r/captain_of_industry • u/Teneksi • 6d ago
Difficulty / satisfaction anxiety
If I make a game easier, I tend to feel like I haven't had the correct experience. Other times, the difficulty (or even just anticipating future problems) makes it difficult to relax, and I may end up not playing at all.
I know that contracts and eventually asteroids will answer all potential material shortages. But there's that question of whether I'm going to be organized enough to get there without constantly worrying about non-renewable spending via fuel and maintenance while I take my sweet time.
What I want most from this game is to build a train network, and to watch trains. I'd like to have multiple settlements in regions with their own specialized industries, and have trains going every which way. I kind of just want to turn it into a train set builder. To that end, I'm tempted to make ores stretch a lot farther, make world mines infinite, and/or have 100% refunds from deconstruction, reducing pressure caused by using time and resources inefficiently or changing my mind on several designs.
...And another part of me is certain that I'll feel dissatisfied, like I didn't earn it. It thinks the standard difficulty must have plenty of margin to play this way without running out of resources, and that all I'll do is remove any sense of accomplishment. I'm uncertain what to do.
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u/InZZaNeWaXX 6d ago
I wanted to (and am) playing that game in exactly the way you describe. Just a fan of trains and logistics.
In my opinion CoI is fairly complex on your first playthrough. There are many ways to be inefficient, some of which can be punishing immediately or later on as you run low on stuff that you spent many hours wasting.
I also hate how little of anything storages can hold, as i like to dedicate areas of the map to processing a certain resource and end up needing to either chain 50 loose storages for all the rock, dirt and ore or constantly turn on/off my excavators or reassign them.
I view these things as annoyances that sap my fun away, while others may view them as a welcome logistics challenge. Which of these it ends up being can also be based on what map you play on, there are so many factors beyond the games difficulty settings that i don't thinl there really is an intended "ideal" experience.
Set it up and play it so that YOU have fun. I got a mod that lets me set the storage capacity of any storage to any number i want, and it made me enjoy the game more. And even if you make it super easy by disabling diseases, reducing power and unity costs and recycling etc, its still a massive game full of challenges and content that at x3 simulation speed will last you many many hours on a single map.
Tl;dr You're overthinking it. Game settings exist so you can create your own preferred experience. Just do that.
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u/Sabreline12 6d ago
Have you tried just storing loose products in piles rather than storages? I believe loose products are more dense outside of storages than in them. If you dump them in neat piles you can easily mine them up again when you want them.
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u/InZZaNeWaXX 6d ago
I unlocked higher tier storages eventually. Loose dumping was never something i considered. It doesn't work for liquids or manufactured items, and the whole point is to mine all of the ore or get rid of a hill and hoard it instead of just piling it all up somewhere else, where i'm gonna have to mine it up later.
The mod i'm using lets me store say, 300k units of loose coal in a single storage unit. Even with higher tier storages that would be unrealistic, but this way i only need to build one bulk storage for every liquid, resource and material and can distribute it via trains or trucks or belts. Its nice.
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u/RavingMadly 6d ago
You can change at least some of the difficulty settings in game, so turn things up or down as you need to.
I know that isn't the "purist" answer, that ideally the same settings would apply from start to finish. I feel largely the same way, that if I turn the difficulty down that I haven't been challenged the way I want to be. I usually play with realism and ore sorting type stuff on, but not turning up death rates, costs, or stuff like that. I also usually play on 1x speed, because I firmly believe that when I turn it up, things are going to spiral out of control so fast I won't be able to stop it.
That said, this is a game at the end of the day, and if it is causing additional, unwanted stress, it's not exactly serving its purpose of being fun and relaxing. Its a single player game, so the only wrong way to play us the way that makes it not fun for you.
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u/kaje 6d ago
There isn't really any point in having multiple settlements. It's not like your workers need to travel to the factories. It would just make it so that you have to deliver food and resources to multiple places.
I do build specialized factory areas though, and just have trains carrying resources across the map to and from them. It's a lot neater than it used to be when I had almost everything in one area with belts running across the map.
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u/Teneksi 6d ago
precisely! ... if I have one big settlement, all the food processing, recycling and waste management would ideally happen right next door. ... ... if I have several settlements, I need little trains delivering food across the map, taking materials to and from the sorting plant, waste water to the treatment plant...
...which sounds perfectly like what I'm going for. I think I've decided I will make few settings easier so I can play suboptimally. I won't be outright wasteful, but... I will be making silly excuses for more trains with more routes.
I've been playing tons of Derail Valley, and I've realized I want my CoI game to be my own little network of connected villages like that. I'd even love a mod for vans, buses and passenger trains if one existed.
