It's taken 5 years but I have finally finished Phase 2.
Two days ago I finally managed to pass phase two of this game.
I bought it back in early 2021 and it was one of the first games I purchased as a new PC player. I had never played a factory game before but I remember thinking the idea of a little factory running itself could be super satisfying (ready the firing squad I'm sorry).
I don't know what it was but I could NOT figure this game out initially. Looking back now it is super amusing how some of these concepts just did not register with me but whatever that's gaming. My first save lasted all of 2-3 hours. I had a very basic setup in the grasslands with a grid that kept tripping and decided to shelve it. According to the dates on some of these older saves I made it about 9 hours into my second attempt.
Back in the summer of 2023 my "THIRD TIMES THE CHARM" save was created. I so badly wanted to get into this game and made it about 71 hours. After running around in that save a couple days ago, it looks like I was inspired by everyone's very pretty builds and I focused on aesthetics. I probably got annoyed that I had to rebuild after unlocking better miners etc., and abandoned the game again. I also remember the task of having to set up highways with my tractors at the time being daunting. Figuring out how to make a decent highway with refuel stations for the tractors wasn't something I was in the mood to tackle. I was roughly halfway through versatile frameworks and had less than 20 automated wiring but the efficiency was super garbage.
I tried AGAIN for 1.0 and literally got as far as the previous phase in terms of how far I had made it with the space elevator parts except this time I focused much more on producing rather than making it look nice. 16 hours and I called it quits.
Had a serious relationship end back in Q4 of 2024 and named this save "break up save" lol. I I will say it was clear that with every save more things were clicking for me. Things weren't so scrambled, power was handled better, efficiency was much closer to 100%. This was the first save that I chose to start in the desert with and honestly I prefer that biome much more to the grasslands. Made it about 45 hours, plus some distraction on aesthetics, and yet again versatile framework and automated wiring was the stopping point.
THEN ON APRIL 6th OF 2026 I rebooted the ol thing up one more time and something in my brain flipped. Book it to coal power, get foundations set, plan for expansion. Everything in this save was running SO. MUCH. SMOOTHER. I did much better at holding myself to one goal at a time vs bouncing all over which was part of my detriment in the past. At around 40 hours I ran over to the space elevator with all my parts since I was too excited to wait for the number to slowly go up. I dumped everything in, pulled the lever, and finally made it farther in the game than I ever have. I know it only gets harder but holy heck I am so excited to progress. Due to my history with this game (and Deep Rock Galactic Rogue Core dropping in May) I think it is inevitable that I will not finish this save BUT that is okay!!! I am having the most fun I have had to date.