Friday Facts #373 - Factorio: Space Age

[TheEnemy42]

Yay! So looking forward to this! New FFFs is just the cherry on top.

As a community translator I look forward to hearing more about when we can expect to get involved.

[Acid_Burn9]

I've been waiting for this for a long time and was happy to read it, but having done so i have mixed feelings. The thing that worries is this part:

Since the goal was to make the overall expansion experience as good as possible, we have rebalanced the tech tree. This means, that with Space Age enabled, some items that are available in vanilla are unlocked later on some planet. This specifically applies to artillery, cliff explosives (this is the masochist part of me speaking), Spidertron, best tier of modules, and some personal equipment upgrades.

This is basically the only mention of the kind of rewards that you would unlock by traveling to another planets. My expectation going into this, after seeing the title of the post, was that you would add new progression beyond the point of launching the rocket into space with new rewards for doing so. However the way this post comes off to me is that instead you are indeed adding new progression beyond the point of launching, but the rewards for doing so are the same as what we already have in the game, just spread out to saturate the newly extended progression tree, without much new stuff being added (obviously with the exception of stuff actually needed for space travel itself).

I really hope that this is just a miscommunication issue and that there is in fact a ton of new and exciting stuff to obtain by going to other planets and that rewards that were already in the game, that are now going to be locked behind interplanetary travel, are only a very small portion of what you would unlock there, and that you just didn't want to talk about yet because you don't want to spoil anything.

I would appriciate some clarification on this topic.

[Jon8RFC]

Oh, also, since fff will be coming back, don't forget that data of engine improvements are always appreciated and enjoyed.

Rseding91, looking at you for some "I found XYZ could be sped up by 1.5x, but that also meant it automatically made ABC 2x faster, which meant DEF could be rewritten as well since it finally gets the data faster...turns out there's a 20% UPS improvement from just 50 lines of code"

And charts!

[Stringweasel]

Epic! It's going to be a long wait, but very excited! Especially now that there will be a weekly FFF!

Kind of expected it to be space related. Curious now how SE will change once the expansion drops when it has new engine mechanics to play with.

[Stoup]

I've been waiting for this for a long time and was happy to read it, but having done so i have mixed feelings. The thing that worries is this part:

Since the goal was to make the overall expansion experience as good as possible, we have rebalanced the tech tree. This means, that with Space Age enabled, some items that are available in vanilla are unlocked later on some planet. This specifically applies to artillery, cliff explosives (this is the masochist part of me speaking), Spidertron, best tier of modules, and some personal equipment upgrades.

This is basically the only mention of the kind of rewards that you would unlock by traveling to another planets. My expectation going into this, after seeing the title of the post, was that you would add new progression beyond the point of launching the rocket into space with new rewards for doing so. However the way this post comes off to me is that instead you are indeed adding new progression beyond the point of launching, but the rewards for doing so are the same as what we already have in the game, just spread out to saturate the newly extended progression tree, without much new stuff being added (obviously with the exception of stuff actually needed for space travel itself).

I really hope that this is just a miscommunication issue and that there is in fact a ton of new and exciting stuff to obtain by going to other planets and that rewards that were already in the game, that are now going to be locked behind interplanetary travel, are only a very small portion of what you would unlock there, and that you just didn't want to talk about yet because you don't want to spoil anything.

I would appriciate some clarification on this topic.

I shared the same sentiment at first! But knowing that they're now on track to be releasing regular FFFs again, I'm definitely gonna reserve any actual concern until I see what stuff they have to tease in the coming weeks

Super excited to finally hear news about the expansion! I'm glad I've held off on playing SE all this time so this DLC will feel fresh as possible to me

[galibert]

Is there an equivalent of Early Access for the dlc? It's cool for the players, of course, but for the main game it also contributed to the impressive final quality.

[Nidan]

They just announced a years worth of FFF, I wouldn't expect them to show everything on week 0.


The interesting thing will be the new mechanics; everything else can, and probably will, be modded in short order.

