History VideoGame / Factorio

* WideOpenSandbox: Although there is a goal — build the rocket silo and launch the satellite — you are not bound by any one set path to achieve that goal.

* TheTurretMaster: The player. Because most of your weapons are ineffectual against massed bug swarms, turrets are key to defending your factories. Gun turrets are cheap and don't require electricity, but require an extensive logistics network to maintain their ammo. Laser turrets are expensive to craft and require huge amounts of electricity, but don't need any conveyor systems for ammo. Flame Turrets are powerful, but they require walls and 'hedgehog's teeth' barriers and fuel. Artillery turrets have phenomenal range and explosive splash damage, but can only target spawners and worms, not the bugs themselves, and their shells are materially expensive.

* MoreDakka: The base gun turret is essentially a giant [[GatlingGood Gatling gun]]. Tech upgrades exist to give it more dakka.

** All liquids are uniquely colored to allow for easy identification, and the game helpfully adds windows to every other pipe segment so you can actually see what's in there. Crude oil is dark grey, heavy oil is red, light oil is yellow, petroleum gas is purple, lubricant is green, sulfuric acid is also yellow (but of a different hue than light oil), and steam is white.

* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Primarily for speed:
** Basic transport belts are yellow, fast ones are [[RedOnesGoFaster red]], and the fastest tier are blue.
** Gray (Burner) inserters are the slowest, and use coal instead of electricity. Yellow is medium speed, and slowest to run on electricity. Red inserters are as fast as the yellow ones, but have twice the reach. Blue inserters are the fastest-moving. Purple inserters pick specific items, green inserters pick up items in stacks, and white inserters [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs pick up specific items in stacks]]. The last three move as fast as blue inserters.
** Gray assembly machines are the slowest, then blue, then yellow/green.

* MoreDakka: The base gun turret is essentially a giant machine gun. Tech upgrades exist to give it more dakka.

** Nuclear-powered robots never need to stop to recharge, but if a Spitter attacks them they'll still need to be repaired. In addition, you will need to add Robot Network infrastructure to extend the operating range of your robots, and regular bots will pull power from your grid to recharge periodically.

* ExcusePlot: "Your spaceship crash-landed on an alien planet. Your only hope of escape is to construct a rocket that can get you home." That's all the reason you're given for building the largest, most badass factory complex in gaming history, and frankly, it's all the motivation you should need.

** All uranium ore, centrifuges, and nuclear reactors glow green to signify their use of nuclear technology, and even depleted uranium ammunition, nuclear-enriched rocket fuel, and atomic rockets are coloured green. (In reality, uranium can come in many colours, and reactors would glow blue due to Cherenkov radiation, [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality but the developers decided to make all the nuclear stuff green for player convenience]].)

** As of version 0.16, Underground Belts and Splitters can be directly placed over existing Belts, replacing them, thus making it easier to retrofit or expand existing infrastructure without needing to remove all of the old belts by hand.

** Mineral deposits eventually run out, requiring you to shift your extractors around or find whole new mineral fields. Likewise, Oil deposits will gradually deplete, reducing their production and pushing you to seek out new deposits.

* PoweredArmor: A late-game research allows you to craft Power Armor (and later, [=MK2=] armor) which can be customised with equipment such as an exoskeleton for a higher run speed or a built-in shield generator. Or a [[TheMinionMaster portable roboport]].

* TechnologyPorn: The game in general promotes this - research is painstakingly laid out so you need to develop ''everything'' and work your way up to faster tools and structures, and the graphics lovingly detail your buildings, allowing you to see the turning gears, swinging inserter arms, electrical heating coils, bubbling chemical plants and electrolyzers, and components moving through your factory on belts. The fandom in turn has screenshots of lovingly-built elaborate bases with belts and inserters and assemblers either lined up efficently on material buses, or woven tightly to fit as much factory as possible into a compact space.

* TheTurretMaster: The player. Because most of your weapons are ineffectual against massed bug swarms, turrets are key to defending your factories. Gun turrets are cheap and don't require electricity, but require an extensive logistics network to maintain their ammo. Laser turrets are expensive to craft and require huge amounts of electricity, but don't need any conveyor systems for ammo. Flame Turrets are powerful, but they require walls and 'hedgehog's teeth' barriers and fuel. Artillery turrets have phenomenal range and explosive splash damage, but can only target spawners and worms, not the bugs themselves.

** The very first Inserter in the game, the Burner Inserter, requires no electrical power to run, just a steady feed of coal. During development it was made capable of feeding itself coal (or other fuels) from an input lane on an adjecent conveyor belt, even if it didn't have any fuel to begin with.

