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Factorio

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Factorio
File:Factorio logo.png
The Factorio logo
Developer(s)Wube Software
Publisher(s)Wube Software
Director(s)Michal "Kovarex" Kovarik
Tomas Kozelek
Designer(s)Michal Kovarik
Programmer(s)Michal Kovarik
Tomas Kozelek
Artist(s)Albert Bertolin (art director)
Vaclav "V453000" Benc
Composer(s)Daniel James Taylor
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux
Release
  • WW: 2012 (Alpha)
Genre(s)Action, real-time strategy, survival
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer

Factorio is a real-time strategy video game in development by Wube Software. It has been available as an early access game since 2014.

Development

The game has been developed by a team of developers from Prague since mid 2012. The development team originally consisted of a single person, but has grown larger. Wube Software (/ˈwuːˌbɛ/) was created in September 2014 by Michal Kovarik and Tomas Kozelek in Prague, Czech Republic. To fund the game the development team began an Indiegogo campaign, which started on 31 January, 2013 and concluded on 3 March, 2013. The campaign raised €21,626 of the €17,000 goal.[1][2][3] Following the crowdfunding success, Wube sold early access editions of the game to raise further funds. The developer credits the April 2014 release of the game's trailer as a significant driver of those sales.[4] As of July 2017, the team consists of 15 members.[5]

One of the game's designers cited the "IndustrialCraft" and "BuildCraft" Minecraft mods for inspiration during the game's development.[6]

The game was released on Steam Early Access on 25 February 2016, and its developers aim for a full release in summer 2018.[7]

As of September 2017, the current version is 0.15, and a 0.16 release is planned before the official 1.0.[citation needed]

Plot

The game follows the story of a spaceman who crash landed on an alien planet. As the only survivor, he has to harvest his resources by hand in order to build up an industrial infrastructure to eventually build a rocket and send a satellite to space, while facing inhabitants of the planet who defend their native environment from the pollution and destruction by the player.[8]

Gameplay

Factorio is a resource gathering game with real-time strategy and survival elements, with influences from the BuildCraft and IndustrialCraft mods for the Minecraft computer game.[6] The player survives by locating and harvesting resources to craft different tools and machines, which in turn create more advanced materials that allow for the progression to more sophisticated technologies and machines. The game progresses as the player continues to build and manage their automated factory-style system, which automates the mining, transporting, processing and assembling of resources. Players research advanced technologies that allow them to create new structures, items and upgrades, starting with basic automation and eventually leading to oil refining, drones, and power armor.[9][10]

The current version of the game is formally "won" by launching a rocket with a satellite, although choosing to ignore this goal and instead continue to build a factory is possible, as Factorio is an open world game. Construction of a rocket requires massive amounts of resources, forcing the player to set up a sizable, effective factory in order to complete the game's goal. There are achievements for finishing the game in under 15 or under 8 hours, which indicates the expected completion time for a skilled player. The any% single-player speed-running world record is 1 hour 58 minutes and 15 seconds, but was set using a favorable map seed and aliens set to peaceful,[11] conditions that allow a more controlled playthrough.

Combat

The player is concerned with defending themselves and their factory from the planet's increasingly aggressive indigenous fauna, who become increasingly more hostile as pollutant emissions created by the player's industry increase, necessitating the importance for the player to consider the balance between their production and the enemy's aggressiveness.[12] There are four types of enemies: Biters, Spitters, Worms, and Spawners. Biter and Spitters are produced by Spawners absorbing pollution, and will intermittently form large groups to attack the player's industry. Worms are powerful stationary defenses that protect Spawners. Combat can be done in the early game with a pistol, which then leads to a sub-machine gun, a shotgun, a combat shotgun, a rocket launcher, a flamethrower, and in extreme cases, nuclear missiles. In case of emergency, the player can also attack by swinging their pickaxe at an enemy. Ammunition also has multiple types, starting with cheap but weak conventional rounds and progressing to piercing rounds and eventually depleted uranium rounds.

