Factorio

I have been binge playing Factorio for the past several weeks. I remember purchasing this on Steam a long time ago. Google says the game was published in February 2016; I likely got it when it first came out. Typically, Apple Macintosh computers are not known as gaming PCs. Since the new M1 Pro MacBook Pros are supposed to be pretty fast, I installed Steam and Factorio was the first Mac compatible game I tried. I cannot remember if I finished the game (launch a rocket), but I did get pretty far before. The game starts simple but gets complicated fast with all the research requirements.

This is my base with using five out of seven research chemicals:

The research tree is ridiculously complex, and each new research chemical is much harder than the previous one to produce. I stared with the red flask, then added green, black, and blue. In the beginning, you need to use conveyor belts to move raw material and WIP around. But soon, you can build floating robots that will move material for you, albeit slowly. The crucial technology to make this logistics network function requires five hundred yellow flasks. I could not construct a connected network, so my build was very disjointed, and needed me to run around as a courier. The enter research cycle for this technology took almost an entire day to complete, but now I can push/pull material from anywhere to anywhere. Unfortunately, I think i need to tear down most of the build and reconstruct it to take advantage of the floating logistics network.

I am not sure why I did not play this game all that much during dialysis. It is the perfect time suck but does require logic and concentration to build ever more complex systems. Looking back, I probably suffered from a bit of brain fog while on dialysis since it only cleans your blood enough to keep you alive. There are still lots of toxins in my blood and electrolyte imbalance is a thing. Anyway, I am taking a break to think about how to reorganize and reconstruct the base to move to the next level of complexity.

Not sure who reads this blog, but if you like building games and never heard of Factorio, get it. The game is $30 on Steam, and there are frequent sales.

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Closer view of current base. This is the first research chemical build. It is fairly orderly, with conveyor belts going to research labs. It gets a bit more complex as I tried to double up production and squeeze more and more into the same space. There are several clever (self-assessed) conveyor rerouting to have everything run automatically.

This is the right, or newer side, of the base. The black flask production was still pretty automated, but after getting the oil refineries and chemical plants, the build for yellow flasks was totally chaotic. Notice the abundance of boxes instead of conveyor belts supplying all the factories. Ugly.