After almost 5000 hours in the game, Space Age made me hate Factorio.

[Hovercraft]

I really wanted to like the Space Age, unfortunately gimmicks like spoilage and heat pipe requirement for Aquilo made it impossible for me to like the game without modding it to remove/improve the gimmicks.

This is a part 2 of this rant: https://steamcommunity.com/app/427520/discussions/0/4634862623030094117

I managed to overcome the spoilage gimmick (I absolutely hate it). The fact that I need to breed biter eggs by dragging bioflux from Gleba and sending the biter eggs back for the soil production is absolutely annoying.

I wish the carbon fibre had alternative recipe that would not require organic material (just use carbon).

I landed on Aquilo, and I would not mind the heat pipe requirement, except it only heats to one square wide. Why do the facilities that produce heat need heating? Why is the steam turbine that is hot by the fact of being supplied with 500'C steam needs heat pipe?

The whole thing is annoying drag due to massive latency of the things getting into orbit.

It seems that devs specifically created these gimmicks to drag the game out with an unnecessary grind.

[Chindraba]

Once you have survived you foray into Space Age, and collected any achievements you have set as goals, if any, you can undertake what I expect to be my future in Factorio.

Base game + elevated rails

Nauvis has kept me entertained for many hours. The projects I begun in 1.1 don't migrate will to 2.0. Even the maps have issues which are not game-stoppers but show the migration is only a band-aid for the old maps.

One sample: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3389817282

I love the trains, and elevated rails will take my adventures to a new level. I don't expect that Nauvis will fail to keep me occupied for as long as I've got left to play. I may, possibly, try a game with quality added. More for the experimentation than for any goal. Or, I may not.

Over 10k hours so far, I'm sure there's a few more available without Vulcans and kin. Though I do plan, eventually, to do a playthrough of SA. Just because.

[Nonotorious]

If they had added literally anything, ANYTHING at all to deal with spoilage i would not mind as much. It doesn't even need to stop it totally just slow it down, anything at all. Feels like the devs just gave up halfway through.
Quite frankly i will also be giving Space Age a thumbs down if there isn't any new stuff patched in because it is utterly ridiculous to go from spoilage to literally making cryogenic science, that's a bad joke.
As i have said elsewhere the latter half of the game seems unfinished and poorly thought out, how many people are using the belt weaving storage exploit to bring back enough promethium because asteroids only stack 1, is this really the way the devs intended ppl play? They sure fixed being able to use mines as ablative armor real quick.

[Seklero]

Just built faster spaceplatform if you have problems with transfer things.
As for the Aquilo i don`t see much of a problem with need of heat pipes it is another type of challenge for your creativity.

[MoDon]

The number one complaint I see in these message boards is people who seem rather put off that each of the new planets is actually something new, and not just a re-skin, so they have to think and solve new problems.

[Descriptor]

I rather liked Fulgora and Vulcanis as new challenges and twists on the gameplay. I even liked Gleba's core new gameplay loop, even if it's a bit of a drag. But everything past Gleba, including managing the spoiling science packs, everything to do with Biter Eggs, and honestly everything about Aquilo are just so tedious as to take all the fun out of it. Too much micromanagement at the end of the day for what is supposed to be an automation game.

Maybe I just need to get better at space platforms (which I honestly just do not enjoy using), but the minute I landed on Aquilo and realized that I needed to import absolutely everything, I pretty much immediately ended my run, as it just stopped being fun. Such a shame, it really had me in the first half there.

[End of history]

I love all of it. These are not gimmicks, they are what makes each planet unique and provide new challenges. If all planets were just cosmetic changes then that really wouldn't be interesting.

I by no means have a mega base, but i have a base that produces all science packs, including prometheus, and that keeps on trucking without me doing anything. With the ridiculously OP science productivity of the prometheus infinite research I get around 18k SPM for a base that was originally designed for 300 SPM. The biolabs of course help too.

