How do you call these games that let you macro-manage people/creatures/processes and you can watch your engine run?
Examples are Rimworld, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Factorio.
I don’t like fast action-based RTS, micromanaging games, I just love to create a world and watch it running on it‘s own!
Is there a specific name for this mechanic? And what are your favorite examples?
Factorio. The factory must grow.
HowWhat do you call these games
I call them management sims, but I’m sure there are other names for the genre, too.
Rimworld is one of my favorites.
Mindustry has been getting a lot of praise. I hope to check it out soon.
Cities: Skylines is popular, and Cities: Skylines II is due soon.
Satisfactory is good (although the Steam version used Epic Games telemetry, which has been called out for being rather invasive, last time I looked).
I usually call them management games. Looking at the Steam tags for Factorio and RimWorld, they both have “Management” and Factorio additionally has “Resource Management”. But I think “Management” is your best bet.
I think RTS games don’t usually fall under management and instead are just called RTS.
In terms of my favourite ones, I love FTL: Faster Than Light. I’m picking it up again at the moment actually. I also like RinWorld, Oxygen Not Included, and Dungeon of the Endless.
I don’t know if I would call FTL a process optimization game. One thing I feel like it’s missing is feedback if your process is being optimized or if you just got lucky. With Rimworld, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Factorio all include metrics that allow you to judge if you’ve made your process better but because of FTLs randomness, it’s hard to determine if you played better or just had better rolls. That said I love FTL and it’s an amazing game.
I’ve played a good bit of FTL and never felt like I knew what I was doing.
Links so people can view from their own instance
Those still direct to the same URL for me. Auto-conversion of ! references seems sub-optimal that way.
What works is linking manually to /c/automation_games (propably only from lemmy, as I understand kbin has different conventions :( ): !automation_games@feddit.de, written like [!automation_games@feddit.de](/c/automation_games)
They’re called management sims, or in the case of Factorio a factory builder.
Rimworld is a colony management sim… check out Dwarf Fortress or Oxygen Not Included for similar games
Rollercoaster Tycoon is a theme park management sim, the obvious suggestions are Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo but also check out City Skylines.
Factorio is a factory builder, I would recommend Satisfactory or Dyson Sphere Program, there’s a few handfuls of those types of games. If you want to get a little wild look into Minecraft (Java edition) w/ mods - most easily something like the FTB Infinity Evolved or one of the new Direwolf packs, it’s arguably where the factory building craze started.
I need to try to get back into ONI. It should be something I would really enjoy. But I got hung up on some details.
Actually, I know it’s a defect in my mindset in approaching that game. I shouldn’t expect certain things like conservation of mass and energy… I also took a while to realize that solubility and diffusion just don’t exist in the game. I don’t want to care so much about this but I struggle.
I loved Tekkit/FTB back in the day! Lots of good times setting up factories and controlling swarms of turtles.
To be honest, I’ve never been able to get over the hump in ONI. I play for hours, have a blast but eventually things start falling apart and I’m not usually able to recover. That being said, I know there’s been some updates since last I played so I may go back to it soon.
Back in 2011 or so I got really into Minecraft mods. I think it was literally just Buildcraft and Industrialcraft. It involved many steps, putting folders inside the Minecraft JAR file, deleting meta INF files, etc. I stuck with it for a few years during which the scene exploded. I actually paid to host a website for my friend’s only server that just included links to the specifics mod versions and step by step instructions how to install them. It was around the same time FTB modpacks came out that I fell off, I played one or two SP worlds with FTB Infinity Evolved and had a lot of fun but Factorio and eventually Satisfactory scratched that same itch.
