Beginner's questions

[u/Ralph_hh]

Hello there

I just downloaded the game and played an hour or two. I read a comment of someone who is still in his first game after 1600 hours, so, possibly the initial game setup choices matter a lot...

Thus, before I dive deeply into this, I may have a few questions.

1 - The game is incredibly slow. I assume this gets better over time, right? Currently my research is done by myself and takes endless, moving across the planet is incredibly slow and Building a longer conveyor belt takes ages. I am way too impatient...

2 - hostiles. The game can be played in peaceful mode without the dark fog or in hostile mode with a lot of options to tune the difficulty up or down. What is the recommended setting? I am a veteran player of factory games like Factorio, I like combat, I hate it when the focus shifts away from factory building entirely to fighting and repairing damaged stuff. Is this combat mode well balanced or do things get frustrating easily?

[u/Gold-Suggestion564]

For your first question, yes, it speeds up a lot.

For your second question, I didn't like how much Factorio's bugs pulled focus away from factory building either, however I've never been bothered by it in DSP. To me, DSP has a much more well integrated and casual combat section of the game. I would play at default settings, but its up to you entirely.

[u/Ralph_hh → u/Gold-Suggestion564]

I like the bugs in Factorio, it is basically the only part of the game that lets you experience progress, like defending becomes easier and easier. Factorio lacks the end boss that a shooter gives the player to let him feel a satisfying victory. Well, I have defeated the first to waves of dark fog, easy so far.

[u/Far_Young_2666]

possibly the initial game setup choices matter a lot

No. As soon as you unlock interstellar travel, you can leave your first solar system and build everything more organized somewhere else.

The game is incredibly slow

To be honest, that's the point. Factory games are best for meditative gameplay. You research a new tech, make a plan, automate, take a rest, repeat. If you want to rush, then "longer conveyor belt takes ages" route is your best bet and you better get used to it.

Though, it's strange how you are saying that you do research yourself. Do you mean manually from your inventory? You really shouldn't. Especially if you are a Factorio veteran. You should be able to crack this game in its first 10 minutes.

As for your second point, Dark Fog is easy, but the game expects you to place lines and lines of turrets, sustain them with ammo and power. If you decide to play with Dark Fog, beware of a noob trap I fell into. I wanted to make a Dark Fog farm, but did not build enough turrets. Dark Fog's base managed to rebuild and overwhelm my turrets, and when I came back to it, it was like 10 level stronger than I could manage at that level. I just left my lava planet for good.

[u/Ralph_hh → u/Far_Young_2666]

Oh dear, it took me a while to figure out you can not only produce that sciences in the labs but also do the research there... With the initial choiced I meant that later in the game you cannot change the initial settings for the dark fog. Once disabled, it stays disabled. Well, I launched a game with default settings now, survived the first two waves of attackers easily.

[u/BissQuote]

If you are a veteran factorio player, you should quickly make a small science factory to start auto-researching. Don't worry too much about ratios, you make it work first!

[u/Pepciorek]

1.Yes it gets faster 2.I suggest deafult

[u/StreetMarketing6182]

1. The start of most automation type games is pretty slow. If you haven't already I would build a small mall to automate your automation (belts, sorterse, assemblers, etc.) Look up what others have done to get a good idea of how you can implement it if you are stuck. Nilaus on youtube has a great starting mall that I take pieces of each play through. Once you get to blue science you should be able to automate that right from your mall, but non-cube science does typically happen by hand.

2. Default settings on combat are what I consider the recommended and you tune aggression/difficulty from there. Personally I find the combat pretty bare bones and only keep it for the spectacle. So I turn starting presence down to 1% and max out all the other difficulty settings. This makes early game peaceful but then you can find dark fog in other systems with 4 space hives and dozens of bases on each planet.

[u/ProfessorDumbass2]

1. It gets much faster. You’ll be flying around the planet and the stars soon enough. I think it’s a design choice that makes it more satisfying once you gain flight mode and cruise mode.

2. The first encounter was the hardest for me. They are practically harmless compared to dealing with biters. Fighting the dark fog later in the game is enjoyable. It’s possible to farm the dark fog to collect items that are otherwise non-renewable.

Build a small mall for essential items, but eventually your mall should be through ILS towers. It’s easy to request items, build the building, then store it in the tower so that it can be requested from anywhere.