I don't see the problem with the spoilables. They science packs spoil in 30 minutes, and getting things from Gleba to Nauvis only takes a few minutes. Bioflux spoils in an hour. It's a fun logistical puzzle to make work and very satisfying when you do. I even do the Prometheus science the "intended way" and ship eggs out into shattered planetary space. A round trip nets me around 20k prometheus science and this is not even particularly optimised. I could of course do belt weaving, or pack eggs in Gleba land fill in order to not deal with the spoilage, but that's not the challenge I wanted, and my round trips produce science packs faster than I currently can spend them so I don't really see the point at the moment.... and if I did then I'd just duplicate my prometheus ship.

Gleba and Aquilo are two of my favourite planets. My least favourite is actually Vulcanus just because I don't think it adds much to the logistics puzzle but rather trivializes a lot with the metal piping, but even if it's my least favourite I still like it a lot.

I'm having a great time.

[Dodi]

I loved Factorio. So I bought Space Age straight away and played it for 100s of hours. Finally reached Gleba. Built a huge defense with import. But the problem isn't tampers or anything else. You simply fail in agony due to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spoilage of the goods. No matter how you build the setup. It just doesn't work. After spending over 20 hours just on a stupid setup with the bioreactors, I gave up. Of course you can simply download the blueprints. But building something yourself just isn't possible. The game goes into the corner and is no longer unpacked until a cold chain is abolished or introduced. Very, very unfortunate. Especially since it doesn't fit into the setting at all.

[Khaylain]

Origineel geplaatst door Dodi:

I loved Factorio. So I bought Space Age straight away and played it for 100s of hours. Finally reached Gleba. Built a huge defense with import. But the problem isn't tampers or anything else. You simply fail in agony due to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spoilage of the goods. No matter how you build the setup. It just doesn't work. After spending over 20 hours just on a stupid setup with the bioreactors, I gave up. Of course you can simply download the blueprints. But building something yourself just isn't possible. The game goes into the corner and is no longer unpacked until a cold chain is abolished or introduced. Very, very unfortunate. Especially since it doesn't fit into the setting at all.

If there exists blueprints that solve it then it by definition has to be possible to build it yourself. The only difference is how much thinking you have to do yourself.

[GAMING_Alligator]

Origineel geplaatst door Dodi:

The game goes into the corner and is no longer unpacked until a cold chain is abolished or introduced. Very, very unfortunate

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this, sorry. Maybe if you posted a screenshot, we could help you debug what's going wrong?

Gleba is very doable from scratch. It just takes a slightly different mindset to the other planets. After all, like the comment above says, those blueprints you can download were created from scratch too.

Especially since it doesn't fit into the setting at all.

It's a jungle planet with organic resources. How does it not fit into the setting? Try leaving fruit sat around in high humidity for a while IRL and see what happens to it, if you don't think the way that it plays fits with its setting.

[GAMING_Alligator]

Is your complaint basically that Space Age introduces new mechanics and isn't just more of the same?

What you call "gimmicks" would be what other people might call "content". Each planet is meant to make you adapt the way you play the game. If you try to brute force them all as if they were Nauvis, I can totally see that that would lead to frustration, since they're not meant to be played like that.

[RiO]

Origineel geplaatst door Nonotorious:

If they had added literally anything, ANYTHING at all to deal with spoilage i would not mind as much. It doesn't even need to stop it totally just slow it down, anything at all. Feels like the devs just gave up halfway through.

You got your wish already.
Quality.

Higher quality materials last longer before spoiling.

Origineel geplaatst door Dodi:

You simply fail in agony due to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spoilage of the goods. No matter how you build the setup. It just doesn't work. After spending over 20 hours just on a stupid setup with the bioreactors, I gave up. Of course you can simply download the blueprints. But building something yourself just isn't possible.

For at least one person, it was totally possible to build something working themselves. Someone had to make those blueprints after all.

And Gleba is easy.
There-- I said it.

Yes. Gleba -- is -- EASY.

