[2021] How did Wube software balance Factorio?

A lot, lot, a loooooot of playing and iteration. For every major release we've had a playtesting session, but some of us (mainly me and kovarex) have simply played the game a lot. Not non-stop of course :)

We've made so many little tweaks step by step, while occasionally taking a little bit of a bigger leap in some of the major versions.

Probably the most impactful balancing has been done around science packs, those were changed several times over the years of development, almost every major version had a bit different science packs, with 0.15 https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-159 removing the alien science packs and introducing purple/yellow/military/space science packs, and in 0.17 https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-275 they got changed to pretty much the state they are in now (except solid fuel x sulfur in chemical science packs).

For science packs I've even had a spreadsheet to get a more detailed overview of cost comparisons between science packs, but in general things are balanced by how we feel about them when playing the game.

The other thing that's kind of susceptible to balance are weapons. Over the years we've improved this balance a lot, but there are still quite a few that just aren't very good in any scenario. Two big milestones when we changed combat was in 0.15 https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-169 and later in 0.17 when we made worms/spitters shoot the non-targeting projectiles with splashes on the ground

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-279

, it was a good time to change some things (military techs, rocket ranges, tank balance, ...). in the lower part of the post https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-275

And pollution has been an everpresent thing that required some kind of balancing, like here https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-286 .

A lot of the recipes aren't too specific. If an advanced circuit takes 2 or 3 electronic circuits is not too significant. While we did touch some non-science recipes over the years, it wasn't nearly as impactful - you just make more of some builds and less of others.

Oh god why do you have to ask such questions XD

I'm not sure, obviously I have some hour on steam, but sometimes I just opened the steam version in the morning to check how is something in the official release, and forgot to close it for an entire day, while dev versions have no time tracking like that. I could try to add the combined playtime from all the saves but that would be a lot of work and I don't even have all of the savegames either.

My steam has 3000 hours, and I bet the idle opened Steam version hours are much less than the time I played on dev versions, so likely a lot more than that. I suppose 4-5000+ isn't impossible but sounds absolutely mental.

Yeah, achievements aren't hard to get. :)

Yeah we play a lot, sometimes the most difficult part is to prevent yourself from making changes that fix your specific factory XD