Alternatieve Vrijdag Factorio Fan Feiten

For issue #51 of Alt-F4, long-time contributor and editor extraordinaire stringweasel delights us with a deep dive into the history of mods trying to make Factorio power network management more realistic. All of them have their own issues and trade-offs, which is why he then introduces his own take at this age-old problem, with great results!

This week is the golden anniversary of Alt-F4, it being issue #50 and all. No special festivities though, feels like we are doing that often enough. Instead, garr890354839 makes their first contribution by talking about some of the weirdnesses and some of the math surrounding rocket silos. Then, everLord introduces another community event by the comfy squad called ‘Biter Battle Championship’!

After an involuntary two-week break (please join our Discord to contribute your amazing article hint hint nod nod), Alt-F4 is back with issue #49! There’s two returns in one week actually, as Dysoch returns to talk about Dyworld once again, this time about the release party and all the fun leading up to it.

After a long while, an ancient contributor by the name of Lovely_Santa is back in his writing pen! We’ve last heard from our hero all the way back in Issue #2 where he was experimenting with the modding abilities of the new (at the time) Spidertron. This time, he actually stays on the topic of Angel’s mods, while writing about something completely different …

After a three-week hiatus, Alt-F4 is back, more motivated than ever! We start off with a bang as ilbJanissary goes into depth about how the calculation engine behind FactorioLab does its magic. It might seem complicated at the surface, but the process is broken down into granular parts that are illustrated with actual examples. No eyes will glaze over reading this piece (hopefully!).

Oh man. It really has been a year since I started this project. Can’t quite believe it’s already been a year, while also not quite believing the project carried on for a whole year. In the beginning, it was just a silly idea that I wanted to try out and see where it would go, not really expecting it to become an actual project with dozens of people regularly contributing. It would have likely faded after a few weeks without tons of people stepping up and contributing. But (at least in this reality) it didn’t, which I’m very happy about and grateful for.

For issue #45, Alt-F4 has another mod spotlight to share, with the twist that the issue will be released alongisde the mod itself! Niet has been plugging away at bringing some of Satisfactory’s mechanics to Factorio, and it’s way more involved than just bringing over the recipes and calling it a day. The article below goes into all the tricks that are used to try and emulate another game as closely as possible.

You remember April Fool’s day this year? Was quite a while ago already, but if you visited the subreddit on that day, you probably saw arrow in my gluteus maximus’s mind-bending video. If not, this week’s issue #44 of Alt-F4 will catch you up and then go over how exactly this dark magic presentation was achieved!

In issue #43 of Alt-F4, mod-maker extraordinaire Dysoch talks about his history of modding (which started all the way back in Factorio 0.7!), giving a bit of an overview of how his mods evolved over time. Then, he goes into his latest and greatest project that’s due for release very soon. It’s a big overhaul mod that’s focused on an overarching story with the goal to be more immersive than previous big mods. More on the details below!

In this week’s issue #42 of Alt-F4, after previously investigating the games that influenced Factorio, we’ll now be looking at how Factorio influenced the automation genre as a whole, if that’s even a thing. Maybe it isn’t. After 7.5 million years of contemplation, Nanogamer7 has an answer, and it might surprise you.