Plants in Techtonica are their own production chain.

Oddly the game starts you off in the Triage phase, with Kindlevine or Shivertorn collected from the map (you’ll have double the former), which you will thresh into both seeds and stems/buds. Seeds go to planters to make more of the base item, with zero loss. Each Kindlevine costs 1 seed, each seed provides 1 Kindlevine. You are effectively harvesting the byproduct.

The refinement stage splits that output into 2 items. Stems = Kindlevine Extract and Plant Fibre. Buds = Shiverthorn Extract and Plantmatter. The interaction between these various outputs allow you to refine the Stems/Buds so that you increase the primary output and stop making the 2nd. By the time you unlock this feature, it’s a good idea to convert to an optimized cycle. There comes a point where you have no use for either Plant Fibre or Plantmatter.

At the start of the game you’ll lack the tool & seeds to run anything complicated. Maybe 8 planters per basic thresher, then 4 threshers to refine. As you progress, you will optimize the refinement, unlock Mk2 theshers (triage first!), get better planters, be able to convert between seed types, and finally unlock a late game new seed.

Finally, know that the production chains here start simple and eventually gain tons of flexibility and therefore complexity. For example, you’ll need Plantmatter bricks. You’ll eventually unlock 6 different production chains that get you that product, and each of those has complex chains before. Which one is the “best” one? That answer changes depending on what tech you have unlocked. There are plenty more of these decision points, meaning that Techtonica is a game of near constant tinkering. Some portions are set it and forget it, others… well you’re going to be rebuilding along the way.

Right to the point here, Techtonica’s UI isn’t the best, and it becomes really hard to figure out ratios to math things out. Less an issue for Assemblers, but all other tools only give you info when they are running.

Blast Miners + Blast Smelters are the best example and it took my much too long to figure out their math. They operate on rather simple rules:

Blast Miner

• Cycles every 12 seconds, so 5 times a minute
• It will consume ALL the Blast Charges deposited every cycle. Max is 20 you can insert
• Depending on your research level, you will get increasing amounts of chunks per amount of Blast Charges. 1:1, 3:2, 5:3, 10:4, 15:5. If you don’t have the research, the charges are simply wasted.

Blast Smelter

• Cycles every 12 seconds, so 5 times a minute
• It will consume ALL the Blast Charges deposited every cycle. Max is 20 you can insert
• Depending on your research level, each charger will increase output to 1x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 10x if the corresponding raw material is inserted.
• It only ever needs 1 Blast Charge to reach this amount.

The result of this is that the Miner actually has a math problem, as the # of charges has an impact on the output. The Smelter only ever needs one, and that math is rather simple to sort out.

Math Time

The larger challenge in all this relates entirely to Inserter speed, belt speed doesn’t mean much at any point. Reminder that:

• Basic Inserters: 20/m
• Long Inserters: 15/m
• Fast Inserters: 40/m
• Filter Inserters: 30/m
• All others use stacks, so the math is only relevant to put the charges in temporary storage.

Belt splitter math is next, a you cannot prioritize outputs, everything is split equally. This means that you can only work on factors of 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on. (Truthfully you can work with odd numbers, but the belt math becomes stupid.)

With that, Smelters are actually really easy, as each need 5 per minute. A Basic Inserter shoots out 20/m, so split to 4 Smelters in 2 stages is enough (split in half, then split those halves). You can use Fast Inserters to split to 8 with the same logic. Assuming you have a storage box, that’s 1 inserter leading to belt pathing, so technically you can have 7 outputs. Technically a lot of things can happen. Still, it’s simple enough to make work and really hard to mess up.

Miners are a right nightmare and I would strongly recommend only using 1 Blast Charge per cycle until you unlock the ability to mass produce with Crusher tech. The production ratios just get stupid otherwise. At 1 charge, easy peezy, same thing as Smelters above.

