(SOLVED!) Morale help, I loathe space platforms

[captainamaziiing]

SOLVED! There is a mod that does exactly what I wanted and teleports materials across planets.

EDIT II: I will not be responding to any more comments on this thread. You people are toxic.



Steam says I have some 3500 hours in Factorio. I love Factorio. It's the highest rated game I've reviewed. It's my gold standard for game development excellence.

I didn't watch any Space Age previews as I wanted to recapture the magic of my first blind Factorio playthrough all those years ago now. Started a whole new game, built a fine base on Nauvis, then it was time to head to Vulcanus, which I did.

But I got 'stuck' there. Yes, it is technically possible to hand/robot mine and grind your way off the planet from scratch, but in any practical sense, it is not feasible.

Luckily the teleporter mod works across planets. Every time I used it I thought "Can you imagine trying to do this with platforms? Fuggetaboutit."

But here's the thing. I'm enjoying Vulcanus just fine. New recipes, new ways of thinking about my base layout. Good stuff.

But I LOATHE the space platforms. I realize nobody else seems to be having the same issues with them that I do, but I the thought of doing another platform is putting me right off the game. I 'beat' Vulcanus just by bringing orange tech through my teleporter by hand. Now I finally have a silo built but I've already researched all the orange tech. I'm tech blocked until I get to the next planet.

But the only way to automate that in the future is the wretched space platforms, and frankly I have no intention of doing so. They are so unfun to me that I will be shelving the game without going to any other planets. The throughput bottleneck and resource cost to ship goods is not working for me in the least. (there is more about platforms I don't like, but that is the crux)

This has crushed my morale. I was hoping to leave a glowing review of Space Age, but right now it's a 'no'.

I'm looking for solutions. Ideally, just a way to use a teleporter to transport materials across planets. I also saw a mod that simply puts all the biomes onto a single map, I'll be checking into it next, but I'm open to any suggestions that reduce or eliminate space platforms from my game.

Thanks in advance.

[Merry_Ascension]

I also hate space platforms. All my Ships that fly automatically between the planets are horribly designed ugly abominations. But they work, they do their jobs reasonably well.

Because I am horribly stingy with my (factually infinite) ressources, I hated putting prime ressources into the Rocket Transportation. But the factory (factories by now, because different planets) grows, and it starts to just cover the hunger of transportation pretty well.

I started to enjoy playing the transport game after I settled on Gleba and its infinte biologically sourced ressources. Yes, I love Gleba. Its such a beautiful puzzle to get to work, and when it finally does, it is just a beautiful thing.

If it helps, build it a bit bigger, forget about building it optimally and the pain of space platforms goes away. Mostly at least. I wouldnt copy blueprints of others. I figure out how to badly design my stuff on my own. Its what the game is all about after all ;)

[Evilsod]

Your entire post is just rambling and excuses. You never gave a single reason as to why you dislike the space platforms, you just refuse to sit down and design one from scratch. Instead of rising to the challenge, you cowered and used a mod to bypass it. And now you've made it into such a big obstacle you don't want to try.

You want a solution? Stop complaining about space platforms despite barely using them and go build them until you figure it out. Like you - presumably - did with the rest of Factorio. They will require fine-tuning or you can build abominations and then try and slim it down. They can fail catastrophically and need redesigning, which also sucks, but that's the challenge. Meteors are your biters and your resource nodes. I had to abandon 2 attempts at Vulcanus because my platform wasn't up to the task of staying in orbit while I built up and I didn't want to launch a new one from scratch, so I went back to my pre-flight autosave and tweaked it.

Or admit defeat and just blueprint someone else's design, I'm sure there are tons out there.

Marking the entire DLC as not recommended because you refuse to build a space platform really just speaks to the mindset of some players here.

[Malidictus]

For me, the biggest issue with space platforms is trying to set up industry on them. I get kinda-sorta get why this was done, but the excessive limitations just make it not fun to deal with. I look forward to the day when I can get rid of all space manufacturing and just supply my platforms with fuel, oxidiser and uranium from the surface.

Originally posted by Evilsod:

Marking the entire DLC as not recommended because you refuse to build a space platform really just speaks to the mindset of some players here.

"Just work around bad design" is A solution, just not a GOOD solution. Not recommending a game based on its cornerstone feature without which pretty much none of the other features work is perfectly viable. Space Age is full of terrible design decisions done with seemingly no greater purpose than to make each surface "different". As a result, quite a few of them ended up pretty bad.

