I played Factorio a fair bit before Space Age came out, it's awesome. I played it for ages with my kid, and it's a great tool for having him think about software decisions.
However I hit a wall with the game that has a relation to how AI has upended the programming world.
Basically, I got bored, and it might be because of the automation.
In the early game, you are running around with an axe, manually putting down inserters and assemblers, manually crafting items. You eventually make some assembly lines to automatically build stuff, and the outputs then go into more and more complex recipes for which you need to organize the flow of resources.
Along the way, you gain the ability to build trains to move goods from faraway places. Along with a number of other mechanics that are introduced, this creates a bit of novelty, because you discover some slightly different requirements and you get to exercise your brain in how to connect things together.
But then at some point, you learn how to make robots. Robots can place factory components as well as just moving goods around. You make a blueprint, plonk it down, and then the robots get all the necessary pieces, and place them down for you. This completely alters the game, because a blueprint can have a huge number of pieces while still being modular. There are people with libraries of square tiles encompassing every aspect of the game, that can simply be snapped together like legos.
I got to a point where I was assembling libraries and caring more about building a good set of components than actually wiring things together into a factory. I got an auto-placement mod, which I figured was a bit like predictive text in an IDE, it saves you from having to put down inserters and turn them, that kind of micro thing that can mess up your factory if you screw it up, but is actually tedious.
Armed with my new library of everything and my auto-placement mod, I destroyed my enjoyment of the game, somehow.
I had played the game enough times to understand what was needed, and so I got to a place where I just needed to place down a mall (a special kind of factory that mainly makes components) along with the bus (assembly lines of outputs), and things kinda couldn't go wrong. I didn't do any more of the typical early-game fiddling with making ad-hoc designs, because I knew what would work, and I didn't want to do the micro. I just satisfied myself that a few belts and rail lines would be enough to glue my libraries together, and that was that.
What does this have to do with AI? Well, I hear a lot of people's complaints with AI is that they were no longer actually coding. Without the need to type out anything, the micro is gone. People were already glueing libraries together, but at least there was some delight in writing the little bits of knitting. Now, you can just execute your architecture with a prompt, and the LLM will just do it all for you. There's still a necessity of checking what comes out, but the character of the work has changed.
Very easy to optimise the fun out of Factorio. I have a hard rule: no blueprints carried forward between saves. It's more fun for me to figure out what I can design quickly that kinda works and kinda supports scaling. A lot of the time I'll just build something as a repeatable unit cell and then use copy/paste, skipping the blueprints. I think it's worth trying this out.
Agreed, and aside from balancers and some train grid blueprints I don't use external blueprints. There are just some things I don't like re-inventing. Sometimes if I do a back-to-back factorio game I'll bring over some blueprints but I learned early that external blueprints are the quickest way to ruin the game for me.
Same. I do use blueprints (I usually make copypasteable smelters, circuit factories and whatnot) but only in the same save, all of them get chucked when I start a new save.
And of course no copying blueprints from the internet at all.
So the first iteration of the design is always slightly wonky, so it remains fun :)
I think that's a good rule. If there's something particularly tricky I will make a blueprint and carry it between games, but it's rare. And I only use my blueprints, with the exception of belt balancers (which I'm not smart enough to figure out). Using other people's blueprints is the fastest way to kill the fun in Factorio.
lordnacho · · focus · HN ↗
However I hit a wall with the game that has a relation to how AI has upended the programming world.
Basically, I got bored, and it might be because of the automation.
In the early game, you are running around with an axe, manually putting down inserters and assemblers, manually crafting items. You eventually make some assembly lines to automatically build stuff, and the outputs then go into more and more complex recipes for which you need to organize the flow of resources.
Along the way, you gain the ability to build trains to move goods from faraway places. Along with a number of other mechanics that are introduced, this creates a bit of novelty, because you discover some slightly different requirements and you get to exercise your brain in how to connect things together.
But then at some point, you learn how to make robots. Robots can place factory components as well as just moving goods around. You make a blueprint, plonk it down, and then the robots get all the necessary pieces, and place them down for you. This completely alters the game, because a blueprint can have a huge number of pieces while still being modular. There are people with libraries of square tiles encompassing every aspect of the game, that can simply be snapped together like legos.
I got to a point where I was assembling libraries and caring more about building a good set of components than actually wiring things together into a factory. I got an auto-placement mod, which I figured was a bit like predictive text in an IDE, it saves you from having to put down inserters and turn them, that kind of micro thing that can mess up your factory if you screw it up, but is actually tedious.
Armed with my new library of everything and my auto-placement mod, I destroyed my enjoyment of the game, somehow.
I had played the game enough times to understand what was needed, and so I got to a place where I just needed to place down a mall (a special kind of factory that mainly makes components) along with the bus (assembly lines of outputs), and things kinda couldn't go wrong. I didn't do any more of the typical early-game fiddling with making ad-hoc designs, because I knew what would work, and I didn't want to do the micro. I just satisfied myself that a few belts and rail lines would be enough to glue my libraries together, and that was that.
What does this have to do with AI? Well, I hear a lot of people's complaints with AI is that they were no longer actually coding. Without the need to type out anything, the micro is gone. People were already glueing libraries together, but at least there was some delight in writing the little bits of knitting. Now, you can just execute your architecture with a prompt, and the LLM will just do it all for you. There's still a necessity of checking what comes out, but the character of the work has changed.
wren6991 · · focus · HN ↗
joshstrange · · focus · HN ↗
Pannoniae · · focus · HN ↗
So the first iteration of the design is always slightly wonky, so it remains fun :)
bigstrat2003 · · focus · HN ↗
Sohcahtoa82 · · focus · HN ↗
I use exactly 3 exceptions between saves:
1. First generation ship to just get me to space
2. Second generation ship to get me to the other planets
3. Third generation ship to get me to the Shattered Planet
Everything else, I'm with you. I don't use blueprints between saves.
With how much of a pain it is to deal with building in space, I'd rather just use the same blueprint.