I completed a playthrough of Factorio Space Age. Here are my thoughts on it:
Factorio Space Age is an expansion-pack for Factorio.
Factorio is a game which involves constructing automated systems which mine
resources, and move/assemble these resources until ultimately constructing a
rocket.
Factorio stimulates the same creativity that programming or other engineering involves.
It’s an enthralling game to play.
The Space Age expansion provides more content for the base game. The game adds
different planets on which to build factories, as well as interplanetary travel.
– Rather than building a rocket to win the game, you build a rocket to ferry
you (or items) to a spaceship. You build up the systems on these spaceships, and
have these spaceships take you (or items) to other planets. You build up more
factories on these other planets. The goal of the game in Space Age is to have a
sufficiently powerful spaceship which reaches the Solar System Edge.
Each new environment (space, and each of the new planets) offers a twist to the Factorio formula.
“First time as a scientist, second time as an engineer, third time as a
technician.” – The experience with Space Age is like playing Factorio
for the first time, for another few times.
The planet you start out on plays out the same as a typical Factorio playthrough
does. – Though, since launching rockets is a fundamental aspect of Space Age,
launching rockets takes significantly fewer resources than it did in vanilla
gameplay.
i.e.: The formula remains the same: your factory gathers inputs from ore patches
(iron, copper, stone, coal, and later, uranium), as well as from fluids (water,
crude oil), and processes these into increasingly complex intermediate products
that are used to assemble items.
Space Age’s new environments twist this formula a bit:
In Space, you build up spaceships (called “space platforms”). The space
platforms are loosely similar to Factorio’s trains: trains serve as a logistics
method for transporting items between stations; the space platforms analogously
transport items on fixed routes between planets.
When traveling through space, the space platforms will need to shoot down
asteroids in their path. (This is the primary obstacle to reaching the game’s
goal: at each stage, the asteroids in space become tougher, and practically
require having unlocked another tier of automated weapons).
The space platforms are constructed through sending items up from the planet.
(And the platforms can send items down to a planet).
The space platform’s systems require gathering resources by collecting chunks of
asteroids, and processing these into fuel for the spaceship’s thrusters (as
well as into ammunition, etc.).
That’s already “Factorio, but different”: each platform needs to have the
systems to sustain itself: to build up enough fuel to get places, to have enough
ammunition to protect itself from asteroids, to have enough power to run those
systems.
The new planets vary the formula further. Space Age has four new planets; these
can be grouped into the three new inner planets, and an ‘outer planet’.
The inner planets can each be bootstrapped just with the resources you start
with on that planet. – I initially thought a Landing Pad building was required
for the space platforms to be able to send items down to the planet. But, it’s
possible to just import the items you need from another planet first;
bootstrapping the factory on each planet from scratch is not necessary!
The new inner planets are: Vulcanus (the lava one), Gleba (the biological one), Fulgora (the lightning one).
I started with Vulcanus.
Compared to the base game, the tech tree has been shuffled around a bit. Of
course, some new toys are locked behind the technologies researched with science
from each of these new planets. – But, Vulcanus has artillery and cliff
explosives. (It’s somewhat frustrating that these can’t be unlocked on the
starting planet!).
Vulcanus does not twist the Factorio gameplay too much compared to vanilla.
With Vulcanus, rather than mining iron and copper ore, instead you forge iron
and copper from lava. Rather than belts of iron and copper ore, you make use of
molten iron and copper.
The oil-based product chain is also varied. Rather than processing crude oil,
Vulcanus flips the production chain: you start with what’s typically and end
product: sulfuric acid. The production chain for other oil-based products has a
different start than on the starting planet.
Gleba, the biological one, I’ve seen more mixed opinions about.
It’s my understanding that the planet’s difficulty has been softened since the
initial release.
I played on a ‘railworld’ difficulty. (Enemies didn’t expand their bases after I
destroyed their bases). With that, and the difficulty nerfing, I never faced any
pushback from the Gleba enemies.
What I did face was significant confusion trying to figure Gleba out!
On Gleba, rather than mining from ore patches, all the resources come from
growing and processing fruit.
Additionally, the assembly machines which process the fruit take in nutrients as
fuel (i.e. they’re not powered by electricity).
