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Interesting. Optimizing the factory for your immediate current needs sounds very tedious, because those needs change all the time. I instead optimize for expandability and adaptability. The factory game genre isn’t for everyone, but if you are interested in some tips:
My solution is usually something like:
- really long line of basic resources (usually a belt of smelted copper and a belt of smelted iron, eventually adding more stuff and adding more belts of iron and copper as supplies are needed)
- when I need thing 1, I make a little package that builds it, drawing resources from the line with splitters so the excess can continue down the line
- thing 2 is an independent little package farther down the line
- When it’s time for thing 3, I build copies of the packages for building thing 1 and thing 2 as necessary to feed the construction of thing 3, again as separate feeds splitting off the main resource line
- when it’s time for thing 4, its again independent of the production of things 1-3, except they are splitting off the same main resource belt
- If the resources on the main belt are insufficient to feed all of those machines, one of three things needs to happen: 1. Add more raw resource processing until your belt is full and backed up at the beginning 2. If that’s not enough, upgrade the belt 3. If you don’t have a belt upgrade available, build another main resource line and use splitters to rebalance it onto the main line
This construction allows for easy expansion without having to destroy anything. I typically don’t disassemble anything unless it’s actually a problem for some reason or I need the space. This is especially important because you often need some basic components like the level 1 belts even into the late game.
Also, once you unlock robots, you can literally copy-paste, just select an area to upgrade all belts/arms/etc. in, and a lot of other neat tricks that drastically speed things up.
And one last peace of advice: Overproduce everything and let belts backing up balance out the resource distribution. Then if you discover that belts that previously were backed up are now sparse, figure out why and optimize it, usually by adding more production of whatever the missing resource is.
Ultimately throughput is all that matters. Loss of throughput because you don’t need something isn’t wasteful. Loss of throughput because you aren’t producing enough of something is a problem to solve. Things that don’t affect throughput don’t matter and aren’t wasteful.
That’s funny, I love Slay the Spire, but I have mixed feeling about Balatro.
Balatro is addicting in that once I start playing I don’t want to stop, and yet after playing for a few hours I couldn’t say for sure I had fun at any point the whole time.
Playing Balatro feels like exploring the backrooms to me - just infinite bland nothingness.
My experience with PvPvE games is they tend to be incredibly toxic, with some people just trying to get started, and others picking on them for fun.
I have several friends who vow not to play PvPvE games again after bad experiences in games like Last Oasis and Worlds Adrift, although they were interested in playing both of those games in a PvE format.
Personally I find the extra danger from considering other players “another type of enemy” to be interesting. But also those types of games tend to breed to most toxic communities.
I’ve gotten macOS to run in a virtual machine.
I think I used https://github.com/sickcodes/Docker-OSX
New Super Mario Bros. (For the Nintendo DS), in the multiplayer battle mode.
There is a multiplayer mode where you fight over collecting stars in 6 different maps, using the main game’s mechanics and powerups.
In one of these maps, there are bullet bill launchers. One of the powerups is a mini mushroom that makes you tiny, and when you are tiny you just harmlessly bounce of enemies when you jump on them instead of killing them. That lets you ride the bullet bill, repeatedly bouncing off it. The multiplayer maps loop, so you do this indefinitely, and every time you get back to the launcher, it will add another bullet to your train.
My brother and I would deliberately avoid collecting stars, and instead try to make the longest bullet train and try to stay in the air as long as possible.
This is the “metroidvania” genre part of the game but, it’s not for everyone.
That being said, both Hollow Knight and Silksong make the exploration a lot more streamlined than in older metroidvanias with the map features. When you don’t know where to go, check your map and look for paths that lead to areas that aren’t filled in yet. When you get a new power, see if you can remember any locations where that might be useful.
I agree with a lot of your commentary. A couple times so far a “good run back” has been the grind that let me buy some of the higher-cost items from shops. Sometimes it’s frustrating but usually once you get used to the path it goes quickly. There have been a few times where I didn’t realize there was a closer bench until after I already beat the fight lol.
Double damage would suck a lot less (and be a better mechanic) if you had 6 HP to start, or if you healed 4 at a time, or if bosses didn’t always do 2 damage.
Most of the bosses have 1-damage and 2-damage attacks. Also 6HP and increased healing are available relatively early (still a good way into the game but it’s a long game).
Skills and traps don’t do enough damage to feel especially useful either.
I have to strongly disagree with this. Especially when you start getting more traps/tools and upgrades for them, they get very strong and don’t require you to get dangerously close to the enemy like the basic attacks. Some of the bosses and many of the arenas I’ve gotten through mainly thanks to the consumable traps.
Common enemies are spongy, bosses take at least 33% too long across the board.
Like in most metroidvanias, you start off struggling against common enemies but as you get upgrades they become weaker relative to you. However I do agree that the trash mobs are a bit too tanky. Maybe somewhere between 50% and 25% less health would be ideal. I’m not sure I would adjust the bosses though.
There have been several boss fights so far where I die to the path to the boss more than the boss itself and it takes way longer to get to the boss than actually beating it.
That being said though, I do think there’s some merit to runbacks as an actual consequence for failure. I definitely strategize more cautiously because of it.
Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable.
Then it sounds like the legislation enforcing leaving private servers on the table should also move the liability to whoever is hosting the servers. I’d be surprised if it doesn’t work that way already tbh.
The controller is going to be closer to $200