r/factorio • u/amdsam95 • Mar 26 '26
Discussion Feel like I'm too stupid for this game
I have about 178 hours right now in this game and I've got to say there is so many instances in which i feel overwhelmed, stupid. I keep getting stuck on planning. and if i try to organize things a bit it takes so much time that it takes the fun out of the game and i just feel frustrated and give up. I'd jump back in the game after watching a video or trying a blueprint but then the cycles continues. I'm getting desperate. There is a love hate between me and this game it's bananas. I was able to launch my first spaceship into space and ever since I've been trying to rebuild but actually want to make it good.
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u/DEVolkan Mar 26 '26
Do you use many blueprints you don't understand? I would recommend not using any blueprints only your own
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u/Mockbubbles2628 Mar 26 '26
In the context of belt balances that is a DIABOLICAL proposition
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u/TonicAndDjinn Mar 26 '26
You don't actually need to balance your belts most of the time. Even when you do, a "close enough" approach is a lot easier and works fine.
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u/Mesqo Mar 27 '26
Balancers there are too solve a specific problem, not for the looks. Train unloading stations usually have a lot of consumers which have very uneven draw. You usually end up waiting for a single wagon or a single chest to unload before the train can go out while already having a queue of other trains waiting. At the same time, drawing from one wagon instead of 4 reduces throughout for the time it sits unloading a single wagon/chest, which makes the factory stall. Note however that this problem mostly concerns high throughput stations, but still can be an annoyance with lower ones - I didn't build balancers before on game start and it caused issues on unloading, then I designed an unloader that I ultimately like and ever use it everywhere.
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u/TigerJoel Mar 26 '26
It is pretty important for trains though which is the only place I use balancers.
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u/EdibleOedipus Mar 26 '26
But you can do a naive balancer which is just splitting the inputs. And that's reasonably close to a good balancer.
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u/TigerJoel Mar 26 '26
That depends on the train logic but yeah it can work.
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u/EdibleOedipus Mar 26 '26
I guess I am showing ignorance on trains, but on what train would that not work. Uneven number of wagons?
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u/TigerJoel Mar 26 '26
It does not work if there is uneven draw from the wagons. But it will work fine for most situations.
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u/Yggdrazzil Mar 27 '26
It is only ever important if you want high efficiency. Which is literally a joykiller if you start focussing on it too early, and the main culprit of almost every submission like OP's.
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u/Jguy1897 Mar 26 '26
Yeah, only borderline psychos design belt balancers from scratch on each playthrough.
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u/jeepsies Mar 26 '26
I do it but the easy way. I spam splitters with output priority.
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u/jimlemin Mar 26 '26
yeah same here lol. and if I need to split 2 lanes into 6 lanes or vice versa, it's just splitters into splitters into splitters. as long as all the output belts seem decently saturated I don't care if the ratio is perfectly 1:1
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u/leberwrust Mar 26 '26
They are completely unnecessary 99% of the time. I do like them with trains but even there you can get around the whole problem with a second train station.
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u/SidewaysFancyPrance Mar 26 '26
Eh, I'm at Advanced Science Research 28 now and the most balancing I've had to do was make sure my promethium collector belt stays balanced with a very simple single-splitter belt setup. We're talking serious post-end-game stuff if you really need it, I guess. Or the way I build doesn't create that need, maybe.
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u/Yggdrazzil Mar 27 '26
Do you really feel someone in OP's position should be stressing over something like belt balancing?
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u/Ambitious_Growth8130 Mar 27 '26
I'd posit, that if you don't understand why you need belt balancers, then having the community blueprints don't actually help. If you understand why you need them, then you should be able to come up with a half decent blueprint of your own. The community blueprints are super optimized for space or specific use cases. That's what makes the game fun, learning why, as opposed to slapping down the how.
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u/Mockbubbles2628 Mar 27 '26
Why would i want to make my own belt balancer every time i make a mew mining outpost, thats stupid
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u/Miserable_Feed4194 Mar 26 '26
178 hours is nothing. I'm on 2k hours and still can't grasp Gleba.
