Captain of Industry

The game is amazing if you like these kind of games. Hours pass by without even noticing and there's always something to do, something to optimize, something new to build. The research tree is inmense, there's a lot of content in this game. BUT. They're still in Early Access and there's already a DLC hiding content behind a paywall. The game is not a cheap indie either, which makes this inexcusable (honestly the price is fine for a game like this, but the DLC while in development is dirty).

On paper, this is hands down a more complicated game than any of the "Big 3" in the genre: Factorio, Satisfactory, and Dyson Sphere Program. For anyone thinking of buying this who has never touched at least one of those games—you can stop reading here. Go play one of those instead, because this one will overwhelm you and possibly turn you off from the entire factory-builder genre. Unlike other games in the genre, the extra difficulty in COI comes down to: -Handling byproducts -Managing population growth -Managing buildable space It sounds like something any factory-builder fan would love, but let me explain why in practice the game kind of falls apart for me. 1. Handling byproducts This part is genuinely fun (most of the time). It requires you to either build additional production chains to process byproducts or set up mechanisms to dispose of them. Since these byproducts are often fed into other production chains, you have to carefully balance your ratios or vastly overproduce everything. The main problem is that almost every mid-to-late-game production chain generates at least one byproduct (often more), so it gets tedious fast. Imagine Factorio's [spoiler]Gleba and Fulgora[/spoiler], but with much more variation in what you need to manage just to keep your entire production chain from either backing up or getting starved. During those sections in Factorio, I frequently had to close the game because I was overwhelmed by the dependencies between all of the products and needed to do something else, and I know other people in the community share my sentiment about those sections being harder to plan for. 2. Managing population growth Almost every production building requires people to run it. Those people have to be fed, supplied with goods and medicine, and have their garbage collected. Population growth can take in-game years, and diseases can spread quickly, leading to a population collapse. In a worst-case scenario, improperly prioritized facilities are left unmanned, triggering a death spiral. With proper priorities set, your critical infrastructure should be the last thing to go dark, so that specific scenario is not a death spiral you should be realistically worried about. The real issue is that, due to these population fluctuations, expansion has to be very gradual. With every major growth spurt, you have to stop what you're doing and revisit your current setup: -Farms -Power Transformers -Luxury goods production -Waste disposal You constantly have to verify that your existing infrastructure can support the new population size. If it can't, you must immediately halt expansion to add a new module or redesign the relevant factory. Underproducing food or falling behind on waste management will set you back significantly, costing you population that takes years—if not decades—to regain while your factory sits partially unmanned. In other games, underproducing simply means reduced throughput; here, you are actively punished for expanding too fast. 3. Managing buildable space The maps feel huge until you actually start playing and realize how massive the facilities are. You quickly learn that [u]space is a resource[/u]. To make matters worse, you can't just place factories anywhere: some recipes require seawater, and ore processing needs to stay close to the mine. If you want to use trains, you also have to account for their huge turning radiuses and strict incline limits. Eventually, you reach a point where you either have to flatten an entire mountain range with excavators or surrender to belt/pipe/rail spaghetti, as a clean layout isn't always possible. And if you do choose to wait for those mountain ranges to be moved— better leave the game on the second screen, grab some popcorn and watch a movie or do something else. Leaving the game overnight is also not an option, since all it takes is for the game to back up on one of critical byproducts like rock/slag to eventually turn the entire infrastructure down if left unmonitored. [h3] Summary / TL;DR [/h3] Most factory builders give you a sense of accomplishment with every completed production chain, without forcing you to immediately overhaul your existing infrastructure under threat of losing the entire run. This game does. It's also the only factory builder where map space is vast, but buildable space is extremely scarce until the mid-to-late game. This forces you to either stall your tech progression while terraforming or construct suboptimal logistics because you can't hook a poorly placed factory into your rail network. I really tried to like this game, I put 250 hours into it across multiple saves, but I just had to step away. Maybe I'll revisit it for 1.0, but at this point in development I doubt my gripes will be addressed. These aren't bugs or balancing issues but fundamental design philosophy that just doesn't sit right with me.