In the late game (assuming you don’t have infinite mining nodes) you’ll worry about vein exhaustion and want to increase the ratios. Recall, 5 cycles per minute, and 15 per cycle, meaning 60 per Miner per minute. There are no inserters where that math works so you’re left with 2 options.

• Option 1: Use a combination of a Fast Inserter (40) + Basic Inserter (20) on a single belt to the miner.
• Option 2: Use a Mk1 Belt, a Stack Inserter (as long as it’s over 120), and split it once. That will give 60 per belt.

• At 2 per cycle, that’s 10 and you should split a Basic Inserter to 2 Miners
• At 3 per cycle, that’s 15 and you should saturate a belt and use a Long Inserter on the miner
• At 4 per cycle, that’s 20 and you should saturate a belt and use a Basic Inserter

The reward for this math problem is producing slabs of material, which is absolutely game changing and the only way to run machines in the Crusher phase (floors 12+). It also blends well with a more complex production chain involving powders, as production of slabs can double – at the cost of triple the production complexity.

I do enjoy solving math problems, and Techtonica’s sparse UI means that there’s a lot of trial an error required to solve it out. Nearly every other factory game supports the concept of saturated manifolds, and this is a true standout example of an exception. Good luck!

Factory games generally work better with a main bus to manage the distribution logistics. That is, the ability to move material around efficiently. Recall this visual from Satisfactory

Techtonica does it different, as it doesn’t have a large map (or at least it’s broke into instances) and doesn’t have liquids. It does have complex production chains though.

In some games, you’ll have a main bus, then dedicated arms to craft a given thing, which takes up a lot of room. Space restrictions in Techtonica mean you need to build compact and plan WELL ahead of schedule. The good news is that the vertical space is rather large. As a general rule, you can dig around 5 spots higher than the highest point of the ceiling until you clip out.

Now in terms of planning, you need:

• Power. Lots of it. Power in Techtonica is dependent on water. Floor 2, 7 and 11 are the only places with enough room for this. And Accumulators (batteries)
• You need an open space. Almost every floor has this, though floor 4 may be the best option.
• You need Iron, Copper and Limestone available. Only floors 2 & 11 have this. You can ship the other material through the elevator.
• You need a LOT of logistics items. Meaning Belts, Floors, and Inserters. I strongly recommend having a dedicated station to build this that isn’t part of the factory at the start. You also want to research vertical belts quickly.
• There are 3 types of production (Assemblers, Crushers, Threshers). You need dedicated space for each.
• Research cores need space for a core composer. They are big and should be put far away.
• The elevator can transmit power through the floor, items through the ports.

For my playthrough, I have a ground floor for mining & power generation, the next floor covers the entire zone. The first floor will be split into 4 sections.

• The absolute farthest part will be for Core Composers (research cores).
• Close to that area, I’ll have Accumulators (though for practical purposes, you can easily place them on any other floor.) You will use floors above this location for Crushers later in the game.
• Third, is a large area that supports 16 Planters and 4 Threshers. You’ll need 3 floors eventually
  • 3 floors of 16x planters
  • First floor to thresh plan materials into intermediates
  • Second and Third floor dedicated to processing intermediates.
• Finally the factory proper.
  • For most of the game, you’ll need ~12 lanes in the bus. Each lane should have a space between to (belt + empty + belt) to aid with pulling things off the belt cleanly
    • Iron Ingot
    • Copper Ingot
    • Iron Frame
    • Copper Frame
    • Iron Component
    • Copper Wire
    • Mechanical Component
    • Copper Component
    • Plantmatter Frame
    • Processor Unit
    • Relay Circuit
  • Pulled items should head to a storage buffer, then an Assembler. Because space is at a premium, build the Assemblers just far enough apart to have dedicated input lanes. If a product has 2 inputs, then you need : belt, belt, inserter, assembler (2 spaces), inserter, belt. That’s 7 spaces.
  • When you hit the end of the floor, build stairs going up that are 6 high, and then attach a floor to them. This will transfer power to the next floor and give enough space to run belts on the ceiling if need be.
  • Generally, you only need to store 1 stack of any given item that is NOT going onto the belt (e.g. crank wheels). Any item that is going on the stack, you want to store overflow (have the same quality inserter putting things in, and putting things out).
  • Some items should not be put on the belt as they are only used in 1 other step. Either belt them through the back, or build the assemblers next to each other.

