Tag Archives: Dyson Sphere Program

Still can’t finish a game of Dyson Sphere Program

I blogged a while ago about losing interest in Dyson Sphere Program before I finished it. Well, I tried again and I still couldn’t finish. My reasons are many, some I think I talked about back then and some I think I didn’t. But they bear repeating because as much as this game is trying to claim the mantle of Factorio, it still comes up short in some important aspects.

First, I still don’t enjoy actually “building” things is DSP. In Factorio you start the game buildings things manually, which means you have to be physically next to whatever you want to build, but at least you can build everything as fast as you can run. Eventually you get little robots who will build things for you anywhere on the map, the only downside is that they’re a bit slower and use energy. DSP unfortunately has the worst of both worlds: you still have to stand next to whatever you’re building, but you *also* have to wait on slow little robots to build the stuff for you. You map out plans, and they *slowly* get to work.

This may seem a petty complaint, but it’s hard to overstate just how much this dampens my enjoyment. I never have the feeling of “let me throw down some massive blueprint that my robots will build, and then go do something else” because I know I’ll have to stand next to them while they build it. I can’t run off and let them do their thing, I have to *stand there*, not doing anything, or nothing gets done. And if the blueprint is big enough, I have to slowly shuffle along it so I can expand the robot’s radius, otherwise the outermost edges of the blueprint never get built either.

I also can’t just quickly build something like a massive transport belt stretching for miles, because I can’t build it at running speed, I have to *wait for the robots*.

OK, that’s a complaint I think I already covered in the previous post, but it bears repeating. What else? Oh yeah, flying in space is boring because again, there’s nothing to do but wait until you reach your destination. Oh, I already said that too?

Well there’s one complaint I’m pretty sure I *didn’t* cover last time but it’s a bit complicated. It has to do with multiple outputs.

In both Factorio and DSP, there are certain things you can build where you can’t build *just* item A, in order to build A you must *also* build an equivalent amount of B. And both A and B must have space to be built or neither can be, if you’re full up on A you can’t build B and vice versa. It’s a bit of a tough balancing act in a game where everything else is build on its own.

But I actually don’t think DSP handles this concept well, even though it has a lot more examples of it than Factorio.

In Factorio, the only time you have multiple outputs is in oil processing. When you start the game the only oil processing you can do is basic oil processing, which takes in crude oil and gives you petroleum gas (think methane and ethane). Basic is the right word for this, because it’s simple and easy with a 1-in-1-out setup. And it’s perfect for making the simple plastics (which you’ll need a lot of) because they require just petroleum gas and coal.

But you quickly research advanced oil processing, and that’s where you get multiple outputs. Advanced processing gives you petroleum gas plus light oil plus heavy oil. And if you don’t find some way to use up the light and heavy oil, you can’t get any more petroleum gas (so you can’t get more plastics). So why would you ever use advanced oil processing, when it complicates your life so much?

Well there are a few items (rocket fuel and lubricant) which *require* light and heavy oil. But also, if you crack all that light and heavy oil down to petroleum gas, you’ll end up with 50% more petroleum gas than what you’d get from basic oil processing.

So this recipe presents you with a trade-off: do you take the simple setup which gets you less total output, or the complicated setup which can get you more? Cracking heavy and light oil isn’t easy, it requires many more refineries and a lot of water, but when oil is scarce and plastic is in high demand, you need as much petroleum gas as you can get. On the other hand when oil is plentiful, maybe you don’t care about efficiency and just want the easier recipe.

DSP has a similar idea, except there’s no trade-off. DSP starts you off with their version of advanced oil processing, which has multiple outputs that you have to find a use for. Later on there are two recipes which can turn one output into the other or vice-versa. This has the same effect as the “cracking” I explained earlier, where it complicates your setup but allows you to have as much of one output as you can get. But in Factorio it’s a trade-off, and in DSP it’s mandatory.

DSP also have multiple outputs in some *exotic* recipes. DSP has all the “normal” raw materials (iron, copper, stone etc), but then it has fantasy ones like “Fire-Ice.” These fantasy materials can usually be processed to yield multiple outputs, at least one of which is a high-level output that normally requires an extremely complicated setup to create. This would be really cool, except on most maps these materials won’t be found in your starting star system, so you can’t even use them until you finish the tech tree anyway. And as I said about multiple outputs, you have to make sure you use up one of the outputs or it will back up your production of the other, and that’s kind of a pain.

I never got out of my starting star system in DSP. I did start launching a little Dyson Swarm and getting power from it. I even appreciated the swarm more this time than last time, as it fixed some of my power issues on my starting planet.

