Factorio

Factorio's expansion is maybe the craziest instance of a mod driving the base game I've ever seen. It's up there with DotA and Counter Strike in terms of impacting the game, although the game itself is smaller than Half Life and Warcraft III.

It is funny though because it's almost like Earendel joined Wube just to get paid to continue developing his mod, and to coerce the other developers to build up the base game so his mod would be better.

I'm still planning on going back to Space Exploration after I finish the next EverQuest expansion, and every time I read one of these updates I feel like I'm more likely to do a full replay in a few years when the Space Exploration mod has all this base game stuff.

Kirun said:

Buddy and I have finally been playing this lately. I played it briefly several years ago, but the UI really frustrated me after having already played Satisfactory. I've definitely given it more time this go-round and found it pretty fun. What are some of the "must have" mods for this?

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I wouldn't say there are any must have mods. The game itself is really polished and most things mods bring either bring extra content or alleviate burdens the game developers want you to face.

If you're looking for the base game + some extra stuff, Krastorio 2 is good Krastorio 2

If you want a crazy extension to the game, Space Exploration is amazing

Kirun said:

Buddy and I have finally been playing this lately. I played it briefly several years ago, but the UI really frustrated me after having already played Satisfactory. I've definitely given it more time this go-round and found it pretty fun. What are some of the "must have" mods for this?

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To add on to Tuco's post, as I just restarted as well:

Squeakthrough: Allows you to walk through gaps in most buildings, allowing denser designs and preventing 'pipe fatigue' from having to walk around pipe complexes

even distribution: Allows you to ctrl-right click drag to drop balanced amounts of items into containers/machines

helmod: a production calculator; incredibly useful for big bases or more complex content mods.

Resource Spawner Overhaul: great for having more control over your world generation.

Loaders: just a nice way to easily load/unload stuff.

Recipe Book: Amazing tool for when you have complex content mods, esp. with combinations.

YARM: A resource monitor that will track resource patches and provide estimates on depletion time and rate.

Picker extender: Vastly expands the functionality of the pipette tool, definitely recommended. Makes the q key even more useful.

Bob's inserters: This specific module of the Bob's mods pack is amazing. Gives you more control over your inserter pick-up and drop locations, including allowing 45-degree inserters and more. allows for hilarious antics like using 2 stack inserters at 3 blocks away and setting the angles so you only have a 22 degree round trip.

I'm currently rolling a combo of bob's mods and Angel's mods with the madclown expansion, which is a total overhaul of the gameplay loop, while retaining the feel of the vanilla game: Angels Mods

This guy has a pretty good ongoing playlist to megabase on this combo:

If you want an expansion to the early game (burners everywhere, and there's an entire pre-electric tech tree), I've heard good things about AAI [MOD 0.15] AAI Industry

Playing Palworld made me want to resume Factorio again. I started my Space Exploration playthrough in 2022, put in a few hundred hours before putting it down and resuming in August of 2023 and putting in a few hundred hours. Factorio 2's release date is August of this year, which basically creates a streamlined version of the Space Exploration. I want to finish before that release date, but it's going to be another few hundred hours of playtime to get there!!!

Tuco said:

Factorio 2's release date is August of this year,

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Wait what? This is just a patch update right?

Seananigans said:

Wait what? This is just a patch update right?

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I think so. I think it's being packaged as a free expansion or patch.

Brikker said:

I'm guessing you don't have kids...

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I've got a 9 and 5 year old, which is why it's taking me literally 3 years to beat a game!

Gravel said:

Not sure anyone other than Tuco plays modded Factorio, but I loaded up Space Exploration and Krastorio 2 and had no fucking clue what I was doing.

I hadn't played since December 2020 as I mentioned in the Satisfactory thread. Played for a couple hours to get my bearings before installing the mods.

Should I stick with it, or just do a normal playthrough to figure the game out again?

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Personally I used to play modded factorio and tried to revisit it a few months back. It was still fun and I got the hang of it again after a couple sessions, but ended up distracted. At this point I'm just going to wait for their 2.0 DL release (that is supposed to be its own Space Exploration/etc) and just play that unmodded when it comes out.

Gravel said:

Not sure anyone other than Tuco plays modded Factorio, but I loaded up Space Exploration and Krastorio 2 and had no fucking clue what I was doing.

I hadn't played since December 2020 as I mentioned in the Satisfactory thread. Played for a couple hours to get my bearings before installing the mods.

Should I stick with it, or just do a normal playthrough to figure the game out again?

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I enjoy drowning in confusion, so I enjoy it. I played Space Exploration + Krastorio 2 after doing a ~40 hour playthrough of vanilla and I am enjoying how I have to redo everything multiple times either because of my own foolishness or because of new tech is unlocked.

If you really want to play it, go ahead, buuuut it might be better to wait till later this year when they release Factorio 2.0 which will include space content natively, and then if you want to play Space Exploration, do it after Earendel (Who makes Space Exploration and was hired by the makers of Factorio) releases a new version of SE that builds on Factorio 2.0 (who knows when that'll be).

My guess is that Factorio 2.0 will incorporate a lot of the core ideas of Space Exploration (Building smaller bases on different planets with unique resources, building constraints etc), while streamlining a lot of the details. The details of sharing the many resources between planets is a huuuge hurdle in Space Exploration, and the cost to ship goods (at the start) makes it intimidating to do anything but efficient transport.

I figure I should start posting some spaghetti from my Space Exploration build. Below is my first attempt at Bio 1/2. It's terrible. I love it.