My first floor of of the factory was dedicated to intermediate materials to fill up the belt. My second floor was logistics buildings, since Inserters have cross-dependencies. Third floor was more advanced items where Relay Circuits are finally added.

You will have some weird spaghetti for item upgrades, as you need the base item. Belts, Assemblers, Miners, Smelters, Threshers will need the base materials added from the back. When you get Mk2 Assemblers in a limited quantity, prioritize the production chain to make Mk2 Assemblers, then work from the bottom up as quadrupling the base item has compound benefits at the end.

Mining Bits + Research

This needs special consideration, as you likely only want to have 1 Assembler per mining bit tier, as you only consume half the output for the next rank. Mk1 bits produce at 10/min. Mk2 only needs 4/min input. You likely won’t create Mk4 bits until much later in the game, and then chain them into Mk5, 6, and 7. Mk7 bits generate at 1/minute and dig 2500m. As long as this is going 100% of the time, you will unlock each floor without thinking about it.

Research can be a pain. Red creates 30, Blue uses 30 to create 10, Green uses 9 (?) to create 3. This is a pain because the requirements of research are inversely proportionate. You may only need 15 red to unlock something but you need 300 green to unlock another. I’d strongly recommend having 2 Assemblers per research core. More than that will not be sustainable. Once you unlock Crushers, you can make a dedicated area for research, it’s too complicated until you can use gold.

Final Note

When you unlock Blast Miners and slabs, you’ll want to use those instead to create raw materials as it’s quite a bit more effective. The factory itself can remain as is. Late game with Crushers, you’ll find different ways to make things with slabs, at that point it may be worth rebuilding the entire factory proper to be more efficient.

I gave it a good go and came away with some interesting thoughts.

• The early game stuff from EA is still here. Lima is floor 1, which is effectively the tutorial.
• Floor 2 is Victor, which in the EA was the main base location. That appears to still be the case, given that this floor has Iron, Copper, and Limestone. I’ve got a multi-story factory once again.
• The balance of Iron/Copper remains a challenge. You’ll seemingly never have enough Iron until quite a bit into the game.
• Biobricks and routing to the 3 mining areas remains a priority.
• The tweaks to the Planter/Thresher production cycle are less intuitive. Instead of collecting seeds, you collect material that is Threshed into seeds. The lack of a UI that explains this (Thresher UI doesn’t populate until you put stuff in it) is going to be a hurdle for some.
• Research appears to have been balanced, including very early access to a fuel-free jetpack.
• Making foundations takes way too many materials, in particular limestone. By a factor of 10. This means you need to explore for chests to find materials.
• It becomes clear very quickly that you do not want to craft anything by hand if you can avoid it, Mk1 craft double the rate, Mk2 quad. The game is balanced around the latter.
• Floor 3 has some research unlocks for Planters/Threshers. It takes ~20 mining bits to unlock. Better done sooner than later.
• Floor 4 is the Hydro floor, which was a mid-game unlock in EA. Water Wheels. Should be a race to get here honestly, as they make a world of difference.

So far, it’s been rather similar to the EA experience, with the exception of automating floor construction, which is much more difficult. The main difference so far is the need to craft Mining Bits, which are, well, an interesting mechanic.

In the simplest of terms, Mining Bits are a time-gating mechanic. The elevator has 2 inputs for mining bits, at 4/minute. As you dig further, the bits become less effective. Automating construction of these is key, as they are slow to build and slow to dig.

So far I consider the experience improved.

Clearly, I really like the automation genre. I like a lot of genres (Metroidvanias are near the top), but automation is where I get a kick. At its most basic, it’s visual algebra, a near perfect merger of architecture and engineering. The factory must grow!

