Factorio Forums

I know the devs want to force us to produce ammo on the space platforms, and I know they've made interesting, different power systems for the different planets so they don't want us to just take nuclear power wherever we go, but I think there are better ways to accomplish this than making it artificially expensive to ship ammunition or anything related to uranium off the planet.

First, uranium. Every planet seems to have some resource or resources that are exclusive to that planet (Vulcanus=Tungsten, Fulgora=Holmium, etc.) Uranium is Nauvis's exclusive resource. Instead of punishing us for taking Uranium off the planet I think it should be required as part of some late game recipes on other planets. That would match the mechanics for the other planets better.

If we're not supposed to use nuclear power plants on the new planets maybe there's some reason they don't work anywhere besides Nauvis and space? Or maybe shipping the reactors should be more difficult? Honestly, the only other planet I'd even consider using nuclear power on anyway is gleba.

And the whole thing with nuclear bombs is just silly. You can ship an ENTIRE nuclear reactor but a single bomb is too heavy? And it's pointless anyway. It didn't stop me from sending the materials to make a couple on Vulcanus to kill my first demolisher, just forced me to wait a few extra minutes and launch a few more rockets. If that's not supposed to be a viable option, lock nuclear bombs behind Vulcanus science or something like that.

A far as ammunition goes, Yellow bullets are easy to produce in space, so I wouldn't ship them up anyway, and red bullets are unnecessary. But before you get the railgun, arming a platform that travels back and forth from Aquilo takes ages because you can't make rockets very quickly with the resources your asteroid catchers bring in. I have to either ship extra coal and sulfur up from Nauvis, or just ship rockets up 25 at a time, which is a pain but I'll do it if the other option is to wait hours to send my next shipment to Aquilo. Maybe this is a skill issue on my part and there's some better way to break up large asteroids than using rockets, but to me it looks like all the other high end ammo costs even more explosives so I'm not sure what else to do there.

Fulgora and Vulcanus don't require a steady stream of ammunition. The only places that do are Gleba and space. So making ammunition hard to move around only makes the most challenging places more frustrating than they already are.

It also feels a bit clumsy to say "carrying bullets and rockets to other places would be broken, so we're just going to pretend they're SUPER HEAVY."

Maybe instead we could start with rockets that can only hold 1/2 or 1/4th of the current weight, making it impossible at first to ship heavier things, but then have science that unlocks heavier rocket capacity. That way it would still limit the amount of bullets you can take at first, but eventually increase to a full stack or more.

Cwythevere wrote: Mon Apr 07, 2025 7:30 am *snip*
But before you get the railgun, arming a platform that travels back and forth from Aquilo takes ages because you can't make rockets very quickly with the resources your asteroid catchers bring in.
*snip*

The logic of your post is sound to me, but on this particular point, one possible workaround is to have the ship fly around the inner solar system a bit first, instead of just hovering over Nauvis. This will increase the frequency and variety of asteroids and potentially allow you to build a buffer of rockets before heading for Aquilo.

And as an extra bonus, if you set the target priority of the rockets to ignore small asteroids, you won't waste them as you let the gun turrets take care of them.

Indeed, as previous poster says, rocket turrets should be set to destroy medium and big asteroids only, ignore small ones, that way you will not use any rockets while flying around first 4 planets, they will cumulate instead.

A related issue is the 2000 flat physical resistance of larger asteroids. If they'd lower that to 500, legendary uranium ammo could become actually useful.

I am happy with the challenge as it is. No need to lower resistances or increase ammo capacity in rockets. Current configuration is just a part of the challenge, I am happy with it.
My space ships produce red ammo and rockets in very big amounts, even on Aquilo asteroids are no problem.
Will see how that goes beyond Aquilo, but for that I will have railguns developed I think.

I don't see an issue with uranium and ammo shipping. You don't need it.

- yellow ammo created on the space platforms is sufficient. To not waste ammo, you need to set a filter in the gun turrets to just target medium and small asteroids: To allow space platforms going faster, you need more ammo, so a foundry to create iron plates is very useful due to its inherent speed and 50% productivity bonus.