[Acid_Burn9]

I shared the same sentiment at first! But knowing that they're now on track to be releasing regular FFFs again, I'm definitely gonna reserve any actual concern until I see what stuff they have to tease in the coming weeks

They just announced a years worth of FFF, I wouldn't expect them to show everything on week 0.

I really hope you guys are right. Don't get me wrong i don't expect them so share every detail right away, but a simple "Yes there is a lot more new stuff to unlock, not just what was already in the game." would be nice.

[Rseding91]

I really hope you guys are right. Don't get me wrong i don't expect them so share every detail right away, but a simple "Yes there is a lot more new stuff to unlock, not just what was already in the game." would be nice.

I can confirm there are plenty of new things to unlock.

[Acid_Burn9]

I can confirm there are plenty of new things to unlock.

Thank you! Looking forward to more FFF! <3

[aka13]

I really hope you guys are right. Don't get me wrong i don't expect them so share every detail right away, but a simple "Yes there is a lot more new stuff to unlock, not just what was already in the game." would be nice.

I can confirm there are plenty of new things to unlock.

<3

[asdsasdsasdsas]

Now this is dope.
Now my only question is why the top right octo claw thing doesn't have anything that punts unwanted stuff into space.

and also what new train stuff is coming, i need more train control

[MEOWMI]

Amazing news. I do wonder if the sprite for the engine isn't a little bit too glowy. At any rate, I have full faith you will deliver a great expansion. It was especially fitting to have Earendel comment on the situation.

[Kronus_Aero]

Well, I wasn't expecting this, I felt a mixture of excitement and horror when I saw Earendel as the list of authors for this FFF.

I just finished up a 700 hour SE run you see! But seeing now that SA (can we call it that?) is going to be something less imposing and more fresh, I'm back to just being excited.

BTW I did enjoy SE, I just don't have another run like that in me.

[JekoRhino]

Amazing!

I can't wait for the next FFF and I look forward to seeing more of the new content!
Really hope that you can rebuild the Ship you crashed with at some point.

Since I never played the mod I can't really imagine how it would work.
I would've love to learn more about it in future FFF and see some general gameplay!

Also any plans for Early Access/Preorders?
I would love to pledge my support!

[AdamK]

How come 'Wszystko będzie''? Polish phrase ina a name of Czech company? There must be some more backstory

[Koub]

Super news
I'm hyped, but patient, that's me getting older I guess .

Looking forward to the FFF almost as much as the expansion itself. Almost.

[Tertius]

It's great to see there is actually a life project with progression! The good thing for my part is there will be more and different challenges, and there will be more train control (whatever this this will be in the end).

The not so good thing for my part is that artillery is moved to a supposedly later stage of the game. Artillery was for me always the point where I personally felt I beat the game because everything was possible to automate including keeping biters away, and I had all the time in the world to do what's remaining. Not the rocket launch. After unlocking artillery and automating artillery support, I had peace of mind and was able to concentrate on making the rocket factory. Not just making some rocket factory but making a nice rocket factory.

It's my hope that launching rockets is possible much earlier in the tech tree, making it just an additional means of long range transport. And if I should decide to go to the planet that makes artillery available first, I would have artillery not later (in terms of hours played) than with the vanilla game. May be I would then not be able to unlock the highest module tiers at the same time on another planet, or unlock the spidertron. If this is what you meant with choices are more meaningful, that's fine with me.

However, if it gets more tedious to deal with enemies than currently, I promise to disable them at map generation. Please don't make me do that. I consider dealing with enemies more as entertainment, not as real challenge. If they become a continuous threat instead of entertainment, I would disable this threat instead of taking the challenge. I can't stand factories being attacked and destroyed, that's not what I have fun with.

[AntiElitz]

Really exited for the expansion! Looking at the new science colors I really hope you consider some shape changes to the Flasks. Those colors do really get close to each other. Hard to see even for non colorblind people

[Splitframe]

There are so many things that Space Exploration just can't do because it's a mod.

Hello Earendel,
big fan of your mod. Will we see some of the addon technology like the animated engines bleed over into your mod?

Greetings