Can we get a creative games thread?
Make a metro map, prevent shit from eventually collapsing. Pic related.
Make factory, defend shit, launch rocket, win game.
Don't fucking buy this shit, slow-ass Mexican devs who are fucking greedy and so fake-release their v1.0 of the game.
Version 1.1.3 and I still run into bugs in vanilla in less than three rocket launches. Oh yeah, it's fucking Unity so it runs like shit too.
All three games here: volafile.io
Well, SimplePlanes is shit. Dunno why you'd play that if you could just git gud and KSP. If you want guns and shit you can always mod that into KSP…
Gonna also bump because for once I'm actually discussing vidya and Holla Forums doesn't care…
Factorio was the best/worst purchase I made in a while. 60 hours in over the course of a couple of weeks and still having a blast.
It's way more satisfying building shit with others though.
So wait, is this more a thread about games where you have to think creatively to solve problems or games where your oddass creation requires creative engineering because you wanted to build something more interesting than the standard solution?
Either way any game from Zachtronics
Draugtorious
OpenRCT2 is talked about a lot, but I would recommend OpenTTD as well. I would say it has a higher learning curve than rollercoaster tycoon, but designing rail networks after getting a grip on the concepts is fun. I've put a lot of time into it, but there are still some basic concepts I don't fully understand.
Prison Architect was pretty fun when I played it a few years ago. The idea is that you design and oversee a prison as you would expect from the name, but in practice it plays a bit like dwarf fortress with less of a learning curve.
I've been playing this a little the last few weeks. One problem I have with it is how to approach overall factory design. Is it better to design a factory where each component is produced for general use, or is it better to produce each component "on site" as needed? For example, in my current factory I have one area where copper wires are produced and sent to assemblers that require them, such as the various types of circuit assemblers. The alternative would be to have assemblers that produce the prerequisites next to the assemblers and just send the more general materials such as copper or iron plates to the area.
No Man's Sky. Infinite planets with infinite creatures, resources and upgrades to discover. Also at the center of the univers there's some super secret stuff but apparently it takes 25000 hours to reach it.
But i already know what's at the center, it's how to talk to girls and make your weiner fkning huge
The latter is much more efficient and "easier". For example, basically everyone makes green circuits by stuffing the copper cables directly into the circuit assemblers on a 3->2 ratio.
The former is essentially what is called a "main bus" system, where you have a giant series of belts running basically every intermediate product down the center of your factory floor, siphoning off certain products to dedicated assembly areas as needed.
Really, almost everyone is going to use a combination of these. I'd recommend at least separating your smelting area and running copper plates, iron plates, and steel as a "main bus" through your entire factory. Most intermediate products can be made from those where they are needed. Adding more intermediate ingredients also on belts makes things look prettier, but less efficient and thus a lot more difficult. You probably never want to put stuff like processors or modules on belts because you won't really need as much as fills the belt.
The latest update makes the problem more a choice in aesthetic than efficiency, though. The new "stack inserters" can take many items off a belt at once, where previously only an inserter taking items directly from one chest or assembler and putting it into another could do that. This helps eliminate the throughput issue that you'll run into, especially with circuits. You need so many fucking circuits it's ridiculous; by endgame half of your entire factory's resources will be dedicated to making circuits, and managing to rig up enough belts and inserters and assemblers to move that gargantuan mass of copper plates and copper cables is a big challenge.
Really, I suppose the best answer is that you never really "design" a factory from the start. You "build" a factory and then "rebuild" or "repurpose" it as you go along and you needs change and you are forced to adapt. Trying to plan out the perfect factory from the very beginning kind of breaks the point of the game.
Endgame it seems more efficient to totally do away with belts and just use robots and requester chests for everything.
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I have given up on Zachtronics games. Later levels always end up feeling too much like real life work.
I never use logistics robots for anything other than keeping my person supplied with needed items. It just takes all the challenge out of the game and ruins the experience, IMO.
Not I gotta play RCT again.
The greentext sounds good, but is the game good?
What? What game is that? Google doesn't come up with anything.
I thought about it a bit, and I would also recommend dawn of discovery. Dawn of discovery (also known as Anno 1404) is vaguely like openTTD because it is also a game about logistics. The main creative part of it is how you design your cities and trade routes to make use of what resources you have. It starts simple, but can become extremely complex.
Another one is Craft the World. It's interesting, but has some major flaws. Essentially, it is a combination of dwarf fortress and terraria, with some tower defense elements. The main problem I have with it is with its AI and crafting. The AI's pathfinding can be pretty bad at times, and gets worse on large maps. There are ways to work around it, like the player's portal spell, but micromanaging like this feels like it goes against the idea of dwarf fortress clones. The portal ability also makes building rail networks feel kind of useless. My problem with the crafting is that you need to drag components onto a grid like minecraft in order to craft things. This sounds like something minor, but it becomes really annoying considering you do it every time you craft something. It doesn't add anything to the game except for the developers being able to say it's like minecraft. I would still recommend it, just be aware it has problems.
If you don't mind early access, Besiege is kind of neat. It's like KSP but focused on designing siege engines.
Next time I'll try more of a mixed setup like how you explained. In my current factory I have everything on belts. In theory I thought it would be less wasteful this way since if one type of end product wasn't needed, the intermediates could go towards something else. In practice, it seems to lead to more spaghetti type layouts and leads to some annoying bottlenecks.
This only works if everything is on loops. If not, then the products just get stuck at the end of the line instead of being used by the assemblers at the beginning of the line.
I tried a few times to make a factory where EVERYTHING looped back to the start, but it always failed miserably because the belts just became way too long, especially for things that didn't need that many products.
I then tried to come up with a design where the main bus loop was intersected with smaller loops that ran between intermediate product assemblers and final product assemblers… but I realized that doing so would involve taking into account every single item in the game, so supposing I could completely manage throughput, it would essentially "complete" the game and make it not fun anymore. As I said, winging it as you go along is more enjoyable.
For my next factory, maybe I'll revisit the idea of a looping main bus composed of just a few items that you need shit-tons of, like plates and steel and cables and green circuits. It might work.
I never thought of using a loop in the design of intermediates. Instead, Mine was set up sort of like the first image. It functioned, but was really inefficient in some areas. The square at the top represents an intermediate assembler, and each other square represents an assembler that needs the intermediate. This led to bottlenecks at the top while the assemblers at the bottom were under served.
Actually, I wonder if a loop which used a spiral design would work. Assemblers could effectively use the same belt twice, but it would be a nightmare to design and expand on.
Last Leviathan is a pretty interesting concept. Besieged-style building and art, except you're creating ships to sail a fantasy world of oceans. It's early access as shit right now and the only combat is against NPC boats and fortifications, but the ultimate goal is to have the campaign evolve into fighting against gigantic sea monsters.