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Post #7331 · source on Telegram
Factorio Base as Perfect Metaphor for Legacy Codebase Entropy
Description
A screenshot from the game Factorio showing an enormously complex and chaotic factory layout with intertwined conveyor belts, pipes, and machinery sprawling across the entire screen. The top text reads 'I FINALLY UNDERSTAND THE IMPERIUM TWO YEARS AGO I BUILT THIS WITH MY OWN HANDS' and the bottom text reads 'I HAVE NO IDEA HOW IT WORKS IT'S ETERNALLY IN A STATE OF DECLINE, BUT I KEEP DUCT TAPING NEW ADDITIONS TO THE FACTORY TO KEEP IT FUNCTIONABLE'. The Warhammer 40K Imperium reference combined with the Factorio spaghetti base perfectly captures the experience of maintaining a legacy system you originally authored but can no longer comprehend
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39Comment deleted
The Imperium of Man runs on the same architecture as your codebase: ancient, incomprehensible rituals performed by people who forgot why they started them, held together by the sheer force of duct tape and denial
This is every senior engineer looking at a codebase they wrote two years ago. It was a cathedral of elegant design then; now it's a shrine to a forgotten god, kept running by duct tape and Stack Overflow answers from 2012
It’s the moment you realise your microservice mesh is basically Conway’s Law rendered in belt spaghetti
The only difference between this Factorio base and your production microservices architecture is that at least in Factorio you can see all the spaghetti on one screen
The Imperium of Man and your two-year-old codebase have more in common than you'd like to admit: both are held together by ancient rituals nobody understands, maintained by tech-priests who pray the machine spirits don't revolt, and any attempt at modernization risks catastrophic failure across the entire system
Rewrites are for heretics; true Mechanicus devs appease the machine spirits with duct-tape rituals and pray the smokestacks don't revolt
It’s not architecture anymore - it’s archaeology. Our Adapter pattern is literal duct tape, and the SLO is held together by cron and tribal memory
I love Factorio but the game being 2d made it a pain in the ass, especially as you progressed further. Satisfactory would be my recommendation, if you not factor in the game having dogshit performance (thanks UE5) Comment deleted
I like Satisfactory but the game being 3d made it a pain in the ass, especially as you progressed further. Factorio would be my recommendation, especially if you factor in the game having excellent performance (thanks custom renderer) Comment deleted
Dogshit take tbh The performance is exceptional for the game this complex. Disable lumin if you don't have high-end gpu and have fun. UE5 is only a part of the problem, it can be used to create great stuff, but only if you're not a copro(misspelled on purpose)-dev with photo-realism as your only goal Comment deleted
I have a fairly powerful rig but the performance is still ass. It was somewhat ok when they were on UE4 but the upgrade to UE5 tanked the whole game. And no, I don't have that useless lumen feature enabled. Comment deleted
That's what I thought until I capped the FPS, unlimited FPS in satisfactory fucks everything up Comment deleted
It's capped, but I still don't like having my fans get obnoxiously loud when I'm just sitting in the main menu. Still, it's very addicting and I can't put it down Comment deleted
Lmao who does even need it at all Ppl are stupid I can understand 90, mb 144 if you are playing shooters, but for Satisfactory 60 is just enough Comment deleted
idk, I can clearly see the difference between 60 and 165 frames per second on my monitor, even if I just moving the mouse pointer, and 60 frames per second is uncomfortable for me. A week ago, my ubuntu AGAIN broke the nvidia drivers and fallback to old version that does not support more than 60 frames per second, and I noticed this immediately after reboot. Comment deleted
60 and 165 is poles apart.someone seeing 60 vs 165 side by side can tell immediately Comment deleted
Exactly I have 60, but unlimited is the default setting Comment deleted
Satisfactory doesn't require think. You just place things and connect them. Since it's 3D, you can easily connect everything by simply building over existing buildings. Factorio, on the other hand, gives you puzzles, and the more compact you try to build something, the more interesting those puzzles become. Comment deleted
Worst take of the year Comment deleted
Partially true. I'd say Satisfactory is designed in a way that requires the player to design something monumental, but exactly once per completion, and new each time Comment deleted
It's just slightly uncomfortable, for the real PITA try Dwarf Fortress. Comment deleted
I like Satisfactory and Factorio, but feel that I'm ready for something 4d Comment deleted
There is a 5d chess with time travel and multiverse Comment deleted
https://youtu.be/q7qFuoerlVI?si=jzgx70SE9ZERLB34 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/ much insteresting 4 me tbh Comment deleted
Also, factorio being 2D doesn't take away from any aspect of it being a genre-defining masterpiece Comment deleted
I didn't say it wasn't. I just prefer not to be confined to a 2d space. Hence why the recommendation. Comment deleted
For me the downside of Satisfactory is you can't just copy a thing and plop it right next to the thing you already have Maybe that has changed Comment deleted
It has blueprints now, but with limited size and need special building for blueprint creation. Comment deleted
That's exactly the problem, you don't have the blueprint if you've just designed the thing and now want another copy of it Comment deleted
well, yea, but thats was game design decision. devs clearly says that satisfactory is game for peoples that just enjoy building process, so they dont add any tool that allow you build factories effortlessly Comment deleted
Oh, thats like my code... Comment deleted
And Factorio is meant to be scaled up until your pc is dying, on the other hand Comment deleted
can confirm, there's actual guides on how to reduce lag so your factory can grow even more Comment deleted
I will note that this is usually the ultra-lategame. I've personally only encountered this after 100+ hours on my very weak laptop with zero thought put into what is and isn't performant AND on the 1.x version that had ridiculously unoptimized fluid calculations compared to 2.0 Comment deleted
I think mindustry is also a great game which is free, but its focus is split between production and pve Comment deleted
Satisfactory sucks, Techtonica is the real 3D factory game Comment deleted
factorio is the best way to test you're design patterns and software engineering skills Comment deleted
It's so unbelievably sad, it's so much more mechanically interesting and fun than Satisfactory. Comment deleted
yeah but it's harder and not as easy to make spaghetti Comment deleted