Reactor Idle and Factory Idle - assembly incremental games

[Gilberreke]

Have you guys tried these? They're currently all the rage on the BTW IRC.

It's a combination of assembly games like SpaceChem with incremental games like Clicker Heroes. No repeated clicking either. So much fun to be had!

http://reactoridle.com/
http://factoryidle.com/

By having to make Factorio style assembly lines, the games become more fun and less skinner boxy, but as incremental games go, they are a little light. It's a fun idea, but I wish there was more challenge to either side of the equation.

And just to finish the list, here's another idle game by the same man, which is a population simulator and more of a pure idle game with a fun twist:

http://worldidle.com/

[magikeh]

*clicks away quietly cursing the currently optimized setups

[Caevin]

I thought I had escaped the allure of Idle games after I played Sandcastle Builder awhile. But no, the moment I clicked on that first link I've been clicking away (well not so much now, I just got the automated replacement and selling of wind turbines, hah!). Yeah, I'll be at this awhile.

[Gilberreke]

I thought I had escaped the allure of Idle games after I played Sandcastle Builder awhile. But no, the moment I clicked on that first link I've been clicking away (well not so much now, I just got the automated replacement and selling of wind turbines, hah!). Yeah, I'll be at this awhile.

They are fortunately not clicking games, so there's no repeatedly clicking anything, except for a very small period of maybe on Reactor Idle until you get your sellers going.

Also, never repeatedly click buildings to replace them, just ctrl-click to do all of them.

Btw, be sure to try the second one, it's a lot more assembly gameplay heavy and surely the better of the two games.

[Caevin]

Yeah I learned that control+click right after I got my auto replenishers. Ah well, you get them quick enough it's no big deal.

I had a hump to wait through on the reactor game on the grind up to coal I think, so I tried the other one. Already trying to optimize my tiny factory. I like that you get the same price back when you resell things. That design encourages you to refactor, which I do enjoy thoroughly.

[Gilberreke]

I found a third, less interesting game by the same guy, added it to OP.

[Sarudak]

At what point does an idle game stop being an idle game and become a simulation/strategy game? Is factorio an idle game????

[jorgebonafe]

or... at what point does the opposite happens? Let's get BTW for example. As you progress, some parts of the game become automatic, and that helps you get great quantities of materials to progress further, and automate more. So, is BTW in part an idle game?

[Gilberreke]

At what point does an idle game stop being an idle game and become a simulation/strategy game? Is factorio an idle game????

As with all categorization, there's a bunch of grey areas of course, but in general, idle games keep on going if you close the game down and the downtime when you are not playing tends to be a large part of the game. In that sense, Factorio is not an idle game.

But yes, games like BTW and Factorio have elements of idle games, due to the automation part. On the other hand, these are the first idle games I see that do the opposite and take a cue from the assembly line games, like SpaceChem, Factorio, BTW, etc.

[Wafflewaffle]

God damn it!!! Now someone is going to have to explain to me the mechanics of heatsinkers and boilers cuz i hit a plateau right after i hit Gas Burners.... GOD DAMN IT!!!

[Gilberreke]

Getting there! Check out my crazy 4-way distribution stuff on the research station.

God damn it!!! Now someone is going to have to explain to me the mechanics of heatsinkers and boilers cuz i hit a plateau right after i hit Gas Burners.... GOD DAMN IT!!!

They're weird and it takes a while to grok. There's a beginner guide on Kongregate to look into.

[murillokb]

@Gilberreke thanks for destroying my productivity for today. I've literally done nothing since I started playing both games this morning D:

[devak]

Tried Both before. Both have the exact same problem: by the time it gets interesting it takes FOREVER to advance

[Wafflewaffle]

Tried Both before. Both have the exact same problem: by the time it gets interesting it takes FOREVER to advance

Yeah i feel the same. As the game goes on the problems get more complicated but the time it takes to solve them grows arithmetically while the time it takes unlock another problem to solve grows geometricaly. This discrepancy grows and you need to interact less and less with the game. I believe its that "idle" time between your interactions that really sets Idle games from strategy/puzzle games. Puzzles dont solve themselves and strategy games will more likely punish you for being idle then award you.

There is something undeniably interesting in games like this thought, we talked about clicker and incremental games and to me these hit the same notes as idle games (if not downright mesh together in some cases). Those first 2 were really well put together and will probably destroy my productivity for the next few days.

[Uristqwerty]

In my experience so far, arranging the parts and routing items has been slow enough that by the time I have used most of the available space, the machines or machine ratios I had used are obsolete. On the other hand, putting so much time into packing stuff together has actually made the game less interesting to me, as it's a bit boring and takes a lot of time.

Currently stopped here, plus a single plastic research line off-screen:

[devak]

This discrepancy grows and you need to interact less and less with the game

Indeed.

I think the maximum is about an hour or so between moves. The game (both Factory and Reactor) starts fairly fast-paced, and slowly the time between actions decreases. In a sense it feels Turn-based, where you take a turn to upgrade or research, adjust your buildings to the new ratios, then take a turn accumulating points and money.

I played Reactor Idle to Thermonuclear (the blue ones) where eventually i was waiting a day to do anything, and realized i stopped caring. It's a bit of a strange game since it always feels like you should be building giant reactors, but truly anything below a 1:6 ratio (1 power source to 6 generators) isn't worth bothering. This means you're sticking with lower-tech power sources for far longer than it feels you should.

