447
What game did you hate even after sinking a lot of time into it?
(media.piefed.social)
I've been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don't mind so much the fact that it's different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I'm bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
For me, it's the opposite. In Factorio you know that to produce one Z, you need 3 Y and 4 X, and to produce 1 Y you need 3 V and 1 W, and so-on. And you can make the perfect conveyor system so that your mine connects to your smelter which goes to your gear factory, and so-on. You never really have to struggle with space because you have an entire world to build your conveyor belts on.
Sure, until you get a certain kind of explosive, you might be annoyed by cliffs, and the locations of the resources are random. But, other than that, you can build the exact same optimal thing every time.
Once I launched a rocket in Factorio once, I never really got the urge to build the same thing again.
With Oxygen Not Included there are a dozen ways to solve each problem, whether that's how to make air, what to feed your dupes, how to deal with heat, etc. As a result, each time I play it my base looks different because I'm dealing with a different set of opportunities, a different set of challenges, and so-on. Also, with laying out your machines in 2d, the same basic machine (say an O2 generator that uses water and feeds a hydrogen power generator) can be built a dozen different ways, none of which are fully optimal, it all depends on how much space you have, where everything else is, etc.
But, what I especially like about ONI that you don't get with Factorio is the "physics engine" solution to things. I know it's unrealistic and simplified, but still, the fact that you can make petroleum by boiling oil instead of using the machine is great. And then there are the various techniques to make a reverse-flow heat exchanger so that your oil is pre-heated and your petroleum is cooled. That's awesome. AFAIK that kind of solution doesn't exist in Factorio.