Have you ever played with Lego Technic or mechano where you spend hours building something like a vehicle or crane and enjoy just the minutes if not seconds or playing with it finished?
It's that on a wider scale, it's that part of the largely male mind that LOVES land management, taking some area of land, claiming it and making highly productive under your watch. It's why I can confidently say most of the men on this board would be happier if they had a garden big enough to grow things on.
It's pretty standard that you get more advanced functionality than simple A to B belts as you progress through those kinds of games.
Filters, splitters, programmable switches etc. Then there's separate fluids, logistics and power networks with their own tricks and restrictions to figure out too
They are technically restrictive in that there non-functional possibilities, that's the basic premise of an open ended puzzle game. But they're not restrictive in that there's not much you can do with them. After all a processor is just a handful of types of logic gates and an absurd number of connecting lines, which are the same basic tools as conveyor belt games.
You could probably crowd source some ingenious miniaturisation solutions if you reversed your needs into factorio game terms and made it a challenge map
Give you a perfect example, started playing Fallout 4 again just to REALLY do some crazy settlement builds. For the life of me I can't do the conveyor belt and production stuff but you can see some on YouTube that create the most insane factories with it.
IMHO it's part of the charm. You have restrictions but building around these with say robots and train systems to make it better and better is what makes these types of games great. You start with shit belts and that's it, you get further and further unlock new stuff and optimise again. It's a constant thing which is always fun.
Part of the fun from conveyor belts is that restriction, at least I think it is for those that enjoy it. Its the act of coming up with a solution but having to use tools that are somewhat clunky and difficult to use, the challenge of it.
Have you ever played with Lego Technic or mechano where you spend hours building something like a vehicle or crane and enjoy just the minutes if not seconds or playing with it finished?
It's that on a wider scale, it's that part of the largely male mind that LOVES land management, taking some area of land, claiming it and making highly productive under your watch. It's why I can confidently say most of the men on this board would be happier if they had a garden big enough to grow things on.
It's pretty standard that you get more advanced functionality than simple A to B belts as you progress through those kinds of games.
Filters, splitters, programmable switches etc. Then there's separate fluids, logistics and power networks with their own tricks and restrictions to figure out too
They are technically restrictive in that there non-functional possibilities, that's the basic premise of an open ended puzzle game. But they're not restrictive in that there's not much you can do with them. After all a processor is just a handful of types of logic gates and an absurd number of connecting lines, which are the same basic tools as conveyor belt games.
My brother-in-law is an appliance engineer, and he plays Factorio in his spare time. It's just his thing.
Oh yeah definitely a huge overlap.
You could probably crowd source some ingenious miniaturisation solutions if you reversed your needs into factorio game terms and made it a challenge map
So build a train network or transport robots instead.
Some people can do it where others can't
Give you a perfect example, started playing Fallout 4 again just to REALLY do some crazy settlement builds. For the life of me I can't do the conveyor belt and production stuff but you can see some on YouTube that create the most insane factories with it.
IMHO it's part of the charm. You have restrictions but building around these with say robots and train systems to make it better and better is what makes these types of games great. You start with shit belts and that's it, you get further and further unlock new stuff and optimise again. It's a constant thing which is always fun.
Part of the fun from conveyor belts is that restriction, at least I think it is for those that enjoy it. Its the act of coming up with a solution but having to use tools that are somewhat clunky and difficult to use, the challenge of it.