I covered Factorio the other day, and there are pile of posts on Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program (DSP). They each bring a different thing to the genre, and therefore have their own identity. Techtonica hits 1.0 today and I wanted to take a bit to go over how it brings its own flavor to the table.

World Design

• The maps are voxel based and designed by hand. This gives an inherent grid structure to everything, 3D construction, and a ton of exploration potential. There’s a substantial amount of lore and progress from the hand-crafted experience.
• The world size has functional limits. You have a LOT of space, but nothing infinite. Since you’re spending time in caves, you need to mine to make bigger factories.
• There’s a storyline, and a good one. Who’d of thunk it? Having goals outside of making numbers go up is important.
• Prior to 1.0, you had to unlock various station hubs, which gave a sense of progress as things changed over time. 1.0 you’ll unlock more floors, which again is focused goals.
• There’s no PvE. Hard to explain how much I dislike PvE in a game about numbers.
• The sound/art design is unique in that it doesn’t look to reuse Unreal Engine assets and structures. Art is always personal, and I certainly enjoy it more here than others (except DSP, building an actual sphere around a sun never gets old).
• There’s a jetpack. Jetpacks are life for 3D games.

Factory

• Every Assembler rank increases the amount created by a factor of 2 as compared to manual creation. This dramatically reduces the amount of machines needed at scale. So let’s say it’s a 2 stage crafting process (raw, intermediate, final). Automating it makes it 4x more efficient (each step reduces by 2x). Mk2 Assemblers are 16x more efficient (each step is 4x). If it’s 4 stages, then it’s 32x better (2x2x2x2) at rank 1, and 256x !!! better at rank 2 (4x4x4x4).
• All games have miners, smelters, assemblers, and then more complex variants. Techtonica has this, but by the mid-point pivots to a completely different method of collecting items through Blasting. Instead of more efficient numbers, you have to build new mining operations. 1.0 will pivot again, as you’ll need to pump sand and explore downwards.
• 3D main bus construction is automatically straight and intuitive to use. DSP is the closest comparison.
• Power generation is relatively simple (pre 1.0) with water wheels and transformers. Power distribution is through Power Floors, meaning no poles or wires getting in the way. I really dislike power poles.
• Production Cycles are present where you re-use items as catalysts in order to produce other things. Planter / Thresher cycles is a great example, where you continually re-use seeds to generate plant material.
• You can’t delete things, but you can blast them to oblivion. While I think the AwesomeSink in Satisfactory is both an easy out and end-game goal, I do like that production queues need to be thought out.
• Monorails that are a 1:1 system for transporting mass amounts of material. I have a general dislike of trains due to their complex pathing requirements and rail radius limitations. Monorails are awesome!

Research

• Creating intermediate research items to unlock new things is in all the games. Only Techtonica has those items as a permanent fixture on the map. Kinda like trophies. (They will take significantly less space in 1.0).
• Research is well thought out, with queues, and no randomness. (This, without hesitation, is my largest remaining gripe with Satisfactory – Hard Drives are dumb). NO RANDOMNESS! It also doesn’t add more unique buildings to an already complex production chain (I feel DSP has crossed that line now).
• Research is never wasted, as it provides an incremental benefit the more of it you have. Most games focus instead on logarithmic infinite research (e.g. +10% mining with increasing costs), here it’s a passive gain depending on the size of the trophy.

I am hopeful for Techtonica 1.0, in that it can continue to lean into it’s strengths so that comparisons are more obvious between games in the genre. I’ll be having regular posts on a new playthrough for the next little bit. Small devs can use the attention!

Factorio is the granddaddy, if you will, if the factory automation genre. There were others before, but Factorio really set the bar for others to reach. It launched in early access in 2016 (before that word really meant anything), hit 1.0 in 2022, and just recently released it’s expansion Space Age. I’m not poking my head into Space Age as Techtonica is in like 3 days and that game requires more attention given the state of affairs.