Base Factorio offers constant progression. Any problem solved once is solved forever - assuming it was solved well. Yes, the player would need to scale up, but logistics is scalable when "solved well". Space Age throws that out the window. It repeatedly requires the player to solve the same problems, effectively restarting from scratch at every step. That's considerably less compelling.

[Necronium]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

For me, the biggest issue with space platforms is trying to set up industry on them. I get kinda-sorta get why this was done, but the excessive limitations just make it not fun to deal with. I look forward to the day when I can get rid of all space manufacturing and just supply my platforms with fuel, oxidiser and uranium from the surface.

Originally posted by Evilsod:

Marking the entire DLC as not recommended because you refuse to build a space platform really just speaks to the mindset of some players here.

"Just work around bad design" is A solution, just not a GOOD solution. Not recommending a game based on its cornerstone feature without which pretty much none of the other features work is perfectly viable. Space Age is full of terrible design decisions done with seemingly no greater purpose than to make each surface "different". As a result, quite a few of them ended up pretty bad.

Base Factorio offers constant progression. Any problem solved once is solved forever - assuming it was solved well. Yes, the player would need to scale up, but logistics is scalable when "solved well". Space Age throws that out the window. It repeatedly requires the player to solve the same problems, effectively restarting from scratch at every step. That's considerably less compelling.

That argument screams that someone have problem with his own skill and not a game. Since when Factorio was about solving things once and for all? Cause I cant fathom putting few thousnds of hours into a game where you copy paste same ♥♥♥♥ over and over again.

Only argument I hear is that someone is not liking building space platform but dont say why he dont like it. Its not that different from base game par need of transportation of items via rocket.
I get feeling that most people that have problem with SA are those that copy paste others blueprints but when game throws at them some kind of new "challange" they opt out and say that game is bad.

[captainamaziiing]

Originally posted by Evilsod:

Your entire post is just rambling and excuses. You never gave a single reason as to why you dislike the space platforms, you just refuse to sit down and design one from scratch. Instead of rising to the challenge, you cowered and used a mod to bypass it. And now you've made it into such a big obstacle you don't want to try.

You want a solution? Stop complaining about space platforms despite barely using them and go build them until you figure it out. Like you - presumably - did with the rest of Factorio. They will require fine-tuning or you can build abominations and then try and slim it down. They can fail catastrophically and need redesigning, which also sucks, but that's the challenge. Meteors are your biters and your resource nodes. I had to abandon 2 attempts at Vulcanus because my platform wasn't up to the task of staying in orbit while I built up and I didn't want to launch a new one from scratch, so I went back to my pre-flight autosave and tweaked it.

Or admit defeat and just blueprint someone else's design, I'm sure there are tons out there.

Marking the entire DLC as not recommended because you refuse to build a space platform really just speaks to the mindset of some players here.

From my post: The throughput bottleneck and resource cost to ship goods is not working for me in the least. (there is more about platforms I don't like, but that is the crux)

Now apply all the things you said about my desire to mess with space platforms and apply it to your own reading and comprehension skills.

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

"Just work around bad design" is A solution, just not a GOOD solution. Not recommending a game based on its cornerstone feature without which pretty much none of the other features work is perfectly viable. Space Age is full of terrible design decisions done with seemingly no greater purpose than to make each surface "different". As a result, quite a few of them ended up pretty bad.

Base Factorio offers constant progression. Any problem solved once is solved forever - assuming it was solved well. Yes, the player would need to scale up, but logistics is scalable when "solved well". Space Age throws that out the window. It repeatedly requires the player to solve the same problems, effectively restarting from scratch at every step. That's considerably less compelling.

If you want to justify why you dislike it and not recommend based on that, then sure. OP has none of that, it just screams that he refuses to try again after his first attempts weren't a rousing success.

I find it laughable that you try and justify your dislike of it in that you're having to start from scratch at every step.
Care to explain how that applies to Space Age and more specifically space platforms? And yet doesn't apply to setting up new production chains in base factorio?
Or are you going to tell me that setting up a nuclear power plant is identical to setting up a smelting stack, which is identical to setting up oil production?
No, those are all wildly different challenges that require you to start from scratch. The only difference is, you've been perfecting those for up to 10 years, whereas this is fresh and still needs working out.