The entire planet is a one-trick pony.
You set up two rows of biochambers; one beacon in the middle, one output belt running through the middle. You run two ring belts around the whole thing. The outer ring belt (which will need to be interacted with through long-handed inserters) will be the fuel belt where nutrients are put. (Use whole belt reading to put just enough on it; and not saturate it fully -- because nutrients spoil fast.) The inner ring belt is a dual-ingredient belt, one-lane per ingredient, which you easily accomplish with the two-sided side-loading used in the usual manner for smelting columns. Except here, with this one, you're loading onto a belt that's one-directional and circular.

Find a point where inserters won't need to interact with the ring belts, hop an underground two tiles there and put in an inserter filtered to spoilage-only to take spoiled stuff off of the ring belts and put it into active provider chests. Put in filtered long-hand inserters on the biochambers that ensure spoilage is dropped onto the outer belt with the nutrients. (You're expecting stuff to not spoil in bulk; so it outserts onto the slow belt.)

Feed the outer ring belt with nutrients from spoilage at first. Then switch to nutrients from bioflux later. Produce nutrients locally per build. They spoil too fast to ship them.


The same build can, in minor alterations for needing higher troughput on output products or input ingredients, be repeated for every single recipe line the planet has to offer.

[argrond]

Just like in the previous rant, answer is the same: if you are annoyed by that new mechanic (freezing), means devs implemented their idea successfully. )

Tbh my only concern there is lithium, I foresee I will have some troubles bringing that from farther patches since heating moves slower with each heat pipe length. Everything else is working properly (including quality), and my base is barely twenty chunks big and, of course, it just works, almost nothing is done there to optimize it in space reduction or efficiency of processes.

Prolly the easiest planet so far, if you succeeded on the previous four, of course. )

[RiO]

Origineel geplaatst door argrond:

Just like in the previous rant, answer is the same: if you are annoyed by that new mechanic (freezing), means devs implemented their idea successfully. )

Tbh my only concern there is lithium, I foresee I will have some troubles bringing that from farther patches since heating moves slower with each heat pipe length. Everything else is working properly (including quality), and my base is barely twenty chunks big and, of course, it just works, almost nothing is done there to optimize it in space reduction or efficiency of processes.

Prolly the easiest planet so far, if you succeeded on the previous four, of course. )

Train tracks don't freeze. You can ship rocket fuel to local heating towers and maintain separate webs of heated area.

[Fletch]

Origineel geplaatst door End of history:

I don't see the problem with the spoilables. They science packs spoil in 30 minutes, and getting things from Gleba to Nauvis only takes a few minutes. Bioflux spoils in an hour. It's a fun logistical puzzle to make work and very satisfying when you do.

FYI, both (bioflux/agg science) spoil in an hour. Biter eggs spoil in 30 min though.

I've found it quite easy to have a couple of space platforms dedicated to each item type transporting a single rocket load of a spoilable thing (ex: two space platforms between Nauvis / Gleba transporting only agg science -- 1k packs each) -- if the transport becomes the bottleneck between producer/consumer, simply copy/paste a new platform into existence. Do the same for bioflux transport, etc.

You don't want a space platform sitting there loaded with some spoilable item, and waiting on something else to be rocketed up -- that platform should immediately start moving to the target planet as soon as the one rocket load of the spoilable item shows up.

[Hurkyl]

Origineel geplaatst door Descriptor:

I rather liked Fulgora and Vulcanis as new challenges and twists on the gameplay. I even liked Gleba's core new gameplay loop, even if it's a bit of a drag. But everything past Gleba, including managing the spoiling science packs, everything to do with Biter Eggs, and honestly everything about Aquilo are just so tedious as to take all the fun out of it. Too much micromanagement at the end of the day for what is supposed to be an automation game.

Maybe I just need to get better at space platforms (which I honestly just do not enjoy using), but the minute I landed on Aquilo and realized that I needed to import absolutely everything, I pretty much immediately ended my run, as it just stopped being fun. Such a shame, it really had me in the first half there.

You don't have to set up shipping loops for every little thing. Just drop a thousand or so copper/iron/steel plates and stone/concrete, set up a platform to make regular shipments, and you're good to go for producing individual items as needed.


If your issue is placing ice/concrete. note that force building will do that for you automatically. (well, it sets ghosts, which your personal construction robots will place)