What makes this more complicated is that each of these items (the fruit, the
processed fruit, the nutrients) each spoil after some time. e.g. if a nutrient
is not used within a couple of minutes, it becomes spoilage, which can’t be
used. – Because spoilage can’t be used, your systems have to be able to deal
with these spoilable inputs.
Somewhat dastardly, the Gleba science pack requires an alien egg as an input; if
the alien egg ‘spoils’, it hatches into an enemy unit.
The Gleba science pack itself also spoils(!!).
It took me a long time to figure Gleba out.
Ultimately, having just enough of a setup to construct just the Gleba science
is itself quite straightforward.
Fulgora, the lightning planet, is probably the most interesting new planet.
Rather than building up new items from mined ores, with Fulgora, you mine scrap
items, and recycle the scrap down to intermediate products.
This results in a funny twist wherein the blue circuit board, which is typically
a late-game intermediate product that’s complex to assemble, becomes relatively
common on Fulgora; whereas the green circuit board, which is typically an early
game intermediate product, becomes relatively difficult/expensive to acquire on
Fulgora.
– But also.. because you’ll end up with an excess of items you don’t use from
the recycled scrap, you’ll naturally end up having to dispose of these excess items
in order to avoid blocking the factory’s production. This emphasises the flow of
the factory, and emphasises streams of items.
The final planet, Aquilo, is cold.
Unlike the other planets, Aquilo does not support bootstrapping a factory just
from resources available on the planet. It requires using the space platforms to
import items.
Aquilo’s gimmick is that, in addition to power, each building needs to be
adjacent to a heated pipe. This puts some constraint on how the factory is
arranged.
It also makes getting started on Aquilo really interesting: solar power is very
limited on Aquilo, and it requires power to get water, and other power sources
require water to provide power.
Constrained Land
A common denominator across these new enviroments is that the area you have to
work with is relatively constrained.
On the starting planet, cliffs restrict where you can build. (Cliffs can be
cleared using cliff explosives, which require Vulcanus science packs to unlock).
Vulcanus is limited by its cliffs, and lava. (Lava can be paved over with a
late-game item).
Gleba’s land is swampy, and so often requires landfill. On the other hand, the
lack of cliffs/oceans means no chokepoints to serve as a defense.
Fulgora’s land is limited to islands. Each island needs to be self-sufficient in
terms of power.
Aquilo’s land is extremely limited.
I wouldn’t overstate this point. It’s not too complicated.
But.
Common advice to new players is to not condense the factory too much. By leaving
plenty of space between buildings in your factory, you’ve got room to make
adjustments and refinements to the factory. Whereas, a dense, compact factory
risks being difficult to make changes to.
Combat
Factorio is not a combat-oriented game.
In the base game, combat plays a role as you expand your factory.
But by mid/late game, you’ve likely automated your factory’s defenses, turning
defense into a logistic problem. The artillery unlocked in late game practically
eliminates challenge from attacking (turning attack into a logistic problem).
– That is, it’s not like combat in Age of Empires or whatever, where combat is
a strategic aspect of your macroeconomic considerations.
With the new planets:
- In space, your platforms must shoot down enemy asteroids.
- Gleba’s enemies most closely resemble the enemies on the starting planet.
They’ll attack your factory if you pollute too much, as such.
- Vulcanus’s enemies are big and powerful, like mini-bosses. On Vulcanus, these
mini-bosses each guard a region. Once killed, you’re able to build in that
territory.
- Fulgora doesn’t have any combat/enemies.
- Aquilo doesn’t have any either.
New Toys
In the base game, you unlock more powerful buildings which help make the game
easier.
You unlock higher tiers of belts or assembling machines, which require more
complex intermediate products to build, but provide more useful buildings.
e.g. At the start, your only option for power is burning coal to power steam
engines. Later in the game, you unlock solar power or nuclear power.
The Space Age expansion similarly provides more powerful items which make the
game easier.
Each of the inner planets has its own unique buildings which work well with
other planets.
e.g. Vulcanus unlocks a big mining drill (which is a more efficient machine
compared to the electric mining drill), and a foundry (which provides a powerful
way to deal with smelting).
Probably the coolest new piece of equipment is the mech armour.
In the base game, you upgrade your armour to the point where you can equip your
armour with a power generator, shields, and roboports.
