Originally posted by /u/alpinemesh
Hi everyone, it is me again with the attempts to produce videos about Kittens Game. I got the general sentiment the last time that watching a let’s play is not too entertaining because there is nothing spectacular to look at but I just could not stop :)
Elevator pitch: Are you a beginner and just don’t know yet how to survive your first winter without too many casualties? Maybe you are a seasoned player that wants to help a friend to get started? This video tutorial has all the answers to the very basic questions and a tiny bit more!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhEcvK1MZ_E
It has two parts. The general explanation of what incremental games are and what is the point of them, and a hands-on practical example of getting started with a very first run of Kittens. I am sure that most people here don’t need it anymore, but you may use it to get your friends play and enjoy it, which was my initial intention.
featherwinglove
Capt. Kirk and Dr. Taylor (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home 1986)
Antipatience
Yeah, I run the current WR design when I play. It’s pretty hilarious hand feeding the silo cause fast inserters can’t keep up.
Penny pinching the time saves, I mean. Red belt is so pricy that (outside of 100%) it’s only really used to save like 30 seconds on the wait for that one last RCU/rocket fuel to reach the silo in order to launch xD
featherwinglove
Me no understand “penny pinching” …those things are expensive. The runs I’ve seen (at least the recent WRs) beacon the silo so hard that it can build the rocket faster than it can launch it and they hand inject all the parts. Where I see the most red belt is actually in the steel back end: They size it to fill a yellow conveyor with stone furnaces, and then once they have the steel/refractory furnace, replace all those furnaces with the double-speed variety, double the number of iron EMMs, and replace most of the yellow belt with red belt. Also, in 100% almost all of the red belt is used to bring together the iron and copper for the 48 green circuit front ends for the most ridiculous achievement I’ve ever seen in a video game. And it’s in a video game that has an achievement for getting run over by your own train. (The funniest train accident I’ve ever seen was this guy who blew up a biter nest and had this medium biter following him for nearly a minute until it got splattered by a train. The player had no idea this was happening until I tagged him with the timestamp in a comment days after the gameplay.)
Antipatience
Ah yes. Red belts in a Factorio speed run. Outside of 100% they’re used for very short stretches to get an extra couple ASM in the line, and to reduce latency of the final parts getting to the rocket. In other words, it’s just penny pinching for time saves (speedrunning in a nutshell lol)
alpinemesh
Thank you very much for your appreciation and recognition! It is especially nice to hear from somebody who knows firsthand the difficulties of making such videos.
I started the channel so that I could produce Kittens videos, and not the other way around. I guess, that is one of the reasons there is a certain level of quality.
Now I am trying to play some other games as well. As you noted, it could be easier to bring more people to the channel with something more widely known. I am making Volcanoids videos for now, but Factorio could work out as well. And when I play Factorio I tend to use yellow belts everywhere I can. Not sure why… Saving the environment, I guess :)
alpinemesh
Duly noted! :)
featherwinglove
So, a more serious reply now. First, it is really hard to make an incremental game interesting to watch, and I appreciate your attempt to do so. I also appreciate that you’re fairly good at the game. Nearly every 'tuber I’ve seen play incremental games and make videos for YouTube are painfully incompetent at the game. You’re good at both playing and making the videos, and gratz, you’re the first such 'tuber I’ve seen! (This would include me; I tried to do unique stuff, and at the time, no one had made a Swarm Simulator video, so I did so. Is that why YouTube banned me? I have no idea. But I had a house fan cooling a laptop with a dead fan, a dollar store microphone and Audacity doing the noise filtering, so it was one of my worst videos from a technical standpoint. Also one of my worst performers in the metrics.)
Factorio vids are a dime a dozen, and it is interesting to watch. So if there’s a niche modpack or strange way of playing that interests you, that could be a way to get some people coming to the channel to check out the Kittens stuff. Sorry, I’m not going to watch much of it because not only do I bore of watching Kittens, I tend to bore of playing Kittens eventually, usually take several months off, the inevitable purring craving returns, and I blow the old game flat because something new like policies has appeared, and I want to have a fresh experience. Now, if you do the burner thing, split down to yellow belts with the individual machines, or this happens. I’ve noticed even vanilla speed runners using red belts have a tendency to split down to yellow for the machines and inserters because it’s cheaper. Ah, the simplicity of Kittens…
featherwinglove
Guides are for the birds.
featherwinglove
And this is precisely why I hate the ending of Outer Wilds (not in the genre of incremental games.)
featherwinglove
I beg your pardon??
alpinemesh
It is a very good question, indeed! If I am being honest, I usually start playing a new incremental game out of interest, and then simply cannot stop :) Similar to games like Factorio, etc.
Chibraltar_
thanks, it helped me a lot :)
i was doing deep runs of several weeks (up to space beacons and antimatter and stuff)
pronoun14
This guide from the wiki is really helpful. Do you have any questions that we could help with?
There is a section about half way down named “OK, so I’m resetting now. What exactly should I do, and in what order?”
pronoun14
I’ve played quite the variety of incremental games, “idle” games, exponential games… I still don’t know what “the point” of them is, haha. Entertainment I suppose :)
alpinemesh
Thanks for the idea. However, I probably will need to research this one before I can say anything about it. I have only reset the game once. So far I am only good at starting the game :)