But I really did not enjoy shuffling back and forth between planets to build stuff. In Factorio you can get a bird’s-eye-view of your entire factory and slowly scroll around looking for issues. Or you can just look around for some bare area where you can stamp out more assembly lines. *Or* if you’re busy building that new assembly line, you can glance back at your factory to see how much extra material it can send your way or if you’ll have to make everything this line needs on-site.

I can’t do that in DSP. If there’s an issue on one planet such that it isn’t producing any science, I can’t diagnose that issue without flying all the way there (which takes a few minutes), then looking around for the cause. And perhaps the cause is that I need a few more items which are only produced on my *other* planet. So I have to fly back to the first planet, pick up those items, fly back to the planet with the issues, fix the issues, then fly back to wherever I started when I first noticed the issues so I can get back to what I was doing.

And I can’t build things at a distance, as I said in the first few paragraphs. When I finally got to the last kind of science, what I really wanted was to find somewhere fresh and empty to build so I could get away from the spaghetti I’d already created. There was a planet a few minutes away that I could have gone to. But it didn’t have all the raw materials I needed.

In Factorio that would be fine, I’d zoom to some empty part of the map in my bird’s-eye-view and start carefully planning out whatever assembly line I need to create that final type of science. I can then use a tool to count up how many and what kinds of machines I’ll need to build everything I’ve planned, and figure out what items I’ll need to import to other parts of the factory. Then I load up on machines and send the robots to build. While the robots are building, I can run to other areas and start sending the items needed over to that new area. By the time the robots are finished, everything has arrived and the assembly line can start producing science.

But in DSP this is a time-consuming and *boring* back and forth game of flying to the empty planet, planning out what I’ll build, flying back for machines, bringing them to the empty planet and *slowly* waiting for my robots to build everything while I stand around. Then I fly to whatever planets need to send materials this way and tell them to do so. Then I fly back to that planet where I built everything to make sure everything is working properly.

It’s a mess, it’s boring, and I just couldn’t be bothered to finish the game because of it.

I think if they give a Factorio-style map screen, along with robots who will build stuff when you aren’t standing next to them, the game would be improved just enough for me to finish it. But as long as everything takes so damn long, I don’t think I’ll ever finish it.

I unfortunately just went back to Factorio.

Why can’t I seem to finish a game of Dyson Sphere Program?

I’ve talked a couple of times about Dyson Sphere Program on this blog, and while I’ve enjoyed my time with it immensely, I’ve never managed to actually sit down and finish a game of it. This post will be a sort of ramble on why a game so similar to Factorio just doesn’t do it for me the way Factorio does.

To start with, I’ve already talked about how I feel the game doesn’t “scale up” in the same way Factorio does. Later research goals in Factorio cost exponentially more than earlier ones, but in Dyson Sphere Program the relationship seems more additive or multiplicative than exponential. Then there’s the difficulty with blueprints, I can’t have a nice big blueprint that does everything I want anywhere I want it because since planets have to be spheres, the gridlines get broken up closer to the poles. This means a blueprint developed for the equator doesn’t work at the poles and vice versa, and means it’s not nearly as fun to make and place my blueprints for a big mega-base.

I’m also not to keen on constantly having to move between planets. In Dyson Sphere Program you have different planets that you’re collecting resources from, which should be really fun but the time it takes you to GET to those different planets is very boring. They couldn’t have realistic space travel ala Kerbal Space Program, but they also didn’t do enough to make space travel interesting in and of itself. So sitting there for a few minutes while you travel to another planet is just boring, and you HAVE to keep going back and forth because there’s no way to build things on one planet while you’re standing on another. This was something Factorio dealt with very well, running around was also boring in Factorio but once you build radars everywhere you could go into your map and change things anywhere that you had radar coverage without ever having to move your character. It was fun, it worked, and Dyson Sphere Program should have incorporated it so I don’t have to trek back and forth between planets just to make minor changes.

The lack of enemies is another thing I think I’ve talked about but it bears repeating because in Factorio the enemies actually did a lot for the game. Their attacks kept you on your toes, pushing back their bases gave you something to do while waiting for research, and it was a very fun structural problem to try to figure out how you were going to make everything you wanted to make while still protecting it. Factorio gives you an infinite canvas to build on, but gives you constraints in that you must protect everything from the enemies. That’s more interesting to me than an infinite canvas with no constraints.