** As of version 0.16, Underground Belts and Splitters can be directly placed over existing Belts, replacing them, thus making it easier to retrofit or expand existing infrastructure without needing to remove all of the old belts.

* AntiStructure: The artillery turret and wagon, added in 0.16, will only target spawners and worms, destroying them in one shot. You ''can'' manually set targets for them, but hitting a fast-moving bug with the slow-to-react artillery is more trouble than it's worth.

* BoringButPractical: Planting chests right in front of mining drills early on. At the start of the game, the player likely hasn't unlocked electricity, meaning that they'll only be able to use coal-powered mining drills and inserters - and as coal-powered inserters will consume some of the coal excavated by mining drills, at a time when the player likely needs as much coal as possible, simply planting a chest will save a lot of resources.

** Gray inserters are the slowest, and use coal instead of electricity. Yellow is medium speed, and slowest to run on electricity. Red inserters are as fast as the yellow ones, but have twice the reach. Blue inserters are the fastest-moving. Purple inserters pick specific items, green inserters pick up items in stacks, and white inserters [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs pick up specific items in stacks]]. The last three move as fast as blue inserters.

* CrueltyIsTheOnlyOption: In peaceful mode, [[ActualPacifist the bugs stay in their nests and never attack your factory]]. However, you still have to attack the nests in order to get alien artifacts necessary to craft top-tier items and to win the game. Some [[GameMod Game Mods]] avert this by adding other ways to make the artifacts. Averted as of 0.15, where alien artifacts were removed, so clearing nests is only necessary for expansion.

** The nature of the game itself makes it easy to learn yet hard to truly master. It will make you think about your factory's layout, power, and infrastructure as you build bigger, which may necessitate your tearing down of buildings in order to build them in a more optimal layout. On top of that, you need to keep an eye on your pollution and the slowly encroaching biters. Not for nothing do some players in the community joke about "The factory expanding to meet the needs of the expanding factory."

* DifficultySpike: Prior to version 0.15.0, the jump between tier 2 science packs and tier 3 was huge, effectively requiring you to double the size of your factory to automate it. Version 0.15 changes to 5 tiers, with gradual increases in complexity for each type.

** Nuclear-powered robots never need to stop to recharge, but if a Spitter attacks them they'll still need to be repaired. In addition, you will need to add Robot Network infrastructue to extend the operating range of your robots, and regular bots will pull power from your grid to recharge periodically.

* KillItWithFire: Post 0.13, the Flamethrower is the most efficient way to deal with both spawners and Worms. Pop in, spray maybe a tenth of a fuel canister onto the ground around them, then step back and watch the health bars shrink away. Flamethrower Turrets take the concept further by tapping directly into a pipe feed from your petrochemical production line, and can do tremendous secondary damage with the lingering flames. Using refined liquid fuel further improves the damage dealt by flame turrets. Flamethrowers were toned down a notch in 0.15, but in exchange the tank was also given a flamethrower, and flame turrets are still the game's most efficient area denial defensive weapons.

** Developer blog comments indicate that new code is being tested for version 0.16 that will streamline and simplify adding undergrounds and splitters directly into a running line of belts, thus making it easier to set up infrastructure without extra commands to remove belts first.

* FragileSpeedster: The car. It's the fastest non-railway vehicle in the game, and since patch 0.11 the car has included a roof-mounted machine gun. However, speed comes at the sacrifice of armour, and even crashing into a tree can severely damage the car.

* InconvenientlyPlacedConveyorBelt: Mostly averted. Conveyor belts are one the most useful things in the game, for moving both resources and the player quickly across the map. That said, as a factory grows larger and more labyrinthine, it's inevitable that the player will end up trying to run against one at some point. A Modular Armor component that prevents belts from moving the player exists in the game's code and can be placed into custom scenario maps, although as of 0.15 it does not have a recipe for production.
* KillItWithFire: Post 0.13, the Flamethrower is the most efficient way to deal with both spawners and Worms. Pop in, spray maybe a tenth of a fuel canister onto the ground around them, then step back and watch the health bars shrink away. Flamethrower Turrets take the concept further by tapping directly into a pipe feed from your petrochemical production line, and can do tremendous secondary damage with the lingering flames. Using refined liquid fuel further improves the damage dealt by flame turrets.

* ShotgunsAreJustBetter: The standard shotgun has a very bad range but deals the most damage of all the weapons that the player can wield until they unlock the even more powerful combat shotgun, which gives a 20% damage bonus on top of any shell damage upgrades you've researched.

