How do i keep motivated in factorio? i get bored easily while playing it and i wanna grind it but i just cant

[steve]

I keep having the cycle of starting a save and getting bored after automating red science and green

[knighttemplar1960]

It depends on what motivates you. Red, green, and gray science are easy, blue science and advanced oil processing are tricky at first (especially advanced oil processing), purple science is also the same level of tricky. Yellow science is complex and space science even more so since it requires rocket launches to produce.

If you like solving logistical puzzles it will keep you occupied for hours creating and improving blueprints.

If your personal goals are better weapons to blow up bugs, not so much.

Another possible solution is to play multiplayer and spread the parts you feel are grindy out between each player or let each player specialize at what they are best at. I team with my wife and she likes building defenses, taking territory, and defending the base so she does that and will occasionally set up mining outposts and train stations and I do all of the building only blowing up bugs myself when we need more territory than she has managed to take or when I have to help her recover her gear.

[Togo]

Get some train working, its sick, and pipelines too

[Khaylain]

What Knighttemplar wrote is pretty good.
I would like to add that some times you just have to let a game rest a bit to get your interest and motivation to play it back. Or it may just be that other games would be better for you. There are many games that some people play for thousands of hours while others can't find them interesting beyond an hour. That is not a problem with them, or you.

But I do think that if you manage to find someone to play Factorio multiplayer with that some of it may be alleviated. Having someone else to talk about whatever with while making a mess of a factory can be what allows you to have fun beyond your current limit.

[Shurenai]

Set small achievable goals based on the things that crop up in your factory. By which I mean, Break your tasks up into distinct goals.

For example; Your iron runs shy- You look at the production tab, you're producing 100 iron/min but estimate you're needing 120. So, a simple achievable goal in the short term is to double your iron production- It'll cover the missing bit, and also give you a decent buffer of time to focus on other things before you later have to double it again.

Doing it this way, You're always working on some new goal, small and achievable as it may be- Instead of being constantly overwhelmed by trying to think about the entire factory at once.

A TO DO list mod or notepad irl or otherwise is good for this as it lets you list out things to do and you can do them to suit your mood in the moment.

Edit: And to be clear here, It's important to make a conscious goal out of these routine tasks; Doing so lets you have small moments of accomplishment and success throughout your hours playing; Not doing so however can make those routines feel like they're actively interrupting the things you WANT to be working on, and it can actively wear away the fun of the game to feeling like you're constantly being tugged around.

By making it a conscious if simple goal, you promote that factory-must-grow mentality a bit.

Also, A working task list lets you prioritize things and understand how your overall factory is doing health-wise and informs you of whether or not you can just finish the project you're on before moving to the next most important task. If you dont have a working task list you just kindof assume whatever problem crops up is the most urgent to resolve, when it's often not. (Only problem that I consider to be "drop everything and run to fix it" is power problems- Don't ever let your power shut off D: )

[Drizzt]

i almost always "hit the wall" at blue science - because the ramp up in the size of the factory is pretty substantial

even grey is a little bump - since red and green can get decent production with just one blue assembler feeding them each component - whereas if you are feeding 10 red science assemblers and 12 for green (the ratio for approx 2 science per second) - the equivalent for grey science needs 10 grenade assemblers, 3 piercing rounds, one regular ammo and one wall assembler

it's still doable on the basics since it just needs standard resources - but it does require a stone smelter and a steel smelter

but since blue needs petroleum it increases the complexity of the factory and supply lines a lot

is also massively increases the production chain - i.e. for the same 2 science per second you need:
- 24 blue science assemblers
- 20 engine assemblers (+2 pipe assemblers)
- 18 red circuit assemblers (+4 copper wire assemblers and a decent green circuit supply)
- 3 plastic plants
- 1 sulphur plant

plus a decent supply of petroleum (6 refineries if using basic oil processing)

etc.

this is relevant to me since i just got blue science going in my latest game

and i am now getting a decent train network up - which is important since i have just exhausted my starting iron patch and my coal is about to go etc

i enjoy the trains but it always takes me a while to get them going - since i tend to delay building an engine plant - plus i always build massive defences for my base and my outposts etc - so i spend a lot of time and resources on walls, turrets, belts, inserters and ammo

anyway - point is - i totally understand - and i have gotten through the blue science overwhelm period in a few ways

sometimes i grab a few barrels of oil - enough to make a few hundred blue science - just so i can research the tank and advanced oil processing - and then do all my building and designing and fiddling without actually rushing to connect it all up - and knowing i won't be wasting any oil without getting all the oil products - and can use my tank to clear outposts etc

i also get engine production set up - since that will let me build trains (and the tank) - and it is the only bit of blue science that doesn't need oil

plus sulphur is easy (petrol and water)

and plastic is just petrol and coal

then red circuits for the last piece of the puzzle

the main thing with blue is it usually reveals spacing problems in the factory - as well as throughput and resource shortages

i also got the dreaded power cut this time

but it doesn't bother me so much since my defences are coal powered



anyway - yeah - Factorio has stages that pretty much match the science packs - and several of them are "walls" that can frustrate - and often it can kill a game - depending on map layout - biters - base design - mood etc

i have often quit games and restarted before blue, after blue, and before yellow - often building much bigger and wider in my next game to allow everything to fit

but even then - sometimes it can still get frustrating - e.g. when you haven't quite got your train network up yet and realize you need to rebuild one whole track due to not leaving enough of a gap to properly signal junctions etc



no shame in restarting and trying to make a better factory



and the first successful blue science setup is a satisfaction of a level that can bring tears to nerdy cracktorio addicted eyes :-)


good luck :-)

[Avloren]

Also since no one else has mentioned it: I find building a "mall" is a huge boost as far as removing the tedium/grind of expanding the factory. That's a section of your factory that doesn't contribute to science, it only exists to build all the components you need to expand the factory - so belts, inserters, assemblers, miners, power poles, etc. The idea is to never need to hand craft things, or at least not the common ones, you just run to the mall and grab them out of a chest.

Once you do that, it hardly matters if you need 10 assemblers or 40 to automate the next type of science, because you have a chest with 50 of them waiting for you to grab.

This leads to the next step: past blue science, you get bots. Then you transform all the chests in your mall into logistics storage chests, and you build one or two hundred construction bots and enough roboports to cover your whole factory (don't hand craft them, automate roboports and bots at the mall too!). After that you don't even need to manually build things, the bots do it for you. So for example doubling your green chip production can be a literal copy+paste that takes about 20 seconds.

At this point you've minimized the parts of the game that are the most repetitive - handcrafting the same old mundane factory components and expanding production of things that you already have - and you can spend a lot more time focusing on whatever you think is cool, like figuring out how the heck train signals work or driving your tank through biter nests or whatever.