Space platforms are a new system that require you to design a sustainable orbital platform using the fragmented resources at your disposal. It seems to me that the core dislike of this is only that people don't want to try and fail at it. It's understandable, failing sucks, but that's a mindset issue, not a fault of the game. Space platforms are daunting undertakings at first and you aren't sure what threats you'll be encountering, requiring some trial and error or over-designing. I was putting off building a science platform over Vulcanus cos my original transport ship was a bit of a failure and couldn't survive in orbit around Vulcanus for long. Turned out it wasn't that bad when I finally got on with it.
Once you know how to do a space platform, you've solved it on a basic level. Once you've solved logistics for a particular route, that's solved too. I assume that once larger meteors and high tier research gets involved, this problem evolves further.
Sounds to me like that is the core of the base game.

Seems like all the complaining about Gleba have died down too.

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by captainamaziiing:

From my post: The throughput bottleneck and resource cost to ship goods is not working for me in the least. (there is more about platforms I don't like, but that is the crux)

Now apply all the things you said about my desire to mess with space platforms and apply it to your own reading and comprehension skills.

Sorry, you think "I don't want to spend resources on the interplanetary logistics" is a genuine reason?
Pretty sure I covered that when I mentioned you making excuses.

That is the question you have to answer. Make what you can locally, transport the rest, or do you spend more resources to ship things from other locations that you don't actually need?

I genuinely don't know what people were expecting from the expansion. It's like you wanted a palette swap and that's it.

[captainamaziiing]

Originally posted by Evilsod:

Originally posted by captainamaziiing:

From my post: The throughput bottleneck and resource cost to ship goods is not working for me in the least. (there is more about platforms I don't like, but that is the crux)

Now apply all the things you said about my desire to mess with space platforms and apply it to your own reading and comprehension skills.

Sorry, you think "I don't want to spend resources on the interplanetary logistics" is a genuine reason?
Pretty sure I covered that when I mentioned you making excuses.


That is the question you have to answer. Make what you can locally, transport the rest, or do you spend more resources to ship things from other locations that you don't actually need?

I genuinely don't know what people were expecting from the expansion. It's like you wanted a palette swap and that's it.

I didn't ask for a critique from a butthurt sod. I asked for a solution, which I have since found in the mod that does EXACTLY WHAT I ASKED FOR, and teleports materials across planets because apparently I'm not the only one who loathes the space platforms.

[Necronium]

You cant take someone seriously when he say that it is though high cost of transporting and throughput. Maybe when you do things without modules and research and without mentioning new buildings it is "high" but when you play game properly - you make progress - it shouldnt be even a problem to send anything into a space, especially when resources are mostly infinite so it is matter of your own factory capability

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by captainamaziiing:

I didn't ask for a critique from a butthurt sod. I asked for a solution, which I have since found in the mod that does EXACTLY WHAT I ASKED FOR, and teleports materials across planets because apparently I'm not the only one who loathes the space platforms.

I gave you a solution, it just wasn't the one you wanted to hear. Happy you found one that works for you.
Since this thread is obviously no longer relevant, tell me, how many other challenges do you mod out because you can't handle them? Is that how you intend to approach every hurdle in Space Age?

[GAMING_Alligator]

Originally posted by captainamaziiing:

But I LOATHE the space platforms. I realize nobody else seems to be having the same issues with them that I do, but I the thought of doing another platform is putting me right off the game
...
I'm looking for solutions. Ideally, just a way to use a teleporter to transport materials across planets

That's not looking for solutions, that's looking for training wheels. Honestly, it sounds like you're just refusing to engage with the game's new systems and instead of trying to make them work, rushed straight to a mod that trivialises the core challenge of the DLC, which is interplanetary logistics.

I would uninstall the teleporter mod right now, and think about how you can do what you need to do with platforms as they are, or you're just going to need more and more mods as the game goes on (just wait until you get to Gleba). How can you make platforms faster? How can you build more to allow more throughput? How many rocket silos do you need to get enough material to them fast enough? How can you bootstrap other planets so that you don't need to redo the burner phase again and again? And so on. These are all fun problems to solve if you engage with them.

What I'm saying, is try to solve the puzzles the game gives you without "cheating" (for lack of a better word), rather than trying to make them conform to the way you want to solve them, and I'm sure you'll have a better time with the DLC.

Also this forum is great when you have questions and problems that you I need help with, so you'll no doubt get more productive replies if you were to reformulate your post in a way that allows people to help you work with game as intended.