A brief recap of what Factorio is:

• 2 dimensional factory automation game. The lack of vertical space means that planning of layouts is essential as you won’t be able to run belts easily. Trains for massive transport needs.
• Research is accomplished through tiers of constructed items. You don’t use ore, you use inserters, rails, capacitors…
• Enemy AI that responds to pollution and grows in difficulty over time (you can turn this off).
• Buildings are all pre-fab, meaning your inventory is clear about what you can place
• Logistics networks that allow bots to construct buildings or move inventory around automatically.
• Modules & beacons that increase productivity, crafting speed, or reduce power consumption.
• In that network there are logic gates that can be used to start/stop items from being created.
• The base game completes when you send a rocket into space.
• An absolutely wild amount of mods.

You’ll likely recognize many of these items found in other games. In some cases Factorio does it better, in others it’s just added complexity.

I opted to head back into the game after a very long absence. I don’t think I had played after 1.0 (2022), so most of my memories were based on complex friction. 2.0 is now available, even if you don’t have Space Age, and with it comes a huge amount of Quality of Life boosts.

• Every inserter has filters built in
• Blueprints are baked in, no research needed. Also can rotate blueprints.
• Improved “ghost” behavior (a placeholder before constructing)
• Robots have much better logic
• Trains have a slew of improvements, importantly in track design
• Electric Poles have a larger range (YES!)
• Maximum range indicators for below ground belts/pipes, and auto-placement when dragging. This feature alone will shave 10% off a playthrough.
• Search/Pedia function that saves from alt-tabbing to the wiki.
• Rockets are simpler to launch (well… sorta)

The prior run throughs were complicated, mostly because the controls really limited your options. I am absolutely convinced that all factory automation games today are 3D because of the painful memories of spaghetti belts in Factorio. So my 2.0 run through was a generally pleasant surprise when all the QoL items showed up throughout the run. I’d go so far to argue that the game is finally accessible!

After having completed the playthrough, there are still some interesting friction points here that are simply not present elsewhere.

• The main bus in the picture (the colored vertical lines) are a right ass pain to manage without sufficient planning. It takes a truckload of material to build all those belts, splitters and underground portions. Honestly, every other factory game I’ve played does it better (Foundry has throughput issues, but mechanically sound).
• The main bus can only really accommodate a subset of material as a result of this PITA. Which enables a fair amount of creativity in mini-factory design.
• Building prefab often adds un-needed complexity. Theoretically you can “belt” up to 8 different items making them accessible for crafting. You will need about 12 of those materials to pre-fab buildings. See point about the main bus about why this isn’t terribly pleasant, until you simply don’t care anymore.
• The logistics network solves 99% of these issues, with the exception of mass crafting intermediate items. It takes a long time to get there.
• Ratios are hard to figure out, making mini-factories a puzzle with either very good answers, or very bad answers. The wiki does wonders here.
• I remember playing without blueprints and now with. I can’t fathom going back.

Factorio 2.0 is about as good as it can possibly get given the core design fundamentals present. Almost every single pain point comes down to the limitations of 2d design and therefore the requirement of very efficient logistic space design. It feels like every other part of the game is a candy coating and relatively smooth sailing.\

SIDE NOTE: 20% of players have launched a rocket, which is the game completion step. 65% have gotten to the oil step (which is effectively trains, or tier 3 of 6). Given the sheer amount of complexity, those are impressive retention numbers. Satisfactory players only appear to have 30% who have even started the game, 4% that have gotten to phase 4 of 5.

Every other game in the genre has avoided this issue by adding in vertical components, meaning that the fundamental design is different. Those games instead need to balance numbers (input / output / throughput) and world design (exploration / goals).

