The scaling up is so fun. When you launch your first rocket, that's just the start.
The goal is to build an enormous base, to try and launch a rocket every minute or even faster.
It requires elaborate multi-lane train/rails networks to sustain a base like that and it is awesome.
But you can build your bases any way you like and use any technology you want.
I was thinking the ultimate goal would be to find the edge of the map and wall everything off.
(I still haven't met my goal of really understanding rail signals)
I also wonder if there isn't more in store. For example, I don't see what paving and reinforced concrete floors are for. Will there be wheeled robots, or (sigh) burrowing beasts that can go under walls?
30% faster for stone brick, 40% faster for concrete, 50% faster for refined concrete
Speed bonuses also apply to cars/exoskeletons making overall travel faster.
Maybe I will just wall off all the passages from nearby bodies of water.
What could people possibly offer, when all the things they're capable of making can be produced at zero cost?
I'm not being snarky, this is something I genuinely worry about. I think Universal Basic Income is the only reasonable answer.
The answer is simple, protection from them taking it by force. This is literally the reason for liberal democracies.
Dictatorship, feudalism, and other forms of authoritarian structure always come with the downside that the ones at the bottom are trying to get the ones at the top. Thus if you are at the top, you live in worry and fear of a rebelion, revolution, a coup, from your family or friends to betray you, etc.
In that scenario, your day job becomes maintaining your power and authority at all times. Which like any other job, is taxing, tiresome, and hard work. So even though on paper it seems you've got all the goods and services at zero cost, there's a tremendous cost to yourself to maintain that position when others are trying to steal it from you.
That's why, the "right to property" is fundamental. You want a society which can guarantee that right, and give you piece of mind that what you own is yours and no one is going to take it by force. So you can relax and enjoy the fruit of your labor (or inherited factories output).
One solution for this is to create a system that is governed by the rule of law, where no players is in such a bad state that they could be willing to risk it all to steal your piece of the pie. Thus a balance must be struck, where everyone can find satisfaction, even if some get to have a lot more than others.
I asked, "If it costs someone literally nothing to save lives, but they can't profit from it either, how can I CONVINCE them to do it?"
And your answer is, "They shouldn't have to. We should militarize the police to protect their rights to be heartless."
I don't even know how to respond.
No, that's not the right answer.
Rather that it could be gainful for the owners of the factory to give out part of its produce to provide stability and hence protect the factory.
What if you have a factory that produces superior robots that can repel any uprising against you?
You could just not go outside, but at that point with the onset of depression from complete lack of socialization and Vitamin D you'll eventually kill yourself, yourself.
So its way better to willingly agree to participate in a tax scheme, than being at risk of beheading from masses or poison in your drink.
There are other schemes, but it's always the same idea, you need to keep people happy enough and satisfied so they don't come for your stuff. That way, you can enjoy it in peace.
Edit: Well assuming a liberal democratic taxation system. Otherwise taxes can be a way to take even more from people at the bottom, like in feudalism, where land owners tax their labourers for the right to use their land.
Is it really willingly agreeing when there is no option to opt-out?
As though taxes, government and broader social organization has nothing at all to do with why the roads are paved and there's a municipal sewer system. Or why it seems like it's so hard to find a body of land on Earth where you aren't subject to another, possibly much worse government (military is funded by someone...)
If moving somewhere you wouldn't have to pay taxes always seems like it would be too hard, maybe think on that.
If you're interested in a more theoretical (and less bourgeoisie oriented) discussion of the tensions between a social contract justification for punishment and our practical inability to leave the state, I would recommend "Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play" as well as "A Theory of Justice", both by John Rawls, as well as "The Principle of Fair Play" by A. John Simmons. You may know the second as a standard component of any introductory political philosophy curriculum, and the first and third were parts of a philosophy of law class I took, taken from a textbook by Frederick Schauer. They are quite interesting.
The conclusion I have come to is that we are morally bound by the laws of a state in proportion to the degree that they benefit us in comparison to other possible bodies of law. This approximates our willingness to agree to a given scheme of rules if we were presented with free migration between all possible states, and the extent to which we would prefer the state we are actually in, we should be considered to have willingly agreed to their laws even if that did not happen in reality.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Jr.#1900...
No force can stand against an infinite amount of drones, to name just one thing. Those who own the means of production that no longer require workers will also own all means of warfare. Few people own more and more, faster and faster. This will not magically wrap around to the opposite.