[captainamaziiing]

Originally posted by Evilsod:

Originally posted by captainamaziiing:

I didn't ask for a critique from a butthurt sod. I asked for a solution, which I have since found in the mod that does EXACTLY WHAT I ASKED FOR, and teleports materials across planets because apparently I'm not the only one who loathes the space platforms.

I gave you a solution, it just wasn't the one you wanted to hear. Happy you found one that works for you.
Since this thread is obviously no longer relevant, tell me, how many other challenges do you mod out because you can't handle them? Is that how you intend to approach every hurdle in Space Age?

I'll run as many mods as I like. Just because I don't lap up every design decision a dev makes means nothing. What matters is I enjoy playing the game. Guess what, in Valheim I got the mod to teleport metal because real life is too short for some game design decisions. Space Platforms are not fun. The challenge is not being constantly irritated, and that's not a fun challenge. If I need to mod platforms out of the game to access the rest of the game, and someone already made the exact mod to do that, then I will. I play 'iron man'. No deaths, no saves. Reloading a saved game is the same as a loss. That's MY preferred play style. And yes, I will mod as necessary to make a game I like.

I play Monopoly with house rules too.

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by GAMING_Alligator:

How can you make platforms faster? How can you build more to allow more throughput? How many rocket silos do you need to enough material to them fast enough? How can you accelerate other planets so that you don't need to redo the burner phase again and again? And so on. These are all fun problems to solve if you engage with them.

What I'm saying, is try to solve the puzzles the game gives you without "cheating" (for lack of a better word), rather than trying to make them conform to the way you want to solve them, and I'm sure you'll have a better time with the DLC.

Exactly what I was saying. There are a small number of items beyond the science packs that can only be manufactured on certain planets. If those items are in constant demand and you're running low, you need to expand your production to handle the cost of the logistics.
If you're scaling up your science per minute, the cost of transporting the science packs is also a factor.
Alternatively, constantly ship stuff you can build elsewhere and scale up further to cover the cost.

I have no doubt at all that he'll get to Gleba and try to mod out the spoilage instead of dealing with that challenge too. That is exactly the mindset he clearly has now.
It's looking like that'll be my next planet to try after Vulcanus, once I've sorted out my full science build on Vulcanus, sorted out my production on Nauvis and improved the design of my platform for travel between planets.
I'm sure it'll be ♥♥♥♥♥ to not overbuild things and leaving it to spoil!

OP - This game is not Valheim. Transporting metal in Valheim is not a challenge, it's a pure time sink. At least, that's how it was when I played it ages ago. It also didn't require a mod... you could just turn that limitation off...

[GAMING_Alligator]

Originally posted by captainamaziiing:

From my post: The throughput bottleneck and resource cost to ship goods is not working for me in the least..

Have you considered just building more rocket silos? IME, when there's not enough throughput of something in Factorio, "build more stuff" is usually a reliable solution.

[captainamaziiing]

Originally posted by GAMING_Alligator:

Originally posted by captainamaziiing:

But I LOATHE the space platforms. I realize nobody else seems to be having the same issues with them that I do, but I the thought of doing another platform is putting me right off the game
...
I'm looking for solutions. Ideally, just a way to use a teleporter to transport materials across planets

That's not looking for solutions, that's looking for training wheels. Honestly, it sounds like you're just refusing to engage with the game's new systems and instead of trying to make them work, rushed straight to a mod that trivialises the core challenge of the DLC, which is interplanetary logistics.

I would uninstall the teleporter mod right now, and think about how you can do what you need to do with platforms as they are, or you're just going to need more and more mods as the game goes on (just wait until you get to Gleba). How can you make platforms faster? How can you build more to allow more throughput? How many rocket silos do you need to enough material to them fast enough? How can you bootstrap other planets so that you don't need to redo the burner phase again and again? And so on. These are all fun problems to solve if you engage with them.

What I'm saying, is try to solve the puzzles the game gives you without "cheating" (for lack of a better word), rather than trying to make them conform to the way you want to solve them, and I'm sure you'll have a better time with the DLC.

Also this forum is great when you have questions and problems that you I need help with, so you'll no doubt get more productive replies if you were to reformulate your post in a way that allows people to help you work with game as intended.

What I'm finding is the people in this game forum are actually pretty toxic. The exact solution I was looking for , and politely requested, with my reasons for doing so, existed, as noted above, but what I got was mostly people being less than helpful. And by 'less than helpful' I'm being charitable. I asked for help, I got insults.

Toxic forum.