The game has both singleplayer and CoOpMultiplayer modes. A demo is available on the [[https://www.factorio.com/ Factorio website]], with the full game available on the website, and from [[http://steamcommunity.com/app/427520 Steam]], [[https://www.gog.com/game/factorio GOG]] and the [[https://www.humblebundle.com/store/factorio Humble Store]] for €20/$20.

** Tanker trains were intended to simplify transporting both crude oil and it's refined products from outposts to factories. However, steam is considered a liquid and it doesn't cool down overtime. Therefore it is possible to use tanker trains to transport steam from a nuclear power plant to an outpost in order to power the outpost as opposed to running a long power line.

* CoolCar: The handbuilt car is fast, agile, can run on anything that burns and can ram into trees without taking significant damage.

''Factorio'' is a crowdfunded top-down two-dimensional [[ConstructionAndManagementGames construction and management game]], with RTS elements planned for later updates. Currently the game is officially an alpha, but has had impressive critical (winning ''two'' of the four categories at the 2015 Czech Game Of The Year awards) and financial success already.

* CoolTrain: The diesel engine is fairly snazzy in terms of appearance and it will become the backbone for any large factory once local mineral deposits are depleted.

* TheTurretMaster: The player. Because most of your weapons are ineffectual against massed bug swarms, turrets are key to defending your factories. Gun turrets are cheap and don't require electricity, but require an extensive logistics network to maintain their ammo. Laser turrets are expensive to craft and require huge amounts of electricity, but don't need any conveyor systems for ammo. Flame Turrets are powerful, but they require walls and 'hedgehog's teeth' barriers and fuel.

* NotTheIntendedUse: Grenades are designed to be used against swarms of biters. Most people instead grab a crapload of them, run towards a forest and start hurling them as fast as possible to quickly clear trees.

* ShoutOut: The repair pack previously used an icon of the Eleventh Doctor's sonic screwdriver. Certain buildings are assigned a name from a list of backer-chosen names, which has inevitably led to references such as "[[{{TabletopGame/Warhammer40000}} Lab]] [[Characters/Warhammer40000TauEmpire AunOTauShi]]".

** Using the train to plough through enemies. The train takes next to no damage and can easily squish the largest of bugs, but it's not always easy getting enemies to nicely line up along the railway tracks as they do in some of the trailers.

** [[KillItWithFire Flame turrets]] have good range and do good damage and consume any oil product the player might not have much use for. [[VideoGameFlamethrowersSuck Unfortunately]], they need pipe networks laid out to them from the oil refineries, their {{Painfully Slow Projectile}}s cause them to overshoot [[ZergRush fast-moving enemies]], and they have a minimum range within which they cannot target. The only times they are effective for more than showing off is when protecting oil refineries (where ammo should be plentiful), and while under heavy siege by highly evolved enemies that spend a lot of time gnawing at the walls in a stationary position and absorb lots of damage before going down.

** ComplexityAddiction: Mods that scratch this itch (yes, even moreso than the base game) are ''very'' popular with the playerbase.

* GameMod: Varies from simple mods to change recipes or make minor adjustments to gameplay, such as the Long Reach, Arborium, and Autofill mods, to entire game-changing mods that add in new resources and enemies and/or make radical changes to the tech tree, such as the collection of mods collectively referred to as Bob's Mods. Concepts and ideas from several mods have been adapted into official game mechanics.

** A lot of things that you would think would require electric power — conveyor belts, splitters, large water pumps — don't need to be powered in-game because doing so would just add a layer of annoyance and not add anything to the gameplay.

* BagOfHolding: Given both the large number of inventory slots and items stacking, it's not hard to fit an entire locomotive and several cargo wagons with plenty of space to spare.
* BigCreepyCrawlies: Nothing but. Even the "small" bugs are the size of a man. Big bugs are the size of a dump truck and can shrug off high-explosive rockets.

* InconvenientlyPlacedConveyorBelt: Mostly averted. Conveyor belts are one the most useful things in the game, for moving both resources and the player quickly across the map. That said, as a factory grows larger and more labyrinthine, it's inevitable that the player will end up trying to run against one at some point.
* KillItWithFire: Post 0.13, the Flamethrower is the most efficient way to deal with both spawners and Worms. Pop in, spray maybe a tenth of a fuel canister onto the ground around them, then step back and watch the health bars shrink away.

* TheTurretMaster: The player. Because most of your weapons are ineffectual against massed bug swarms, turrets are key to defending your factories. Gun turrets are cheap and don't require electricity, but require an extensive logistics network to maintain their ammo. Laser turrets are expensive to craft and require huge amounts of electricity, but don't need any conveyor systems for ammo.

* UnwinnableByMistake: Before version 0.13 without mods, there was no way to cross water even though it's possible to spawn an island, forcing you to quit and start a new game.