Pacing of technologies seems a bit off

[FunMaker]

For me the pacing of the technologies is a bit off. I don't like the idea, that building something up and throwing it all out of the window if something better is available. For me vanilla Factorio was about "getting something better, fiddling with it a bit and be happy, that it's working better by a varying margin but have some nostalgia for the old builds you did - and they are still contributing to the overall production chain.

Space Age in my opinion has tooo many gates that destroy previous builds and feel like the game is joking with the player:

Space Platforms: I am okay with the first stationary space platform, i am okay with the first space platform that brings you to another planet, i am okay with optimizing this mobile platform because it had some quirks. But what i am not okay with is: Getting additional Asteroid Processing Recipes from Vulcanus that lets you throw your old platforms out of the window and redesign them from the ground up. And do that again if you are visiting Gleba. Do that again if you are switching from solar power to nuclear, do it again if you are switching to fusion reactor. On top of that: Do that all with the towers to defend against different kind of asteroids.

Asteroid Recipes from Gleba: I am not interested in pushing foundries on another planet. You need calcite for the foundries on that planet, but pushing calcite through space is something that is not fun, because you have to push so many rockets to space. If you go to Gleba you get the "Calcite in Orbit" recipe. But if you have visited vulcanus and gleba, you might have come up with a solution for your Nauvis shortages of products that could be produced by foundries, so the interest in "calcite in orbit" for nauvis is really low. Foundries are not fun to use on another planet, they are bound to vulcanus for me. The electromagnet plant is way better. If you get it you are happy to upgrade your builds on other planets.
Another thing is cliff-explosives. The only way to get sulfur on vulcanus prior to "sulfur in orbit" is to gather old stone-vents from the surface of vulcanus by hand or bring in the sulfur from Nauvis. If i have the "sulfur from orbit" option, that is unlocked on gleba, it is far too late to build something like that up. It does'nt matter anymore...These recipes do not look like a relief but in fact like a joke made with the player like: "You have done the hard work and built 10-16 hours on your setups? Hopefully you are exhausted, because here is the easy way that does it in 20 minutes!". I know, that some overhaul mods like to do such things. I have played Angelbob till the end. But nothing that i have seen there feels so much like pain in the ***.

Foundations: I like the idea behind Fulgora. I like the challenge of small space, but at the point where foundations are unlocked, i do not care for fulgora anymore. This might be the perspective of some one that sees the shattered planet as the final of the game, in fact there might be players that might think "the games starts if all technologies are researched and i can build my megabase".

Lightning Collector: The collectors do not bring any positive effect. The greater area of effect and the increase in effectiveness looks nice on paper, but it consumes more space and if i have placed lightning rods all over the place the lightning collectors are nothing to wait for, because the effects are neclegtable. Add the tedious gameplay of placing 10000 accumulators to this and you are done with the energy mechanic on fulgora. In vanilla the tedious fields of solar panels that some player do might apeal to them, but vanilla gave the player alternatives. on Fulgora alternatives are not great (like steam engines).

Epic & Legendary Quality:
Why unlock legendary quality modules on fulgora and epic quality on Gleba / legendary quality on Aquilo? This looks like "Oh you have build your Quality-Producing setups? Throw them away and rebuild everything that has lower quality or walk all over the place to replace lower quality modules". Does not feel fun to me to gate this on different planets. If you do the things when they are unlocked, you are updating your builds 3 times for little effect.

Infinite Productivity Researches: Getting infinite research for Scrap recycling or processing unit productivity or steel productivity is nothing to go for at that point they are available. If you got the electromagnetic plant on Fulgora and using it on Nauvis you have increased your output by a huge margin already, why bother with the productivity research? Or vice versa. Same with the other infinite recipes of that kind. You already have a solution for a problem, why bother with another solution? In fact it looks like 2 solution: a fun one, that is fun-wise more rewarding, because you have to fiddle a little with your builds or the boring one to just increase the productivity by a flat amount. But both in combination feel off.

Does someone agree?

[BlueTemplar]

Some of this might be valid, some of this might be more like :

«I spent 2 hours in my first freeplay game to fill my ore fields with burner drills and making a self-powering burner inserter coal field setup, now I have to throw it all away that I have made a boiler and steam engine and I have electric powered inserters and electric drills ?!»

Maybe it will just be more clear with more experience what is worth skipping ?
(And was that burner set up a waste of your time if you had fun setting it up the first time around ?)
(And then you have mods creating a burner inserter experience worth not skipping.)

Also, what's up with that «no early sulfur production on Vulcanus», the petroleum gas & water recipe still works there ?!?

[mmmPI]

The only way to get sulfur on vulcanus prior to "sulfur in orbit" is to gather old stone-vents from the surface of vulcanus by hand or bring in the sulfur from Nauvis.

This is incorrect, one can use the simple coal liquefaction receipe.

