Why would I want space age?

[Zaekyr]

First off I am not interested in quality or planet hopping after I found illogical research sequences that do not make sense. (I can barely stand the problems with the base game though it is fun). My question is what is in the space age expansion for someone who only desires to play the 2.0 game? Is there anything other than elevated train rails? Seems a waste of money just for those.

[Fel]

The main reason to want space age is for the variety of challenges, since each planet has pretty distinct features that force you to change how you approach making a factory there.
If that does not interest you then it's safe to say that it's not going to be for you (and severely over-priced if you only want elevated rails).

[CasualGamer]

I think it's bigger than the original game. The increased complexity, including quality- for me, made Space Age an easy purchase.

[Strategic Sage]

If you just want the 2.0 game, then go ahead and play that. I really don't understand the 'illogical research sequences' thing; Factorio isn't a sim and isn't trying to be a sim. That type of thing exists for game balance.

[Khaylain]

It's not for you

[Glyph]

Form your own opinion about why you would or wouldn't want to play this game. No one cares about whether you do or don't. It's not like we get a cut of the sale.

[königplatzen]

Space age, if you get bored with vanilla and want some new mechanics. And there will be mods at some point, which will build on space age related mechanics. (spaceship related, for each different planet, etc)

mods for vanilla will stay, too, but the vanilla mechanics is a subset of space age mechanics and you will have more possibilities with space age, if you search for those...

[Doc✪Hollywood]

Originally posted by Zaekyr:

Why would I want space age?

How should other people know that? If you dont know yourself what you want then maybe it's time to consult a psycho analyst which can help you to fathom and explore the depth of your unconscious, desires and latent wishes

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by Zaekyr:

Why would I want space age?

You would not want space age.
In general Space Age is more of what the base game is. More of what you do like and more of what you don't like. It seems that what you don't like is already on the edge of too much, and adding more of that probably isn't enough to compensate for adding more of what you do like.
Gaming is a personal taste thing and what's good for one is meh for someone else an crap for another. Given what you've said about the base game, Space Age is not only not worth the money, it's not worth getting at all.
On the personal taste thing, for me it was worth the money for the elevated rails. Not because I need them in the games I've played, but because I like the train work enough that elevated rails is going to make it so much more fun. I may never play more than one game of Space Age, and that one is because "I've got it why not play it once?" I can play a 'vanilla' game with rails included, and still get Steam achievements if I want them, or add elevated rails to almost any other combination of mods I want. (So far I've not seen any list elevated rails as a conflict anyway.) But, if you are not 'in love with the trains' even that's not enough to justify the cost.
If, someday in the future, you have gotten to the point that the research sequences, and what ever else you may not like, are not such an issue, and you want more of what Factorio is, then you can reconsider the DLC. If not, you can still have fun with what you have. As @königplatzen has noted, you can still use hundreds of mods, with more coming out every week, to enhance or change the base game without needing Space Age. Once all the work is done on it even Space Exploration will be available - and it's not going to be compatible with Space Age anyway.

[Doc✪Hollywood]

Originally posted by Chindraba:

You would not want space age.

[Entropy]

Originally posted by Gordon✪Gekko:

Originally posted by Zaekyr:

Why would I want space age?

How should other people know that? If you dont know yourself what you want then maybe it's time to consult a psycho analyst which can help you to fathom and explore the depth of your unconscious, desires and latent wishes

Wube bottom licker detected lol. Just for once not be sensitive/defensive and answer the question and be useful.

[knighttemplar1960]

Quality is quite a powerful feature. When it was announced I didn't like how the mechanic was described or how the numbers seemed to work out but after playing around with it for a bit I know I'm going to have difficulty starting a new game and waiting until I can start producing quality machines and modules in future play throughs.

Space platforms are very nice. They essentially allow you to have infinite supplies of all non-planet special resources. The only problem with space platforms is due to the mechanics of space platform flight, all of them tend to be flying bricks except for my Gleba needle that is designed to transport bio-science as fast as possible and do literally nothing else but bio-science and even it is still very brick like just very elongated. I've experimented with different designs (like a starhsip Enterprise, Klingon battle cruiser, Romulan War bird, A Battlestar ala Galactica, and a Star Wars Star Destroyer) but except for the ones that are all ready shaped like a brick or a needle the cosmetics makes them very inefficient.

As for the other planets Vulcanus and Fulgora have some interesting mechanics and exploring them was fun. Unlocking the machines that are available on them was a great help on Nauvis and the problems that the 2 planets have early game are easily mitigated late game with tech from the last 2 planets.

BUT

I found Gleba very tedious. Because of my disabilities I am forced to play slowly. Many times on Gleba I found that critical resources spoiled before I could get a sustainable production loop built. This forced me to blue print what I had and reload the game. Expand what I had, blue print it, reload the game, repeat until I could get a stable factory set up or I required help from a teammate in multiplayer to get things built before resources spoiled. Quite tedious and very not fun and the worst part is, unlike the previous 2 planets, there is no tech unlocked later that solve/mitigate those issues.

