izigame.me

I've beaten factorio, shapez 1 and 2, and satisfactory.
I've gotten pretty far in mindustry and countless other tycoon/management games.
This is my favorite genre.
Foundry lacks the polish that factorio has but to be fair to foundry, no other factory game has the QoL and depth that factorio has. Reading foundry's patch notes it shows that the devs are paying attention to the pain points and that gives me hope for an easier play through once I come back to the game.
Overall, if you enjoy factory games, this is for you. The game does a fantastic job at making itself stand out with the galactic market and logistics options. I got it on sale for 16 dollars and it was a fantastic purchase.
If I could get any one feature added to the game it would, without any competition, be gathering supplies for massive projects. I set up a total of 4 malls in the game but due to the distances between sections of the factory, I ran out of materials constantly. I'm begging the devs to add something that brings belts, loaders, building blocks, pipes, and other bits and bobs to the character. Satisfactory solved this issue with the dimensional depot, factorio with logistic bots and shapez only limits the number of things placed with easy methods to increase that value.
Another minor (and i mean minor) gripe i have is once you finish your tech tree, there are only researches to increase mining vein productivity and pump-jack productivity. Once I switched over to shipping in all materials, I had no need for research. The multiple days worth of factory dedicated to research now sit silent waiting for orders that will never come.
Must install mods:
any blueprint mod. This game needs a blueprint mechanic. Manually placing every loader sucked. Later game products use 4 inputs and 1 output, that 5 things plus the belts that all have to be manually placed. I think I averaged 4ish machines PER INTERMEDIATE STEP. Once I had the blueprint mod, I was scaling up to 20 machines per intermediate step and it took half the time. My current project is a 74k per hour robot factory that uses 200 max tier assemblers. I would not be doing the project if the blueprint mod didn't allow me to scale.

----

Pros:
Galactic Industry
galactic industry is an amazingly well executed mechanic. I found it intuitive to use and learn and 90% of my factory is supplied by the galactic market.
Planetary Logistics
It is fun to sit back and watch all of the planetary ships scoot around and deliver my materials. I love that I have the option to forgo ore patches in lieu of buying and shipping materials. making outposts is easily my least favorite aspect of all factory games but this is a nice alternative.
Robot Manufacturing/Selling
Selling the various robots was a delightful mechanic, the interface was a touch difficult to figure out but once i understood it i was fine. It was nice creating mini factories dedicated to various bots. If i needed more firmalite, id just chuck down a new production line and set up enough shipping to sell everything.
Infrastructure
The high voltage/low voltage was an intuitive mechanic that did a great job at guiding me by suggesting i spread out my factory. In the end I ended up building on a mega slab of building blocks but chucking down transformers on separate pads was easy.
The infrastructure in this game is fantastic. Needing an elevator to get places pre-jetpack was a neat mechanic and I still use them to get to the lava zone. Setting up the infrastructure was a highlight of the game but that could be a me thing. Freight elevators too. I would like to see an interface on the freight elevator that allowed multiple levels. It would allow vertical buses but if it doesn't get added, oh well.
Can you pet the dog?
You can pet the wildlife.
Sound Design
I am genuinely frustrated at myself for deciding to build in a desert. A section of my factory dipped into the rain forest biome and the bird sounds were delightful. A sound design pass is definitely needed.
Modular Buildings
Modular buildings were an amazing feature. A tip for people getting started with modular buildings is ship in construction blocks on a T2 medium ship that empties into 4 separate warehouses. set up 4 transport ships and set up 4 construction ships. Speeds things up a lot.
Orbital laser.
This is single-handedly the best surface terraforming tool the game has. I've leveled mountains. Tip for terraforming: point the laser perfectly horizontal to your current location and just hold down the button. The laser will carve out terrain until it reaches your laser pointer at which point it'll move forward and start carving out the next section of the mountain. Reminds me of the way water jet cutters work. My only complaint is that the upgrades for the laser don't increase the duration by any significant amount. At least not for the digging I was doing.
----

Cons:
Ux/Ui
The controls need an update. The deconstruction and construction ranges are too low, machine hit-boxes make placing things tricky. I spend a majority of my build time floating with the jetpack so I'm frequently fighting with landing pads and fluid machines for line of sight to the block I'm placing.
Fluid Processing
One of my least favorite aspects of the game is fluid processing. Pipes are really cumbersome and are a pain to quickly build with and you will frequently be building new olumite outposts. as soon as i realized i could ship in olumite i did. yeah productivity would make it easier but I quickly out-scaled the pipe throughput and the logistics of my multiple mini factories plus needing unique outposts for each one just wasn't fun (to me).
Olumite Shipping
about 2/3rds of my galactic market purchases are olumite barrels. I feel that the weight could be lowered a bit but I wouldn't mind a dedicated ship that only transports liquids. We already have a cargo ship dedicated to planet side transport.
Ship Loading/Unloading
Example: I built a mini factory that made 1k construction material per minute. 5 max tier assemblers. I needed two T2 medium ships to handle that throughput. Its not too bad but scaling any larger would make the landing pads take up more space that the machines manufacturing the parts. I don't know how to fix this in a way that doesn't break item balance elsewhere but it is a (minor) gripe.
Draw Distance
I have a really good PC because I always go big in factory games. Let me raise the cameras max distance. Same with the minimap. Pop in and screen draw distance is also insufficient. I had to be almost on top of some solar panels to get their angle to update properly. The solar panel still worked, it was just a visual thing.
Lack of Power Options
You get two options. Solar/battery or fueled steam turbines. Both scale up well, I would just like to see more options.
Noise Ambiance
Assemblers have one noise. "KER-CHUNK"
Ship Movement
Ships could use an animation update. They move up and down with no smoothing.
Galactic Map
Needs a way to bulk select planets and sectors to unlock them.
Firmalite Plates
Placing the lava smelters sucks. Everything later on needs a lot of plates. My combat robot assembly line needed 30 Smelters and there's no way to destroy terrain in the caves. This leads to constant fiddling and positioning to place enough down for the project and then you have to run foundation and belts to each one. I developed a system that let me do it quickly but if i could clear the terrain and copy paste, I would be happy.
World Traversal
jetpack is too slow especially when I need to make excessively frequent supply runs. Conveyor belts don't really have a home since I'm constantly moving between locations.
Mining Veins
The hourglass shape of the veins makes setting up freight elevators a pain. If there were better teraforming options this would be easier. Automate explosives.