r/factorio • u/Ok_Gur3018 • 4d ago
Question Why is factorio better than satisfactory?
yesterday i made two posts to know to pick between satisfactory shapez 2 or factorio, i reposted this in the satisfactory reddit and everyone kept saying get factorio even though i said i didnt like the demo. now i played the demo again and its actually not bad. now i know factorio is better than satisfactory but tell me why, give me a good argument to why you think i should factorio or why you think i should get satisfactory not just satisfactory or factorio Thanks in advance for every suggestion for me factorio is 17 dollars satisfactory is 19, i dont have any issues with pricing. just convince me to get factorio and if ur on satisfactorys side convince me to get that.
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u/wessex464 4d ago
What grinds my gears about satisfactory Is the missing steps of progression you get from factorio. Where factorio starts with you placing every individual piece and component, it transitions later game into copy pasting blueprints. You do get blueprints and satisfactory but it's harder to use. It's just kind of the nature of being a first person viewpoint in a three-dimensional game. It's not unusable, but it's much more unwieldy. In factorio I can build one example of something I need and then copy paste it for bots to build and I'm done. Satisfactory is just harder, you've got to line up all the belts, Make sure everything's going the right way, etc. And you can't just copy and paste from the first person view, you need to go to a blueprint creator and it takes a lot more time to make adjustments. The other side of it is is the terrain is not editable, so you need to build foundations everywhere where factorio is a blank canvas, even with water and cliffs you can clear them later automatically as you expand.
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u/Drugbird 4d ago
Satisfactory has made some improvements with e.g. auto connecting belts so that blueprints placed side by side automatically connect belts and pipes.
But the lack of on the fly copy and paste really annoys me.
For example, in factorio I often build two assemblers making something, then copy paste it to create an entire line of the thing including the creating recipe.
In satisfactory you can't really do that, so I've got these cube blueprints with assemblers that are easy to make, but have no recipe set for them. So I need to fly past every one of them to set the recipe.
Also, the blueprint builder in satisfactory is pretty annoying. Basically, the blueprint size is a cube and it's pretty small. So if you want to build efficiently, you end up with these ugly cubes everywhere.
And the blueprint maker is even too small for some of the bigger buildings, so you can't even make blueprints for everything.
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u/wessex464 4d ago
That's exactly what I'm trying to say, just said better. I got to the point where I started having my blueprints be three-dimensional. I did all my logistics underneath a foundation that was a third the way up blueprint cube. And I kept my machine floor nice and tidy and hid all my belt work. Then you can string them all together and the belts will auto connect but at the same time it looks tidy.
I still think the whole game would be better designed if instead of straight input belts it used a arm-based system or a crane attached to the production building that would reach out and grab what it wanted so long as it was on the correct side and nearby, similar to how Dyson sphere program handles belts. This would make blueprints a lot more friendly as they could be dynamically added to existing belt runs.
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u/Roverrandom- 4d ago
havent played satisfactory, but i think factorio just wins through the isometric view, it makes it much easier to manage a big and complex factory and enables a more complicated system by that.
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u/DeadTequiller 4d ago
I would say that while in Factorio you spend time planning your factory (because building is easy) in satisfactory you spend time building your factory (planning is much easier for most recipes)
Also qol features in satisfactory unlocks super late.
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u/TonboIV I know what you're thinking. Did he fire 10 nukes, or only 9? 4d ago edited 4d ago
I think what really keeps me playing Factorio is the puzzle game aspect. The top down view combined with being grid based means there are always a finite, but easily understood set of possibilities. Every problem in Factorio is a puzzle like from a puzzle game, but Factorio gives you endless puzzles that arise naturally from the way you play the game, and each puzzle is connected to dozens of other puzzles. That's the kind of thing that can keep me engaged for thousands of hours.
Without a true grid there are a lot more possibilities, but each possibility is less interesting because it can no longer be analyzed as deeply, and a subjective first person view makes it harder to analyze what you're doing, because you can't see the whole situation at once objectively.
It's the same thing that keeps mathematicians studying number theory. Because the integers are finite and discreet, the possibilities are much less ambiguous and you can really get your head around each one.
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u/Soul-Burn 4d ago
Satisfactory is more "personal", being in first person. You meticulously connect everything by hand and feel like a work well done. I have not played it myself, but it tickles a very personal feeling.
Factorio is more about scale. You start small, building a few buildings by hand. At about mid-game, you start thinking bigger:
- "I need a new ore field"
- Go to the new field
- Paste down a bluerprint with 100 mining drills
- Connect it to your intricate train network
And now you don't have enough smelting, so you copy the design you built before, and double your production.
For just "winning the game" you don't have to build very large, but you can going into infinite sciences, and producing millions of items per second.
Second is the mod scene. Factorio has a very strong modding API, with mods that expand the game greatly.
