What I love about Space Age

[Kyralessa]

What's your favorite new Space Age feature? What great new thing have you noticed that you weren't expecting?

We have enough bug threads, so let's have a praise thread.

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For me, still setting up smelting, what I've noticed is that ghosts look really good.

In the past distinguishing between ghosts and real items could be quite challenging.

These blue, phasing ghosts are still very recognizable as what item they are, but also recognizable as ghosts.

Much easier to use. This is a great change.

[jamiechi1]

I like the color of the ghosts, but not the horrible wavy animation effect. Not good for older people with eye issues.
Edit: On second thought, the new ghosts cover up the color of modded tiles of various colors.

I do like the way that it is very difficult to edit and update my mods for the new version of Factorio. I like the challenge. I write some of my own mods. Too easy to just install someone else's mod.

And I like being able to set up machines while they are ghosts, before they are placed.

Edit: I now use a mod to fix the ghosts to look like they did with 1.1 Factorio.

[EustaceCS]

Quality.
Infuriating at times. Rewarding at times.
Viable for multiple playstyles and at different stages of the game.
Might sink extra hundred hours into just fiddling with it.

[Kyralessa]

Another subtle but really good change:

In Factorio 1.1, if you laid down a blueprint (or just a lot of ghosts) but didn't have bots yet, you could end up chopping a lot of trees by hand. But as you were chopping the trees, it was likely a lot of ghosts would disappear because when the tree disappeared, now you were inadvertently right-clicking on ghosts.

In Factorio 2.0, it appears that when you chop trees, you're locked into chopping mode. As long as you hold the right button down while chopping, you're only chopping, and not deleting ghosts or anything else. You can move from tree to tree continuously chopping without making a shambles of your ghosts.

This makes life much better.

[Kyralessa]

Now that I'm doing more scouting by car, I can really see the "Natural paths" feature talked about here:

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-401

Even on a heavily-forested map, instead of constantly bumping into all-but-impassible forests or cliffs and having to backtrack, there's always a way around. Exploring the map by car feels really good now, nice and smooth.

[mmmPI]

I really like the new silo as requester chest, i feel it's really making sending things to orbit accessible and easy compared to the circuitry involved in space exploration mod.

I like quality, i didn't thought i would spend that much time trying to get more and more legendary things, i thought it would be for megabase, but after going to Fulgora i started to get a few and wanted more and more and ended up completly drawn into it like the first days i played the original factorio with forgetting to eat for the whole day.

I like designing spaceship, they don't really need to serve a purpose, i just give myself a set of rules / objectives and spend time trying to make it work.

I need to keep the rest for later because there's so much things i like x)

[Panzerknacker]

I like that less recipes are available at the start of the game, stuff like Electric mining drill and Radars need to be researched first. I also like that fish can spoil so you better catch a fish or two before you get into a fight!

[jamiechi1]

Another subtle but really good change:

In Factorio 1.1, if you laid down a blueprint (or just a lot of ghosts) but didn't have bots yet, you could end up chopping a lot of trees by hand. But as you were chopping the trees, it was likely a lot of ghosts would disappear because when the tree disappeared, now you were inadvertently right-clicking on ghosts.

In Factorio 2.0, it appears that when you chop trees, you're locked into chopping mode. As long as you hold the right button down while chopping, you're only chopping, and not deleting ghosts or anything else. You can move from tree to tree continuously chopping without making a shambles of your ghosts.

This makes life much better.

Like mining the leaves in Satisfactory. Never thought of trying that here.

[Kyralessa]

Another nice feature: However one may feel about cliff explosives being further down the tech tree, I like the fact that cliff destruction isn't available until cliff explosives are available. It means I can use the deconstruction planner without marking a bunch of cliffs for destruction when I have no way of destroying them right now.

[mmmPI]

I like planting trees and having a way to mitigate pollution with biochambers.

[Scarlett7Moore]

What I love about Space Age in Factorio is how it expands the game's scope into space exploration while maintaining the core gameplay loop of building, automating, and optimizing. The introduction of new planets each with distinct challenges and resources adds an exciting layer of complexity.

[Kyralessa]

Another thing I love about Space Age (which I really miss when I step back into Factorio 1.1 to play Space Exploration) is the pins.

In Factorio 1.1, when I want to drive (or jetpack) to something far away, I have to look at the map, head there, look at the map again, correct my course...

It's great to be able, no matter where I am, to just pin that arrow and drive straight toward it, not even needing the map once.

It's also been fantastically helpful for finding my car, my tank, my spidertron, and my fellow player in a two-player game.

[adam_bise]

Platforms!

[jamiechi1]

Another nice feature: However one may feel about cliff explosives being further down the tech tree, I like the fact that cliff destruction isn't available until cliff explosives are available. It means I can use the deconstruction planner without marking a bunch of cliffs for destruction when I have no way of destroying them right now.

One can 'blacklist' items such as cliffs with the deconstruction planner. So not really an issue.

[trancexpress]

Quality and the new automation machines with built-in productivity, plus handling byproducts and spoilage. I feel there are now more ways to build your factory and I'm happy due to it.

[coffee-factorio]

I think I'll always be in love with Space Platforms.