What happened to the space platform

[Emperor]

Way back in... I want to say 2015 they talked about eventually adding a space platform for the end game content.

It was talked about a bit in Friday Facts 74
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-74

and followed up on in Friday Facts 75
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-75

I can't seem to find anything beyond that in the blog posts (I'm currently at 89 flipping my way through them to see if maybe I missed it at some point) and no word about whether it was canned, delayed, or just... no word at all.

Whatever happened to that idea?

[Yung Venuz]

I think they just haven't gotten around to adding it yet.

[piccolo255]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-111

We have been discussing this topic for some time already, and we decided that the plan of the space platform would be too much if we really want to keep aiming for having 1.0 finished in a year. I believe that some people will not like it, but we have a lot of other things to be done on the ground before aiming for the stars.

(...)

There are is so many of them, that we can't promise to finish all of them, so adding space platform wouldn't really make it better, especially when these feel like "must haves" while the platform is rather a "nice to have". At this speed of releases, my estimate is that 1.0 would come after 0.14, so there aren't so many releases left to do the all other things we were postponing for a long time.

This doesn't necessarily mean we will throw the idea away. One of the possibilities is that the space platform content could be part of an expansion (but no promises here), so we could make it really shine and use the possibilities of the idea fully instead of making hasted prototype squeezed into the regular schedule.

Well, the release has been pushed back a few more years and a few more versions, but AFAIK there are no further developments on space-platforming.

Edit: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=325909

by Koub » Wed Dec 20, 2017 9:33 pm

We never truly know. We had no idea artillery would be a thing 2 weeks before 0.16.0 release.
However, we do know there is little chance space platforms will make it in the foreseeable future.

[THE kilroy]

I wasnt around that early but it sounds like the spacex mod https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=40288

[Emperor]

Originally posted by piccolo255:

...

Thanks for digging that up piccolo. I hadn't gone that far ahead in the blogs to get to that one when I posted this. Shame.

[Morphic]

Y'know, I think it wouldn't sting so much if they hadn't released a teaser picture and talked so much about it. Still irks me that they changed their stance of "this would be a great addition for endgame!" to "whoops, we don't know anymore and we are just going to focus on this and that. End game is not as important.".

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by Emperor:

Originally posted by piccolo255:

...

Thanks for digging that up piccolo. I hadn't gone that far ahead in the blogs to get to that one when I posted this. Shame.

No problem. The trick is in not doing it manually: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=space+platform+site%3Awww.factorio.com

:D

Originally posted by Crestfallen Knight:

Y'know, I think it wouldn't sting so much if they hadn't released a teaser picture and talked so much about it. Still irks me that they changed their stance of "this would be a great addition for endgame!" to "whoops, we don't know anymore and we are just going to focus on this and that. End game is not as important.".

Well, it's the risk inherent in Early Access, and early promises in general. Some stuff just doesn't make it. Devs have to consider development time, viability, how it fits into the rest of the game, etc. I'm also disappointed that platforms are unlikely to be included, but I don't begrudge the devs for it.

BTW, the devs' stance still seems to be "this would be a great addition for endgame!", as you can see here: https://www.factorio.com/content . In development, you often have to make tough choices about removing or scaling down features, or no software would ever ship. We'd still be waiting for Windows 1.0 and Civilization I. That's why I'm a bad programmer -- I want to include everything! :P

[Hex]

Originally posted by piccolo255:

BTW, the devs' stance still seems to be "this would be a great addition for endgame!", as you can see here: https://www.factorio.com/content

Refer to the roadmap linked on that page, as the page itself is out of date. The space platform is almost certainly not going to be in 1.0. However, mods can actually re-create it, since world layers are a thing.

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by Hex:

Originally posted by piccolo255:

BTW, the devs' stance still seems to be "this would be a great addition for endgame!", as you can see here: https://www.factorio.com/content

Refer to the roadmap linked on that page, as the page itself is out of date.

Is it, though? It seems to be regularly updated. It even mentions artillery in the "current content" section, and that's been out only since 0.16.0. I don't think there is anything to update there until 0.17 hits? Note that "possible future content" does not in any way imply "before 1.0". This page is a general overview, and it has a different purpose from the roadmap.

So, I wasn't implying that space platform is likely to be included before 1.0. I was providing evidence to directly refute the quoted post by Crestfallen Knight. Devs still seem to hold the "great addition for endgame" stance, even though some of those had to be put on a backburner.

[Hex]

The roadmap was updated like a month ago, and has no mention of the space platform.

Also, my understanding is that they basically see the game as feature complete. There's a few cool things they could add here and there, but the space platform is definitely not something planned to be added into vanilla.

Here's an example of what's possible via mods: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Caves
The functionality is already there for a space platform, it's just a question of what it can offer for vanilla purposes in order to provide interesting gameplay choices without feeling tacked on.

[Shurenai]

Well, Since it got necroed... For the benefit of those who get summoned back from the dead, Space platforms are in the game now via the Space Age expansion dlc.

[Wren]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.