Factory Idle is a bit strange since it's about building assembly lines, but it largely lacks the means to efficiently build them. So you end up spending forever to redesign your constructions, and then try to avoid any further change as much as you can. (which goes against the spirit of any game).

[Gilberreke]

I don't get why having to take a day or two between actions is a bad thing? Isn't that the whole point of an idle game, to gate your playing of the game over time? You guys make it sound like that's a flaw of the game, when it's obviously a decision, not a mistake. You might think the decision itself is a mistake, but the execution of that decision seems very deliberate.

Personally, I don't mind a game that doesn't suck you in, but lets you play a few minutes each day.

[devak]

I don't get why having to take a day or two between actions is a bad thing? Isn't that the whole point of an idle game, to gate your playing of the game over time? You guys make it sound like that's a flaw of the game, when it's obviously a decision, not a mistake. You might think the decision itself is a mistake, but the execution of that decision seems very deliberate.

Personally, I don't mind a game that doesn't suck you in, but lets you play a few minutes each day.

A game needs to give me a minimum level of satisfaction for me to continue playing. Inevitably these idle games become irrelevant, as they offer no further moves for a day or more, while i need to keep them running.

[Gilberreke]

A game needs to give me a minimum level of satisfaction for me to continue playing. Inevitably these idle games become irrelevant, as they offer no further moves for a day or more, while i need to keep them running.

You don't need to keep idle games running? That's the whole point, they continue on when the game is not running? You can just forget them for weeks and come back and receive a bunch of progress.

[devak]

You don't need to keep idle games running? That's the whole point, they continue on when the game is not running? You can just forget them for weeks and come back and receive a bunch of progress.

Factory Idle and Reactor Idle have about a 10% efficiency when running truly idle (so the game is closed) making the waiting even longer when running idle. Bonus ticks are ridiculously inefficient compared to true idle games

[Gilberreke]

Factory Idle and Reactor Idle have about a 10% efficiency when running truly idle (so the game is closed) making the waiting even longer when running idle. Bonus ticks are ridiculously inefficient compared to true idle games

Actually, that's patently untrue. Leaving an idle game afk, versus playing the idle game to constantly max out revenue is obviously a BIIIIIIG difference, like huge. Bonus ticks allow you to always play active. So sure, you accumulate less, but you can use the bonus ticks as you're upgrading. Making use of bonus ticks this way, you can get pretty efficient.

[DerAlex]

I'm a sucker for these kinds of games, and given that I spend weeks of my life in factorio, I gravitated torwards factory idle.

Anybody wanna share layouts? I like having nice and tidy, modular designs without much spaghetti, even if it means I can't use every room to the fullest. With the right research levels, everything runs with 100% efficiency

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Plastic 5x5


Plastic 6x4


Plastic 3x8


Electronics 10x6


Electronics 6x10


(both electronics layouts could be done with a few tiles less, but I haven't found a way to reduce the overall square footprint, so I "padded" them out to look nicer

[jakerman999]

After playing around with it for a bit, I think I've found the smallest 1:1:1:1 plastic:

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Factory idle really sucked me in. Should be be doing electronics in another day or so. So far what I've been doing is slowly tweaking every part of my factory trying to get a couple extra tiles free, and then re-arranging everything to get enough of those free tiles together to make another assembly line. Then I buy an upgrade for a component; wipe it all away and start fresh! lol.

Here's what my first factory looks like atm. Still got quite a bit of tinkering to do with it, and some extra floor space to use too.

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[William the tuba]

So, I was initially put off on the first big wait (plastic to electronics), but after revisiting the game a week later, I've accepted 2-3+ days waits as part of it. Now saving up gun money to invest in a big research push towards engines, I find the biggest problem limiting component density, isn't optimal placement, but instead:

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Conveyor throughput.

It's easy to miss:

Conveyor: transports items from one component to another. Can take in 1 item/tick

... should have 4 out conveyor(s).

Most buildings run at 10 tick intervals for the early game, so if the building buys more than 10 items in that time, you need more than one output conveyor. jakermann999, your build won't work by the time you get to Plastic Maker 2 (12 oil, 12 coal, 6 gas -> 3 plastic). I found oil 3, coal 3, and gas 4 to be affordable during the upgrade to electronics, so this design is quite pleasingly symmetrical:



However, you need 4 plastic makers at that level to feed an electronics maker 2 (12 plastic/10 ticks), which means 2 input lines to feed all the plastic in on time (getting you 100% efficiency).

This only gets worse when you unlock guns.

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I'm not quite done with it, and it's a little messy, but with the upgrades I've got, I need 5 iron ore lines and 2 iron foundries per steel maker for 100% efficiency (only calculated that by the time I got to the bottom right). It's more a pain routing everything than anything else.

To build up enough money to upgrade to gun maker 2 took a few days of it in the background, with no research. I'm happy to say with this factory and the kilofactory, I've got $1.08m/tick.

I need 2.278 billion research points to unlock engines. For a 24h wait, that's 2930r/t, or for a 48h wait, 1465r/t. The second isn't impossible; 4 research center 3's will do it, about, at the cost of around $500,000/t (possible that I'll be running more analytics centers so maybe higher).

I might be able to fit them in and cover the costs, or I might have to wait for the trillions and upgrade my iron production again.