Constantly needing to refuel your character (a robot), as well as needing to physically be in the places you want to build, work together to make me not enjoy the endgame. I don’t like running around making sure I have enough fuel or am standing near a charging station, and I don’t like building a giant conveyor belt across a tundra planet if it means I have to march across the planet myself to make sure it gets built. Having the bots build actually makes building long belts go a lot more slowly in this game than it did in Factorio where at least you could build a belt at your running speed.

Unclear benefits to building the actual Dyson Sphere. The Dyson Sphere in literature and science is an idea of harnessing the nearly unlimited energy of a star to do our bidding, and yet I got all the way to the final Research cube and never found myself with the kind of unsolvable power troubles that seemed to require a Dyson Sphere. I built one for kicks (it’s also unclear where you’re supposed to build the launchers but whatever), but I feel like I’d have been just as well or better served building more and more solar grids across the surface of the planet. Land was super plentiful and why should I spent more to build solar grids in space when I could just build solar grids on the ground. The efficiency gains (if there even were any) weren’t worth it and the energy gains for running your planet-wide base weren’t so great that I felt I needed it.

So overall Dyson Sphere Program is still a very fun game, and it’s a somewhat unique way to combine Factorio with space travel. But I’m feeling less and less confident in recommending it to others considering I can’t even bring myself to finish it.

Random thoughts about Dyson Sphere Program

So Dyson Sphere Program (DSP for short) is a video game I’ve put way too much time into, and I decided to write down some random thoughts I had on it

I now know why Factorio was helped by having biters: they give you something to do and work on.  I spend a lot of time in DSP just waiting for the next research to finish. I had nothing to lose but time, and no idea of what to do next. Biters in Factorio at least gave you a goal and a thing to work on whenever you were stuck. “I don’t know what to do, well the biters to the west are giving me trouble, I’ll reinforce the defenses or destroy the nests, maybe both.”

It feels like there’s too much research and also it’s a mistake to let you queue it all immediately.  I end up researching a lot of things that I don’t know what they do or why they help. I just queue up everything I can currently research and I end up wondering what the hell any of it did because I wasn’t really thinking about my decisions. The research queue is a QOL feature, but its absence does at least force the player to kind of go back to the tech tree and glance over the techs every few minutes instead of every few hours.

Also I think the research tree could use some UI help.  There are certain techs that require other techs… but those techs don’t directly precede them.  If I MUST research Tech A before Tech B, then Tech A should be linked to Tech B and immediately precede it.  OR AT LEAST if I click on Tech B because I want to research it, then Tech A should get queued automatically before Tech B.  As it stands I found myself wanting to research certain techs and having to hunt around the tech tree to find the required pre-reqs (logistics/interplanetary logistics were where I had the most trouble)

Other times I research a tech only to find that although I can craft New Item B, that item relies on Other Item A which I do NOT have the tech for.  So again I have to hunt through the tech tree to find Other Item A so I can finally craft New Item B like I wanted to.  Again, if B requires A then A should immediately precede B and I shouldn’t be allowed to research B until I have A.

I feel like this game doesn’t really ramp up in scope and scale as much as Factorio did, and because of this I found myself not really needing or caring to expand all that much.  After making an initial spaghetti base I moved on the starting planet to two new spots to set up research lines, and that basically carried me through half or more of the tech tree.  My starting resources never/barely ran out and I didn’t need to go to new planets for more iron or copper, just for the titanium and silicon that didn’t spawn on my starting planet.  Having certain resources only spawn on specific planets is certainly one way to incentivize moving off-world, but I’d also like it more if higher levels of science required massively increased amounts of resources, forcing you to colonize more and more planets to meet the resource requirements much like how Factorio forces you to expand further and further outwards to meet the higher requirements for Blue/Purple/Yellow science.

Blueprints were the opposite of intuitive.  I understood Factorio blueprints pretty quickly, but I could not possibly figure out how to create a blueprint here without going online.

I really like the multiple levels for transport belts, really makes the spaghetti come alive and does at least mitigate my disappointment in not having double sided belts like Factorio. Double sided belts were where you could create a T-intersection with belts with say Iron Gears from the left and Green Circuits from the right, and the result would be a belt with Gears on its left half and Circuits on its right half. DSP doesn’t have that, but at least with multiple layers of belts all on top of each other it isn’t *too* much trouble to get everything where I want it, possibly even easier.

Having liquids exist as little cubes on belts took some getting used to, but since pipes in Factorio were always a little opaque and had strange fail conditions, I really like this system

Why does every single planet have coal?  Is it just to give a player something to mine for energy when they first land on a planet, to make sure they can always get the energy to get back home?  Because coal being dead plant matter on earth makes it seem like ALL these planets were once life-bearing.