As for the forms of control they will exert, I can think of a few options: media, access to healthcare, and employing you to be a useless drone just so you don't rebel--or to stroke their ego by beating you in a video game, like the link below:
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/clive-thompson-future-of-work-...
Even if we land in a UBI world where people don't have to work any more and enjoy a "good" life from their UBI, economic mobility will still be extremely reduced, so gaining relative wealth will become much harder. That alone is quite dystopian.
Wow, that's quite dystopian indeed.
Now, when we get to increasing longevity, genetically engineered humans etc, that might change. But then it would also change the parameters of the equation... these future humans won’t resemble the humans of today.
However, there are two conditions for that to happen: 1. That there are enough resources to build factories for everyone 2. Everyone have access to the knowledge and means to create those factories.
The way I see it, space exploration is vital in guaranteeing the first condition, and having an open forum of knowledge sharing and research is needed guarantees the second condition.
There's been a social experiment going on here at the moment (Australia) - everyone has had UBI for a while in the form of unemployment for everyone who needs it, and paid at a rate that you can live on.
They're finding it hard to get people to pick fruit and so on - it used to be done by back packers who aren't coming because travel isn't happening. Strangely, no one thinks to pay people more to pick fruit and stop it from being a shitty job, instead they lowered the amount they're paying for unemployment. UBI effectively creates a new minimum wage, there are still a lot of jobs no one wants to do, so techtopia will have to wait a while imho.
I mean really one answer here is: maybe we as a civilization don't actually need mass-farmed fruit, because it's not actually cost-effective to produce and consumers clearly don't actually value it very highly.
The point of UBI is a grand solution to stop us having goods and products which depend on creating a defacto underclass.
Crypto was such a shit show.
What are you trying to say/ask?
Even if that's not possible, that's what we should strive for
As soon as there is no personal incentive (or real ability) to improve things, the tech sector starts to stagnate and fall behind the rest of the world.
With renewable energy, etc, the country shouldn't fall apart like USSR did, but it is almost certain to fall prey to more entrepreneurial/militaristic neighbors, sooner or later.
Every one who works for him should know that we need to ditch our burner inserters asap and get to ... wait, not solar... solar + nuclear with a circuit to turn it on and off depending on steam.
It's an aspect of the game I think most doesn't seem to give a lot of thought.
Throughout history, colonization has always required the demonization of the colonized people. Savages, barbarians, white mans burden etc.
Now a typical factorio player would be aghast for murdering humanoids to take over their resources ( or maybe they wouldn’t? Could be an interesting mod!). But we know those slimy brainless insects are just reactive monsters.
But even more... if you play the game, the early waves of the natives can actually do a lot of damage if you aren’t too careful, and can even kill ya. So the game instructs you to absolutely hate these creatures and to fear them. And when you finally build a base large enough to defend itself from hordes and hordes of natives, you feel rather proud, rather than feeling aghast at the carnage. There is a visceral hatred the game has taught you for these “enemies”.
Why would they try and stop you if they weren't sentient?
In that game, how many players would stop if the native population were humanoid? If they were humans? If they would exactly look like the player? How many players leave some place for them to roam?
Building machines is addictive. And like any addiction, there is nothing stopping it.
We should be carried away because one day in the not so far future, somebody has to decide if energy is spent on food production or on mining for bitcoins or some form of product development simulation or calculation. Do we want to have the global ethics that choose the food?
Are mosquitoes sentient?
They look different. They’re inferior. I don’t see any sign of high intelligence.
I personally assumed they were intelligent. I thought the game was making an attempt to draw parallels to the way real life colonialists dehumanazed the native people.
You could definitely read them as being more inspired by scifi aliens like the zerg, though. It is a very common trope for zerg/flood/bugger style aliens to be initially percieved as lacking higher intelligence, but twist they're actually as smart or smarter than humans. But that's not necessarily the case in factorio (afaik, I never got to the endgame). If they aren't intelligent, how does that cast the player's actions? I guess it puts you more in the role of being harassed by wolves?
Iirc correctly there is a factorio blig post somewhere about this exact topic, with the original author basically saying 'meh it's just a game mechanic'.
Then again, there's the stardew valley author removing pig butchering from the game for sort of similar concerns, so what do I know.
This is the premise of E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops”.
https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machi...
Metal isn't renewable. The factory must expand!
Trying to work out which of my colleagues would betray me, and what the best position for my units for the next turn.
I don't consider myself particularly competitive, but the need to minmax was strong with that game, and the social/diplomacy element was just infuriating.
An interesting GDC presentation on a similar subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WMNuyjm4w