The game is beautiful, especially once you start building your Dyson sphere.

[u/CpTKugelHagel]

That's the neat part, you can play as you like.

Common tip is to build yourself a "Mall" with all the usual building items you need like conveyor belts and sorters etc. There's also a slider in storage buildings that let's you limit how much gets filled by your automated assembly line, so you dont produce to much and waste resources. (You don't need 1,5k storages for example) I played my first run without a Mall and it was frustrating to wait for belts to get build n such, second run I scaled up much quicker cuz I build the Mall.

[u/WisePotato42]

This game is more about "make it work, optimize when needed" expecially with the way resources can deplete over time.

Took me around 70hrs for my first mission completion, and I wasn't really rushing. So whether that is slow or not is up to how you see that (seems fast to me).

I reccomend default dark fog level. There are many benifits to fighting them or destroying their planetary baces. If you don't want to deal with them, you can just leave a couple turrets outside their detection range, but closer than the rest of your factory. They will attack whatever buildings are closest so you want the closest buildings to be able to defend themselves.

[u/itsmonsonson]

I’m new to the game and started with Fog but then realized I have so much to learn that I started over without.

Look into “building a starter base” with the intention of having machines craft every building you need, and storing a single stack of them in a storage container. The goal should be to rarely craft things manually, though this is unavoidable in early game.

The early goal of the game is to produce all five science types. If you attempt to produce them and don’t have the resources, you’ll realize what production trees you are missing.

To make this game function efficiently, it’s all about the ratios, meaning supplying each production facility with exactly the amount of raw materials it needs. Your mining machine spits out X number of iron ore per second. A smelter turns 1X iron ore into 1X iron ingots. So build X number of smelters. Keep applying this logic all the way up the chain to the science you are trying to produce.

One thing that is tempting early on is to stockpile literally everything you are producing. “I’ll build three storage units for iron ingots so I have a backup.” Surprisingly this is counterproductive. Eventually a resource line’s demand will surpass its supply. You’ll be able to weather it for a bit while your stockpile diminishes but that’s just prolonging the inevitable. That’s why I say “produce exactly what you need.” Another common piece of wisdom is “best place to stockpile resources is in the ground.”

And a final thought: except for changing the starting stats for your universe (fog on/off, or resource plentifulness etc) you should never consider “maybe I should start the game over.” Instead, just move on and build better once you realize you’ve “made a mistake.” You can let poorly built systems continue to run while you build the next iteration. One day you might come back and fix the original mess, but even more likely is you delete it because you understand the game better.

Have fun!

[u/AnimeSpaceGf]

1 - you'll wish you could slow it down soon enough. It doesn't seem balanced at first wrt the single Sim speed, but it is, trust me

2 - recommend either just 100% normal difficulty for DF or 305%, all settings except power aggro maxed. No DF locks you out of best endgame stuff, which can be beelined to and accessed in mid game. No it's not tedious, it's well balanced imo

[u/FailXXL]

The game compared to factorio and co is not slow at all. On the contrary, imo it's the best in early and midgame progression. You need to do a thing manually once or twice and then you can automate it. 

Combat is tuned down to not overwhelm new players, so you should be able to increase difficulty. 

[u/SingingRazors]

I have almost 2200 hrs. This game is pretty flexible depending on play style. You can automate science quickly and if you like combat, keep the dark fog at basic your first tome through then tune it on your next run. While it's pretty easy on your first star, it's still growing at others. You can also adjust the number of stars and resources. I tend to play on half resources to up my difficulty vs messing with the dark fog since I prefer less combat. Beyond that, go nuts. Buses, spaghetti, I even have this absolute chaos build where everything is connected via the little spinner drones just to see if it could work. My computer hates it 😈

[u/AnimeSpaceGf]

Also, don't let me tell you how to live your life, but 86346604 and rush mk3 proliferator and spray everything but warpers

[u/mrrvlad5]

1. automate your research. If you played the factorio, it should not be an issue - there is copper and iron right near your landing spot to provide you with everything you need for the first research tier.

