Administratorio
The factory must grow. Subject to approval.
Administratorio is a full overhaul for Factorio 2.0, built around a small administrative correction: firepower is out, paperwork is in. The factory remains recognisable—belts, furnaces, copper vanishing at an indecent rate—but building it correctly is no longer quite enough. Built is not the same as approved, approved is not always the same as staffed, and none of those words necessarily imply that the coffee pipe is connected.
Forms and Work Orders become factory inputs alongside the usual materials, while certain machinery also expects money or an employee to arrive and make its operation official. Offices develop working hours. Night work develops exceptions to the working hours, then staffing requirements for the exceptions. A factory can look perfectly healthy and remain motionless for reasons which are, regrettably, internally consistent.
The point was never to add a paper-themed recipe layer and leave Factorio underneath untouched. Administratorio changes what counts as a functioning factory: production depends on an administrative factory beside it, logistics begins on foot, labor has a cost, and local wildlife has ceased to be a military question.
Biters do not attack you, and there are no guns with which to improve the conversation. They are citizens now. They arrive at Administration Desks with complaints about pollution, damaged landscapes, unemployment and the other public amenities your factory emits; settle their cases through the proper bureaucracy and they leave peacefully, even paying taxes. Leave them waiting and dissatisfaction becomes a protest, walks into the factory and switches off a building.
Native residents are no longer hostile. They are dissatisfied, which is much more expensive.
You may also hire them. Paid biter workers operate machinery, train for increasingly specific careers and form your first logistics network: Biterports send actual employees across the factory with items and construction materials instead of solving the matter with flying robots and abstraction. Salaries must be paid, night shifts must be caffeinated, and the union is not present merely for texture. Before long, the creatures once kept outside the walls are holding up most of what happens inside them.
Space Age
Going to space does not repeal the weapons ban. It does introduce asteroids, to which the Administration responds with trajectory orders, qualified biter astronauts and a use of the word “voluntary” that has passed internal review.
Each planet is treated as a new jurisdiction and, therefore, a new administrative problem. Vulcanus has demolishers who neither complain nor pay taxes, so claiming their territory calls for paperwork, bribery and a legally persuasive quantity of lies. Gleba permits biological paperwork and experiments whose participants are voluntary in quotation marks. Fulgora and Aquilo sustain different injuries to administrative common sense; meanwhile the forms begin crossing planets, mixing jurisdictions and acquiring the authority of a very expensive stamp.
Administratorio is in Beta. The base game and Space Age campaigns can be played through, but balance, compatibility and migrations are still moving around. Reports from real factories are particularly useful; players routinely build arrangements no responsible test suite would think to fear.
Credits
The Resolution Office scrubber art and Propaganda Distillery art are by Hurricane (Hurricane046).
The Inference Token icon, the optic fibre artwork, and the optic fibre mechanic come from Moshine and Moshine-assets by snouz.
The Involuntary Relocation Receiver sprite and icon are a repurposed Long range delivery drones (GNU LGPLv3) asset by Sacredanarchy and Klonan.
Disclaimer: This mod was vibecoded by a real programmer who does not have enough free time to code himself, but it's still made with love and attention.