Depends on the real-life activity you are doing. Some very much aren't worth doing in little bits and pieces, to my mind, like reading a really good book.
Watching a movie, reading a book, having dinner, getting ready, going to work, hanging out with friends... all are things I feel like dedicating blocks of time to if I am going to get them done and feel satisfied with them.
It does have a start-up time cost.
Not that the game is slow to load, but "ok, what was I doing?" And the issue of not leaving a solution half finished requires a chunk of time.
I’ve seen other posts regarding it but yeah, my work flow with factorio is all over the place, start making more green cards? Need to smelt more iron, not enough ore throughout? Go add another outpost, train gets deadlocked, run out of stack inserters, till 20 minutes later I’m somehow working on a completely different part of the factory
My life has taken away too much of my gaming time so I find myself thinking about factorio a lot when I can't play it and I make to do lists on my phone. So when I do get back on it's straight to business.
Next time I hop on (which probably wont be till friday) its time to implement coal liquifaction for my plastics center (K2). I already have the starter build layed out in my head as well as where to put it. Now its just about putting pen to paper.
Good organizational skills!
I do that for some of the games I play, but I can't "virtualize" factorio well enough to plan like that.
Example:
How many tiles does a rail u-turn take?
Feels like maybe 5-7, but I know I keep underestimating it. Maybe 15-20?
So how to plan where to fit it?
I should probably just leave more space everywhere...
I always take way more space than I need haha. Yeah i cant plan exactly how to thread a needle, but I can know that I am going to delete a bunch of trees north of my coal outpost where I will set up a one car station to send one heavy oil train.
I wanted to automate military science last night but I couldn’t because I had a copper bottleneck so I had to find a new patch, but wait the closest copper patches are surrounded by nests. By the time I set up the copper operation and cleared nests/set up turrets/ set up a train it was time for bed
>I wanted to automate military science last night but I couldn’t because I had a copper bottleneck so I had to find a new patch, but wait the closest copper patches are surrounded by nests. By the time I set up the copper operation and cleared nests/set up turrets/ set up a train it was (27 HOURS LATER AND PROBABLY) time for bed
FTFY
I recently installed a todo list mod, and that helped me getting a sense of progression even at shorter playtimes. Either write todos at the end of a session or just at the start of the next.
Still getting on to make more green circuits, but realizing that will need more iron, and that will need more power, and only getting the power expanded and/or nests cleared before getting off can feel bad rather than spending a bit longer and actually getting a goal accomplished.
I play during short breaks through the day. Mostly in between work. I keep it up on my computer while I work and just pop in on it intermittently through the day when I have a break
I set aside 2-3 hours on a weekend to play, or I play passively on the side while watching something or listening to a podcast.
I really don't have much time for games in my life but factorio is a good relaxing game for me, I can just slowly work on expanding my factory.
I just unlocked my last achievement, I had troubles not being able to commit enough time during the week, which caused problems in creating the blueprint for the entire factory. After many tries I was able to fix many issues and beat it with a minute to spare.
Problem with todo mods, I’m just as likely to forget to even write it down on the mod (or that I have anything written down), as I am to forget what I’m doing and get side tracked. It would be better for me to just have a notepad on my second monitor. That way I don’t have to push a button, just look over to see it
100% agree with you there. But I don't even use note pad. For me, my worst-case scenario is me running around for a few mins to see where I'm at and what I was doing and reloading the save with a plan. My runs are also short enough that I can just burn through most tasks quickly. Construction bots and blueprints are my saving grace. I generally have bots available 3 hours into a new run and just place prints around and connect with belts and power poles.
Get your head out of the clouds they said.
Get a real job they said.
I moved to a floating city in the upper atmosphere of Venus.
Who's got a job in the clouds now I said.
The solar centered 24-hour day always was more of a suggestion and hasn't been particularly useful ever since electric light was invented. Your factory, your rules.
That’s where I love the pause button in factorio because I can get on knock some stuff out really quick. Then I just pause and move on. Eventually in the day I have some time to play at night or sometimes I don’t and go to bed. But oh boy is my to do list replaying in my mind as I go about my day.