Lightning Collector: The collectors do not bring any positive effect. The greater area of effect and the increase in effectiveness looks nice on paper, but it consumes more space and if i have placed lightning rods all over the place the lightning collectors are nothing to wait for, because the effects are neclegtable.

This is not true, the positive effect can be measured easily, one produce more electricity with the same amount of lighthing. Overlapping them is useless, but that's a player mistake, one should instead replace the less efficient, if one need more power.

Why unlock legendary quality modules on fulgora and epic quality on Gleba / legendary quality on Aquilo?

it's called progression, that's the same with the modules you have tier 1 tier 2 and tier 3, and the assembly machine too , tier 1 tier 2 and tier 3... If you update your build when you unloack them you upgade 6 times for little effect, and you throw your build away everytime...

Yeah it's behind a planet, that makes it a reward for the planet, it create choices of "do i go for quality thrusters now ? even if don't have access to epic or legendary ?" or do i wait till those are available because it's not high priority and i won't need it for X planet.

Infinite Productivity Researches: Getting infinite research for Scrap recycling or processing unit productivity or steel productivity is nothing to go for at that point they are available.

You don't get infinite productivity research for processing unit or steel those are capped at 300%, the research are useful all along the game, unless you reach the limit of 300% but even then, researching allow you to remove some productivity module in the EM plant and swap them for speed or efficency instead.

You get infinite productivity research for "mining productivity" or "asteroid productivity"

[FunMaker]

Some of this might be valid, some of this might be more like :

«I spent 2 hours in my first freeplay game to fill my ore fields with burner drills and making a self-powering burner inserter coal field setup, now I have to throw it all away that I have made a boiler and steam engine and I have electric powered inserters and electric drills ?!»

Maybe it will just be more clear with more experience what is worth skipping ?
(And was that burner set up a waste of your time if you had fun setting it up the first time around ?)
(And then you have mods creating a burner inserter experience worth not skipping.)

Also, what's up with that «no early sulfur production on Vulcanus», the petroleum gas & water recipe still works there ?!?

Well until nuclear power (and mostly beyond) i let the burner drills that i made from the start until early game mine the coal (with burner inserters as feeders) because they are failsafe for electricity stravation and the 5-10 drills that you built on iron ore and copper ore are easily moved to the coal patch. So that is not much of a hassle for me - the count of affected entities is much lower. But you may have a tiny point there.

The sulfur problem was my fault, you are right, that would do the trick!

The only way to get sulfur on vulcanus prior to "sulfur in orbit" is to gather old stone-vents from the surface of vulcanus by hand or bring in the sulfur from Nauvis.

This is incorrect, one can use the simple coal liquefaction receipe.

Yeah the sulfur problem was my fault, indeed!

This is not true, the positive effect can be measured easily, one produce more electricity with the same amount of lighthing. Overlapping them is useless, but that's a player mistake, one should instead replace the less efficient, if one need more power.

Well Fulgora works like every other planet, there is a cycle of "day" and "night" that imho is fixed in time - but it is not day and night but "lightnings occure" or "no lightnings occure". There is a time with many lightnings and you are overflown with energy - it does not matter if you are using rods or collectors. And there is a time where not a bit of a lightning hits the ground - and it does not matter if you are using rods or collector - you could place collectors all over the map and no energy would come through them. If you are looking around the map while "no lightnings occure" time is active you will see NO lightnings at all. So covering more land with collectors does give you no benefit. In fact the aoe size of the rods matches nicely with substation coverage so i do not see why i should use collectors. The better stats of the collectors effectivly brings nothing to the table. The better accumulator recharging capabilities of the collectors are useless too, because the recharging capability of rods does suffice.

Yeah it's behind a planet, that makes it a reward for the planet, it create choices of "do i go for quality thrusters now ? even if don't have access to epic or legendary ?" or do i wait till those are available because it's not high priority and i won't need it for X planet.

Yeah you are right here, it is a choice. But it's a choice that is not much fun too me (and you don't have to agree!). Building something that i can throw out of the window if i progress further does not appeal to me. So the so called choice does not bring much to the table for me. The only thing where i find quality useful in midgame is for accumulators on fulgora, because you have to place them all over the place and the quality increase is nice.

You don't get infinite productivity research for processing unit or steel those are capped at 300%, the research are useful all along the game, unless you reach the limit of 300% but even then, researching allow you to remove some productivity module in the EM plant and swap them for speed or efficency instead.

You get infinite productivity research for "mining productivity" or "asteroid productivity"

Well the game indicates that the researches are infinite (infinity symbol?) and i read the FFF about the productivity cap, but that wasn't my point. For me productivity research at this time in the game feels not as rewarding as researching the first levels in vanilla, because you got a funier way to come by with possible processing unit shortages. There might be another view if you are progressing through the planets in another order, but i doubt that.

[EustaceCS]

Epic & Legendary Quality:
... This looks like "Oh you have build your Quality-Producing setups? Throw them away and rebuild everything that has lower quality or walk all over the place to replace lower quality modules".