Mech Armour takes this one step further, giving you a jetpack. The jetpack has
two big benefits: it lets you fly over all terrain (rather than being hindered
by cliffs, or lava, or buildings), and it automatically flies if a train were to
collide with you.
In the base game, trains were pretty much the deadliest threat to the character
in the late game. So, having the armour as a way to avoid that is very cool.
I liked the new military items.
You get to unlock a rocket turret, as well as a tesla turret, and a railgun
turret.
For weapons the player gets to wield, there’s a tesla gun, and a rail gun.
The rail gun is a very fun late-game unlock which is very powerful against
Vulcanus’ demolisher enemies.
The tesla gun is decidedly ‘meh’. It might be very good with some more bonus
damage technologies researched.
Late game also offers a new power generation method: fusion power.
Factorio’s nuclear power is already strong as-is.
Fusion Power is an even better power method. Nuclear power requires water, which
is a limited resource in some Factorio settings. Fusion power’s only input
requirements are its fuel cells.
Late game (into post game) also allows for capturing the enemy nests & using
these. But, this wasn’t a system I made use of in game.
Quality
The Space Age expansion also includes a “quality” mechanic. (“uncommon”, “rare”,
“epic”, “legendary”).
Items can have a higher quality, which makes the item better. e.g. “rare
ammunition” will do more damage than normal ammunition.
I’ve seen on social media, this is not as loved as other parts of Factorio.
I’ve also seen people point out there are currently ways to cheese the quality
mechanic; getting higher quality items in ways that’s obviously way easier than
what’s intended.
In my playthrough, I made slight use of the quality mechanic.
On Fulgora, land is somewhat limited, and so it’s useful to be able to have
higher-quality buildings within the same restricted amount of land.
Generally, the quality mechanic is not “over powered”. It’s not exciting.
To me the biggest problem is that dealing with the quality is a big increase in
complexity.
To construct higher quality items, either the item must be constructed with
higher quality inputs, and/or the assembly machine constructing it must be
equipped with quality-enhancing modules.
Inputs to an assembly machine must all be of the same quality tier. You can make
a rare item with rare-quality inputs; but, you can’t make an item with some
normal inputs, and some rare inputs.
Quality-enhancing modules add non-determinism to the assembly machine’s output:
there’s a chance that the item is made with higher quality.
This results in a significant increase in complexity in factory layout.
Because qualities can’t be mixed in input, your factory needs to consider five
times as many kinds of resources.
Unlike other systems in factorio (the logistic network, circuit network, trains,
space), quality does not feel exciting to design a factory for.
Unlike other new toys (rail gun, fusion power), quality doesn’t feel
overpowered. (Although, well, I didn’t build many high quality items).
Unlike higher tier items in factorio, I don’t feel it’s worth going for quality
items.
Of course, I could be mistaken about the quality system.
Having even a marginal increase in value for buildings in a constrained space
could be worth the increase in resources to build. (e.g. That’s the rationale
behind the faster belts).
And, it does offer a nice post-game challenge for players who find that
appealing.
But, in my playthrough, I wasn’t interested.
Space Age Has a More Interesting Systems Sandbox
As with the vanilla game, in Space Age, the challenges are intrinsic to the
gameplay.
The game has a bunch of systems you use to build up a factory.
The goal is somewhat arbitrary.
The goal in the vanilla game is “launch one rocket”. A common post-game measure
was to see how much science-per-minute a factory could produce.
In the Space Age expansion: reach the Solar System Edge.
I reckon the new planets that the Space Age expansion results in a more
interesting post-game sandbox.
Since each of the planets plays out slightly differently, there are different
advantages and disadvantages to producing items on each of them. – Perhaps the
player can aim for efficient trading by having each planet produce and export
what that planet is most efficient at, and importing everything else.
Fusion power is powerful. In my playthrough, my factory wasn’t large enough to
require anything more than the simplest fusion reactor setup. In the post-game,
it’s probably worth making use of fusion power everywhere.
The quality system provides an added challenge, and a concrete goal to reach
towards. The player can aim to scale up their factory by upgrading the
buildings to higher tiers.
Highlight: Rescuing a Spaceship from a Failure Cascade
One highlight of my playthrough was having to rescue a spaceship in Aquilo
orbit:
I had a space platform that lingered in Aquilo orbit.
