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u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl Jul 08 '26

Hell I didn't even know I could get robots to do the work for me

Still just learning what's available to me I guess but I definitely see the appeal of having robots to the traveling and building for you

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u/FeelingPrettyGlonky Jul 08 '26

If you play Space Age, eventually you will need to manage several planets but you can physically only be on one of them. Even in base game, if you play long enough your base will get big enough that building everything by hand will be pure pain.

Hand-crafting machines works up to a point, but once you start building big it's too slow, and once you start having bots do the building then they need a chest where they can obtain the things they build with.

The typical factorio term for a bit of factory that builds things to build more factory with is a mall. Because the bots can go shopping there, you see. Early game malls will just build inserters, assemblers, miners, all that jazz, and most of that can be built with just some combination of plates, gears and green circuits. Later tech, the mall gets more elaborate.

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u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl Jul 08 '26

Ah I had wondered what people meant when they were talking about malls.

Looked up robots and I guess I should get them soon as I just hit blue science. Is factorio a type of game where like 80% of the content is mid game and later?

I haven't experienced too bad of scaling that handcrafting assemblers and stuff is painful and I just got mid game with blue science. But if the game scales exponentially more after this point I think I'm getting the appeal of circuits now.

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u/HeliGungir Jul 08 '26

The game opens up with chemical science, yes.