• Satisfactory added Dimensional Depots as a parallel to logistic bots and absolutely blew the roof off the game as a result. The game can instead focus on building BIG, and does so amazingly well. Blueprints are needed for massive factories!
• Dyson Sphere Program added logistics and blueprints to solve a lot of scaling issues. They are still trying to figure out the PvE portion with Dark Fog.
• Foundry is still trying to figure it out. The starting experience still needs work, and there is no clear end goal.
• Techtonica is hitting 1.0 in a few days. More as I start a new playthrough.

Long post conclusion… Factorio is a great example of creative design within interesting constraints. Nearly every feature we take for granted in the genre originated here, and pretty much as a result of game engine limitations. Even more interesting is how Factorio hasn’t stopped evolving! It’s not like going back to Morrowind where it’s in a time capsule – this game has continued to develop and steer a path forward (either the devs or mods) which others have not much choice but to follow. Wild when you think about it.

Lots of stuff on factory automation, but I did want to put a bit to (virtual) paper on the final entry in the God of War Norse saga. I picked it up last month when it was released on PC, having played an thoroughly enjoyed the first one.

GoW:R is, simply, more. The game is longer, it has more mechanical depth and breadth, there are more characters, there are more worlds, more puzzles, and there is just simply more to do. Your mileage may vary on if more is better.

Mechanically, the depth and breadth adds more complexity to all the battles and for the most part makes them much more engaging. The game pretty much forces you to use different tactics instead of simple brute force, which is I piece I really enjoyed. There are times, especially in the middle portions, where you are presented options that can’t truly be used (the amulet notably), and some complicated text on combat effects that are meaningless for long stretches. You can complete the entire game without much attention, but the post-game items pretty much make it a requirement (Beserkers notably).

There are new weapon types which unlock new puzzles. A special arrow can now chain effects across distances. A spear can unlock new areas. You’ll find yourself doubling back multiple times in order to fully open the game areas. I found this extremely tedious and not at all rewarding, if only because the game engine lacks precision outside of combat. The spear is a standout here, where it only provide bow-like functions for most of the game, yet is used as a metroidvania tool to explore more content.

Having more worlds to explore is fun and jaw dropping. The art and style applied to every realm is magnificient, and more often than not you’ll face some new vista that makes you take pause. Vanaheim in particular is impressive as you scale a massive wall and look out upon the realm. The travel within a realm has more options, and each has an open area (or more than one) that is filled with sidequests and things to discover.

I think the open world portions are the weakest of the bunch. They intertwine upon themselves and lack focus. You really notice it in Alfheim’s sandy areas, where’s it’s just open space and not much else. The final areas (Crater/Jungle) are comparable to a Chinese buffet. You have everything there, but all of it is mediocre because it tries to do too much. You enter the zone chasing a drake, but have to unlock an hour’s worth of stuff of side quests to inch your way closer. The great news is that 100% of the open world stuff is optional, so you can take what you like and move on.

The first game hit a home run in the story department and visceral combat, which covered over a few weaknesses. Overall I think Ragnarok is a better game than it’s predecessor when taken as a whole, even if the story isn’t as strong, and the combat not as fresh. There’s a tremendous amount of care in each system, and you can feel the crescendo of options all along. It’s amazing looking back at my childhood games and then comparing it to this. I can’t honestly fathom how games can improve on this model, there’s just too little space left to innovate. But I keep getting surprised, so who knows?

The last time I was in Foundry I had successfully deployed a set of robots to the space station, effectively trading them for a set of cookies. For an EA game, there was a decent amount of content present but obviously there was a pile of tweaking to go. Those generally fell into 3 prioritized categories: Balancing, Content, and Quality of Life.

Update 1 was released and had all that with cables and connectors.

