Alternative Friday Factorio Fan Facts

For this week’s issue of Alt-F4, Therenas takes a page out of the FFF playbook and talks about the development process of the next big update for his mod Factory Planner, going into his somewhat philosophical thoughts on interface design. Dr_Doof also shares a cosy little Christmas event with us, organised by the Red Circuit crew.

Another week, another issue of Alt-F4! The sixteenth week of this merry series of words to be precise. To celebrate, TheKool continues his Complexity Corner series by asking the five Ws about speed modules. Afterwards, DedlySpyder pontificates on how modding inspiration sometimes comes from unexpected places.

This week, with 1.1 experimental just released, we take a look at two of the things it brings with it. First, Conor_ investigates what the new train stop limit allows him to do in his TSM-based factory. Then, Therenas explores what the multithreading update to belts means, both in theory and in practice. Careful, you might just learn something!

This week ironic toblerone takes us on a crazy adventure into space featuring the fantastic Space Exploration mod by Earendel. Suit up and strap in, this is a fun one!

In this spookily coincidental issue 13 of Alt-F4 published on Friday 13th (it’s almost like we planned this), we focus on a single topic: building as many rocket defences as possible. What are rocket defences, you ask? Well, stringweasel is here to tell you, taking you back to a simpler time; the land of Factorio 0.11.

In this very easily divisible issue number 12 of Alt-F4, xthexder goes into some of the technical behind-the-scenes regarding the bouncy spider at the bottom of the page. Then, TheKool gives some newcomer-friendly insight into production modules and their uses. Finally, T-A-R shares some info on an upcoming community event that looks like a lot of fun.

Welcome to the eleventh edition of Alt-F4, bringing you both mathematical analysis and a history lesson. So, listen up, student! Pocarski took it upon themself to see whether real-world mathematics works out on Nauvis. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. Then, stringweasel returns once again to take a look at a bit of history, this time focusing on past mechanics that are now long obsolete.

Welcome to the tenth edition of Alt-F4, breaking into double digits! This week, Recon419A returns to present a compelling argument, this time about how you should go about setting up the borders of your empire. Next, trupen does some science and dives into some of the rare annoying aspects of Factorio. Lastly, stringweasel has some corrections of last week’s issue of Alt-F4 on the origins of Nauvis.

After our special love letter issue last week, we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming this week with issue nine! TheEnemy42 gives us some insight on how the crowdsourced process of translating Factorio into many different languages works, and stringweasel continues their Nauvis Archives series by digging into the origins of some of the language that has developed around the game. Enjoy!

For this issue of Alt-F4 we decided to do something special: ask the community why exactly they love this game so much. Everyone was invited to submit a short piece detailing their absolute favourite thing about Factorio, which many promptly did. Here’s to one of the greatest games of all time, and to the dedicated team that made it a reality these last eight years!