Tutorial to build a car.

[The Konrad]

I'm happily revisiting Factorio 1.0 after a successful Early Access campaign a very long time ago and it seems to me that researching a car to continue the tutorial takes such a long time. I didn't remember it taking that long.
Is this a feature?

[ekisacik]

I played through the new old new (current) tutorial. It was lengthier than I wanted, but I think it does a better job explaining the game than any other. To get to the point, there is a major point the game is trying to drive home:
If something is taking too long, automate more of it. Mine more iron (and copper), produce more science, produce science more efficiently, upgrade power, consume science fast enough... it's the difference between hours and minutes of waiting.
The point of the game (the "brains", if you will) is to do this in an efficient and intelligent manner (and preferably quickly).

[Morsk]

The car takes 2x as long to research as the engine, and 1/2 as long as Logistics 2. It shouldn't be far out of proportion to everything else.

Maybe machines are slowing down due to lack of power, and you need more power.

[The Konrad]

I had six fully stocked researched labs and it still felt too much of waiting.

I don't mind automating, hence I enjoy this game, but the map is tiny and the resources are scares, all the while the whole automation is just for the sake of a tutorial.

[Drizzt]

6 labs isn't much - it'll do you for researching the initial (red) science, but beyond that you're really looking at 12 or more labs to get some decent research speed, and this will need at least one fully loaded iron belt (or at least fairly well loaded anyway, you can do the maths based on how long each thing takes to produce and how much you need per second - max 15 items/sec on a first level (yellow) belt)

that tutorial map is a little small and the resources a little scarce, but part of what it is showing is that to progress quickly you need to exploit your local resources - i.e. cover that second iron patch with mining drills and run them through a decent size smelting setup and get a constant stream of iron gear wheels and copper plates feeding 5 red science assemblers, and have an assembler constantly producing circuits to feed an inserter assembler, and get some more iron gear wheels feeding a transport belt assembler so you can feed 6 green science assemblers and get that sweet science running at some proper industrial speed! :-)

and so you may need to go blow that nest up north away to get your hands on that copper (but you may be ok since early game it's the iron that you need loads of), and maybe blow the other ones away so you can concentrate on building

an important thing to know is that you can actually calculate how long anything will take to research - e.g. engine takes one hundred 15 second cycles, so that would take 1 lab 25 minutes, so in your 6 labs that'll be just over 4 minutes, so long as they are operating constantly at full power - automobile takes twice that long, so would have been almost 10 minutes if everything was running constantly at full power

sorry if this is already stuff you know (you said you'd played the game a while back) - and it is possible that the research times may have changed slightly, but as i said, if you were running at full power and fully loaded through those 6 labs, automobile should have taken just under 10 minutes - so if it took longer than that then it's possible there was a bottleneck somewhere

[AlexMBrennan]

Tutorials are designed to teach new players the mechanics of the game, and they are by necessity contrived and not particularly interesting.

You can do as you wish, but if you are familiar with the game then you will not get much out of the tutorials.

[The Konrad]

As I said earlier, I already sent a rocket to space ages ago, I still have the savegame even, but I need a refresher on the mechanics, hence I am replaying the tutorial.

But this tutorial segment struck me as tediously long. Because nothing happens once you kill the indigenous natives and you just have to wait until your research is done.
Waiting shouldn't be part of a tutorial. Not for new players who don't know what to do in their time. Why bother building anything extravagant? As soon as you got your car loaded you never going to use that map ever again.

[Drizzt]

@Saint Konrad - i think it's hard to put into context how this tutorial might be for a new player - as you say you have played the game before, so once you decided that all you needed to do was wait for the research, that was that for you - but a new player may spend the time playing with the mechanics and optimizing their production, or may not yet have killed off the natives etc - so your experience was likely very different from a new player - also since you were just using it as a reminder of how to play, the point you got to was likely enough to stop the tutorial and move onto starting a freeplay game, since you were clearly comfortable with how to play again

[The Konrad]

Yeah, either I was nooby enough to make nooby mistakes, and 6 Labs weren't enough, and it took too long or I was expert enough to know what I was doing, and it took too long.

The main goal of that Tutorial seems to be research and slightly more advantaged production (green Erlenmeyer flasks), shooty shooty kill kill natives like a good colonialist and build walls and do turrety stuff.

The speed-up button didn't work and the whole setup is: build car to get away from that base.
Once your green Erlenmeyer flasks are ready the research optionally should be sped up in a tutorial that is based around other things. That's all I am saying.

[Drizzt]

there's a speed up button?

[The Konrad]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2200341847

Shift + Numpad Plus is supposedly there to increase the game speed but I didn't notice anything sadly.

[Drizzt]

ah yeah i think that's only in the scenario editor

[The Konrad]

Okay, case in point: I'm finding the length of the car building tutorial too long.
I don't mind the "filling up" part, but tiny map and "just do whatever" until you research x, y and z for your car feels off.

[Drizzt]

fair enough - i started the tutorial when i started 1.0 and quit as i started researching engine i think - happy that i could move onto freeplay - so yeah, i guess i felt the same, but maybe new players will just love it lol :-)

[The Konrad]

Originally posted by Drizzt:

fair enough - i started the tutorial when i started 1.0 and quit as i started researching engine i think - happy that i could move onto freeplay - so yeah, i guess i felt the same, but maybe new players will just love it lol :-)

If you quit you basically "found it too long", too. You just abandoned the tutorial, I tried to accelerate the process by building and supplying more labs. But after that level I was no longer interested and didn't proceed with the destroyed base and the train setup.
I will do that later or never, I lost the drive to continue that.

[Drizzt]

yeah - i'm agreeing that i found it too long, but that's because i know the game - if i was a new player i may have been enjoying it more since it would all be new - i wanted to get to the train level, and may well have another go to do so, but yeah, i quit and started a freeplay, and that has been going well :-)