Grumpy Quitting

[UnusedName]

I'm calling it after ~200 hours playing Space Age - this expansion isn't for me. I give up. Gleba is too unpleasant. I do not want to play a racing game and dealing with spoiling science. Whoever came up with the idea of making the science packs spoil deserves everything bad that happens to them.

I've played Factorio for more than 1,000 hours so I'm a bit surprised that this expansion was so unpleasant for me. I was looking at the Steam achievements and I wanted to provide some feedback since at the moment it looks like there might be some cliffs blocking player progression at the places where I struggled. It'll be interesting to see how many players finish the DLC - going by the Steam achievements at the moment >95% of players haven't reached Aquilo but maybe that'll rise with time.

1.
Getting started with Space Platforms is really hard. There isn't a sandbox mode any more (???) so the only way to design a space platform is to hurl a huge amount of resources into orbit. More than is needed in my experience. This is a huge waste of time and effort if something goes wrong and makes what should be a lot of fun a real chore. Once the foundations are in space it is a joy to play around with space platforms. Getting the foundations into space made me ask Steam for a refund but they knocked me back, so fortunately it is more than a few hours into the game!

2.
Getting started on Gleba is too hard. I also didn't realise that you could drop cargo without a Cargo Landing Pad (+ that hadn't mattered on the first 2 planets + we aren't allowed to bring inventory so I assumed that was the intended way to play) so I struggled a lot more than was needed but I looked up some videos online of how to deal with Gleba and discovered that I'd missed a critical piece of information. Even with that it is a nightmare learning how Gleba works and trying to get a bootstrap base set up is a labour of love with very limited payoff. The base game has an entire tutorial on how to set up power, Gleba really needs something similar. Experimenting and making mistakes hurts a lot, figuring out what the game expects me to do on planet vs. with imports from other planets isn't fun because it eats so much time and pentapod eggs are stressful. I don't know if it is *intended* that they can be preserved in biolabs and recovered with recyclers, but id that is intentional it should be signposted more clearly. Maybe with a tutorial. I spent hours keeping those damn eggs fresh and I hate them for it.

I don't know how to get a logistics system set up that gets Gleba science from there to Nauvis while handling spoilage. At this point I don't want to either. I want to go and do something fun.

3.
Vulcanus and Fulgora were both great, really enjoyed them. Aquilo is a big mystery.

[MisterDoctor]

I am in a similar place but for the opposite reasons. Gleba was the best part and Vulcanus and especially Fulgora ruined the great experience I was having. Fulgora has made me question if I even like this game in the first place.

(I knew though that the gaming "high" I was having with Gleba would inevitably result in a gaming "low" which is where I am now, so I hopefully just have to wait for it to wear off to get back to a more neutral/unbiased point of view.)

for your specific problem with spoilage and pentapod eggs:

since pentapod eggs require pentapod eggs, this means that you will want at least TWO pentapod egg buildings that feed each other. once you have this setup, it is mostly stable as long as you deal with spoilage (including having some turrets to deal with any eggs that happen to hatch.) it may not be *perfectly* stable but it is mostly stable.

(I have ignored my Gleba base while doing Vulcanus and Fulgora and it just makes endless bio science that spoils and the eggs never stall since I deal with the spoilage from the science. when I have more production going it's a little bit less stable since there may not be enough bioflux for the science and then some eggs might hatch, but there are turrets to deal with it. I also have some filter splitters to catch any stray eggs if I make a mistake. they get immediately put into wooden boxes with an alarm speaker tied to it so that I know right away if some eggs are escaping.)

(I have not got it working yet, but theoretically it should be possible to create a pentapod egg loop that does nothing but keep some pentapod eggs alive. I suppose this is already what I did with my science setup, with the two egg buildings, but you could set it up in a more dedicated fashion and try to get it super stable. My one attempt at this did not quite succeed. Part of the problem is that the eggs spoil into wrigglers and not spoilage. So possibly it is just better to do it with bio science as the output and then you spoil to spoilage and not enemies.)

