Anyone else find gthe default settings more attractive in Space Age?

[Grayhill]

Of all the many cool new things, one thing that has been occuring to me is how 1) I no longer have much desire to try death worlds, rail worlds, or other alternate game settings, 2) playing with mods no longer interests me, and 3) I'm much more inclined to keep playing the same save than to go start a new one.

For me, personally, all of this was exactly the opposite in 1.1. I was always switching it up, playing with max resources, thin resources, rail worlds, death worlds, ribbon worlds, etc. And this, in my eyes, was the beauty of 1.1: there were so many ways to play the game. Infinite replay value.

I also depended on a long list of QoL mods. I'm no longer tempted by those mods, with the possible exception of rate calculator, and even with that, the new tooltips go a long way to making rate calculator unnecessary.

I really like the early game, so I am tempted to get another save going as I end my first playthrough of Space Age, but when I consider map settings, nothing but just default settings sounds like fun.

Of course all of this is 100% just personal preference! And some players had this approach to 1.1 too, and some are digging into all the mods and experimental stuff with Space Age too. I'm just curious if anyone else has had a similar experience to mine.

One reason for all the changes for me, I think, is that so much QoL stuff was added to the base game, plus SA is so much more complex in interesting and creative ways. There's so much to do and never enough time in a day to do it. I thought 1.1 was a masterpiece of video game design, and now they've gone an quadrupled how good it is.

[Dixi]

Yes default game without mods looks better in 2.0

In 1.1 belt throughput was serious problem in mega base building. Since it is upgraded X4 by stack inserters and more by another tier of belts, problem dissolves completely.
Base game in 2.0 become more complex, so you don't need addons to turn it more challenging/diverse.

From other side of view, base 1.1 Factorio existed for many years, and addons was a way to play something new, while 2.0 is up for just a month. Maybe some years later 2.0 will also require addons to be more exiting.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, how much have you played pre-SA Factorio ? How much have you played SA, in particular post-rocket ?
Also, you don't exactly explain : what made you keep restarting games (before or after getting to the endgame ?) ?

Default game settings still hardly interest me
(they're basically for first time players and self-restricting challenges),
though I'm kind of glad Deathworld Marathon has been made 'easier' :
expensive mode would probably been too much for my first SA game.

2.0 has integrated a lot more mod functionality into vanilla, but there are still things that I'm missing in QoL(ish) mods :
Mods for 1st expansion run (including Rate Calculator-similar functionality with Helmod)
And, not yet (assuming that it would be too cheaty on space platforms), but its time will come : Placing pipes next to each other
(took 6 years to get some of the Picker Pipe Tools functionality into vanilla, maybe some day..?)

And overhaul modpacks are another matter entirely, but it's probably too early to try them out in SA or even just 2.0 anyway.

[Grayhill]

Yeah, how much have you played pre-SA Factorio ? How much have you played SA, in particular post-rocket ?
Also, you don't exactly explain : what made you keep restarting games (before or after getting to the endgame ?) ?

Cannot be sure because I stopped playing Steam about 4-5 years ago. It was 2000 hours then. I'm estimating a total of 7-10k hours by now, I guess?

I have playing Space Age for 180 hours or so.

I don't think I have ever restarted a game. I quit games/saves when I have finished them, and then I move on to a new save or some other project. I've won every achiement pretty much every way you can except speedruns, so it's not that I have never finished a game. Occasionally I'd start a new save because I wanted to try something odd, but if it turned out not to be fun, I'd try something else.

[Grayhill]

From other side of view, base 1.1 Factorio existed for many years, and addons was a way to play something new, while 2.0 is up for just a month. Maybe some years later 2.0 will also require addons to be more exiting.

For sure. I will eventually give some a try. One of the first will be starting on any planet, probably. No doubt some will release some cool new planets. Cannot speak for whatever is there, but I've seen at least one. Something like that is at least a year off for me, probably.

Certainly was not disrespecting 1.1. That was, I thought, a perfect game (or as close as anyone will ever come), and now they far outdid it.