I love this little snippet and the posters and icons for each faction are very, very cool. Being a huge fan of Factorio, I have spent hundreds of hours playing around with all of its technology and trying to discover what works best. I personally find a mixture works best, though I'll admit most of my operations focus on belts and bots because I settle my bases in places that have tons of trees, so trains don't get involved until the late tech part of the game.



I also play around with writing fanfics, of which my initial idea focused around a single character (either a human or an android) that crashed on a 'default' planet and now had to escape to space and return home. This became boring quickly with just one character, so later versions expanded this to be a small group, working purely with humans at this point, but getting home was always the end goal. However, I never really had any details about the universe at large, but this gives me ideas both for that and to bring androids and more robotic entities into the story:



. The universe is in a state of industrialization. Planets across the galaxy rich in resources are targeted for processing and production while others with no sentient life forms are militarily cleared for colonization. All aspects of these efforts, as well as everything in between, is handled by Factorio; the galaxy's largest corporate organization, harnessing and exploiting the valuables of the universe for the benefit of sentient life.



. Unfortunately, this massive endeavor has encountered an unexpected brand of competition and, more surprisingly, resistance. The Automata, a self-designated 'race' of robots, androids, and machine, created with artificial intelligence to handle and accelerate the efficiency of these efforts, both compete against each other within Factorio's employ, each proclaiming themselves superior to the other, and rebelling against Factorio and the organics, denying themselves as 'merely machines built to serve' but deserving of their own place in the universe; some arguing they are even more deserving than the organics as it is their efforts which harvest the resources, produce the technology, and clear and colonize the planets the organics reside upon.



. Caught in the middle of one of these conflicts, one of the Factorio company's Prospector-class starship, The Lady Fortuna, has gone missing while on a mission to evaluate several systems and planets beyond the territories of colonized space to determine their value in the growing boarder expansion efforts. It's surviving crew, a mixture of Humans and 'Automata', have crash landed on one of the planets they were sent to evaluate and must now return to space and make contact with Factorio in order to return home. However, they must first develop the technology to do so and survive against the native creatures of this new world, all while being wary of those who attacked them returning to finish the job or, potentially, A.I. rebellion. Will the survivors be able to work together and return home? Or will they fall victim to the threats and enemies around them? Or will they be too busy fighting each other? Can they overcome the differences in their beliefs? Or will their own internal struggles be their ultimate undoing?



I can see the cliches in this plot, but I can also see it becoming a really interesting story if I can figure out how to handle the characters properly. Add in references to Fallout, Starship Troopers, maybe even some Dead Space, and it'd be pretty fun to write as well.



I think I'm going to be busy with a new alpha for the next week or so.