[jamiechi1]

I found a mod that gives me the option to disable the spoiling of the Science Packs. And I plan to set the spoilage to the minimum value and then start a new game if needed. I understand spoilage for some of the items that are gathered on Gleba, but intermediate or final items made from them that also spoil; that is just stupid. There is a good chance that I will just disable spoilage completely.

[computeraddict]

1.
Getting started with Space Platforms is really hard. There isn't a sandbox mode any more (???) so the only way to design a space platform is to hurl a huge amount of resources into orbit. More than is needed in my experience. This is a huge waste of time and effort if something goes wrong and makes what should be a lot of fun a real chore. Once the foundations are in space it is a joy to play around with space platforms. Getting the foundations into space made me ask Steam for a refund but they knocked me back, so fortunately it is more than a few hours into the game!

Save your game, hit `, type /editor twice

[MisterDoctor]

1.
Getting started with Space Platforms is really hard. There isn't a sandbox mode any more (???) so the only way to design a space platform is to hurl a huge amount of resources into orbit. More than is needed in my experience. This is a huge waste of time and effort if something goes wrong and makes what should be a lot of fun a real chore. Once the foundations are in space it is a joy to play around with space platforms. Getting the foundations into space made me ask Steam for a refund but they knocked me back, so fortunately it is more than a few hours into the game!

for this part, if you setup auto requests you can just build with ghosts and anything you ghost will get sent to your platform automatically as long as it is available on the surface.

[BlueTemplar]

[...]
I don't know how to get a logistics system set up that gets Gleba science from there to Nauvis while handling spoilage. At this point I don't want to either. I want to go and do something fun.
[...]

Then just don't, and

bring (most of) your science to Gleba ?
Which seems to be hinted by the game, as that's where you unlock the super-labs ?

----

[...]
for your specific problem with spoilage and pentapod eggs:

since pentapod eggs require pentapod eggs, this means that you will want at least TWO pentapod egg buildings that feed each other. [...]

And one of the buildings can be just a belt.

----

See also :
Gleba has killed the game for me.

[MisterDoctor]

[...]
for your specific problem with spoilage and pentapod eggs:

since pentapod eggs require pentapod eggs, this means that you will want at least TWO pentapod egg buildings that feed each other. [...]

And one of the buildings can be just a belt.

maybe but I have found that a small belt loop is a lot less stable than two biochambers. I think having more than one source of freshness makes things more stable. if a building is itself the only source of freshness but also needs to be bootstrapped then it is not very stable. but yes there are different approaches that can work.

[nzer]

Then just don't, and

bring (most of) your science to Gleba ?
Which seems to be hinted by the game, as that's where you unlock the super-labs ?

Bio labs can only be built on Nauvis, despite being unlocked on Gleba.

[GrumpyJoe]

Then just don't, and

bring (most of) your science to Gleba ?
Which seems to be hinted by the game, as that's where you unlock the super-labs ?

Bio labs can only be built on Nauvis, despite being unlocked on Gleba.

Built or crafted?
I'd rather move to Gleba than to stay on Nauvis forever.
Im close to building the win condition space ship.
Pondering my options now, I think I'll just decrease asteroid spawn rate with a command, because that's the fun killer to me. Space combat.
The planets are fine.
What's holding me back the most at the moment is Fulgoras buildable space. My 1-2 trains are waiting on the track loop like on a rollercoaster.

Btw. How dare you use my name that way OP

[BlueTemplar]

Oh. (I was 4, now 3.5, planned real techs (all requiring Gleba science) away from

biolabs

.) Damn, looks like they are

spawner-based, and can only be placed on Nauvis... :/ I guess this is to make Nauvis still relevant (aside from optional Uranium) ?

Still, seems like it's a bit like the situation with Biochambers :

you don't have to use them for most bio recipes (except maybe for fruit processing)

, but are rewarded if you do ?

(And just to be clear, by

«bring (most of) your science to Gleba»

, I meant

«ship it there using space platforms, except maybe for the cheapest types of packs»

: which the game actually seems to teach you by

requiring military science for the tech that allows making military science on Gleba !

)

[nzer]

Built or crafted?

Built. If you want to use

bio labs

, you must

ship your science to Nauvis

, full stop.