Space Age with Planet Mods

[jay_clark]

So I was playing the Space Age and had visited the three local planets of Volcanus, Gleba and Fulgoria. Before heading off to Aquilo, I decided that I would go ahead and download some planet mods. I had heard about Castra with some kind of alien military but decided against downloading it. I had heard that if you leave the planet, that the aliens end up becoming way too advanced to combat. I had also heard that because the alien military gets so big, that the game itself starts to lag badly. I have no personal story about this but decided to stay away for these two reasons.

I did download Muluna moon of Nauvis mod and had a bad experience. I am thinking that this mod may require a brand new start which is not what I was doing. I was orbiting Fulgora when I installed it and I noticed that my space platform was not able to boil ice down to water for my engines. This maybe a technology you unlock maybe? Anyway, I uninstalled this moon of Nauvis mod and was able to turn ice into water again. If you have had a different experience, please let me know.

So about me, I have beaten Space Age before but I struggled with getting to the solar system edge. I have not messed with quality much but have seen a lot of videos with the LDS shuffle and turning meteors into Legendary components. I consider myself an above average player and think Factorio with Space Age is the greatest game I have ever played. Below I have tabulated the five mods I installed and my thoughts on them. They all played nicely with one another other than the Nauvis moon mod I explained earlier.

Corrundum - gets really detailed into the different chemistries. Planet is interesting with the lakes of natural gas and the electrical storms. Science benefits are mediocre. A lot of work to create iron and copper which are really not that necessary at this point in the game. You can drop off many of the items required to create the science packs allowing the engineer to skip past many of the chemistry technologies the creator of the mod wanted you to explore. When you land on the planet, I believe there are enough starting materials and technologies to allow you to get off the planet just strictly based on what you are given. Also, if you land on the planet and decide that you need a break, you can easily craft a rocket through imports and leave. I thought the mod was just average. (better than any mod I could have ever created though!)

Maraxsis - very beautiful planet with fish swimming around. Very detailed production chains and a second area to explore in the deep trench of the planet. Has a building similar to a Foundry or Electromagnet plant except it allows for 50% quality instead of productivity called a hydro plant. I feel like this could be abused and would have personally gone with productivity for it as well. Because the science has to be made in the hydro plant, I am constantly making different qualities of blue hydro science which is quite a pain. It has a really interesting new beacon in this mod as well. While you can craft a rocket through imports, you have to unlock the technology to figure out how to launch a rocket from under the water. Once you get to the planet, you are not leaving till you figure it out. Like Aquillo, you do need to bring in some imports to be able to survive as you need to craft a submarine which is a reskinned spidertron before even attempting this planet. I thought this mod was really incredible.

Moshine - similar to Vulcanus with the molten iron that allows for unlimited iron products. The ore patches are a mix of about five different things so you need to sort the heck out of this when mining it. I thought this was refreshing as most mods and even the base game, everything is a nice patch of one particular mineral so this five different things can cause logistic problems with some items backing everything up. If you land on the planet and need a break, you can always just import in what you need and leave. Has a great tech tree with updated solar panels, accumulators and trains. It also has an A.I. tech tree which seems like a really interesting idea but it does not seem really fleshed out. Making these A.I. cores does allow you to unlock long handed stack inserters and productivity for quantum chips but nothing else. Using these A.I. cores are like using a new kind of science pack that requires a very special building. Since these do not get used up in a lab like a traditional science pack, I ended up not coming back to this type of science as there was always something I wanted to unlock in the normal tech tree. I think the A.I. cores idea is really neat but I do not feel like it quite landed. I still really enjoyed the mod though.