- yellow rockets against asteroids, created on the space platforms, is sufficient. You need to set a filter in the rocket turrets to just target big asteroids: You need advanced asteroid processing, then you're able to create sulfur on a space platform, which in turn is required to create explosives and rockets. A complete rocket production chain on a space platform contains iron plate production (2 foundries, shared with yellow ammo production), 1 advanced carbonic asteroid crushing, 1 coal synthesis, ice melting, 1 explosives, 2 yellow rocket. Balance power consumption, speed and productivity to get proper ratios and throughput with speed modules, efficiency modules, productivity modules and 1 or 2 beacons.
On Gleba it's a similar chain, except you create iron ore with bacteria, biosulfur, burnt spoilage (for carbon), and water is directly available.

I also don't see an issue with nuclear power supply. On Vulcanus, you replace reactors with Acid neutralization. On Gleba, you replace reactors with heating towers and they burn spoiled stuff and rocket fuel from jelly. Jellynut is the key for power production on Gleba. On Fulgora, you catch the lightning. On Aquilo, it's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem. Main power supply is fusion, but to get fusion, you need preliminary power production. I used heating towers with rocket fuel, then heat exchangers and turbines. That's synergy since you need heating towers anyway. Just build more of it.

Space platforms for the inner planets can run on solar power. For reaching Aquilo, it's actually a nuclear reactor. But since this platform will visit Nauvis frequently, there is no issue with nuclear fuel cell supply and disposal. Beyond Aquilo you use fusion power, and since Aquilo is a mandatory waypoint, fuel supply is no issue as well.

At least this is how I do it. I observed what options the game offers, and these seem the natural (and probably intended or default) choices.
If shipping uranium and ammo was cheaper, I would probably just ship it instead of looking for alternative solutions. So it's actually good balancing to make shipping expensive as an incentive to find alternative solutions, so in the end you have multiple viable solutions, of which shipping is one, and creating on the spot is another.

Cwythevere wrote: Mon Apr 07, 2025 7:30 amAnd the whole thing with nuclear bombs is just silly. You can ship an ENTIRE nuclear reactor but a single bomb is too heavy? And it's pointless anyway. It didn't stop me from sending the materials to make a couple on Vulcanus to kill my first demolisher, just forced me to wait a few extra minutes and launch a few more rockets. If that's not supposed to be a viable option, lock nuclear bombs behind Vulcanus science or something like that.

The real-world Titan Missile System is probably a good. Comparison for the Factorio rocket. It launched the Gemini space exploration capsules, and had an effective Mass to Orbit of around 3500kg. This provided a capability for early communication satellites, or a 1-man orbital demonstration.

The B-53 series of nuclear warheads bore little in resemblance to a Science Fiction “suitcase nuke” - it is a massive implosion-detonation device weighing about 4000kg! The Titan was only barely able to reach a Suborbital/Ballistic trajectory with this load. This makes sense, because Steel, Lead, and Uranium are some of the densest materials available - while a Capsule is mostly oxygen tanks.


I’m really not understanding how this “entire thing is just silly”. It seems to me like they actually did a really good job of balancing “Steampunk Nuclear” rockets. One of my Promethium Collecting ships uses Nukes instead of Railguns for Huge asteroids, so it is a Viable strategy: just not a Good one.

If you want to get to Aquilo faster, you can ship massive amounts of explosives to a platform (I think they're 500/rocket). It's massively more efficient than shipping rockets. My Aquilo platform makes all of its rockets using explosives launched from Nauvis. Something like 800 explosives is plenty for a round trip with some loiter time at Aquilo. I just have to make sure not to park it there too long so that it still has enough rockets to make it back.

pioruns wrote: Mon Apr 07, 2025 10:37 am I am happy with the challenge as it is. No need to lower resistances or increase ammo capacity in rockets. Current configuration is just a part of the challenge, I am happy with it.
My space ships produce red ammo and rockets in very big amounts, even on Aquilo asteroids are no problem.
Will see how that goes beyond Aquilo, but for that I will have railguns developed I think.

500 flat physical resistance won't change the challenge. You'll likely need quite a bit research productivity before overcoming that with legendary uranium ammo. The point is, diversification should become possible at very late game when mass-producing red rockets on board becomes too trivial.