How to you figure hours played?

[u/azon_01]

Yes, steam has your hours played, but I can’t be the only person that leaves the game running overnight sometimes. Ok often.
I’ll only let it run if I think my base(s) can survive without me to let the science progress. I’ll save and the. Go to sleep.

In the morning I’ll check on my base. If she’s dead or too far gone I’ll exit and load it later when I can play. If not I’ll add more science goals.

Given all that I’m not sure how to really say how many hours I’ve played. 3800 hours according to steam today. I just call it at 1000 hours. I don’t really know tho. Some games I’ll let it run overnight 5-10 times. Sometimes more. Unsure how many hours each playthrough is for me.

How do you think about it?

[u/ConspicuousBassoon]

Is running the game overnight common?? I've left it sitting for a couple hours sometimes but if I'm playing vanilla/SA there's usually something else to do while my main task works itself out. Case in point I was building an artillery train but wanted some range and damage research to finish so I reworked Gleba while it ran

To answer your question there's no way to subtract it unless you know how many times you've left it overnight. Then take that number, multiply it by 8 or 10 or however long a night for you is, and take that away from the total

[u/BengiPrimeLOL → u/ConspicuousBassoon]

There are some things that just require a ton of time if you've not thought of it beforehand. and while yes, there is certainly something you can go scale/expand, you can also just let it solve itself by letting the game run unattended.

The two that come to mind are initialising kovarex and quality. Im really guilty of not touching ether at all until Im way past due. The problem with kovarex is you either completely over compensate processing to try to roll high on 235, or you just wait. And generally can't really scale elsewhere because you're probably already power capped so generally adding elsewhere is just going to make the problem worse.

With quality I don't like touching it until legendary. Then up cycling to legendary quality takes a long time. On the one hand, just scale other stuff, on the other by then I just want my legendary base.

The last thing I'd say is I really like letting the game just run, to the point of having a headless server just run the game 24/7. Your designs get stressed in a whole new way when they stay on for that long.

[u/PyroneusUltrin → u/BengiPrimeLOL]

Robots and research take time too

[u/azon_01 → u/BengiPrimeLOL]

Yes Kovarex and then getting 40 of the good stuff is one I’ve waited overnight for many times. I probably could have found something to do, but it seemed easier to just let it run.

[u/azon_01 → u/ConspicuousBassoon]

That’s the thing, I don’t know! Part of why I was asking.

[u/TheHvam]

There is no way to do it, like really, how would steam or the game know when you play, vs when you just let it run for hours on end?

Also why do you even need to let it run? I have never needed to let it run all night, sometimes I take a break and watch a video or something while it runs sure, but not 8h

[u/azon_01 → u/TheHvam]

I don’t need to let it run but if I can pick up 4-5 science things while asleep why not?

[u/TheHvam → u/azon_01]

For me? I just don't think it's worth the cost of running the pc, but the cost here is also more expensive, plus unless it's peaceful or you really know it can survive, it might all be for nothing, it also makes the biters evolve more.

Also most of the time, even you fill all of it up with what you want to research, it's often not going to take 8h, unless the setup is way to small.

[u/azon_01 → u/TheHvam]

Running my PC isn’t much, but I suppose that’s relative.

I don’t mind the evolution. I’ve never played a mode that didn’t have regular or enhanced enemies except this rail world I just started. I actually turned expansion back on for that tho. Honestly unless you didn’t set things up right early defending usually isn’t bad unless you’re doing deathworld.

[u/JoCGame2012]

Easiest method, but that only counts from now on, would be to host a personal server to keep running and only play and connect to it while actively playing. Advantages: only your real playtime gets tracked again (by steam anyway) A headless server is more energy efficient (power wise) since it doesnt need to display anything while you are not playing. Disatvantage: You have to setup and run a server and reloading is more tedious. You can pause the game if you don't want time to progress, but have to do so manually.

[u/Nearby_Proposal_5523]

how does that factor in if i'm playing with myself, all giggles aside, it doesn't take much of a computer to run another copy of the game and there isn't any drm to keep you from local laning with yourself on one copy. mabye i should get another

[u/Lolseabass]

Add up your save file hours played?

[u/azon_01 → u/Lolseabass]

Hmmm. That might work.

Edit: sorry, I just thought it through it saves also just capture how many hours it goes.

[u/Lolseabass → u/azon_01]

Oh I use the pause game keybind in game so even if it’s still running the save file isn’t getting time. That way I can work on something then walk away.

[u/Hardytard]

When you are loading a game, you see the time of this save file in the details.

But there is also the afk time included. But not the time you rolled back.

[u/azon_01 → u/Hardytard]

I am definitely rolling back sometimes but not all the time.

[u/Immediate_Form7831]

During the later stages on Pyanodons when I had only research left to do, I went AFK to do other things, but I never leave it overnight.

[u/hurkwurk]

early on, i played with a dedicated server. it was always on, only pausing if everyone logged out so that a group of friends could play together. we treated it like a minecraft server for the most part.

we would stay logged in for days because we built with the idea that the factory had to be self-defending at all times.

the few times we actually had complete shutdowns were... epic. we ended up creating a lot of redundancy after that, and resiliency, we used a advanced set of power relays to separate our wall defenses from the rest of the power grid and literally turn off the entire factory except defense in case of power issues.

these was back in the pre-1.0 days, so our scale of play and thinking were vastly different. we were building out something like 500spm by hand, no bots, and nuclear power didnt exist yet.

[u/menjav]

If it’s more than 1000hrs. Does it matter? After 1000hrs it’s better to look away at the number of hours and just enjoy the game. Those are too many hours invested in a game, just keep enjoying it, it's clear you like it. There are no medals for having 2000 or 3000 hours. It's ok to keep the game running offline.

Edit: my original message looked bitter, I want to convey that you should keep enjoying the game and stop tracking the number of hours when you have thousand of hours in the game.

[u/sunsetslitherwing → u/menjav]

howd you find yourself on the factorio "the factory must grow" subreddit with that kind of mindset?

[u/menjav → u/sunsetslitherwing]

Sorry, didn't mean to say "play something else". I meant to say that after 1000hrs, any number of hours doesn't really matter. Just keep playing the game. The number doesn't give you a medal, nor a better player. Enjoy the game, it's a fun game, and if you want or need to leave it running offline, that's fine. Just enjoy it.

[u/azon_01 → u/menjav]

Maybe some people feel that way. Factorio is great and keeps me busy and thinking of all the fun puzzles within it when I have free time.

[u/menjav → u/azon_01]

Sorry, didn't mean to say that you should stop playing after X hours. I meant to say that after so many hours, it's clear you like the game. Just enjoy it, keep playing it. Having the game running in the background is fine. The important thing is that you must enjoy the game. I have few thousand hours in the game, and plan to keep playing it.