I could not find a dedicated spot to post reviews, I hope here is fine.
I play this mod together with one other person in multiplayer. We have around 40 hours and have just implemented purple juice. We are both complete mod-noobs; the only overhaul mod we have played is around the same nr of hours in Space Exploration, which we quit because it got too hard, haha. We have a couple other minor quality of life mods implemented such as Jetpack and Fuel leech. If desired, I can write down a comprehensive list. It has been a couple days since I played, so please forgive me for forgetting the names of some produce and functions.
During our playtime, we had only two crashes, both of which seemed to be fixed with version 1.1. One was related to the healthcare system and the other seemed to occur when a necrofal would spawn on top of the player.
First of all, what a BEAUTIFUL mod this is! The icons are superb. We have had a great time taking care of “our” people. Giving them as healthy diets as we could. I loved how in a very factorio way, you start off in balance with nature, foraging from forests and water, but as you become more and more developed you slowly start to become independent of them.
At first, certain parts of the mod can feel quite overwhelming or unclear. (How do we make Huwans, how do we give them food? How many should we make? How much food is enough? This “gathering” option provides 4 different types of food. What are the differences? Do they matter?) At times this could be quite frustrating, until we realized factorio wasn’t always completely clear when we first started, and that a learning curve is part of the game.
All in all, we felt that the mod currently is already quite well balanced, and the main thing that is still required is to give the player more information. Below, I wrote down a couple points at which I believe the mod can still be improved. Please use, or ignore, at your own discretion. :)
Gathering / farming
- I was completely SWAMPED trying to figure out how to make sugar for ethanol. What is jello fruit? Where does it come from? It took me a long time to figure out you could gather it once you have enough orchid points. The player should be attended that the more advanced gather research is even there, and the research for ethanol should be locked behind the advanced gathering research.
- Once I finally found the jello fruit, I was very confused that I wasn’t able to farm it, as I didn’t see any other sugar recipe. I made another note about this under “food”.
- A greenhouse is exactly twice as big as the outdoor farm, with the benefit that the temperature and humidity are always perfect. However, penalties for non-fitting temperature and humidity levels are maximum 40%. So on a produce-per-area level, the farms are always more efficient, meaning that there is no benefit of ever upgrading them. Am I missing something?
Biotech & medicine
- I love that bacteria/mold/virus strains first need to be started. The result of this was however, that whilst building my base, I had to keep in mind to leave enough space for two fermentation tanks or bioreactors. One to start the process, and one to take it over. This is quite unhandy with bioreactors being as big as they are. A possible solution would be to make the output of the initial production large enough to completely fill the nr of pipes minimally required to span the distance between the output and input of the building, so you can simply switch recipes within the same building once the culture has been started.
- I love the idea of an infectious disease. It was the only thing that forced me to actually build my medicine set-up (probably way too late). I didn’t find the antifungicide particularly hard to create once I found out where the hell the required fruits come from.
- Like the research that makes ethanol available should be locked behind the research for jello fruit, the same should go for the antifungal medicine and the research for its ingredients.
- Does molasses serve no other purpose than making sugar sirup? If that is the case, then all it does is force the player to make two sugar syrup factories, one using molasses, the other regular sugar, and try to produce as little as possible molasses in the first place, to avoid either one backing up. Although realistic, I am not sure where this places it on the “fun” scale.
Building
- I like the different types of houses, and although challenging, I like how they don’t come cheap. It brings a slight tear to my eye, however, seeing all the old houses sitting idly in a box once they have become obsolete. I would love to recycle them, be it if only for 50% of the input wood and screws.
- The dimensions of the buildings can be quite big. It would be handy to know their dimensions beforehand without having to build a “trial” version of each.
- It would be nice to be able to reserve slots in the market hall and pharmacy for certain foodstuffs, similar how we can do in trains and our inventory.
- Would be nice if houses which have no electricity or water would show this on the map, in a similar icon other buildings without electricity do.
Food
- Perhaps I am missing something, but almost all foods are fruity or umami. Why have that many flavours if they go mostly unused?
- It is not clear to me what influences which foods get eaten first within the marketplace. Does each caste simply start with what they like best?
- It is hard to get an overview of the properties of different foodstuffs, and impossible to know what the properties are of, or what recipes I can make with certain foods before finding or biogenerating them.
o For example, why should I generate bell peppers if I do not know the properties of a bell pepper?
o In my hunt to make ethanol, after a while I could logically deduce that if jello fruit is not farmable, sugar can probably also be made from sugarcane. It would be nice to know this for sure, before setting up this complicated bioscience park.
o The properties of the foods that result from “gather food” are listed as results of the recipe, but only the top two are visible and the rest fall off the screen, making the different types of gathering hard to compare, and making the beginning steps quite intimidating.
- Only after 35+ hours of gameplay did I see that every foodstuff provides different amounts of calories, fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Although I can guess the effect of calories, comparing them between foods is very difficult and making a food-strategy is almost impossible. Furthermore, there is no explanation of the significance of fats, proteins and carbohydrates.
- An overview, perhaps a “cookbook”, would be nice. This book would have all possible foodstuffs, listing their properties (taste, healthiness, luxury, calories, etc.) and possible recipes involving these foods.
Huwams
- Similarly, an overview of the different castes. What are their likes and dislikes housing-wise, food-wise, what makes them physically sick, mentally?
- This overview could also contain information on who is sick from what.
- At this point, I see no use in using different genders. In my mind, using them will only increase the possibility of exponential population growth, spiralling out of my control. Perhaps if huwans would die more often and manually replacing them would be more of a chore, this system would be more attractive to use.
We felt like the mod was quite well balanced, and the main thing still required is Information. We love your work and are eagerly looking to its future developments!