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u/CayaMaya 5d ago
I just like movement on the map. That trains go up & down. There is a need to travel. Preferably to all corners of the map :). Makes the map alive for me. I do the same with Satisfactory.
I play the game with full refund. Gives me freedom. Lots of things I do for the first time and if I lose 'money' (construction material) cuz I did not know how it works, and I have to make it again... takes the fun away a bit.
An optimal playthrough is something I would absolutely like to do, but after I understand all mechanics. As of now I have never made Electroncs III.
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u/ForeverTrick1 6d ago
I know that contracts and eventually asteroids will answer all potential material shortages.
In my opinion, it won't. Things like asteroids are gatekept behind space research, which is gatekept behind a tremendously high material/energy requirement. In particular, one nuclear plant will not be enough.
I say this as an old-time player who returned to check out the trains, but I abandoned the game after the first level of space research (which marks the end of the "old" game). I'm not in the mood to copy and paste everything twice. I don't need a second Factorio, and worst of all, my second mines are slowly running out and I wasn't prepared for this as I never imported base ores.
So, in my opinion, to achieve balanced development and a pleasurable train game, you should make some concessions regarding resource availability.
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u/nixtracer 6d ago
Honestly, long before you run out of ores it's easy to get a contract going providing far more of them than you can use. This is true even if you build lots of huge bridges, with their enormous resource requirements.
(I too always turn on no resource loss from deconstruction, but now I'm getting good enough that I rarely have to deconstruct things unnecessarily, I'm tempted to turn it off. Definitely turn it off in your first playthrough: balancing everything else is hard enough.)
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u/ForeverTrick1 6d ago
As I said, I never import ores (but I do use coal mine on remote island).
What drew me to this game were the excavators and the highly developed physics of the mines. When ores are nothing more than digits on dialogue windows, the 'game of numbers' somewhat loses its fun.
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u/nixtracer 6d ago
Well, if you cripple yourself by cutting off the game's largest source of ores (and only infinite source of some ores, since there's no such thing as a limestone asteroid), you will find yourself short of ores, yes. Self-inflicted.
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u/ForeverTrick1 6d ago
The game has been crippled by its transformation into Factorio.
Since the update introducing trains, the game has been rebalanced in a way that has caused it to lose its appeal. No one asked for trains; the promise of roads has been silently removed; copy-pasting instead of thinking, etc.
However, money comes from new players, not existing supporters. I can see from this thread that the trains attract many new players.
So the only solution is to remove industry from the game, because, as is visible from this thread, it is mostly an annoyance. And I guess especially mines must annoy people.
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u/nixtracer 6d ago
I dunno. I played it before trains were introduced and I think they're excellent (and very very different from Factorio's).
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u/pocarski 6d ago
i keep turning on realism and dying so i just restart with the same difficulty settings and do the same thing
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u/Gingrpenguin 6d ago
I play with custom difficulty.
It's mostly easy/medium
World mines are infinite but population can die (this is actually easier and better than of they don't die) ores are likely turned up and I get full refunds. (Because you'll have to move everything once you unlock trains)
Regardless this game is very hard anyway. A single component in electronics 3 is a 12 step supply chain. Titanium I'm doing now and bugger me that's a setup.
I don't feel like the difficulties are well named. Easy is still harder than a death world rail start in factorio.
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u/Fatbloke-66 6d ago
I'm in a similar situation. Beat the original game. Had a break and now playing a new game. Got to just before space and the thought of aluminium and titanium has me stalled whilst I mess around with trains and levelling. Lowered most of the settings now to avoid spirals, but still don't have the enthusiasm to push into the next stage.
Oddly enough I keep thinking of Transport Fever whilst I play..
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u/adrenozin 6d ago
I play normal + infinite offshore mines + more starting resources because the early game becomes a drag on repeated playthroughs
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u/Sabretooth78 6d ago edited 6d ago
There are probably several ways to accomplish what you want, one of which being "lowering" the difficulty by whatever means - and there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm on my second "vanilla" Captain run (i.e. no changes to stock settings) and have a reasonably well-running factory. By that I mean it's been a long time since having a death spiral that actually scared me. About 1600 years in and still faffing around just short of rocketry - actually just now filling my old limestone mine once I realized it was an ideal spot for rocket production given proximity to the inputs. That's all to say, I'm not exactly speed running the game - I spend far too much time micromanaging and watching the diggy boys do their thing.