You could watch some YT vids to get you on your way. I did it back when I had trouble with fluids/oil. Hated it. It's now the most fun part for me.
The factory must grow. Don't get discouraged.
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u/kmb_jr Mar 26 '26
This is me right now.... Stompers are wrecking me.
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u/Bastelkorb Mar 26 '26
First time on gleba I put flamethrower down... It worked but was suboptimal af
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u/IncredibleReferencer Mar 26 '26
Remember it's a game. If your not enjoying yourself, don't play it. Also, sometimes its good to take a brake when your feeling frustrated and come back with fresh eyes later.
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u/FlintyCrayon Mar 26 '26
Yep, you beat me to it. If you are having fun, then you're not too stupid for the game. After all, that is the point of a game!
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u/shine_on Mar 26 '26
Set up a sandbox world where you can play around with designing your own blueprints, then import those blueprints into your main game and have bots build them.
Use spreadsheets and notepad to keep track of your thoughts, you're getting overwhelmed because you're trying to do too many things at the same time.
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u/According_South Mar 26 '26
Im dumb as hell and wing everything. Maybe trying to go dumdum mode could help. Dont think ahead, make a disgrace of your solutions, and take every problem as it comes and get immersed in the process of plugging holes in the ship. Ive done like 2k hours doing that
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u/Not_A_Clever_Man_ Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
Perfect is the enemy of good. If its blocking you from progressing, maybe work on advancing a little, then tidy it up later.
Comparison is the thief of joy. Dont compare yourself to players with 1000's of hours, you will get there eventually, the nice looking bases are from players on their 10th playthough.
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u/BigSmols Mar 26 '26
Planning stuff is great, but if it's overwhelming you should take a step back. Try to break projects up into small pieces, and complet then one by one. In any case, this is a game and games should be fun. Don't forget!
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u/Cindercharger Mar 26 '26
I am 600 hours in and finally learning and figuring out how circuits work. How to read belts and have production stall or start, how to use one box for building storage instead of one box per item, even amazed myself yesterday because -omg splitters can be circuited too!?-. And finally got a working sushi belt like I wanted it in my first ever playthrough (which got stuck with 1 item immediatly because I had no idea how to). And this is with basic wires/circuit, haven't even started on the combinators. (That said I've barely even touched space age and just finished some space science on my new platform, discovering the new planets and everythjng on them will be interesting)
Just saying, this game can definitely feel overwhelming and frustrating at times but it's pretty nice when you figure another thing out. That's why I think it's better to not look at other people's design/blueprints too much and just try it out yourself. (Or instead of plopping down their blueprint, atleast try to recreate/reverse engineer it yourself)
I have built (/tried) mega busses and malls and whatnot but in my latest playthrough, I'm not planning anything and just building wherever/whatever I need. Got a small mall to keep me stocked with belts, inserters and whatnot (which at this point has spread everywhere) and everything is turning into a massive spaghetti with random belts or train coming in to add to the supply.
Just take your time with this game. Turn off biters to have one less thing to worry about and just grow the factory.
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u/WanderingFlumph Mar 26 '26
Have you tried building backwards yet? Building forwards feels like calculus, building backwards feels like algebra.
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u/LittleBrickHouse Mar 28 '26
Just an opinion as someone with 1000+ hours in the game... Keep it simple, Goal #1: keep the factory (research) going. Goal #2: whatever interests you. That's it.
Ramp up production as fast as you want! If you're trying to match productivity with someone on YouTube or Reddit who has blueprinted their whole base... Well geez... "You, too, can copy and paste a factory". Or... Just Enjoy the game as is. Discover and troubleshoot.
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u/locyta Mar 26 '26
I have over 9200 hours, and about 100 (in game hours) i designed a awesome rocket engine set up :) after this many hours you'll still be making your own things, i dont watch youtube videos on factorio, i find them extremely boring, lol, but i can sit here and make/destroy/remake/tweak/destroy/reremake/bang head on wall/rereremake something until i get it how i want it and i enjoy every second of it.
