately aren't all games "time killers"?
https://youtu.be/o2M8WrEtosI
The true killer.
Given 52 cards in a deck every shuffel results in a order mostlikle never to have been seen before.
https://brobible.com/life/article/deck-cards-total-number-order-cominations/
So math basically if you have more than 52 things you can place Its almost guaranteed that the order will be unique in the universe.
The sad thing is after all this I think you would enjoy the game If you actually played it.
You see all bases as the same because you cant see the elegance of the solutions used as you have never had to find that solution your self.
EDIT:
I just want to note I would most likely enjoy playing FCE as well. And I owned that game before we even started this discussion had just never gotten around to playing it.
I did not realize before this thread that the building of autonomous systems was the singular driving force behind this game. I thought it might have some other elements but it really just comes down to automation. Rows and rows of machines and flapping robot arms.
But if the entire game is designed to allow you to automate everything then what is the accomplishment in automating everything? Since this game has banked everything into automation ... but the automation is handed to you .. and all you need to do is place it together. Is it innovation if the game designed all the components to be used for innovation?
It is like if you play a ninja assassin character ... and then you go around ninja assassinating everyone ... was that really an accomplishment? You could talk about it takes great thought to ninja assassinate people ... but of course the game literally gives you every single conceivable ninja assassination tool. And if that ninja assassination game had no other real elements other than ninja assassinating everyone ... would it be a good game? If you like ninja assassinating everyone then YES. But other people would say "That is all it does? Not very rewarding."
This happens in many games but since Factorio placed all its eggs in one basket .. it kind kills it for me when i see a Yotube video of "This is how you automate this .." since this game is nothing but automation with flimsy gameplay elements tacked onto it.
I stopped playing the Factorio demo when it asked me to research Automobilism and I had 4 laboratories and needed more and knew that I had to start a new iron mining spot, new smelting spot, new assembler spot and feed it into my laboratories. I stopped because I saw it all in my mind and then realized that doing it would just be a time consuming exercise in sprite organization. Then I would just need to do the same things with every other production challenge. I see what i need to do in my mind ... or even worse i see a Youtube video of what i need to do ... and then i see no point in actually doing it. Everything would just get larger an larger and larger and more time consuming.
The reason I have always compared FCE and Factorio is that both came out the same year (FCE first on steam though), both have the same premise, both are about factories and when i first saw the two I was like "Factorio is like flat Fotresscraft ... what a dumb idea, why would anyone want ot go backwards like that". FCE is a more holistic experience that merges exploration, automation, terraforming, tower defense, environmental challenges, design, survival, architecture, and aesthetics together. It is very cheap on sale, it works fine, and it was made by one guy. But OMG people crap all over it, misunderstand it, make assumptions about it, and almost nobody plays it. Factorio killed it and it boggles my mind .... and is a further cause for disappointment in my fellow humans.
I would be willing to gift FCE and the Frozen Factory Expansion if someone would gift me Factorio simply because the idea of supporting Factorio without supporting FCE is sickening to me :P
OK so a racing game should not give you a car or a way to make a car. There should be no way to complete any goal in any game. That is nonsense.
Factorio gives you tools you have to work out how to use those tools.
FCE gives you tools you have to work out how to use those tools.
If you going to start down that argument then "cookie clickers" are the purest form of game only allowing the player to increase one number and derive dopamine in response.
All games could just be seen as increase a number and get dopamine. Including FCE.
You should go on a server and see a real base first hand.
The same premise "Automate everything, Defend everything" I thought you didn't like that.
One minute you say there different then the next that they are the same can you make your mind up.Better yet can you make a bullet point list of the things they have in common and things that are different.