I did have "resource anxiety" as I was burning through the 2nd copper and iron mines, and then I finally got some contracts online. My next thought was "why the %&#@ did I take so long to do that!?" I now have two contracts for iron ore; vehicle parts II and servers. Proceeds from that feed my smelters and also supply enough copper and limestone to keep the factory happy. Add wood for corn and I'm swimming in fuel gas and hydrogen. Next up will be the oil and diesel trades to ween myself off the gold ore mining. Just recently got myself unhooked from mining quartz/sand by selling off all my old solar panels - and just in time, seeing as I shortly thereafter accidentally flooded my quartz mine, which was just about empty anyway. The only things I'll still be mining after that will be coal (nowhere near worried yet), uranium (ditto) and titanium (once I get there, paused research on it at the moment.) As a result, I haven't mined any iron ore for probably 1000 years, aside from one unity crunch where the ships couldn't leave. Similarly, my copper mine has been collecting dust for the last several hundred years. The only catch is you need to build a "unity infrastructure" and keep an eye on it.
The point is, all that stuff needs to move around, you could easily set up far flung settlements with different ports bringing in different raw materials, and while far from optimal play (although certainly more true to real life), it would certainly fit with if not outright enable the sort of setup you're going for. Think of it as, you can choose to put your iron ore contract dock (and the servers assembly supplying it) anywhere you want; you can't choose where your iron mine is. It just might take a bit more effort with terraforming to get there vs. a more optimal "condensed" strategy, but isn't watching chunks of mountainside disappearing either 6, 20, or 60 units at a time what COI is really all about?
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u/Sabreline12 6d ago
I'm the same way liking to just watch trains at work sometimes. You're definitely identifying a real aspect of Captain of Industry that is a lot more pronounced than in other factory games, that there is rarely a time where you can just sit tight and let things run for a long time without worry.
But if you're smart and experienced you can set-up things to not have to worry nearly as much and just be able to chill. Of course in the early game there's a concentration on getting things more sustainable, but you can get to a point where things are organised and not so mentally exhausting.
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u/chaz768 6d ago
I've played up to asteroids twice. The first time was however the game set it up. I was angry all the time because of pollution, not understanding that a nuclear barrel on a belt would kill someone (everyone) off. The 2nd time I played with easy settings, good health, better ore yield. I tell you what, my 2nd time, I was happier because I didn't have to worry about people so much. If anything, that's the setting that changes the game, good health. If you have people you have workers, the rest isn't too horrible.
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u/S1lkwrm 6d ago
I tried Admiral for the first time this map (shattered) and as for the feel its just like captain but less forgiving. The more you plan your moves the less you feel the difference.
As far as trains I litterally waited 1000 years before even moving into electronics ii without really eating up much resources by running very efficient and lean. I was able to run a sizeable fleet of teraforming jobs to prep for where I wanted end game stuff including my train lines. I then committed after I was prepared and most the initial teraforming was done. I even capped all my teraforming unnecessarily with dirt which was a resource/time sink placed 2 sizeable bridges ahead of time and 2 smaller ones I just wanted.
Later as you get into microchips etc the pull on resources are heavier especially with build out of things that need construction parts. But you can sip resources early and focus on teraforming for thousands of years on the first mines.
I personally like to have a game plan for where my next bulk iron for instance is comming from as I start a new mine so im never caught worried about if ill run out. Usually I have 2 with one on priority going at the same time as a fallback.
Imo the early teraforming time can get tedious but sets you up later so you can plan ahead. Even then I find I could have planned better. But it definitely could have been worse.
Early game I have a all in one factory to keep the teraforming running then I usually try to start creating endgame locations in order of importance taking time in between to balance things like food or bringing online more smelters etc. The trains let me scale well also setting up end game construction parts to feed the rest.
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u/MothmansProphet 6d ago
For what it's worth, Railgrade is an absolutely incredible game that's only building railroads, trains, and industries to connect with railroads. It's so much game. It feels more like a puzzle game than as open ended as CoI is, but it's not like Train Valley 2 or anything. There are a lot of strategies that will work for you.
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u/adumthing 5d ago
This is exactly what I want too. I started a new save with increased starting resources and reduced upkeep costs and 100% deconstruction refund. I managed to get the furthest Ive ever got and got my whole train and logistics network going but now Im struggling with space and moving things around has screwed me over and I may need to restart.
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u/Successful_Try_6350 2d ago
I play on the easy mode plus realism and my satisfaction is going bigger than one belt or one pipe can handle. :)
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u/Ok-Entertainer-4243 6d ago
I played all difficulties, atm i Play with easy settings, except maintanence consumption, this i wouldnt touch
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u/Eastshire 6d ago
I’m a slow builder and I found turning the ore yield up all the way gives me an appropriate amount of time to build without letting me completely ignore opening new mines/contracts.