Oh, you've unlocked tesla/rocket turrets, throw your laser/bullet turrets away and rebuild everything with tesla/rockets.
Oh, you've unlocked advanced oil processing, throw your current oil piping setup away and rebuild everything for thrice as many output and twice as many input liquids (<- this is my favourite (or not)).
Oh, you've unlocked tier 3 assemblers / tier 3/4 belts, throw your current manufacturing/logistics setup away and rebuild everything with new production output balance / thoroughput.
And so on, and so on.

Unlike examples which I've listed, Quality offers significantly more complicated choices.
And throwing Quality blindly everywhere is not necessarily an upgrade.

As of three mid game planets giving three different Quality related benefits - excuse me, you'd like all three being completely identical or what?
Each offers something special in some (if not all - didn't finished memorizing new tech tree yet) areas.
Which is good!
Different elements you can get on different planets impact your decisions differently.
Which is good!
(you don't have to engage with Quality if you don't like it.
Which is good!)

[mmmPI]

Well Fulgora works like every other planet, there is a cycle of "day" and "night" that imho is fixed in time - but it is not day and night but "lightnings occure" or "no lightnings occure". There is a time with many lightnings and you are overflown with energy - it does not matter if you are using rods or collectors. And there is a time where not a bit of a lightning hits the ground - and it does not matter if you are using rods or collector - you could place collectors all over the map and no energy would come through them. If you are looking around the map while "no lightnings occure" time is active you will see NO lightnings at all. So covering more land with collectors does give you no benefit. In fact the aoe size of the rods matches nicely with substation coverage so i do not see why i should use collectors. The better stats of the collectors effectivly brings nothing to the table. The better accumulator recharging capabilities of the collectors are useless too, because the recharging capability of rods does suffice.

This is not my experience, when i try to build a mining outpost, there is only a limited surface of lightning available, which makes it desirable to have collector instead of rod because they will have a higher efficency, and be able to recharge more accumulators higher quality than the rod during the very short "night" when there is lightning. I can use more speed beacons or more mining drill vs accumulator when using quality in the drill.

For me productivity research at this time in the game feels not as rewarding as researching the first levels in vanilla, because you got a funier way to come by with possible processing unit shortages. There might be another view if you are progressing through the planets in another order, but i doubt that.

The infinite research that are rewarding late game to me are railgun shooting speed, mining productivity, asteroid productivity explosive damage until you can one shot asteroids with a yellow ammo or red, physical damage too, those then become "milestone" in way, diminishing return with few key steps that are getting impossible to get for the very late game.

In the "early" game or if you goal is just to reach the win screen i agree they may be a burden and quite useless, i don't think speedrunners invest much ressources in them for example. They may alleviate the need to scale things and facilitate a little depending on how you plan your factory, it may also drain ressources, it adds a little strategic dimension on top of the late game ressource sink.

[HadesSupreme]

IMO:

1. The initial unlocks for planets feel underpriced. If you go to Vulcanus and spend an hour there to build a base you're gonna have thousands of science packs if not tens of thousands (if you have a buffer storage) by the time you're finished and shipping Vulcanus science back to Nauvis. Ditto for the other planets. So 500 packs for stuff like Cliff Explosives feels too easy, that's literally the minimum you need if you fill a single rocket and don't have any productivity on labs. If you're an interplanetary engineer I think you should be able to throw 2k research at a tech minimum.

2. Infinite research makes certain science packs pretty irrelevant. It's actually disappointing that I finished Aquilo, was making tons of research from it, then realized that my Aquilo base only needed like 1/5th the pack production of Nauvis because there's so little research involving that pack. Vulcanus science feels similarly irrelevant, extra artillery bonuses past the first few are pretty w/e and low density structures are far from a limiting factor with how good foundries already are at producing them. Fulgora can feel weak, scrap productivity isn't your limiting factor (it's dealing with the excess stuff scrap produces), while electric weapons are useless to buff at that point and infinite bot speed isn't that useful since you can just throw more bots at the problem. Only Gleba research feels like its important to maximize, which is ironic given that its the hardest to do so by far with spoilage.

[BlueTemplar]

Techs in general are underpriced if it's not your first Factorio game or if you're not playing on some game settings far from default (or doing some kind of challenge).

And there's a good reason for that :
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=121089

(And that was already the case before the expansion pack.)

So adjust your game settings accordingly.

[HadesSupreme]

I already play on Deathworld Marathon mode, which was made easier in space age, and even with the 4x price increase tech comes far quicker than it should once you get to the interplanetary stage. But going to like 10x tech cost would make the early game very, very long and make certain techs like Nuclear power fairly ridiculous just to make interplanetary tech even moderately hard. The two are out of balance.

[BlueTemplar]

I don't know, DWM here too, and Nuclear just happened while I was busy discovering Vulcanus...
(Though for this specifically, see also viewtopic.php?f=6&t=120974.)