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Factropy

Factory-building game full of tropes. · By dorfl

Frustations with the game and suggestions i have

A topic by 3hoursonly created Aug 29, 2022 Views: 313 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 4
(6 edits)

The game certainly holds a lot of promise but i can not play it for longer than 2 hours at a time before quiting in frustration. I do not expect you to fix those. It is just feedback and what comes to mind right now.

The lack of production insight (theoretical throughput, acutal throughput) make it really hard to design things without trial and error.

There seem to be some limits where i can only construct so much stuff in one pause, hitting resume and pause resets this. The pause key is not part on many keyboard layouts, so some letter instead would be appreciated.

There is no way to see how much material is remaining in certain mines.

The reduced scope of buildable stuff does work as a bad tutorial but it leads to me deleting my base and rebuilding from scratch around the time i get steam power working every time.

The font of the text telling the story is to small to notice. I feel like i am mssing part of the story. Having a queue of story beats, one can review would help with that. Those later could be polished up with images or something.

Bad seed can mess up the game a lot. Giving a player some choice where to build the base could even that out. To prevent decision paralysis give a limit number (2 or 3) of scans for hill composition. (Like terraforming mars)

I would like to feel more involved in the war. One way to accomplish that could be a star map (pseudo 3d like stellaris galaxy map, just plain 2d or even just a list) where one uncovers more as the war is going on by meeting delivery requests which leads to learning about new planets involved in the war. The player could also request shipments. I would summarise that ideas as base builder which serves to constrain choices in a semi procedural choose your own adventure game / visual novel.

The lack of mouse map movement (like Anno/CIV/… has) is frustrating.

On lower framerates than target (fps) when moving in one direction it sometimes happens that the game falls “behind” meaning while you are moving up and then lift the finger when you arrive, there are still seconds worth of moving up buffered, which continue being processed leaving unable to input new commands while continuing to overscroll upwards.

It is not possible bring up a remote (somewhere on the map where you can not build a grid to) steam engine as mining coal requires electricity. One idea i have for that is that zepelins come with an internal battery which can hook into a power grid and provide power, having drones do stuff also requires energy, if it is over a power grid it can recharge with grid power the zepelin also slowly regenerates power on its own when in place. If power is exhausted, drones can’t perform new tasks and has the choice of flying back slowly to the power grid or waiting a bit. This could also be interesting to combine with a day, night cycle where as you place solar panels (instead of a base reactor) to meet demand you can power trough less and less of the night as the zepelin battery capacity is fixed.

The steam engine interface needs work.

Smaller map sizes would be nice as an option.

Please add an option to reduce and disable particle. My smelter array kills my integrated graphic.

With my plays style it happens often that i build some big machine to produce some component (steel frames, blocks, main boards, …) just to run out of the component i am building the machine for. Given the Sci-FI theming it might be interesting to have a nano fabricator in the base that can produces everything from raw components and processed componentes but does so super slowly and at high energy use.

The selction box of the launch platform should not include the rocket.

I tend to overbuilt stuff.

The milestones feel to huge. Ammunition is quiet a jump but repairkits feels like an impasseable wall. I struggle to motivate myself to climb it.

When makring something for delete in paused state it is not obvious how to unmark it for delete.

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks for this -- much better to have critical feedback than none at all. A few notes and questions to clarify:

Suggestions from others on Discord agree with you that the goals (milestones) are growing far too large in 0.2, and should be broken up. Also similar requests for more production insight and base statistics, as well as better overall war/story integration.

May I know the specs of your integrated graphics? More testing on lower end hardware is definitely needed. Specifically the rendering/buffering/movement issue is not something I can immediately reproduce on available test machines, but it sounds like a bug handling the input event queue.

It sounds like you've had some bad random map seeds, leading to problems like insufficient starting resources to reach remote mining outposts. You may find using the Curated seed button in the new game window a better experience (by default, new games use a Curated seed from a list of known good seeds unless the Random button is clicked).

Please describe the mouse map movement request a bit more? Is this referring to the main game world or the map [M] popup?

Do you prefer to build a lot while paused, or is it due to other issues like the graphics lag? (This is just a question, not any sort of implied criticism -- I had not considered building much at all while paused, meaning it is quite untested. I would like to fix bugs with this style of play if possible.) 

Edit: The question about how to see remaining material in mines -- Does this refer to viewing the ore resources in a hill? How is this different to using [Spacebar] on a hill, or using Wifi to monitor a Miner in mid-game? Thanks.

May I know the specs of your integrated graphics?

Intel UHD 620 through WINE.

currated map seeds

I understand this workaround. Still being able to place a base, maybe even pre-configure starting resources dwarf fortress style might make sense.

Please describe the mouse map movement request a bit more?

During main game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smNlk2Z8UQw . Once i come come close to the edge of the screen with my mouse and the closer i come to it the faster i should move in that direction (= normalized mouse position difference from center, using screen ratio proportinal weighting and a more cornery norm think ((mousex-xcenter)*widthy)^4 + ((mousex-ycenter)*widthx)^4)^(4) or something based on actual usage testing because i just came up with that formula from scratch.

Do you prefer to build a lot while paused, or is it due to other issues like the graphics lag?

I can’t tell because i never played without graphic lag. I find it more relaxing to be able to build and think. Being able to configure things while they are still in to be build would be nice to, because i have it if sands get’s in my smellter chains.

Does this refer to viewing the ore resources in a hill?

I was not aware that the mining was hill specific when i wrote that comment. It is not, however since there is free screen realestate in the menu showing the number for the resource being mined might be nice.

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks, that extra detail helps.

0.2.9 has a toggle for the Furnace particle emitters on the Graphics tab.