What's the multiplayer like?

[Achilles]

Hey guys looking for a game to play with a friend, haven't really played this before, is this enjoyable with a friend?

[PossibleTango]

Same as single player but with extra people. Game is only fun with friends if you're at the same skill level.

[The_Mell]

It has similar qualities and drawbacks as other building games:
Can you effectively work together?
Is it ok for you to play alongside each other while doing different things?
Are you on a similar level of grasping game & construction concepts? Or can you arrange yourselves without each others different skill levels?
And must things look neat & straight or is spaghetti chaos fine..?

Factorio has a planning & puzzle factor for building the construction lines and these become quite complex & hard to grasp at first look because of multiple levels of intermediate products leading to the final one wanted.
So working together on one line can be difficult if you are not on the same boat. And just jumping in to finish someones else work might be more difficult then expected - not to mention fixing problems.

Quite often the solution is to split work and let the other one kinda do their job while doing your own.
The question then is:
Are able to keep up a together feeling or end you up on different ends of your factory playing your own game while missing the other half..?


Combat is quite easy:
Build vehicle, one driver, one gunner, and have fun blaming each other who screwed up.

[Achilles]

Originally posted by The_Mell:

It has similar qualities and drawbacks as other building games:
Can you effectively work together?
Is it ok for you to play alongside each other while doing different things?
Are you on a similar level of grasping game & construction concepts? Or can you arrange yourselves without each others different skill levels?
And must things look neat & straight or is spaghetti chaos fine..?

Factorio has a planning & puzzle factor for building the construction lines and these become quite complex & hard to grasp at first look because of multiple levels of intermediate products leading to the final one wanted.
So working together on one line can be difficult if you are not on the same boat. And just jumping in to finish someones else work might be more difficult then expected - not to mention fixing problems.

Quite often the solution is to split work and let the other one kinda do their job while doing your own.
The question then is:
Are able to keep up a together feeling or end you up on different ends of your factory playing your own game while missing the other half..?


Combat is quite easy:
Build vehicle, one driver, one gunner, and have fun blaming each other who screwed up. :lunar2019grinningpig:

Thanks very much for the detailed explanation!

[god bless you]

Originally posted by Achilles:

Hey guys looking for a game to play with a friend, haven't really played this before, is this enjoyable with a friend?

https://www.youtube.com/live/QEgfJXagbFQ?si=wgcwoKctiXJMOF_2

[qwerty]

I am playing with two friends and we like it.

We generally talk via separate voice chat, keeping each other up to date on what we're doing and planning anything that affects the entire base (e.g.: how should we setup our train system? what's the next research?).

Apart from that, everybody can work on what they find most fun at the moment. One colleague sets up power, another stakes a new mining operation, I build a production line for new science packs. Kind of nice to have the base built 2/3 by itself, and only having to build the 1/3 part that I find most fun at the moment. :)

[Avloren]

Multiplayer is a lot of fun, but it's a very different experience than playing solo.

In solo, your factory is 100% 'you' - you design every little piece of it the way you like, you know it inside and out. It's exactly as good (or bad) as you're capable of making it. The entire factory is a reflection of you - the way you think, your preferences and priorities.

Multiplayer is more chaotic. There's going to be parts of the factory other people have made that you just don't understand, that perhaps don't work the way you want them to. If you're a um.. 'perfectionist'? This can be aggravating and you'll be tempted to rip up what other people built and 'fix' it. On the other hand, if you can go with the flow and accept that this mess of belts and assemblers does.. something and you don't have to make it perfect, it makes for a more interesting game than solo.

The weird things other people are creating do contribute to the factory, they make the game go faster and smoother, as each of you choose to focus on whatever you enjoy doing. It comes with the drawback that the factory is going to be more messy and disorganized, but that's actually a fun challenge to work around if you don't mind a little chaos.

I think the golden rule to enjoying multiplayer is this: add, don't remove. When your friend builds a bizarre and dysfunctional copper smelting setup, and it just doesn't output enough copper, don't be tempted to rip it all up and do it 'right'. Expand it, add your own (better?) copper smelting setup next to it, and combine the results. In the end the copper gets smelted, and it's a joint effort where everyone's stuff contributes.