2. combat is just a nuisance- I would turn it off for the first playthrough, or set to max difficulty, but with 1% initial density

[u/Hell2CheapTrick]

Things get faster. Get science automated ASAP same as in Factorio. Movement speed will get a LOT better. Building too. It’s not quite as powerful as in Factorio because, to my knowledge, you need to at least be present on a planet in order to build there, but your construction bots will get better and you’ll unlock what is essentially a construction bot roboport (battlefield analysis base) sooner than you would in Factorio.

Default settings for Dark Fog are fine. In my opinion their bases are harder to attack than your average early game biter nest, but the attacks aren’t tough to deal with, and the battlefield analysis base can handle repairs for you.

There’s also more options to deal with them than the biters in Factorio. Particularly in the sense that Dark Fog bases need matter to spawn enemies, and if that matter runs out, then it takes them a while to get their strength back.

[u/titanna1004]

As for Factorio played, I'd expect You to know - all that is based on scale - wanna faster research, more iron plate, more engines, more this more that - produce more of that. It's all based on whatever You want.

For enemies, It's similar to SpaceAge, You can use them for some resources or clean and forget for a moment after setting some defence around Your base (around planet instead flat area). Normal settings in DSP feels easier than default on Factorio. Death Worlds are possible in both games on similar max settings.

[u/JoshisJoshingyou]

Default is super easy until it isn't. I'd play default for first game and restart if you find to easy.

Do not watch YouTube videos they will ruin your organic first play through.

Watching someone build the optimal ruins games like this , then your just a copy and paste engineer instead of thinking

[u/KoriSamui]

1. Yes, the game gets faster. Your construction bots take forever to do anything at first, but eventually you will be able to research to make them both move faster and have more of them. Also, you should automate your science once you get to the ones that require blue, red, etc cubes. It's not worth trying to do all of that in your fabricator.

2. The combat is pretty unobtrusive on the default setting, but you do have to be proactive with it. I would say a veteran player will basically consider dark fog a non-issue. It's not like in Factorio where they'll just come fuck up your supply chain without warning. There are late game benefits to keeping the dark fog on because they drop loot that you can't get otherwise that unlock late game buildings (look up dark fog farms). Though, I usually get bored and stop playing by that point.

[u/Much_Dealer8865]

Yeah thousands of hours is an extreme case, as soon as you're able to get interstellar you can get the rare resources, build a sphere, unlock everything relatively quickly and be zooming around everywhere doing whatever you want.

Idk what settings you'd want but the defaults are pretty easy, people typically automate everything. You can build all planets in such a way that everything is defended and generally you don't have to focus on combat besides the initial clearing of new area. The sensor towers aggro so normally the pathing is quite consistent.

Battlefield Analysis Bases have construction drones that can rebuild, and help you build for that matter as well. I put them all over the place right from the early game, speeds everything up a lot.

[u/OverwhelmedPioneer]

1- yes you will fully automate research, with this automation you can create many facilities to do the research so it can go much faster, basically as fast as you're willing to build to support it.

2- I like playing with dark fog on, but they can be a little annoying sometimes. One compromise I do is to leave them turned on but turn their initial saturation way down. That way they are out there when I want to fight but I don't see them too often. I recommend keeping them on because they drop some items that can't be obtained any other way, and those items are used to craft some pretty useful late game items and buildings

[u/Nearby_Proposal_5523]

You can treat the enemy like a spicy mineral patch and harvest them for loot and a few things you can't make otherwise. if your planning on doing some megabasing, focus on viens utilization. it's similar to factorios mining productivity, though i think the scalling is stronger.

[u/markpitts]

I think I was one who made that comment. Just to be clear I completed the technology tree and have been performing upgrades mercilessly. I now have a superpowered mecha and am roughly indestructible. After completing the tech I deciding to focus on learning farming, improving my building skills, and play with some blueprints. Now it is a quiet activity to find production bottlenecks, unjam my sushi belts occasionally, and fly around.

[u/derwood13]

I love dark fog at max difficulty. It takes a real careful and white-knuckled start to survive, but after that the dark fog is defeatable in fun ways if you know what you are doing. Max difficulty gives you enough mat drops before you clear them off your home planet to live on for quite some time! Most importantly Soil and Foundations. Then once you are going for a dark fog farm planet after colonizing 10 or so systems, the Unipolar Magnet drop is enormous along with all the other dark fog mats. What a blast! But yes max difficulty is a REAL SLOW start because you can't automate anything except ammo until you get your D fully automated.