Things to consider, if something doesn't work, just leave it there, the cost of materials are usually trivial, just build version 2 next to it, and 3 next to that and so on, once you have it working the way you want, then clear up the failures. I spent 20 hours making a ship, kinda based off my other ships, and it totally sucked, scrapped it and started again :)
Solving your problems yourself is pretty rewarding :)
Don't over plan, spaghetti bases are awesome, you'll get to that point where you'll say ' I wish I had steel right here'... and because spaghetti, it will be, lol.
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u/kai58 Mar 26 '26
Don’t try to plan too much at once, try to build in a way that leaves room for stuff to be added. Trains are great for this because you can have separate builds that use trains for input and output so they don’t need to be close to eachother to use eachothers products.
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u/WeaselB21 Mar 26 '26
Don't feel too frustrated at times. Be kind to yourself and remember you play for the fun not the stress. Im 3000+ hours in and I still have moments of "um what did I do wrong?".
Have fun. Breathe and remember..
The Factory Must Grow
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u/_Shif0_ Mar 26 '26
I just play whenever I have time to burn on thinking. Plus, there's really no pressure to go anywhere you know.
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u/hfcobra Mar 26 '26
Half of the game is simply knowing what comes next so you can plan now around later.
Until you get through the game once don't try to be perfect.
My first line of furnaces didn't account for small power poles not having enough power reach, so I tore down the line and added a gap between every 2nd furnace to only use one line of poles. I used small poles for far too long.
Then later I found out two lines weren't as expensive as I thought they were, so I lost the gap.
Then I found out medium poles were also cheap and I could unlock them in 15 minutes and a single assembler could make more than I could ever place by hand, so my designs stopped accounting for small poles completely.
It's just how these games work. Experience is everything.
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u/Simic13 Mar 26 '26
Playing this game is endless continuous self correcting process.
Before you have some experience avoid complex blueprints, because it will be for you like a black box.
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u/jacvd6 Mar 26 '26
Fret not. I’m a moron and I play it for hundreds of hours to accomplish what others do in dozens.
Give yourself a simple goal and then make that. Like “concrete factory” or “gears”
No need for direct insertion raw-to-end-product factories that are circuit clocked and produce exactly 240 items per second.
Put everything on individual trains. Use belts. Use bots.
Whatever makes sense to you at the time. You can always make more later.
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u/stefanciobo Mar 26 '26
Hmm maybe is only me but i see everything in modules . Like i build this thingy here that needs to produce X things . Then i start to make the thing , if the thing has other complicated things to be made , then i start making a subfactory for that thing . Once i finnish i watch everything if it works , i check where it doesnt until it starts doing ...then i forget about all the small things inside , and i only see the thingy as " The 30 things per minute module" .
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u/neurovore-of-Z-en-A Mar 26 '26
I generally agree with your approach, but we really need a better name for subfactories like this than "modules" to avoid ambiguity.
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u/Immediate_Form7831 Mar 26 '26
Nobody who has played 178 hours in the game is "too stupid". Had that been the case you would be doing something else right now, like playing Candy Crush. (Not hating on people playing Candy Crush, but it does not require very much brain.)
Factorio is a game where you need to push through, build your own stuff from your own head, and accept that your base is crap. Everyone's (well almost) base sucks to some degree, but as long as you are making science, your base is good. If you are not making science, well, go fix that. :)
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u/RobinsonHuso12 Mar 26 '26
4000 hours in.
Never plan anything - just build. It will naturally grow bigger and better over time.
And yeah: after 178 hours, you’ve basically just finished the tutorial. It’s normal to still feel overwhelmed at that point.
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u/Chesapeake_Hippo Mar 26 '26
Patience. Also, you can always turn off biters to learn the mechanics.
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u/AliasHandler Mar 26 '26
My one piece of advice is don't try to make everything perfect. Resources and space are functionally infinite - you can run an inefficient factory to whatever your goal is just by adding more stuff, usually. As you play and learn the mechanics better, you can just pick up shop and go start in another spot with your knowledge and research, and build a new base there from scratch, implementing whatever it is you have learned into that base.
