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Comment by birracerveza | Hacker News Reader

Stay away if you value your time. It's not a joke when they call it cracktorio. Especially on the Deck...

Tangent but if you 'value' your time but don't use the time to entertain yourself I'm not sure you're using it right.

The concern isn't that entertainment is bad, it's that Factorio is so entertaining that it tends to get its claws into you, making it difficult to turn off. If someone struggles with time management or self-control, avoiding Factorio is perfectly reasonable.

Entertaining one's self is not the end-all, be-all.

Well, yes, but it can get out of hand.

I really like this game but the colors are hell on my eyes. I'd like to play more but I have such a hard time trying to figure out sometimes what is connecting where. I wish this had some nice bright colors and I would for sure play much more.

You may enjoy Dyson Sphere Program, then, as it has a much brighter palette and (currently) no biters. I have yet to figure out why I like DSP more than Factorio but I just do. It's more _fun_ to me

Yep, I bought that and have played it a bit! I like the graphics much more for sure. I need to get back to digging in some more as I've barely gotten off the ground.

Both games have a "lull period" in them, just at different stages of progression in my experience. But the "game changer"(heh) for me was when I realized that I really needed to start DSP games by spacing out things waaaaaaay more than one might think necessary at the time. Every time I've been glad to have the extra space when I needed to add more production or rework something and didn't have to tear down the whole city to do it

It was made brighter and more colourful recently(ish) :

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-320

Has anyone tried Space Exploration mod on steam deck? Does it run alright?

I've been meaning to try it, but also know its going to suck me in hard if it works well, so have been waiting for the right time.

I've been doing an SE run on my Deck, I'm not that far in, but I think it'll probably be fine, Factorio is extremely light on the Deck given how long the battery lasts with it, so there should be plenty of performance headroom available.

On the Steam deck? How? With external KB and mouse?

Probably because you can pick up and play anywhere at any time.

Playing on a PC vs the Deck (or other similar portable) is like the difference between being an addict and the dealer using their own product.

I’m personally not a fan, but lots of folks report that factorio works fine on the deck.

They made some UI tweaks to make it work well on the Steam Deck. https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-370

I haven't tried it but I've heard that it is completely playable, although I'm sure not as convenient as using a mouse and keyboard.

Controller support landed in June, a long time after that blog post.

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=586148#p586148

It has native controller support as well, evidenced by the fact that it is also available on switch.

Custom input map with extensive radial menus and layers.

I haven't played Factorio (yet...), but the trackpads work surprisingly well for other mouse based games such as Planet Coaster, FTL, point and click games etc.

While I wouldn't play RTS games on it, the pads combined with the fantastic steam input that lets you rebind any button to any keypress (or a macro of presses) makes it so you can be fairly sure you can play most mouse keyboard+mouse games on it.

Initially with a custom input map, took a little customization and getting used to, but was very natural afterwards.

Now with the controller support added to the PC version of the game from the Switch release.

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