this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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Automation and Factory Builder Games

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A community surrounding automation and factory games. Think Factorio or Satisfactory.

Rules

  1. Please stay on-topic: post about automation and factory builder games. There is some wiggle room; there always is when it comes to game genres, but some things clearly do not fit (Pong, a post asking what car you should buy in real life) and will be removed.
  2. Don’t be a jerk. This covers bigotry and discrimination, which includes but is not limited to homophobia, racism, sexism, etc.
  3. Please don’t directly link to pirated content.
  4. When advertising something you have worked on (think your own automation game review website, or an automation game you have worked on), please use common sense for what is spammy. If there’s about four new posts here weekly, don’t post a progress update weekly—we don’t want self-promotion overwhelming the community. But finding new automation game creators is cool, so do post them here every once in awhile! I reserve the right to change this rule to be more specific about what exactly counts as spammy and what does not, but I feel I’ll know it when I see it and trust most posters to operate in good faith.
  5. Please indicate spoilers. The following format works on both Lemmy and Kbin, but if you are using an app it may not. See this comment for which apps handle spoilers. Note that spoilers in post bodies will just show the text in the preview if you link the post in, say, Discord, instead of spoiling it.
Spoilers for SomeAutomationGameSomething that happened at the end of the game! Something else that happened at the end of the game!

will appear as

Spoilers for SomeAutomationGameSomething that happened at the end of the game!

Something else that happened at the end of the game!

Not Rules

Magazine/community icon is the Apple gear emoji for now. Suggestions for a replacement are very welcome.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What makes an automation game good?

Automation being in the game is a huge factor.

For me, a reason for the building and automating is really important. Satisfactory is okay, but Factorio is better for this. Why? The monsters. Factorio requires building more than just what you need to progress further with what you can build, you need to defend it all, too.

And while Satisfactory has enemies, they're pretty static. They only spawn in their designated areas and don't come and attack you unless you go near them.

[–] Elevator7009@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 month ago

I'd imagine if a game contains no automation it doesn't count as an automation game at all. Not even a bad automation game. Just purely unfitting for that particular hole.

I find that interesting! I am not a "video games cause violence" type, but I seem to react negatively to enemy encounters in games where I'm not expecting it for the genre. Action? RPG? Yeah, I'll seek out combat with enemies happily. Automation? Incremental? Oh no, enemies ;-; (This is usually not enough to turn me off from playing the game.) But wanting a narrative reason to justify the building and automation feels understandable.

I feel like the automation should probably kick in at a sweet spot. Far enough that you probably learned how that mechanic worked, even so that you might be feeling a bit tired of doing it manually, early enough that the game does not just become repeating that action and only doing that for awhile.