Aquilo is the planet beyond the “inner planets”; the ultimate planet before the
journey to solar system edge.
In order to get to Aquio from the inner planets, your ship has to be quite
capable. It practically has to be equipped with rocket turrets, in addition to
the minigun turrets.
And, of course, these turrets need to be supplied with ammo.
In designing the ship, I went with a simple modular design:
The outer shell of the spaceship was a belt with ammunition, as well as a belt
of collected asteroid chunks.
Within this shell, was a simple factory: modular units with a common bus of
input resources.
The design worked well enough so long as it got a balanced variety of asteroid
chunks. (i.e. all of metal, ice, and carbon).
I didn’t realise that Aquilo’s asteroids are 80% ice.
This resulted in a case my design hadn’t considered; it was eventually starved
of metal, and so was unable to craft bullets.
(I thought I’d set up the space ship so that if it ran low on ammo, it’d make a
journey back to the starting planet, where it’s safe even without ammo. Somehow,
I hadn’t).
I was in a situation where the ship was beginning to run out of ammo.
But, it’s also in Aquilo orbit, where it’s not safe to be out of ammo (& also
requires some hefty spaceships in order to get to Aquilo).
It’s usually possible to play Factorio very conservatively in order to avoid
unexpected problems.
Most of the time, the pressure is “I want to alleviate bottlenecks”.
This challenge required me to consider resources at my disposal. In the end, I
mitigated this by:
Shipping over some laser turrets to Aquilo (so that these could be delivered
to the platform). Laser turrets consume a significant amount of electricity
(& are not very effective vs anything larger than tiny asteroids), but, I
figured “anything is better than nothing”.
Tried shipping up some more bullets; but, by the game’s design, this isn’t an
effective solution.
Reduced how many thrusters the spaceship used. Before, the spaceship had a
full breadth of thrusters & could go quite fast. But, if it goes slower, then
(per the game’s design), it doesn’t need as high a rate of ammo.
Bodged/reworked the spaceship’s factory setup of asteroid reprocessing. I was
able to get it to a state where it was recovering and (slowly) building up its
ammo stockpile.
In the end, I was able to rescue the ship and get it back to the safe, starting
planet.
It wouldn’t have been the end of the game to have lost the spaceship.
But, the challenge provoked some creative problem solving, and made me consider
things I otherwise wouldn’t have.
What I Liked
Railgun goes thwip-pew.
I mean. Yeah. The overpowered mechanics are great to unlock.
It’s tense the first time you have a spaceship travel to a new destination. –
So, the game’s goal of “reach the Solar System Edge” really does make you feel
like you’re testing a scrappy prototype of a ship.
I really enjoyed how the Space Age expansion tinkers with the Factorio formula,
which puts emphasis on different aspects of factory designs, challenging your
mental models for how you’ve approached problems before.
Despite how long the game takes to play, it was constantly engaging.
What I Disliked
Uhhh.
I did watch Dosh’s video on Space Age before playing the game. In that, he said
that it’s a shame that the factory on each planet didn’t need to be all that
large in order to beat the game.
Space Age takes a long time to play. – In this sense, each new planet feels
like a puzzle. You have to figure out how to set up the factory on each of
the new planets; but, you don’t need to then iterate on your factory design so
that it’s much better than your initial setup.
– By the time I reached the Solar System Edge, I hadn’t scaled up my science
production beyond my initial setup. On most planets, I had only one
science-producing assembler.
On the other hand, I think the weapons generally feel under-powered without
research bonuses.
In the base game, you have tiered levels of bullets. Red, yellow, and
uranium…. (each gated behind tech). This feels like a nice way to solve the
problem: if you want more powerful stuff, you need a better factory. Passive
bonuses gated behind research would motivate a larger factory; but, so does
“build higher tier items”.
And I still think combat on the planets feels backwards.
The endgame planet has no combat; whereas the starting planet faces the most pressing combat.
I think an ideal progression might be the other way: starting out with no
combat, and progressing to increasingly hostile environments.
And of my playthrough, I think I missed out on the True Gleba Experience by
going for railworld.
Because I played with the Railworld settings, enemies didn’t expand.
And so, enemies didn’t get close enough to my farms on Gleba in order to be
triggered to attack.
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