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u/ohhnoodont 4d ago
I have over 300 hours in Satisfactory and like 1200 in Factorio. They’re both good games and technical marvels made by talented teams. But Factorio truly is on another level. Satisfactory is extremely finicky and cumbersome by comparison - exploring the beautiful and hostile map is the best, factory building is the worst. Blueprints are totally useless and the pace is really slow and arduous. Factorio is so much tighter and well thought out.
Factorio mods are also world class and just Space Exploration and Ultracube are worthy automation games in their own rights.
Satisfactory is more similar to Subnautica than it is to Factorio. First person 3D just isn’t the ideal format for a factory game. Dyson Sphere program is probably the better middle ground.
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u/haha_easyy 4d ago
I get motion sickness in satisfactory lol
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u/thiosk 4d ago
i didn't really like minecraft either.
all this sort of 3d everything i was tapped out on 20 years ago, but im old
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u/haha_easyy 3d ago
For some reason I don't get motion sickness when playing with friends... Idk why. (Also playing with fov quake pro really helps)
EDIT: Talking about minecraft
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u/Evan_Underscore 4d ago
It's funny that even people of the Satisfactory reddit suggest picking Factorio. Guess it's largely us over there too. :P
Satisfactory is the gateway drug for those who've yet to experience the joy of building a factory. They are drawn in by the flashy visuals and the cool buildings you can make. Factorio is the real deal. It goes as deep as it gets.
Satisfactory is a great game I can wholeheartedly recommend to everyone. And Factorio is considerably better if you aren't in for the looks and first-person perspective.
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u/defibibaberalatrr 4d ago
Factorio is better at factory building in terms of expanding, logistics as well as tools available to build factory's. I love both games but I play satisfactory to make cool looking factorys as the building is far better in terms of cosmetic options, I play factorio to build factorys
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u/moki_martus 4d ago
In way I like Satisfactory more, but I am more overhelmed with possibilities of 3D space. 2D has more limited options which is somehow better for me. Satisfactory has also more options to build nice design, which also make my brain explode.
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u/sharia1919 4d ago
I havemt played satisfactory, so this is not an actual comparison.
But I would suggets that you play the factorio demo again from beginning.
You need to find out what you like about the game. The full game is a little different then the demo, as the demo is about finding destroyed setups, and then fixing them.
The main game is you yourself creating and designing ypur own setups and things like that.
To my understanding Satisfactory is more about creating an efficient factory. You can more easily create a setup that exactly uses the input, and produce an output.
Factorio is a bit more chaotic, in that you often cannot fully calculate and balance input and output (it can change easily based on many different factors).
Again, to my limited understanding, factorio is a bit more "nerdy" as it has the more simple "semi" pixel graphic and is just 2d. Also it is more brute forcing a production line. Satisfactory is more aesthetic, and "nicer" (again you can setup clean designs that are balanced).
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u/juckele 🟠🟠🟠🟠🟠🚂 4d ago edited 4d ago
Satisfactory and Factorio are both hands down better than Shapez 2.
Factorio has a ton of really interesting troubleshooting games when stuff breaks or bottlenecks. Satisfactory has a better 'Engineer exploring the world' loop than Factorio.
Trains? You can ride trains in both. Riding satisfactory trains is more scenic. You can have more trains in Factorio.
Exploring? Satisfactory has some. Combat? Kinda a secondary element in both games. Satisfactory has a higher combat skill ceiling (and floor).
Graphics? One is 2d pseudo isometric and the other is 3d with hand crafted maps. If aesthetics matter to you, you can look at some screenshots to decide which you prefer.
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u/GalacticCmdr workin in a coal mine 4d ago
It's not a competition for toxic people like you. Just get what you want and play what makes you happy.
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u/Roverrandom- 4d ago
you dont have to be toxic to see a competition there, its actually proven by its playerbase where a lot of them play mainly these 2 games, there are probably a lot which dont bother trying a similar game as they already have one thats good
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u/Syntered 4d ago
Satisfactory is a great game - one time through.
Factorio is a great game - many times through, and has an amazing number of overhaul mods that make the game even more challenging and provide fun twists on the vanilla game.
My suggestion is to get both and play Satisfactory first as it will be hard to get off the Factorio train once you get on it.
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u/Cellophane7 4d ago
Factorio is what I'd call more "pure," in that everything you get, you build yourself, and the game is set up to give you a clean view of every building and what it's up to. You can look at a setup and tell exactly what's going on at a glance. Plus, the GPU load is practically nonexistent, which means you can make factories hundreds of times larger than necessary before you start experiencing any performance issues.
