No Time to Think

Despite liking chess, I've never been very good at it.  My inability to play it well stems from how chess is mastered.  You have to see many moves ahead.  For whatever reason I lack that vision.  I do have an active imagination, but it functions organically.  I tend to take each step as it comes rather than having some grand design planned out in my head.  It probably comes down to genetics and brain wiring.  That said, it is an area that I've been trying improve on recently through video games.  While there are a number of games that focus on using that part of the human brain (Battle Chess being one of the most obvious), I've decided to start playing Factorio again.  Unlike my previous outings with that game though, I'm trying a new approach.

Up until now, I've been building manufacturing centers much like one would grow a garden.  I start by planting some basic resource extractors and smelters.  Then I add assemblers, but the belts and claws are only for what is necessary at that particular moment.  When (inevitably) more systems are needed, I place them in a haphazard fashion.  Sometimes they are independent production lines.  Other times they are attached or integrated into existing ones in a convoluted way.  After a while it creates the impression that the whole factory complex is a massively overgrown garden of metal machines.  There's no room for expansion, and more often than not, modifying anything has unforeseen consequences.  So, in my current playthrough I've tried to rectify this issue.  The thing is though...in order to do it, I need time to think.

In default Factorio, the player has a persistent threat they must deal with in the form of pollution hating bugs.  Normally, one might think that the easiest solution is to just keep pollution to a minimum via solar panels and efficient designs .  Unfortunately, that's only part of the equation.  Regardless of the players actions, the hives will spread and the bugs will evolve over time.  Worse still, attacking their nearby bases (in which they launch raids on the player) only serve to aggravate them further.  The end result of this (I find) is unless you are a very expeditious builder, it is easy to be distracted and ultimately overrun by constant swarms of increasingly giant bugs from every direction.  It's not a great situation to be in when you're trying to learn how to be a better planner.

The solution was, for me, to turn on "peaceful mode."  In essence this makes it so the bugs do not spread, and only fight defensively.  Having done that, I can now spend as much time as I need picturing what I want my base to look like hours ahead of actually getting there.  For example in my current peaceful playthrough I have one massive iron plate production line made up of numerous furnaces and mining machines.  If ever there is a shortage down the line it's easy to just add a few more smelters or extractors to up the production to meet demand.  I works great, but it took some time to figure out the distribution system because it not only has to feed the iron to different subsystems (which require their own separate resources), but also have room for later  expansion at various places down the chain.  This is because in Factorio the more advanced the manufacturing process the more resources are needed back down manufacturing line.

I probably will play another game of Factorio with the bug threat reinstated (perhaps when the 1.0 version launches later this year).  For now though, I'm still training my brain to see further ahead.  Right now the process is slow and somewhat agonizing, but the lack of pressure makes it less a case of analysis paralysis and more of a solvable puzzle.  If/when it becomes easy/routine, then it will be time to bring on the outside pressure.