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Comment by andix | Hacker News Reader

I really liked the concept of Factorio, but stopped playing after a few hours. I think one of the main reasons was, that it's really hard to visually grok the factories from the in game visuals. All the shades of brown and gray made it not really enjoyable either (I like pretty and colourful virtual environments, there is enough gray and brown in the real life).

If the game would look more like those visualizations, I might have enjoyed it more.

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Did you press ALT?

It displays icons over all fabrication and storage devices showing what they are making/holding.

I don't remember, but probably yes.

When was that ? Factorio has increased its colourfuness several times to make it more appealing :

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

(There's also now a saturation slider in the graphics settings.)

And maybe again with 2.0, including some more colorful new planets in the Space Age expansion.

P.S.: The Industrial Revolution overhaul mod might also be to your liking ?

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/IndustrialRevolution3

> P.S.: The Industrial Revolution overhaul mod might also be to your liking ?

Sadly, it's not compatible with Factorio 2.0, and the developer has no intent to update it or allow others to do so.

That's not going to matter much for someone with hardly any Factorio experience. (But computer-savvy enough to install v1.1, which I would assume a HNer to be.)

I wouldn't recommend IR3 to a new player. It's significantly more difficult than the base game - there are a lot more intermediate products involved in making almost everything, the steam phase is a wacky layout puzzle, and it's got some mechanics like ore washing which require circuit controls.

It's a neat mod which I enjoyed playing (and I wish it were playable in 2.0!), but it's aimed at experienced players. Someone with only a few hours in the game will hit a wall pretty quickly.

The Factorio development blog has occasional samples of concept art [0] which are more stylized and saturated than the final, "realistic" assets. I honestly prefer the concept art style, even though the more realistic sprites complement the brutalism and grittiness of the game.

[0] https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/blog-sync/fff-422-concept-v3..., might be a minor spoiler for a late-game turret.

Just checked Steam: May 2020. So probably after this change.

Look into Dyson Sphere Program.

It's a lot more bright and colorful, though I think it lacks some depth relative to Factorio, but I think that just makes it more approachable.

Have you played Shapez? It is a simpler version of a factory game, but I really enjoy it and love the complexities of the shape stacking. It is on Steam or you can play for free here: https://dimava.github.io/shapez/modZ/

I agree that the visual style was not for me. I had a much better time with satisfactory, which is quite pretty. It also spares you the threat of factory destruction.

Satisfactory's scale is so massive for building that it was a shock coming from Factorio. I started a project over the holidays and I'm pretty sure it's going to end up at nearly 200x50. I am not sure it'll fit in a screenshot, hah.

When you’ve built 5KM of train tracks just to get around xD

Guilty as charged.

The scale is both the best and worst thing about Satisfactory. On the one hand, once you finish a build it's really fun to admire everything you built. On the other hand, it's an exercise in utter tedium to actually build those things.

This is not helped by the fact that Coffee Stain has been aggressively anti-QoL as they developed the game. They absolutely refused to put any sort of blueprint feature or tool to speed up placing foundation for the longest time. Then when they finally added those things, the features sucked compared to what players had done with mods because they were so crippled. Then in 1.0 they finally grudgingly added slightly bigger blueprints, which are inexplicably locked behind high tier tech, and they actually make fun of the player for daring to want blueprints that don't suck. It's just baffling how hostile the developers have been to making the building part of the game (which is by far the biggest part) user-friendly.

> they actually make fun of the player for daring to want blueprints that don't suck

In their defense, Coffee Stain/Satisfactory makes fun of the player for absolutely everything. They always have. It's just the culture of their studio.

Satisfactory is on my list, once I replace my ~10 year old GPU.

Which one do you have? A friend recommended Satisfactory but all I have is a 5970 and an M4 Pro lmao

1050ti, which satisfies the minimum spec. But it would probably mean playing on lowest graphics settings at low resolution.

Mine is surprisingly still serviceable at 60fps 2560x1600 on older games, but I feel like it'd choke hard on this one too. The laptop performs much much better but obvs can't run it.

I like the threat of factory destruction. It adds to the flavour, and makes designing the factory not just about pure optimisation

Agreed. I started playing Satisfactory a few years ago, before I ever picked up Factorio. And I played A LOT of Satisfactory. Into the thousands of hours.

I'm currently at a couple hundred hours into Factorio and I can safely say I like it better. It is way more polished and way more in-depth. It has definitely had much more time to mature and respond to user feedback. Also the threat level keeps it more interesting. But I do find Satisfactory much more beautiful, and I think the idea of having belts go directly into/out of buildings, etc, without the need for inserters, a much better style than inserters.

Factorio has "loaders" but they're not enabled in the default game, but easy enough to add with a mod (some do as part of the mod, some enable just them, some even try to make them balanced).

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/loaders-modernized or https://mods.factorio.com/mod/vanilla-loaders-hd or this one made by a Wube developer: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/aai-loaders

Lol, it's funny I played both and like factorio much more for precisely those reasons. It's post-apocalyptic and gritty, and has enemies. Satisfactory is great but I need a threat to stay focused. To each their own :)

I always turn off the enemies when I play.

Turning off biters is one of the options during game creation. There are several options in fact, you can keep biters but reduce aggression or just eliminate them entirely.

I wonder if a mod that changes the graphics to a visual style shown in the link (I'm thinking the Carbot graphics [0] swap for StarCraft 2 in terms of scope) would make it feel more to your liking.

[0] https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article/23053098/starcraft-c...

Probably yes!

I recently played The Planet Crafter. Some similar concepts to factorio, but not quite as deep. But it becomes wonderfully colorful.

Some observations - get off a planet, but in first person perspective. No guns/fighting. Less of a time suck than factorio. Upgrades seem to be less tightly tied to exactly what you do. It's somewhat unclear how to even know how to progress, but maybe it doesn't matter. When automation becomes available, it is easier. There's a struggle for food, water, air at the beginning I didn't like at first (even in menus it doesn't pause). I learned to accept and enjoy it though, and things you do make it less of an issue.

I don't picture Factorio's base pallette to be drab, but if you do, you should check out the color blind mod that amps up the colors and adds distinct visuals for things that would otherwise need color to distinguish . ETA: did you play 2.0 or an older version? They've spruced up the color a few times over the years.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/colorblind_ultimate

I'd be surprised if there wasn't a mod for this already. Personally I like the art style and direction, I just want more details and maybe even in 3D to rotate the camera. Hopefully they're working on the sequel with some of this.

This also affects gameplay, but your map will have a lot more green if you turn up the moisture setting on world gen :) and you can have fresh green trees all the time in the space age DLC once you unlock tree farming

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