Thread by @AlexandraErin

I've been getting a lot of joy out of this game. I find it gives me a lot of the experience I had actually wanted when I asked for a model train set for Christmas as a child: the feeling of constructing something intricate, interconnected, and functional.

https://twitter.com/FactoryTownGame/status/1461031391228006413

It's a relatively chill game in that there's no one to fight and no disasters except through user error (accidentally intruding one pipeline into another) but the gameplay is very deep in terms of possibilities for automation, optimization, and customization.

I was well into the endgame on my first map before I fully grasped the possibilities of building structures using the block construction system. I also just started figuring out the quirks of the computational blocks (which aren't well documented that I can find).

I also didn't know, until I had completed the tech level tree, that you can build pipe networks vertically above ground to have them cross over each other or reach buildings at different elevations of where they emerged from the ground.

I've combined these things (block construction, computation blocks, and vertical pipes) to replace a row of barns (warehouses) that stored my quarried stone with a giant stone tower on the edge of town. It hides two stacks of barns built on top of each other, joined by pipes.

One of the two barn stacks has crated rocks, which makes them take up a quarter of the space. Honestly having more than one barn that's "uncompressed" is overkill, as taking 4 stone out of that one barn frees up space for a crate to be emptied out of the others.

But on the other hand, I discovered that you can use a lot of stone *very quickly* when building giant stone structures using the copy/paste function to make huge walls.

Barns count as part of the general inventory, meaning stuff inside them can be used directly by the player in construction (but must be removed and fed into a production line for the workers to craft anything out of it), and their count is included in your inventory readout.

Having ~80% of my stone reservoir stored in crates means my displayed inventory is not accurate. While it's easy enough for me to estimate the actual amount, I used the logic blocks to create a digital counter that adds up the inventory count of all barns...

...including multiplying the ones in the compressed column by 4, and then displays the total on a digital readout on top of the tower.

The number block was only designed for three digits and will do the "1.1K" thing past that, and my tower holds up to 20,000 stone, so I made five different readouts that each receive one digit of the total.

I've got to say that I don't love the name "Factory Town". There is a 0% chance I would have even checked the game out if I hadn't seen it being played. It's way more delightful than the title suggests.

One mechanic I really appreciate is that your maximum number of workers is not tied to money. You get more capacity for workers by placing houses, which aren't bought with resources but earned by making the people who live in your existing houses happy.

On a Watsonian/in-universe level, the ability to place houses likely represents people coming in and building their own houses, in response to the quality of life availble.

I discovered in speedrunning to the end game content that focusing on leveling up the tech tree can cause the population to plateau because your town's production is being bent in directions that don't directly benefit anybody but yourself.

It also can result in a cluttered, unaesthetic town with little room to decorate or build cool train layouts or structures. Once I had the highest tech level unlocked and had built up a stockpile of several thousand magic transporter pipes, I demolished almost everything.

And then started building a new town, with giant stockpiles of material including magical endgame technology, with a greater focus on aesthetics and quality of life.

The magical transporter "omnipipes" are a literal gamechanger. They will transport anything you put into them, the same way that units of water or steam travel through the first two tiers of pipes.

You've got to be careful not to cross lines transporting different things or you might wind up with an incompatible item jamming up a production line, but each tier of pipes (fluid, steam, magic energy crystals, and omni) has a separate underground layer isolated from the others.

I'm really excited about the pipe system because my initial city was a *mess* of delivery wagons clogging streets and conveyor belts going everywhere. My new idyllic farm village has invisible underground distribution systems.

Because I want my postgame layout to be more aesthetically pleasing, I'm going for little individual villages built one at a time instead of a giant sprawling city. Each one will feed their production into an automated distribution complex in the map center.

I started trying to make something like that before razing my city but alas my lack of knowledge of the automation blocks meant my inventory control was lacking and the depot was alternately flooded with thousands of units of butter, fried fish, or fertilizer.

I couldn't figure out how to discard items until very near the endgame. I'd looked for a recycling center or garbage dump or trash can or similar; it turns out the structure for removing waste from the game is called a "void obelisk". Which is the best name for a trash can.

Anyway. I'm excited about this game, because if you're playing in sandbox/creative mode or race to the endgame with a giant stockpile of construction materials, it's a lot of the fun of playing with LEGO sets and/or model trains.

And the music is very good.