Factorio Forums

You can do quality anywhere in the game. Including in space. But even the worst one is going to give you something you can't live without.

So how do the planets rank for quality? And what does F tier offer you that makes you not just quit them?

I consider all the planets to be my friends, even Aquilo.

A:
Nauvis, Vulc - You're forcing me to choose between a drill that scales to ridiculous levels, and calcite which offers ridiculous
productivity bonuses, that is harvested from a drill that scales to ridiculous levels. Granted, friend Vulcanus makes me dispose of stones I may or may
not need, but I don't ask for flawless. One friend does everything well, the other friend ships a little bit poorly.

One friend is good at it's specialty, the other is a jack of all trades... I just can't choose.

B:
Fulgora - Once you have foundation, a good friend. An A rank match for a lover of trains, who can solve issues without foundation.
Space Platform - My first friend. Doesn't scale with mining productivity, but still can handle a huge volume of infinite materials. Would date again because crazy belts, easy distribution of finished legendary items. The superior crazy friend.

Since both are very good at what they do,

D:

Aquilo - Yes, it isn't a straight F. I can drop calcite and materials onto a surface that scales with ice, on my way back and forth from getting promethium.
This is the crazy psychotic friend that offers "unique challenges". Good match for lovers of crazy friends. No space monsters to shoot means no UPS penalties
for lovers of crazy friends.

F:
Gleba - I have to add trees to scale. Trees make spores. Spores draw in enemies and force the map to draw. Which leads to a bloated save file.

Why you have an F tier friend:
Helps all my other friends be better friends.

If I have legendary rocket turrets I never need to invest in artillery and avoid drawing large circular map. While shipping tungsten for a recipe that is just... unrealistic for artillery's general purpose use.
Legendary stack inserters help everywhere.
Legendary environment modules allow horizontal scaling. Growing trees prevents pollution from being evaluated on cells, which keeps a save file size low even it it doesn't necessarily affect UPS in a way I can predict at this time. Best early game researches to speed up the entire process and researches that affect plastic and asteroid productivity.

My take:

A: Space, Fulgora. They have the best recipes in the form of asteroid reprocessing and EM plant, in terms of yield / throughput. Fulgora is also good in the max-rare stage where you can wash for uncommon scrap and rare recycling results.

B: Vulcanus. It has the second-best recipes: lava to molten copper and LDS / blue chip / rocket fuel. Not having enemies and being less resource constrained are also good.

C: Nauvis. It has everything but that everything includes biters. Anything at a large scale will out-range artillery. On top of that, fishes and trees are surprisingly bad for UPS when they live near your factory.

D: Gleba. Enemies are way too expensive. It does have very good recipes (stack inserters, fruit / bioflux washing) and good bandwidth if you expand. It has potential in presence of rebalancing (e.g. if something recycles to yumako or carbon fiber becomes more useful).

F: Aquillo. I mean, why not just do it in space and drop the legendary stuff. Ice platforms and fusion reactors are promising but they are way too slow right now. And all the heat pipes are annoying.