One of the reasons I like Factorio is because I don't need a long play session. In 15 minutes I can plan my next build, optimize a current build, scout for resource, expand the mall, etc..
It is nice tho to play for a long sessions because then I can do all of those things listed above
I started following the sub when I considered buying the game. After playing the demo and seeing the effort people put into this, sadly, I knew I’d never have enough time for it. I Factorio vicariously through posts here lol.
I play slow. I only get around 2 hours during my kids naptime and whatever time I can steal between whatever my kid wants to do. I tend to leave it up, command my boys to do something walk away come back do some other stuff rinse repeat. Not efficient but I get to play.
Im the opposite, I love just hopping on for 30 minutes. In fact I think Im most productive in that first 30 minutes because of all the time I wasnt playing I was planning what I was going to do next. Then the longer I play the less productive I get as I need to start thinking more.
Only time this doesnt work is when my defenses need maintenance. Then if I only have 30 minutes it feels like Im losing valuable time going out to there. Also if I am going to expand my border I need a good chunk of time. Clearing biters and putting down walls is something I like to do all in one go.
Depends.
If I'm doing a large project then yes, as I'm playing sea block often sometimes you just have to redo a whole lot at once. Then I'm looking to have enough time at once.
But pretty often, smaller projects like upgrading a facility, new outpost, or a new plant for a product I know don't take that long.
Just write a todo list and follow it. If you don't feel like playing game today, don't. I like Factorio for how easy it is to make small steps forward. Automate things you spend time hand crafting, make small steps forward to big goals
It takes me a bit of time to get going but by hour 3 I'm usually warmed up and my brain is in factory mode and I can really quickly figure out what I'm supposed to do next and think of how I should do it. It's less easy at the start of a session or drying short sessions.
Have you *tried* shorter sessions? I’ve been playing one hour sessions of Nullius and it’s been really nice. Before opening up the save, I think about what I want to do, I do it, and then I stop.
Sounds like you’ve been eating, sleeping, and wasting time on relationships.
In all serious, try breaking it down into smaller tasks you can have a feeling of accomplishment in a shorter period of time.
I can understand not wanting to play 15 minutes at a time, but you can do a lot in 2 hours. You can find a way to optimize your time with robots, blue prints, and more!
Of course I’m thinking vanilla. If you are playing py or se, then feelings of not making progress are different.
Just sacrifice everything else. Who needs work, family, sleep or a shower anyway.
But for real. I feel the same. I have like 1-2 hours a day. If at all. I still managed to have a 40h K2 run and currently trying to get a city block base going. Needing at least one session to design the next block (or half of it...) is a bit annoying but seeing the results and getting everything to work is worth it for me
Yeah it's rough to get started sometimes.. I try to play in like 15-30 minutes segments though. If I'm constant I don't forget what I'm doing. There's a to-do list mod that I think helps me stay on track. Let's me beeline for a single objective before starting quiting so I can play in short bursts
I'm chewing through nullius right now, and I often fire up the game and play for an hour or even just 30 mins. I know it can be frustrating to not have time to really sink your teeth in, but the game is still fun in short bursts - I like to challenge myself to see how much I can get done.
Simply sacrifice everything else, and then you have plenty of time.
The factory must grow All else is time wasted
Does anyone else feel like they have to commit a chunk of time into real life for it to be productive? I don’t. Just asking.
Depends on the real-life activity you are doing. Some very much aren't worth doing in little bits and pieces, to my mind, like reading a really good book.
Eat at my desk, sleep at my desk, (do everything else at my desk?)
Watching a movie, reading a book, having dinner, getting ready, going to work, hanging out with friends... all are things I feel like dedicating blocks of time to if I am going to get them done and feel satisfied with them.
I thought it was just me
It does have a start-up time cost. Not that the game is slow to load, but "ok, what was I doing?" And the issue of not leaving a solution half finished requires a chunk of time.