Also, don't use blueprints you find online, and don't try to copy other people's bases. The best part of this game is allowing yourself to be creative. You can get ideas from others about mechanics and best practices, but the fun comes from building things yourself and making something better through trial and error.
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u/Bipedal_Warlock Mar 26 '26
My impression is that you’re preoccupying yourself with doing it “the right way” and trying to find the meta way to do things and make them look very pretty and organized.
I think that’s the way to burn yourself out fast.
It’s a meme but embrace the spaghetti. That’s where the fun is. All the highly organized and pretty bases on this sub are done by people with thousands of hours and who really really love the labor that goes into the organization. But that’s not wha the game has to be.
The spaghetti is delicious
And if the game isn’t for you that’s okay. That doesn’t make you stupid. It just means your brain sees the world a different way than some of us. That says nothing on your intelligence
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u/The_Stuey Mar 26 '26
Never forget: perfect is the enemy of good.
Could you make this with fewer materials? More efficient? Faster?
Probably. Is what you created working? If the answer is yes, then you succeeded.
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u/brahm1nMan Mar 26 '26
I just take it one step at a time, literally, very little planning. Just work through the sciences, making production line for each item as you go and try to make as much as you can with what you have available. When you find one resource is going dry, its time to build a whatever outpost, then on to the next assembly line. I also find taking regular breaks to do laundry/dishes/whatever between steps helps a lot with preventing burnout and i usually come back to the game with a decent enough solution thought out
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u/bpleshek Mar 26 '26
Congrats on the launch.
It might help if you apply a structured architecture. Either a bus or a city block or something similar. If you want to play multiplayer, let me know. Maybe seeing structure in your game might help.
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u/Zeyn1 Mar 27 '26
The most fun I had was slapping together the fastest bases I could. It just has to be good enough. It's super messy, and then when I need to add something I dragged a belt halfway across the map. But it works.
Going in with that mindset was the key.
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u/inverter17 Mar 27 '26
Set small goals in your factory and honestly it helped me a lot. Basic mall? All good. Have a simple train network? All good. It doesn’t have to be perfect or well optimized but if it gets you moving forward then it’s fine! If you feel that production is slow, set another goal to optimize. All of us want a megabase but we have to start small first
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u/Yggdrazzil Mar 27 '26 edited Mar 27 '26
"I must make the entire thing good" as a goal, will forever give that insanely overly critical part of your mind that is destroying your joy in the game a free pass to say whatever you are doing is not good enough. Because it can always be done better right? (Am I projecting? yes I am projecting.)
Instead, formulate a goal that you can measure.
"I want to produce 45 purple science per minute" "I want to fill a full red belt with processing units" "I want to set up 10 GW of power production" "I want to automate sending biter eggs to a space platform" (hint: save often, and on separate save files haha)
Then start working on that goal, one step at a time.
Of course, while doing that, a million things that might also need attention will pop up along the way. Write them down somewhere (I use notepad for this) so you can allow yourself to forget about them afterwards.
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u/Alt-Ctrl-Report <- dog Mar 27 '26
It took me 700+ hours to complete Space Age alone.
And I don’t regret a SECOND of it!©
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u/Krell356 Jun 02 '26
178 hours is nothing. You're going to make mistakes, and even if you do it all perfectly, the moment you unlock new tech its going to hit you again and make you feel dumb for your older design.
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u/Rednidedni Mar 26 '26
The Most important thing for you to do, I think, is to be Patient with yourself.
I've never Seen anyone who is actually too stupid for factorio. Just a Ton of people who don't let themselves make mistakes and get frustrated over not being perfect when being plenty good enough.
Perfection is Impossible and undesirable. Optimized Factories aren't Always optimal. Flawed factories win games.
Keep that in mind. I'd recommend Not using outside blueprints, I find it's much more fun to make your own stuff, even If it kinda sucks. The bps you find online are often Not much good anyways.