I found the challenges on Aquillo to not be difficult just tedious. There are only so many viable designs that will work there so most my bases there will be nearly identical each and every time and I suspect that most player's designs will be very similar. II found it difficult to get started without importing a lot of stuff, especially for power and heat and it was extremely tedious if the stuff I imported was not quality items. There are some things that make no sense such as pipes that carry 500 C steam don't provide heat to the adjacent machines. You still need to run heat pipes to keep your equipment warm. As with Gleba there is no future tech that mitigate these issues once you've solved the challenge of that planet.

Once I get a nice set of blue prints designed I will probably look for and If I can't find a mod I'll write one that adds refrigeration tech for Gleba that unlocks on Aquillo so I can have more variety in designs for Gleba and I'll add promethium heat pipes as the last tech that unlocks on Aquillo that will allow me to take promethium to Vulcanus and manufacture quality heat pipes that provide heat in a 1 meter radius per point of quality. This will allow different designs on Aquillo after conquering Aquillo.

All that said I probably won't play just a 2.0 game with elevated rails. Vulcanus and Fulgora are just too nice to pass up but If I can't find a mod that does what I want on Gleba and Aquillo I will probably just use infinity chests as I unlock each new item. At least until I can write the mod myself provided its worth the time investment.

[Nonotorious]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Once I get a nice set of blue prints designed I will probably look for and If I can't find a mod I'll write one that adds refrigeration tech for Gleba that unlocks on Aquillo so I can have more variety in designs for Gleba and I'll add promethium heat pipes as the last tech that unlocks on Aquillo that will allow me to take promethium to Vulcanus and manufacture quality heat pipes that provide heat in a 1 meter radius per point of quality. This will allow different designs on Aquillo after conquering Aquillo.

That's a great idea with the heatpipes, i don't understand why they made everything else quality but heatpipes do nothing, you can make legendary wooden poles ffs.

As for space age i advise against it to be honest, give it some time, maybe the devs will get their heads out of their asses but i doubt it. I found the later half of the game to be lacking.

Gleba is just tedious, it's not hard, it's just tedious, if you find it hard that's just you self reporting yourself as an idiot, "oh i forgot to filter one of the 15 inserters around every machine and looked away for 5 mins and now the whole thing has stopped, great".
Yeah 10/10 gameplay bro.

Aquilo is just kinda boring, importing fuel and stuff and waiting for the heat to get high enough to reach self sufficiency, i kinda wish they had added the enemies, it would have been something to do and its not like anyone is going there without a mech suit.

Vulcanus and fulgora are fine, fulgora obviously being the best but it's annoying that you need foundation, that should have been earlier, or atleast a diff type maybe, they made multiple soils on gleba, why not make multiple foundations?

Platforms are ok i guess, definitely not a lot of creative freedom here, also idk why there isn't something front facing tank turret like the railgun since missile launcher range is stupidly big and just wastes ammo on more 'efficient' slimmer platform designs.

All in all, space age is far more restrictive in gameplay, you WILL do this a certain way or it's going to be a nightmare, 1.0 had far more freedom design wise.

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

There are some things that make no sense such as pipes that carry 500 C steam don't provide heat to the adjacent machines.

As an aside... your pipes are insulated so well that your steam doesn't lose a single joule of energy. So no, there is no heat leaking out to warm adjacent machines.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

There are some things that make no sense such as pipes that carry 500 C steam don't provide heat to the adjacent machines.

As an aside... your pipes are insulated so well that your steam doesn't lose a single joule of energy. So no, there is no heat leaking out to warm adjacent machines.

The pipes are made of iron and aren't insulated in any way. If they were made on Vulcanus the waste silicon was likely thrown back into the lava from whence it came. Iron has a thermal conductivity of 79.5 W/m K. It seems unlikely that it can't lose a single joule since the steel in the heat pipes that do, do this could be sourced from the same iron.

Sorry, can't quite buy that hand wave. I've used up all my suspension of disbelief on perpetual motion belts, inventory of infinity, and instant nuclear plant just add air.

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

As an aside... your pipes are insulated so well that your steam doesn't lose a single joule of energy. So no, there is no heat leaking out to warm adjacent machines.

The pipes are made of iron and aren't insulated in any way. If they were made on Vulcanus the waste silicon was likely thrown back into the lava from whence it came. Iron has a thermal conductivity of 79.5 W/m K. It seems unlikely that it can't lose a single joule since the steel in the heat pipes that do, do this could be sourced from the same iron.

Sorry, can't quite buy that hand wave. I've used up all my suspension of disbelief on perpetual motion belts, inventory of infinity, and instant nuclear plant just add air.

... and pipes that keep steam at 500 degrees perpetually without losing any energy. Or had you not really thought about that quirk of the simulation previously when using fluid tanks to buffer energy?