6/14/2023 0 Comments Factorio reviewThe sheer amount of stuff you need to build and research makes it impossible to do all of it by hand. Oil pumpjacks, steam engines, copper and iron smelters, mining drills. This in turn means building all the things you need to do those other things. This means mining metals, creating electrical circuits, drilling for oil and harnessing electricity. Building a rocket means fashioning advanced metal alloys, constructing rocket engines, making computers, creating plastics, and synthesizing rocket fuel. But building a rocket isn’t exactly easy, as demonstrated by how they named a whole damn science after it. Stuck on a hostile alien planet, your goal in Factorio is to build a rocket so you escape. In essence, it’s a game about creating your own puzzles to solve, and that combination is more compulsive than a bowl of amphetamine-laced smarties. It’s simultaneously a creative construction game and a cold, logical puzzler about making everything fit in the right way. The reason for this has to do with precisely how Factorio engages with you. But Factorio eats up every facet of your thoughts like nothing else I’ve ever played. I don’t like calling games addictive, partly because it’s lazy and partly because it’s not an aspect of games that should be extolled for its own sake. It comes along with its little man stranded on its little planet, asks you to build one measly drill to mine some iron ore, then takes over your entire head-sponge. This is what Factorio does to your brain. If at this point you’ve absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, that’s fine. But then how do I ensure that I’m getting enough of both? ![]() Maybe I can divert some of the fast inserters to the new assembly line for the precision inserters. But that’s going to consume a lot of additional base resources. What I’m trying to figure out is - should I incorporate the precision inserter assembly line into my current assembly line for fast inserters? But what if I need a supply of fast inserters as well? Perhaps I should just build a whole new assembly specifically for precision inserters. ![]() However, to build a precision inserter, you need to combine a fast inserter (another type of inserter) with a bunch of other stuff. ![]() Precision inserters are useful little things, as unlike regular inserters, they can be programmed to pick up specific items and ignore others, which is useful for building clean assembly lines. See, I’m trying to figure out the best way to set up a new assembly line for my precision inserters, which if you’re not au-fait with Factorio lingo, are basically the robotic arms you see on assembly lines. Actually, I’ve got about two dozen problems, but there’s one in particular currently rattling around my skull like a dum-dum bullet. All I want to do is stop writing this and play more Factorio. I’ve spent half an hour trying to write the introduction for this review of Factorio, but I can’t concentrate.
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