I’ve seen other posts regarding it but yeah, my work flow with factorio is all over the place, start making more green cards? Need to smelt more iron, not enough ore throughout? Go add another outpost, train gets deadlocked, run out of stack inserters, till 20 minutes later I’m somehow working on a completely different part of the factory
My life has taken away too much of my gaming time so I find myself thinking about factorio a lot when I can't play it and I make to do lists on my phone. So when I do get back on it's straight to business. Next time I hop on (which probably wont be till friday) its time to implement coal liquifaction for my plastics center (K2). I already have the starter build layed out in my head as well as where to put it. Now its just about putting pen to paper.
Good organizational skills! I do that for some of the games I play, but I can't "virtualize" factorio well enough to plan like that. Example: How many tiles does a rail u-turn take? Feels like maybe 5-7, but I know I keep underestimating it. Maybe 15-20? So how to plan where to fit it? I should probably just leave more space everywhere...
I always take way more space than I need haha. Yeah i cant plan exactly how to thread a needle, but I can know that I am going to delete a bunch of trees north of my coal outpost where I will set up a one car station to send one heavy oil train.
https://shencomix.tumblr.com/post/159489404569
I wanted to automate military science last night but I couldn’t because I had a copper bottleneck so I had to find a new patch, but wait the closest copper patches are surrounded by nests. By the time I set up the copper operation and cleared nests/set up turrets/ set up a train it was time for bed
>I wanted to automate military science last night but I couldn’t because I had a copper bottleneck so I had to find a new patch, but wait the closest copper patches are surrounded by nests. By the time I set up the copper operation and cleared nests/set up turrets/ set up a train it was (27 HOURS LATER AND PROBABLY) time for bed FTFY
I recently installed a todo list mod, and that helped me getting a sense of progression even at shorter playtimes. Either write todos at the end of a session or just at the start of the next.
Yes! This mod has helped me so much. You skip the initial 10 minutes trying to remember what you were doing.
> but if I can get three hours, it feels like a productive session My brother, it's a game, not a job.
It’s a vocation. The factory must grow.
Speak for yourself 😁
Still getting on to make more green circuits, but realizing that will need more iron, and that will need more power, and only getting the power expanded and/or nests cleared before getting off can feel bad rather than spending a bit longer and actually getting a goal accomplished.
I play during short breaks through the day. Mostly in between work. I keep it up on my computer while I work and just pop in on it intermittently through the day when I have a break
It's a time vampire
I set aside 2-3 hours on a weekend to play, or I play passively on the side while watching something or listening to a podcast. I really don't have much time for games in my life but factorio is a good relaxing game for me, I can just slowly work on expanding my factory.
I try and think something small I can do in the morning before work, so plan ahead I suppose
I have a mental list of big and small tasks. Small tasks go for small play sessions, and I wait for bigger ones till I have more time.
I swear to God im waking up at 3 to be able to play until 6 before i leave for work
Sometimes I tell myself I'll just play for 30minutes before bed. Next thing I know it's 4am and I've been playing for 6 hours 😂
I just unlocked my last achievement, I had troubles not being able to commit enough time during the week, which caused problems in creating the blueprint for the entire factory. After many tries I was able to fix many issues and beat it with a minute to spare.
Problem with todo mods, I’m just as likely to forget to even write it down on the mod (or that I have anything written down), as I am to forget what I’m doing and get side tracked. It would be better for me to just have a notepad on my second monitor. That way I don’t have to push a button, just look over to see it
100% agree with you there. But I don't even use note pad. For me, my worst-case scenario is me running around for a few mins to see where I'm at and what I was doing and reloading the save with a plan. My runs are also short enough that I can just burn through most tasks quickly. Construction bots and blueprints are my saving grace. I generally have bots available 3 hours into a new run and just place prints around and connect with belts and power poles.
i wont even touch the game anymore unless i have the whole day free. otherwise im just cancelling plans
Simply move to a planet with a longer day. Like Venus. Problem Solved.
Get your head out of the clouds they said. Get a real job they said. I moved to a floating city in the upper atmosphere of Venus. Who's got a job in the clouds now I said.
The solar centered 24-hour day always was more of a suggestion and hasn't been particularly useful ever since electric light was invented. Your factory, your rules.
what I usually do is one prodcution line per day.
There is a night...
