I have zero Factorio achievements. I can't help myself but to install some mods every time. The game is better than ever without mods, where they absolutely aren't required, but I can't help but to do it always.
Why can't Wube add Blueprint sandbox into the game?
Good question. Hopefully they will. It's so nice to have, but it isn't required at all. My number 1 ask for vanilla right now would be a rail tool for parallel tracks. It's not a big issue, but with no cliff explosives for a while and the new rail tools, I have pretty curvy rails (and I somewhat like that) but being able to easily throw down parallel tracks would make side tracks or two-Lane tracks so much easier.
Eh it's probably actually just gated by people finishing the game. I'm at 35 hrs in my first save, slowed down a bit by the no yellow/purple cheeve and have finished fulgora and vulcanus but disliked the gleba mechanics so much I've started playing other games again.
With a set of precog blueprints I see the under 40 being pretty casually doable too
The DLC was released 2 weeks ago. Even if people were working on it full time (35hours a week) that still just 70hours in the game.
I normally take my time and build proper bases that don't have to worry about ratios. I tend to make a starter base and then migrate to a monster where everything is on a 4-lane wide mainbus. That's four lanes per item. That way I won't have to wait for something that is bottlenecked by a single express belt of copper.
It takes a lot more time, but it makes for more organized bases, and it's the playstyle I prefer.
EDIT: Ducking autocorrect...
I'll speed run my whole day to remove a single decider combinator from a blueprint design.... Only to revert back to the original at the end of the day because I couldn't get all the bugs worked out.
Yet.
Give it time for base in a book to start shortening runtimes.Shit I have 1.5 hours left and I just got to Vulcanus
I'm considering buying the DLC, is it worth it?
Play vanilla once first at least is what I'd recommend. Space Age you don't get stuff like cliff explosives until you go to a certain planet. That's not critical, but it does make things harder. If you finish vanilla and want more, Space Age is well worth it.
Vanilla will prepare you for the challenges of Space Age. I don't think new players will be prepared for it. It's not particularly challenging, but it does throw some curve balls that experience helps with. It'll also make vanilla feel so much more shallow, so your experience with that will be lessened.
It's amazing
Yes
I'm doing my first play through trying to get as many achievements as possible. Got my first ever Getting on Track Like a Pro and There is No Spoon whilst getting all of the restriction-achievements other than the no handcrafting on. Very pleased with that! I don't think I've even got the easy speedrun achievement before.
(I know the rocket is easier to launch now, but I didn't realise when I was playing so I still would've got the achievement with the old rocket's cost)
