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There's a game from our Czech bros, Factorio.
The plot is even simpler than in Doom: you crash on a planet in a middle of nowhere and, naturally, want to go home.
To go home, you need to build a rocket.
And a rocket silo.
And supplementary structures.
And materials.
And factories to make those materials and structures.
And machines to make those factories.
And engines.
And power plants.
And fuel.
And pipes.
And cables.
And circuits.
And plastic.
And steel.
And so on and so forth, all the way down to raw materials like iron, copper, stone and coal.
By the way, the planet is populated by nasty bugs who are not happy at all to see you and your stuff, so you also need weapons to keep them at bay. And ammo.
You have an axe.
Good luck.
All this obviously requires a lot of time and raw resources.
You obviously need to move a lot of raw resources and intermediate products around.
Initially you only have conveyor belts available. While your base is small, they are quite convenient. As it grows, you start noticing that something is not quite right:
- You need more belts for more intermediate products, but you don't have enough space because you did not anticipate that and put your machines way too close to each other.
- You need certain products in multiple destinations at opposite ends of your base and the belt network gets too big and complex.
- Certain technologies require a lot of specific resources and consume everything available, you get shortages elsewhere and everything stops every now and then.
- Some machines require so many inputs that you cannot deliver them all on separate belts and have to combine.
- Even basic slow belts are rather expensive, fast belts are way more expensive.
You will spend hours trying to get it right and pulling your hair in desperation.
Much, much later, as you climb the technology tree, you unlock logistic robots.
This is where things change for good.
Briefly, you build some flying robots, a few service ports for them, some provider and requester boxes and... that's it.
The robots pick your shit and move it where it is needed, no questions asked.
You can demolish most of your belts and reuse the space.
You can grow freely now.
It's like a breath of fresh air.
Some say the game gets too easy from this point.
Eventually you build a rocket and win the game, but that is not important here.
What I want to say is that this "belts vs robots" situation reminds me of something.
Factorio has only 150 or so products and you will need to mass produce only about 50 of them, and still it is extremely hard to balance everything to avoid shortages, surpluses and blocking.
Now imagine that your map is not a few game screens, but 1/6 of the planet and you have not 50 assets, but hundreds of thousands or millions of them.
Yeah.
If you still think that planned economy is a great idea, play Factorio.
Without robots.
The plot is even simpler than in Doom: you crash on a planet in a middle of nowhere and, naturally, want to go home.
To go home, you need to build a rocket.
And a rocket silo.
And supplementary structures.
And materials.
And factories to make those materials and structures.
And machines to make those factories.
And engines.
And power plants.
And fuel.
And pipes.
And cables.
And circuits.
And plastic.
And steel.
And so on and so forth, all the way down to raw materials like iron, copper, stone and coal.
By the way, the planet is populated by nasty bugs who are not happy at all to see you and your stuff, so you also need weapons to keep them at bay. And ammo.
You have an axe.
Good luck.
All this obviously requires a lot of time and raw resources.
You obviously need to move a lot of raw resources and intermediate products around.
Initially you only have conveyor belts available. While your base is small, they are quite convenient. As it grows, you start noticing that something is not quite right:
- You need more belts for more intermediate products, but you don't have enough space because you did not anticipate that and put your machines way too close to each other.
- You need certain products in multiple destinations at opposite ends of your base and the belt network gets too big and complex.
- Certain technologies require a lot of specific resources and consume everything available, you get shortages elsewhere and everything stops every now and then.
- Some machines require so many inputs that you cannot deliver them all on separate belts and have to combine.
- Even basic slow belts are rather expensive, fast belts are way more expensive.
You will spend hours trying to get it right and pulling your hair in desperation.
Much, much later, as you climb the technology tree, you unlock logistic robots.
This is where things change for good.
Briefly, you build some flying robots, a few service ports for them, some provider and requester boxes and... that's it.
The robots pick your shit and move it where it is needed, no questions asked.
You can demolish most of your belts and reuse the space.
You can grow freely now.
It's like a breath of fresh air.
Some say the game gets too easy from this point.
Eventually you build a rocket and win the game, but that is not important here.
What I want to say is that this "belts vs robots" situation reminds me of something.
Factorio has only 150 or so products and you will need to mass produce only about 50 of them, and still it is extremely hard to balance everything to avoid shortages, surpluses and blocking.
Now imagine that your map is not a few game screens, but 1/6 of the planet and you have not 50 assets, but hundreds of thousands or millions of them.
Yeah.
If you still think that planned economy is a great idea, play Factorio.
Without robots.