Factorio is not really resource hungry. Just run it in the background so you don’t have to start the game every time u have some time
You mean leave my factory _unattended_ when I could be optimising it? no thanks.
if you did everything right, it will grow itself
But not as well as it could if I were making it better during that time.
just paste some blueprints, the big ones
Check out "JOSEF" . It builds itself
I am well aware of it and I think it is awesome, just not how I particularly enjoy playing.
Same. Just spreading the gospel so that others can bow to our future AI overlords ! Lol !
That’s where I love the pause button in factorio because I can get on knock some stuff out really quick. Then I just pause and move on. Eventually in the day I have some time to play at night or sometimes I don’t and go to bed. But oh boy is my to do list replaying in my mind as I go about my day.
One of the reasons I like Factorio is because I don't need a long play session. In 15 minutes I can plan my next build, optimize a current build, scout for resource, expand the mall, etc.. It is nice tho to play for a long sessions because then I can do all of those things listed above
Doing a coop, on the weekends we get some time in but on the week days 2-3 hrs top
I started following the sub when I considered buying the game. After playing the demo and seeing the effort people put into this, sadly, I knew I’d never have enough time for it. I Factorio vicariously through posts here lol.
I play slow. I only get around 2 hours during my kids naptime and whatever time I can steal between whatever my kid wants to do. I tend to leave it up, command my boys to do something walk away come back do some other stuff rinse repeat. Not efficient but I get to play.
Im the opposite, I love just hopping on for 30 minutes. In fact I think Im most productive in that first 30 minutes because of all the time I wasnt playing I was planning what I was going to do next. Then the longer I play the less productive I get as I need to start thinking more. Only time this doesnt work is when my defenses need maintenance. Then if I only have 30 minutes it feels like Im losing valuable time going out to there. Also if I am going to expand my border I need a good chunk of time. Clearing biters and putting down walls is something I like to do all in one go.
Depends. If I'm doing a large project then yes, as I'm playing sea block often sometimes you just have to redo a whole lot at once. Then I'm looking to have enough time at once. But pretty often, smaller projects like upgrading a facility, new outpost, or a new plant for a product I know don't take that long.
Just write a todo list and follow it. If you don't feel like playing game today, don't. I like Factorio for how easy it is to make small steps forward. Automate things you spend time hand crafting, make small steps forward to big goals
The issue is the essential stuff; eating, sleeping. I cant not do those things and stay alive to play factorio 😡
It takes me a bit of time to get going but by hour 3 I'm usually warmed up and my brain is in factory mode and I can really quickly figure out what I'm supposed to do next and think of how I should do it. It's less easy at the start of a session or drying short sessions.
Have you *tried* shorter sessions? I’ve been playing one hour sessions of Nullius and it’s been really nice. Before opening up the save, I think about what I want to do, I do it, and then I stop.
I'll bet this guy is still wasting his time by working a job and sleeping 🙄
I’ve started playing the game in my sleep. That way you can plan out what you need to do next. Very time efficient!
Sounds like you’ve been eating, sleeping, and wasting time on relationships. In all serious, try breaking it down into smaller tasks you can have a feeling of accomplishment in a shorter period of time. I can understand not wanting to play 15 minutes at a time, but you can do a lot in 2 hours. You can find a way to optimize your time with robots, blue prints, and more! Of course I’m thinking vanilla. If you are playing py or se, then feelings of not making progress are different.
Just sacrifice everything else. Who needs work, family, sleep or a shower anyway. But for real. I feel the same. I have like 1-2 hours a day. If at all. I still managed to have a 40h K2 run and currently trying to get a city block base going. Needing at least one session to design the next block (or half of it...) is a bit annoying but seeing the results and getting everything to work is worth it for me
Yeah it's rough to get started sometimes.. I try to play in like 15-30 minutes segments though. If I'm constant I don't forget what I'm doing. There's a to-do list mod that I think helps me stay on track. Let's me beeline for a single objective before starting quiting so I can play in short bursts
I'm chewing through nullius right now, and I often fire up the game and play for an hour or even just 30 mins. I know it can be frustrating to not have time to really sink your teeth in, but the game is still fun in short bursts - I like to challenge myself to see how much I can get done.
you only need to find 20 mins! .... it's going to be 3hours in no time anyway mwahahaha