• Cable system was added that allows some remote logistical control on conditions. Cool in that you can set up backup generators to only work when main power is down, or lights to only drain at night. There’s a lot here that has no meaningful purpose to my gameplay though, or perhaps I haven’t see it.
• Lot of liquid balancing, which pretty much non-existent.
• Liquid cargo ships, which only has a practical value for Fracking.
• Improved information panels that you can access. The way loaders are constructed often prevented using any interface. It’s a whole lot better!
• Resource nodes can be set to 0-infinite. I personally think that this issue is so foundational to the game identity that any fix here is going to be broken. “Finite” resources are not a bad thing, its that the logistics + material requirements to build mining operations are a right pain due to the 3D world design. After the initial nodes are exhausted, you need to dig to get to the next one, and get power to the bottom level. Taking 30 minutes to build a new mining op, then the logistics to transfer the material to another location is simply too painful. So as it stands now, set it to infinite. Get blueprints or an improved experience to build a mining node, and they can then resort to finite durations.
• More decor pieces. Rant below on this.
• Lasers for world destruction and belt upgrades.
• Massive optimizations. Truly impressive improvements to FPS.

There’s a survey out now to help prioritize the dev work, which is nice to see from an engagement perspective. Main items are:

• Trains. I get the concept, but not seeing how it can co-exist with the current large-scale transport items.
• Blueprints. Sure, I guess. A production building with loaders in/out would be nice QoL, but not super pressing right now.
• Pressure Mechanic. Think of it as a timer of sorts to make you take a decision in a given timeframe. Factorio has alien attacks. DSP has the Dark Fog. I personally dislike having PvE if only because balancing it is such a right nightmare.
• Exploration. Maybe for customization? I get how it’s applied in Satisfactory (Sommersloop, Mercer, Hard Drives, etc..) but I don’t see how it’s relevant here. I can’t see how this works with procedurally generated worlds.
• End Game. Well… there isn’t really one right now so yeah, this should be top of pile.
• Unique Features. Creating robots is damn cool. The pieces are there for something more complex. This should be the end game focus.
• Performance/Usability. These are the same thing to me, and akin to polish. Yes, but not at the expense of others.
• More content. I don’t understand this one in relation to the End Game / Unique Feature portion. Do we need more types of power? More liquid options? Should we have production chains with surplus material? Disposal chains? Maybe?

Now for the decor rant, which I sort of hit on with Techtonica. While I don’t get the same joy as others when it comes to designing a pretty factory, I do find some fun in the process. For me to reach that phase however, I need two things to be true. 1) Decor is a low friction activity. 2) Decor is mean to be long-lasting.

Low-friction works in Satisfactory because you don’t need to store walls, you just have a bunch of plates and concrete on you that can quickly create walls in-game. Foundry and Techtonica require you to create the decorations before placing them, in an inventory that has limited storage. You want to build a factory, you will need a solid 50 inventory slots dedicated to all the various material types AND have all the pieces pre-constructed. Did I mention there are dozens of decor pieces? You’d need a separate decor factory just to create them, and have restricted storage to not blow through thousands of base materials. The only option currently is to manually create them, one at a time. I understand these are engine limitations and it would require a significant amount of design work to resolve. Contextual menus that use “foundation” or “lighting” in various amounts would address this, but as long as we have “conveyor belts” and “conveyor slopes” for inclines, I don’t think there’s an actual way to address this.

Long-lasting means that I would maintain a factory for a given duration. I’ve been over how mining ops are temporary by nature, so this isn’t really an option. The main factory portions are 3D and unless using a bus, hard to coordinate for long-term stability. The Space buildings are gigantic and frankly impossible to decorate.

The larger challenge for Foundry is finding an identity in the current mess of factory logistics games. The “unique” hook of generating robots seems like it has potential, and it looks cool, but in the end is just another virtual thing you create. Procedurally generated content should benefit from the concept of “infinite” or at least near infinite. The tools present now do not allow it, and to get there requires a major rethink of how logistics functions at their core. In a practical example, it takes 3 seconds to build 1 section of Mk1 conveyors, which moves things at 160/minute. DSP’s equivalent belts take 1 second to build 3 items (9x faster) and transport 360/minute (2.25x faster), making it 20x more efficient.

The good news is that it appears Foundry devs are extremely open to feedback and are not under a time crunch (at least publicly). There are a lot of good bones here, just needs some clearer vision of what the game wants to be, and then the design decisions can align. Potential!

