Hello tnglier, always good to hear from another fan of the genre, thanks. May I ask how far you've managed to get? Do you have everything unlocked?
Viewing post in Factory Farming (Playdate) comments
Everything is UNLOCKED! Also, all my factories are running and every crop/product is in production. Total playtime was around 38 hours. Great game. It made me think about life, capitalism, consumerism, 40-hour work weeks, finding time, etc... "Why is it sometimes fun to play games that sort of feel like work?" is not a new question, but I think Factory Farming offers a genuinely novel answer: You could be doing it on a Playdate. (Provided you're lucky enough to have one.) You could be doing it outside in the sun. You could be committing time theft and procrastinating tedious tasks by doing different tasks, except these are on a device that's lovingly designed and is a delightful yellow and the screen technology evokes nostalgia. Is that better? Sure feels better. I like how Factory Farming rewards your efforts by granting you more and more land, not only for further expansion, but eventually, as a buffer from the giant tangle of resource exploitation you've left in your wake. Is the Playdate a good console even though Malaysians can't buy them? It's not necessarily supposed to be a satisfying answer.
I'll tell you more about my experience if you're interested.
SPOILERS BELOW:
The biggest challenge for me was definitely the Party Pack. I was nearly convinced it was impossible to achieve continuous automated production on them due to the upper limit of 4 imports per plot. I had to spend a couple days not constructing anything but just travelling between plots, taking notes, drawing some diagrams and scratching my head before I eventually determined I needed to move my entire Energy Drink operations over to the Stony Plateau. Though this was an extremely satisfying puzzle to solve, I was glad to see the game taper off in difficulty subsequently as I eased into retirement.
I did not use any Overflow or Filter Conveyor parts the whole playthrough, nor any T Splitters. I also eschewed Paths, Fences, Signs, Trash Bins, and Buffer Boxes.
A few suggestions / possible bugs: 1) Did you consider making it so that if one half of a Conveyor Belt Tunnel is destroyed the other half is automatically also destroyed? I think this would be an improvement. 2) The size of the Conveyor Grease area doesn't seem to be influenced by the crank the same way it is for Pick Up and Destruction. 3) Two items converging on the same corner tile of a factory will sometimes cause the factory to jam and I have to pick up products to get it started again. Doesn't happen very often.
Thanks tnglier, your description of the progression matches with my design goals which is good to hear! Getting straight into the...
... SPOILERS ...
The multiple plots was initially a conceit to the limitations of the device, as you can only have so much going on at once on such a low-powered CPU. But it then went on to become another layer to the strategy. Party Packs are the only 5-ingredient recipe currently in the game and are indeed supposed to be the most challenging automation puzzle. You can see my Party Pack setup in the time-lapse image above. For this one I tried to do it as-much-as-possible in a single plot from scratch, just importing salt. It was very tight, and I'm still refining the setup now as I need more cactus... I used imports more heavily in my other plots.
I don't personally make use of Filters much, but I do find Overflow, Bins & T-Splitters to be common elements in my designs. I'm starting to use cosmetic items more too, but I didn't use them much when playtesting.
Regarding your suggestions.
1. There are some advanced strategies which revolve around replacing the exit of a tunnel with another type of conveyor piece, another tunnel entrance, or even a factory! For this reason, I'll keep it like it is. 2. This is indeed a bug, thanks for reporting! I got so used to using B + Up/Down to resize things that I didn't notice this was broken. Can get a small patch build out once the recent 1.13 firmware has stabilised. 3. Another feature :) either don't input two ingredients in one corner, or if you really need your inputs to be that compact then you will need also to balance your input rates too.