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Factorio is known among the more technical segment of its player base as one of the most, if not the most, well-optimized pieces of software in videogames. Yet its optimization-obsessed fans manage to push the limits of the factory-builder’s simulation anyway… and then use mods surpass them.
Thus was born the Eternity Cluster, this year’s Factorio megaproject that saw hundreds of players network their factories using a mod to create the God Factory, a system of factories designed to produce over 1,000,000 science per minute, or SPM. Where a normal Factorio player may need 30 or 40 SPM to beat the game by launching a rocket, the God Factory’s maximalist approach was to create as much as it possibly could.
“The most difficult obstacle has been not burning out working on the project,” Hornwitser, one of the organizers and a developer on the Clusterio mod that made it possible, told PC Gamer back in March.
In the end the Eternity Cluster logged over 400 players clocking about 3,900 total hours contributed to creating the God Factory. It’s the kind of huge community event that PC gaming celebrates, that makes waves outside its own niche because of how cool it is that people came together to collaborate on the thing they love in a strange new way unique to them. One that relies, even, on turning the game into something the developers never intended.
After breaking that huge record by optimizing those networked factories, of course the Eternity Cluster team wanted to go bigger. You can read a lot more about that in our feature on the Eternity Cluster.
As for what Clusterio and the Eternity Cluster’s creators have planned for the future now that Factorio has a huge, well-received, planet-spanning expansion pack? I shudder to think, but it definitely involves a hell of a lot more rockets.
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Kurt Indovina
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