The last time I played Techtonica, I unlocked the elevator and hit a wall when it came to blast miners ratios. Without getting into the weeds, Techtonica has (had?) two technology tiers for extracting base materials, and the second tier had not yet filled out, nor was it optimized. I had seen all there was to see. And I saw potential, if only needing focus.

1.0 is coming on Nov 7, and with it a very wide range of changes. And if there’s anything to take as a result of this, is that focus is front and center.

• Updated narrative – which I thought was a highlight in the EA version.
• Improved player tools (the Omniseeker and jetpack) which is QoL. FINALLY you have vertical movement (instead of just hovering), and just overall easier tools to explore dark caves.
• Machine changes which are generally QoL/balancing
  • Mk1 assemblers still give 2x the results as hand crafting – so a chain of 3 assemblers gives 16x more than manual)
  • Mk2 assemblers now give 4x the results as hand crafting. a chain of 2 = 16x the results, a chain of 3 = 64x. This change is likely required from the final floors.
• Long Filter Inserter. This will help clean up belts, as the ninja work required currently is not that much fun.
• Research cores are 1×1 instead of 2×2 (8x smaller), and the composer (the holder of cores) has new options.
  • This one is extremely meaningful for later portions of the game, where you needed massive caverns to store all the cores. This will be interesting to see play out.
• Recipes have been rebalanced so that the math makes sense (yay!)
  • This includes the weird carbon powder sink loop.
  • Curious as to how the plant loop will work.
  • I like the word loop. Loop. (Aside: Techtonica has quite a few production loops, I enjoy them.)
  • No more fractions!
• A new sand biome with materials, power, and whatnot.
  • This is interesting as you are pumping out sand to discover items below you. I am quite curious as to how this will work, and be sustainable.
  • The devs were clear that biodiesel is required to power the tools here. That fuel was available prior, but had zero use, even in mega factories, as the production chain was too complex for any reasonable benefit. New crushers seem to address that.
  • A new production loop should be nice to see. Loop!
• The elevator is no longer end game, but core to progression. There are 16 floors to explore and it can act as a sort of main bus, with 30 inputs/outputs connected.
  • Mechanically, this seems to mean smaller groups of factories rather than large sprawling ones. I’m curious how the relationship between floors will go… like once you’re on floor 8, do you need to ever interact with floor 3 again? How does central storage work?
  • Curious as to how this impacts exploration, which was a key part of the narrative.
  • Devs have been straight on the fact that this breaking into pieces will dramatically improve performance. Which is good, because this was certainly an issue in late game. Power floors were notorious culprits.
  • With 30 in/out options and 16 floors, the math seems to only allow 2 ports per floor. It would seem logical that some floors will not have any production outputs for the elevator, or, sadly, that the ports will be sushi belts.
  • I am super curious as to how this impacts power generation. Mk2 cranks are crazy powerful, but require water. If you can’t transport power, then you need to transport fuel… much different loop.
  • This certainly reminds me of the space elevator in Satisfactory, in that you send stuff up.
  • Curious as to how the monorail will work now. It was very OP prior, but designed entirely to move stuff across a large map. If the maps are smaller, then not much need, especially given the power/logistical challenges of installing them.

It would appear that the game is pivoting from a more sandbox environment to a linear progression path. The net effect of this is that balancing becomes much easier to accomplish, and the narrative easier to build. Clarity of focus to the player is huge boon. The downside to this is lack of flexibility, so the rather, uh, “creative” approaches to factories just won’t work here. You can’t move between floors unless you’ve got a specific set of things done, and that is certainly more limiting.

I will withhold any cynical take on the timing of 1.0. I’m very much looking forward to this set of changes. It was my larger gripe from before, with a ton of potential but just not enough focus to deliver to set it apart from Factorio/Satisfactory/DSP. What’s listed here is an absolutely massive patch of content, and I’m extremely interested to see how this game finds it’s corner of the box to play in.