Space Age: Lategame content only?

[Zottel]

Hey, I didn't do much research beforehand, I just saw now that the addon is available. And so my question is whether it's mainly lategame content or whether there's also enough new stuff to discover in the early game?

[jagholin]

I just say that rocket launch in Space Age is now way earlier in tech tree (req only blue science) and significantly cheaper(20x). Tech tree itself is massively reworked.

[mrxak]

They haven't really added anything to the early game with the expansion. If anything, they've taken some things away and put them on other planets. But around the middle third of the game, you start doing space stuff, and then all of that is brand new.

[Hurkyl]

There are some tweaks earlier, but new stuff starts partway through the blue science area:

• You get access to the quality system the same time as all the other modules, so you can start getting a trickle of higher quality stuff and make plans to get the best effect out of the few higher quality items you have.
  
• You get access to near Earth Nauvis orbit, and can build space platforms to produce space science (and collect a handful of additional materials)

So space science sort of includes itself as a third "white/purple/yellow" choice about where to go after getting through blue science. Space science's main production challenge is about using the rocket system (now much cheaper and, to reiterate, available with just blue science) to transfer materials between the planet and orbit.

Then elevated rails are available with purple science.

A lot of vanilla stuff has its requirements shuffled over to space science instead of (or in addition to) purple/yellow, so even in the time frame where you're limiting yourself strictly to Nauvis, there's a fair bit of novelty available.

[PBoyIIVII]

I was wondering about this too. So there is still a big change in our management of the first factory since the requirements are being revised downwards ?