Im keeping this separate to my major bug reports but i wanted to put together a few ideas and comments that ive had about the game (Based on version 1.04)
and because im proud of it this is a link to my favourite factory ive built to date my “MegaFactory” - 104MegaFactory.xml (1.87 MB)
Bugs
Ordering of parts at stations is still buggy - with stations (in 1.04) still ordering the wrong things in the wrong quantities - tested with a brand new game in tight budget and just following the first car around the stations resulted in these scenarios (and this happens every time) It also makes tight budget nearly impossible at the moment - I also see it in my megafactory - at the lights seats and wheels stations
Occasionally very odd items get delivered to stations - like this examples (cant recreate the circumstances leading to that) but you can see it at varying stations around my megafactory - and it seems to happen over time in new games
When the game is run at full speed my factory which normally runs smoothly starts to back up - i think its because while machines operate faster the speed at which they request new parts doesnt keep pace causing the stations to end up sitting around waiting for parts
The power plant upgrade doesn’t seem to increase the output of the power plants
Parts on the overheads sometimes have the wrong graphics - you see them change when they reach stockpiles
Its possible to install a station even when its Red (stations which are red due to the conveyor belts facing the wrong day will install if you click
The pathfinding is significantly better in 1.04 but not yet totally perfect
This isnt a game problem but i figure you might have more sway with them than me - it would be really handy if in addition to the date on the download page for games on the Humble Store they had a field for version number.
Gameplay Comments
With very fast running factories the export speed of one car per 8 seconds is too slow (my megafactory doing one car every ~3.7 seconds needs to be wired to 3 export slots to manage the flow of vehicles) - is there a plan to upgrade the speed of exports
Making components - at 3.7 (lets call it 4 for maths sake) seconds per car with 5 wheels and 1.5 seconds to make a wheel i need 2-3 make wheel stations to keep up with demand using 6 steel every 1.5-1.7 seconds to keep up - without improvements in either speed of importers or in some sort of improve manufacturing speed and yield upgrades the number of import sockets needed to do the raw material to finished parts conversions is astronomical (its even worse with make lights which needed 2 steel and 1 glass for one light every 6.4 seconds - meaning to keep up with demand id need ~7 stations at work at once)
It would be great to be able to “clone” configs at stations and stockpiles - click on one stockpile and say i want you to be like this one (much like format painter in MSOffice)
Colourable overhead conveyors would be great the network in my megafactory is a birds nest and really hard to work out whats going where
A pause button on stations would be useful - to stop cars moving onto a section of line being rebuilt
The GUI for more robots upgrades Vs Feature Upgrades could use being separate buttons - and the GUI for the stockpile could benefit from a text search (i know gui improvements arent critical at this time)
Not sure how to fix this but at high zoom levels all the factory notices (parts used/ordered) make things visually messy - it would be nice to be able to suppress some of them so you could just enjoy the cars moving around
The delay before a station orders new parts makes super high speed production very difficult - i found by giving stations like fit valves the full upgrade to robots - meaning they can fit the valves in half the time i need them to it improved things because they ordered parts sooner)
Realism upgrades - Id like to see a new station if at all possible Fit Engine Block - and i think it would be better if brakes were installed before the wheels/tyres which is required to be done that way in the real world - also if one opts for a spare wheel that should mean the car needs 5 tyres not 4) - It would also be good to have a graphic following paint where the cars bonnet was up during the engine install process (but im aware that means more graphics would be needed - The sunroof upgrade to fit roof should also require a window at the roof station
This might be a debug only thing - but a purge inventory button for both stockpiles and stations would be useful for clearing out unwanted stock/stock delivered in error without having to delete the station/stockpile
That said for all the complaining ive really enjoyed the game so far (and sitting back watching cars flow smoothly through my best creation to date), features im hoping to see (gameplay wise) will be around having new models, and the need to differentiate ones product offerings on the same line (conditional feature installing) - just now in my factory ive done that with 1 in 3 cars having a panoramic roof (much like the way the real car market works where you have base cars and say a luxury version on the same line with leather seats. Plus the marketing to go with it - making it say unfeasible as a no name car maker to produce luxury cars and flog them at high margins for example
But great work and ive certainly had more than 10USD worth of fun so far 