Cerys - is a small moon for Folgora and the map is very small. When you land on the planet, you are really just able to take yourself and a few construction robots and then you are stuck there. Moon plays out like a puzzle trap as you are not able to import items in but you are able to use a new type of scrap and some of the unique buildings to build things. Has a new type of science pack that is only usable by the moons new science lab. Introduces Plutonium to the game but by the time you are really able to use it, you have access to fusion which is so much better. Plutonium also takes a lot of work to enrich. Science tree has Holmium plate productivity which could be nice and it also Radiative towers which could make things on Aquilo and Secretas much easier without having to use all those heat pipes. Once I unlock the towers though, I am leaving and never coming back as Plutonium just isn't really worth it I think. I did enjoy this mod.

Secretas&Frozeta - So this planet moon combo are about 90,000 km from Aquilo making it extremely challenging to get to. If you remember what it was like to fly to the solar system edge to beat the Space Age DLC, it basically is that same trip and back to see the mod. So Secretas is just a large gas giant that you cannot land on and being a pit stop on the way to Frozeta. Frozeta is just a giant ice ball with a lot of new space ship scrap from all the ships that have crashed on it. For my ship, I have most of my guns at the front with just a few turrets and rockets on the side as that has always gotten me through the day. However, orbiting Secretas or Frozeta means that I have to watch out for the really really big rocks that require a rail gun. Since I have never needed to just wait out in space, I have never needed to have railguns on the side so planning a trip to Frozeta usually means having a metric ton of rockets and stopping for 30 seconds to pick up science packs and get out of there before getting creamed. If you land on the moon of Frozeta, you can import in a rocket to quickly leave if you want. Around the planet and moon are a new type of asteroid that is basically gold. While it can be found in some amounts on Frozeta, it is part of the new science pack that is created so mining it in space is encouraged. The new scrap is kind of interesting as there are a ton of things that this scrap consists of. The planet itself is super basic though. The science itself is pretty great as it has level four modules that can be unlocked, a new recycler that is about three times as fast and robot cargo size upgrades. I really enjoyed this mod despite Frozeta being pretty basic. Just getting there is quite a challenge and I was constantly worried about how much time I was taking when orbiting the planet/moon as I was not protected well on my sides.

These five mods all played nice with one another and I did not experience any problems. In order to Obtain Promethium science, I have to use all the standard sciences as before as well as science from Corrundum, Miraxsis and Frozeta meaning that getting to the solar system edge will require me to master those three additional planets. This makes it much more challenging to beat the game. Also, since I am now becoming accustomed to taking a 90,000 Km run to Frozeta, I have a feeling getting to the edge oof space will be much easier for me this time and I can start mining for Promethium chunks.

https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/14969275015150359238/396B9E0CDC5193F80044FB9803C535DA8E8AEF8C/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

[dynalon]

Muluna should be playable even if you add it later, but you will have to backtrack. Muluna changes how basic space platform tech is unlocked, as well as production of space science.
That being said I did not like it.
In particular I hate how you are forced to make petroleum / plastic from wood. The whole production chain is painfully inefficient so you need dozens of machines to produce enough to launch a rocket. In the end it is just easier to import components from Nauvis. Muluna also does not give any interesting technology.

Cerys - I hated that one too. I did not like how random the enrichment of uranium was and how mod forced me to a single path of progression. Space on Cerys is extremely limited, so you can’t really grow your factory, your progression speed gets throttled by energy. In the end technologies provided by Cerys were simply not worth it.

Aside from full planet mods there are also planet-specific mods / extensions for Fulgora, Gleba and Aquilo. There are also several post aquilo mods (like secrets and frozeta).

[jay_clark]

Originally posted by dynalon:

Muluna should be playable even if you add it later, but you will have to backtrack. Muluna changes how basic space platform tech is unlocked, as well as production of space science.
That being said I did not like it.
In particular I hate how you are forced to make petroleum / plastic from wood. The whole production chain is painfully inefficient so you need dozens of machines to produce enough to launch a rocket. In the end it is just easier to import components from Nauvis. Muluna also does not give any interesting technology.

Cerys - I hated that one too. I did not like how random the enrichment of uranium was and how mod forced me to a single path of progression. Space on Cerys is extremely limited, so you can’t really grow your factory, your progression speed gets throttled by energy. In the end technologies provided by Cerys were simply not worth it.

