No matter how the problem breaks down, one single person will only ever be able to complete the work of a single person. One equals one; it's the reflexive property of equality in math and while people aren't numbers, it still holds true in this case. What technology changes, though, is that while "a single person" remains the same, "the work of..." is a variable that can be improved. One of the fun aspects of the fantasy of automation gaming is seeing that variable scale upwards forever, with a tech tree that gets deeper into sci-fi territory with each new discovery. Alternately, like in Pistonica, tech could advance to the steam age and no further, because once you accept the idea of machines that work perfectly and never break down, dirigible drones and skybound locomotives fit right in.
The demo for Pistonica released recently and it's your basic Satisfactory-style automation game, except on a lovely tropical island where every tool and machine is designed like it's the early 1900s. Wooden drive shafts replace electricity cables and all power is rotational, so rather than batteries to store excess energy you need a nice set of flywheels. Everything is a bit rusty and has the feeling that a whole lot of cast iron was involved in its creation, and "high tech" means a clever use of physical force. It's the kind of setting where it feels like phlogiston is going to show up somewhere, despite that theory dying well before the tech level driving Pistonica's automation empire.
Starting off with little more than a blueprint to build a radio lab plus a box of various supplies, you're dumped on a lovely tropical island to discover the source of a mysterious signal. Thankfully, the supply box has a couple of tools inside to harvest trees and dig up ore, plus a little poking around picking up driftwood and random chunks of stone should turn up a lost chest or two with more advanced goodies inside. This is plenty to get a foothold on the island, building the radio lab and then supplying it with the components needed to blow through the first full tech tier without much fuss.
The tech tree is arranged in tiers, with the first three being fully available in the Pistonica demo. Tier I is all the basics needed to start automation off properly, with a couple of harvesters for wood and ore, basic conveyors, a small storage, etc. The first item is for a manual crafting workshop, the kind of thing you use as little as humanly possible because what's the point of all this lovely machinery if it isn't to build things for you? Still, early days on the island is rough living, so until Tier II's assemblers are available it's necessary to live like a barbarian and hand-craft a few odds and ends. By the end of the demo, though, you'll have a nice network of machines building a solid supply of every possible needed component, linked together by a power network running off wind and steam, while a fleet of mini-dirigibles transports ore from far-away mining outposts to the central production hub.
For the first little while, though, you'll need to deal with multiple items per harvester, because the starting resources never come alone. A good iron mining spot might also bring up some coal with it, or the wood-harvesting drone also snags bananas. Mining spots are pretty much wherever you want to drop an extractor down, with a notification telling you what's coming up and in what quantities per minute, and it only takes a bit of fishing around the landscape to realize that some mining spots are much better than others. This varies from game to game, because while the island's geometry is identical whenever you start a new game, the ore deposits generated from a random seed. Rock formations let you know where the very best deposits are, and a little careful fishing about reveals pure nodes that only give out a single type of ore. At the demo's start they're too far away to do much with, but once the dirigible-drones are unlocked that all changes and you can start manufacturing in bulk.
I'll admit that Pistonica is more than a bit rough around the edges in its current version, but by the time I'd completed the demo I found that I didn't much care. It's got a weirdly appealing level of jank, a little offputting at first but somehow comfortable after a while, as you learn the tools to either work around or with it. It also helps the game has a fun sense of humor, and that the machines are a lot of fun to play with thanks to the nicely physical designs based on early 1900s tech. By the end of the demo I'd abused the building system to see the second island and climb its volcano, made use of the trading system to ship out an endless supply of products for more gold than I could possibly have any use for without new tech tiers to spend it on, and created a power grid that massively overproduced any potential energy needs. You can't go into Pistonica expecting the next Satisfactory (no matter how many wannabe-influencers use that line for every new first-person automation game) but if you go in with properly adjusted expectations, Pistonica is a great time on a mysterious tropical island.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://hardcoregamer.com/a-tropical-steampunk-automation-excurion-in-pistonica-demo/