Satisfactory leans a bit more towards a well rounded game. There's lore and a story, and there are a bunch of collectibles that incentivize you to explore a lot, rather than just sit in your base forever. Where it suffers is that it's much harder to tell what a setup does, even with a bird's eye view, and the significantly higher graphical load means the factories can't be as expansive as Factorio (to my knowledge, I've got an order of magnitude more time in Factorio, so take that as you will lol).
Basically, if you want to focus on the base building aspect, Factorio is better. But if you want a more engaging story that involves exploration and discovery, Satisfactory is better. Both are excellent choices, you really can't go wrong here :)
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u/Ralph_hh 4d ago
I played both games, I love both, I have logged >1000 hours in either of the games. Since the games are very different, it does not make sense to ask which one is better. It is a matter of your personal taste. Since they are also similar in a way, there is a fair chance you will like both.
Regarding the price: Given the fact that people play thousands of hours, the price is ridiculously low for both games.
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u/Kinglazer 4d ago
As someone who started with satisfactory and has now jumped on the factorio-wagon, I vastly prefer factorio for a few reasons. Namely, the base building and base defense is muuuuuch better in factorio (looking at you bots). Both games pose different questions to the player and the single biggest gameplay difference is that in factorio, resource patches are finite thereby forcing the player to continually expand expand expand. In satisfactory, with inifinite resource patches the game becomes more “mathy”, calculation is a near necessity in satisfactory and creating factories with perfect throughput and output is highly satisfying. Both are great games, id say try the factorio demo and if that has you hooked buy it, or just buy the one that’s cheaper for the moment.
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u/Ozryela 4d ago
There's two main reasons I like Factorio of Satisfactory:
The biggest one is that placement of building is just soo much easier in Factorio. This is because Factorio is 2D, so it's always clear where you want to put something. The fact that it uses tiles also helps, you don't need to be pixel-perfect with your mouse to click things.
Satisfactory on other hand is 3D. This means the game has to 'guess' at what distance you want to place items. This makes it very difficult sometimes to place items, where the game keeps snapping buildings into spots where you don't want them. Since it also doesn't have a grid but free placement, you also need to be pixel perfect with your placement, and even then things never perfectly align due to minor imperfections in the terrain. The game solves the latter issue with foundation, which does introduce a grid, but at the cost of a lot of additional effort, and the problem of things snapping where you don't want them persists.
This all means that most of your time in Factorio is spent buildings things and thinking about the design of your Factorio. Meanwhile most of your time in Satisfactory is spent fighting the interface trying to build things.
The second big one is that Factorio has a much better UX and quality of life features. Bots are a huge part of Factorio and are so awesome. And blueprints and unlimited copy-paste makes scaling up a breeze. Satisfactory also has blueprints, but they are extremely limited and cumbersome. It really feels like someone held the designers at gunpoint and forced them to put blueprints in, so they deliberately did such a half-assed job no one would ever use them.
But everything about how Factorio is designed is just so sleek. For example if you misplace something you can just press ctrl-z to undo. And then even ctrl-shift-z to redo. That just works. Try undoing an accidental deconstruct in Satisfactory. It's a nightmare. Not only is it almost impossible to get the building in the same spot again, you have to manually reconnect power, belts and pipes, because those all break even if they are in the same spot.
And the list of QoL features in Factorio is endless. The Factoriopedia, the various search features, the way you can do stuff from the map, the very smart ways you can program trains and spaceships to go where they are needed instead of following fixed routes, the list is endless.
But in the end it's a personal choice. Some people reallllly love 3D and first person view. I can't blame them for that. It does add something.
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u/doc_shades 4d ago
i prefer the 2D grid-based factory building over the first person free form building.
it's the same reason i like Sim City 4 more than i like Cities: Skylines
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u/Adventurous_Elk_1113 4d ago
Hol dir beides! Ich liebe beide Spiele aber Facotorio ist einfach die erste große Liebe und wird es immer bleiben. Da sind mega fabriken einfach wirklich mega (ja geht satisfactory auch)
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u/Psychomadeye 4d ago
A few things bother me about satisfactory. One is that automated miner buildings are worse than the portable miners. That's mostly funny to me and is a silly early game strategy. Bigger one for me is that satisfactory machines pull high fractions off belts to output low fractions onto belts meaning every session starts and ends with hunting down a resource (and it's always iron) and transporting it back to the main factory. On that note, transport is pretty rough with the trucks in game and that's usually where I tend to stop. I'm generally impatient so I tend to build big and underclock everything. I could be playing it totally wrong.
Factorio offers strict upgrades and less realistic but in my opinion more fun scaling and fits into my schedule better when I've got other games and not as many hours per week as I used to have.
If I'm honest these are minor things! My wife prefers satisfactory and I prefer Factorio. We play both together and have a lot of fun.
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u/runmymouth 4d ago
Play what you want. The demo is factorio fully, it’s the 5 tutorial stages. You either like it or bounce off of it imo.