Aside from full planet mods there are also planet-specific mods / extensions for Fulgora, Gleba and Aquilo. There are also several post aquilo mods (like secrets and frozeta).

Thanks for giving me your impression of Mulana. I had some conflicts with my already in play game so I was not able to give it a try. I also had not heard about the planet extension mods. I'll have to take a look at them.

[dynalon]

Past Aquilo there is new modpack called Fall of Promethea, haven’t played it yet but it looked promising. There is also mod called Particle Physics which extends Aquilo and adds some things to Gleba.

For Aquilo I would recommend dredgeworks frozen reaches - it adds deposits which yield asteroid chunks. So basically you are able to build self sustaining base on Aquilo. If you combine it with mod which adds additional asteroid recipes you could potentially do megabase on aquilo.

For Gleba you can try on wayward seas, which overhauls map generation for Gleba and adds some cultivation options. There are also mods like slipstack agriculture and other mods from the same author which work nicely with the other Gleba mod.

For Fulgora there are several options, most notable ones are Scrap Reprocessor, Fulgora extended and Fulgoran Sludge. They modify scrap processing and change Fulgoran ocean to custom liquid which can be processed to scrap and other things.

There are also smaller mods like Nuclear science which is for Nauvis or Biochemistry which adds some uses for biochambers on every planet.

[Twisted]

How well do the planets fit in with Space Age? Do they feel jank, overpowered or incomplete in any way? I've been looking at them for a while and they seem really cool but I normally avoid content mods because they often change game balance or aren't as polished as the base game.

[dynalon]

All planets listed here are optional, meaning they don’t block your progression if you don’t visit them. Cerys is a bit special case, because while it does not block you from progressing it blocks you from leaving once you land there, until you finish it, which can take 10-20 hours with default rates.
Moshine and Corrundum are probably closest to vanilla experience, they provide production chains specific to planet and resources present there, you are also rewarded with useful technologies.
Maraxsis is very unique, it has its own theme, which does not fit completely into space age concept where you land on a planet, build a factory which uses local resources, make science and leave. Maraxsis actually encourages you to move your science production there (basic Nauvis sciences), forces you to deal with quality and has lot of unique mechanics. Reward is also not that significant - one mildly useful technology and buildings which help with quality. Maraxsis is more about journey than the reward.

In terms of balance it depends on what you call overpowered, moshine gives strong solar panels and accumulators, but you usually go there around Gleba or after Gleba and most post Gleba ships will run on nuclear or fusion. Corrundum gives really strong thrusters. I was able to pull 2-3x speed of normal ship, but you can’t just slap those thrusters on every ship and call it done. Higher speed means more asteroids your defenses have to deal with, way more fuel consumption, so it forced me to do complete redesign where I repeatedly tested ships until they were able to fly safely. I would call it an interesting challenge.

Most post Aquilo planets such as secretas and frozeta feel bit out of place in terms of progression. Basically after aquilo you have all the technology you need to go anywhere. So motivation to go there is really low since Aquilo is the usual finish line.

[jay_clark]

Originally posted by Twisted:

How well do the planets fit in with Space Age? Do they feel jank, overpowered or incomplete in any way? I've been looking at them for a while and they seem really cool but I normally avoid content mods because they often change game balance or aren't as polished as the base game.

I think for myself, Maraxsis was the only mod that made me feel I had an advantage that was overpowered as the Hydro Plants give a 50% quality bonus. While they cannot build much, they can still create things that could be broken down for lots of quality components. The next time I do a run, I will probably just keep the Frozeta mod as it gave me something more than Aquilo as the end game. The other mods were interesting but do not have the polish as the base game. Frozeta isn't as polished either but it did provide a nice challenge.

[Bing987]

As far as I can tell, Castra is broken (as of April, 2025). There is a tech that allows building something to collect more data packets and prevents some enemies from spawning. When you connect them to the power grid, the game crashes.