Factorio Forums

Thanks Wube for making this wonderful DLC! I had a lot of fun with OG Factorio, and I had a lot of fun with SA!

After beating the game in 40 hours, making a fully automated high load promethium miner, defeating the slot machine gameplay known as legendary mech armor, and doing everything else on the list such as biter friendly artillery, here are my final thoughts on SA:

I love so much about SA that I could go on for hours mentioning all the details that I think are good, but I won't, because it won't change anything. However, let me say this:
I love Gleba! shun all the haters, Gleba is hella fun.
I love building space platforms! Definitely my favorite aspect of SA overall.
I like quality! Didn't know how to feel about it back when it was mentioned in an FFF, but after playing with it, I enjoy it a lot; however mainly in the earlygame stages, when using uncommon/rare stuff. The "epic"/"legendary" is kinda whatever, although my prom miner definitely benefited from it.

Here are some gripes I have with SA:
- a lot of aspects of the new content feel under-expressed. I wish they were more pronounced.
Specifically, as someone who really enjoys biters and deathworld settings, and mods like rampant, all of the enemies in SA felt way too weak to me.

For example I was looking forward to dealing with lightnings on Fulgora, but then had to learn I basically don't have to, because lighting towers are OP. This planet felt like it has no enemies at all. If it was up to me, I'd make lighting towers a lot less OP, make the basic ones only have like 3x3 grid coverage, and the better ones you can research be 5x5, so that you'd have to rely on bot automation with (quality) repairs packs and/or build around the rods. It would make the planet a lot more interesting imo.

Vulcanus worms are far too easy to deal with, the small ones die to a mix of yellow and red ammo, and by the time you get to mediums you already have railguns and they're completely trivialized. I liked the fact that they're vulnerable to poison, which was uncommonly used in vanilla. I wish you took this further, made worms even more immune to non-poison damage, added poison artillery shells, and made worms expand their territory over time just like biter expansion. It would make military be relevant on Vulcanus instead of being a world that feels like it's peaceful settings.

Gleba enemies are fine I guess, although I still find them rather weak, I'm able to kill small stompers with yellow ammo which feels wrong. I wish their immunity to nauvis weaponry was increased overall and encouraged the player to actually get Tesla weapons to deal with them.

I didn't bother making the Tesla tree during the entire game. It doesn't solve any problem, and feels like pointless right now. Making it be the only viable choice for long term Gleba would make it a lot more interesting imo.

Promethium research is rather lacking. I understand that Promethium mining is post-endgame and a lot of players won't even get that far, but I think the rewards for it are still extremely underwhelming. It would be much more interesting to me if promethium research unlocked space stuff that you normally don't have access to, such as being able to use chests on a space platform (a 4th chest type that is space-only and has low storage slots and requires promethium to build), being able to walk on a space platform, and getting a recipe that lets you generate stone from asteroids on a space platform. Those are all 3 things which are "locked out" on space platforms right now, and unlocking them via promethium research fits within the theme of "it's a rock you get in space so it should give you space research", and it would make the whole ordeal a lot more rewarding and satisfying and actually encourage post-endgame builds.

Aquilo is my favorite planet in terms of aesthetic, sound design, and how it feels in general, but gameplay-wise, it's a planet you touch once and then forget about, which makes me sad. I wish it had some long term value it can provide outside of just the science packs, similar to turbo tier of logistics on vulcanus, bioflux and spoilage for prod and eff mods from gleba, and em plants from fulgora. For example, if Aquilo was able to provide you with freezers (which would require promethium research) that can freeze spoilables and make them spoil slower, that would be a super interesting aspect for both biter eggs and gleba as a whole, and both make Aquilo more interesting and Promethium mining more desirable.

I have never used a single spidertron. I just built it and... that's it. I understand it's supposed to help deal with Gleba enemies at this point, but due to how trivial they are, it doesn't feel needed. Back to what I said with Tesla earlier, I wish there was an aspect to Gleba enemies AI that made spidertron "the solution" to make it feel worth getting.

Anyway, those are my final thoughts. Don't let the suggestions mislead you, I love 99.9% of SA and this is probably my favorite game ever. Will keep on playing and aim for sub-20-hours runs. 40h is too easy imo, got it on my 2nd run :/ Add a tougher achievement for that please! 20h would be much nicer imo. Someone already beat SA in 14 hours.

Vulcanus worms are far too easy to deal with, the small ones die to a mix of yellow and red ammo, and by the time you get to mediums you already have railguns and they're completely trivialized.

Depends on map generation/setting

My first Tungsten mine was covered by a small worm. No big deal, but it was only 200k or so. Not mined with quality miners, base mining productivity is all you get.

Next best ore patch with a few M was behind 2 medium worms. I was using that waaaaaaay before I went to Aqulio (railguns) and getting there cost me like 2 hours of save scumming...

GrumpyJoe wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 11:05 am

Vulcanus worms are far too easy to deal with, the small ones die to a mix of yellow and red ammo, and by the time you get to mediums you already have railguns and they're completely trivialized.

Depends on map generation/setting

My first Tungsten mine was covered by a small worm. No big deal, but it was only 200k or so. Not mined with quality miners, base mining productivity is all you get.

Next best ore patch with a few M was behind 2 medium worms. I was using that waaaaaaay before I went to Aqulio (railguns) and getting there cost me like 2 hours of save scumming...

To be fair that sounds like an issue with the map gen. I re-rolled the same map seed as my first run at day 1 after a couple weeks, and the same map seed gave me a different vulcanus worm spread, where on the first time I had to clear two small worms to get my first tungsten patch, but after a couple weeks it seems like the patches made it so that I only needed 1 worm, leading me to believe Wube fixed the mapgen to be more consistent in that regard.
It's worth reporting the seed where you had to go through medium worms.

That said, 200k should be enough to get railguns if you use prod mods...

On my way to getting it done.
"thanks for the fish" is nor working atm it seems.
I'm a bit stuck as i try to get my first biter nest kill with artillery and getting it researched without yellow/purple science unlocked. (Yeh i could have gone to another planet for that...that would be way easier. So i got myself in an extra hard mode )
Without this science i can't kill the worm no matter how many turrets i use + shooting with a tank at it.
I will import nuklear reactors and fuel...to kill it with a big boom -> Edit: this is what i did and i worked without a problem.
Alternatively i will mine as much as i can, pickup when worm comes and repeat it till i have enough for the research.

I'm more interested in finding out how you went about beating the game in 40 hours. What was your strat? Planet order? About how much time per major milestone? How many playthroughs did it take to secure all 88 achievements?

The increased grid size alone makes higher quality suits significant. I'm currently only up to blue quality on my gear (haven't unlocked higher tiers yet), but running and actually FLYING around with 435% movement speed (or 255% in a tank, which mysteriously takes leg upgrades) makes large spaces a lot more fun to navigate. And I'm not even using all high quality equipment yet, though the great machine on Fulgora is working on it.