Early in the game, wall and turret technologies are available to the player, giving access to the construction of walls and automated machine gun turrets. Walls are extremely durable but do nothing on their own. Gun turrets will automatically attack nearby enemies, and are useful for defending areas, but are not heavily armored and are vulnerable to running out of ammunition. Mid-game technologies provide access to laser turrets which, unlike the automated sub-machine gun turret, do not consume ammunition, and instead consume electricity to function. They ignore the aliens' armor and deal more damage per shot than gun turrets, however they fire more slowly and their severe power costs can easily hinder activity across the rest of the factory. Mid-game technologies also provide access to flamethrower turrets, which consume refined oil and are extremely effective at tackling large groups of aliens, but have a limited cone-of-fire and cannot defend their sides or rear.

Further technologies allow production of 3 different vehicles: the car, tank and train. The car is fast, lightly armored, equipped with a single machine gun, and has a large inventory space, and is primarily helpful for scouting and quick transportation of the player and large quantities of items. The tank is heavily armored, and is equipped with a cannon, machine gun, and flamethrower, but is much slower than the car. The tank excels at attacking enemy colonies from a distance which reduces the amount of local hostiles. Trains are large, unarmed vehicles used for high-speed, high-volume cargo transport through potentially complex signal-controlled networks. The tank and train can also effectively combat aliens by simply running them over, however caution must be taken as they can also easily run over the player.

The end-game military technologies unlock uranium ammunition, nuclear missiles, and powered armor. Uranium rounds are far more powerful than any other bullets, and nuclear missiles can wipe out anything in their path, once again including the player. Powered armor can be equipped with various modules, giving the player additional combat abilities, defensive shields, or the ability to launch robots for automated construction.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer mode allows people, both locally and via the internet to play together cooperatively.[7][13] Factorio supports both dedicated servers as well as player-hosted listen servers. In the past, the game used used peer-to-peer connectivity, however this was removed as more robust options were developed.[14][15] Saved world files can be seamlessly loaded either single- or multiplayer. By default, all players on a server share technology, unless a system of multiple teams has been instituted by the server host. Friendly fire is present. While the hard limit for players is 65,535, the most popular servers were able to handle slightly over a hundred players.[16]

As of the game's 0.15 update, players can also share construction blueprints with other players on their server, via a server-sided public blueprint library.

User-made modifications

The game was designed to be customisable via mods to create additional content, such as modifications to gameplay or re-texturing of visual elements. The developers offer an online portal on the Factorio website for mod developers to host their content. To help support the modding community, there is an in-game mod manager that allows players to quickly download mods hosted on the Factorio website. Modifications to the game can be written in Lua.

References

  1. ^ Smith, Graham. "Factorio Trailer Looks Like A Fun Factory, Has Demo". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 16 May 2014.
  2. ^ "Factorio". Indiegogo. Retrieved 16 May 2014.
  3. ^ Kozelek, Tomas. "Here we are". Factorio blog. Retrieved 16 May 2014.
  4. ^ Mike Rose (27 May 2014). "How a single game trailer turned the tide for Factorio". Gamasutra. Retrieved 28 November 2015.
  5. ^ "Factorio - Team". www.factorio.com. Retrieved 18 July 2017.
  6. ^ a b "kovarex comments on Nerd³ FW – Factorio". Reddit. Retrieved 5 September 2014.
  7. ^ a b "Factorio FAQ". www.factorio.com. Retrieved 28 August 2017.
  8. ^ Dobrovský, Pavel. "Zabijte planetu průmyslem v české budovatelské strategii Factorio". Games.cz. Retrieved 19 May 2014.
  9. ^ Jauch, Daniel. "Our Nation's Factorio Review". APGNation. Archived from the original on 17 May 2014. Retrieved 16 May 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  10. ^ Priestman, Chris. "Factorio Is A Machine-Fetishist's Best Friend". Indie Statik. Retrieved 16 May 2014.
  11. ^ https://www.speedrun.com/Factorio
  12. ^ "Factorio – Content". www.factorio.com. Retrieved 10 January 2015.
  13. ^ Rogers, Tristan (1 November 2014). "Factorio Gets Multiplayer". SandboxDB. Retrieved 21 November 2014.
  14. ^ "Factorio Headless download". www.factorio.com. Retrieved 25 April 2017. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  15. ^ "Multiplayer - Factorio Wiki". wiki.factorio.com. Retrieved 25 April 2017.
  16. ^ "Multiplayer - Factorio Wiki". wiki.factorio.com. Retrieved 29 September 2017.
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