Anyone else got hyped enough about space age that they had to dive into space exploration?

[Mendel]

I had almost forgotten about Factorio... Not having played it for like 3 years at least by now, but then I heard about space age expansion. Well. I had 1050 hours on Factorio.
I read the friday facts again and started to get hyped.. and I thought... the **** with it. I haven't tried space exploration, but now I would have to. I needed my Factorio fix.

now my counter is at 1090 hours. An I believe I will need like 200 more hours before I'm done if not more, I'm taking it slow. I walled off a largeish area for my base with turrets and stone walls before I even got to any real production. Now doing blue science. I wonder if space age will be out by the time I'm done with space exploration then.

[aka13]

I was in the same boat, and at around 700 hours inside SE I got bored. I managed to get to tier 2 of all science packs, but it became a slog before that.
All the sideplanets and side-ressources are the same, set up remote outpost, plop down rail grid, plop down macerators, recycle stone, have 2-3 iterative "enrichments" on end products.

I had a lot of fun designing a mechanism to load rockets on demand by radar signal, and rockets in general were a lot of fun.
Everything else felt very grindy and not that fun to be honest, and after 6 byproducts of the same gameplay having to do the same again for space on norbit just was not fun anymore.
I rushed space elevator, got the first trains up to space, and dropped it.

[astroshak]

AAI …. Nope. I’ll wait for the expansion. Sorry Earandel.

[FuryoftheStars]

Nope.

[pointa2b]

Yep, my current playthrough is K2SE with Rampant/Armored Biters with deathworld settings. Its hellish, but probably one of my most fun playthroughs yet, and I finally get to try all of the powerful modded turrets/weaponry in K2SE

[Khagan]

Exactly the opposite. Knowing that the new vanilla version is going into space anyway has reduced the likelihood of my trying SE in the foreseeable future from small to none.

[blazespinnaker]

Yeah, SE doesn't get a lot of play in the factorio forums because everyone is on the discord. This is sad, because I really really really dislike discord, except for work type stuff.

I've done two full play throughs of SE. The cognitive overload of some of the recipes can be a bit challenging at first, certainly. I never found it to be a slog as you don't really need a lot of resources to complete the game. Well, unless you want to go crazy on production modules!

My only complaint is that setting up a mall for some stuff isn't very esthetic because they all require the largish assembler. Well that and the teleporty thing at the end which sort of ruins everything.

Yep, my current playthrough is K2SE with Rampant/Armored Biters with deathworld settings. Its hellish, but probably one of my most fun playthroughs yet, and I finally get to try all of the powerful modded turrets/weaponry in K2SE

Hah. Crazy.

[Vulkandrache]

Well that and the teleporty thing at the end which sort of ruins everything.

That thing should come WAY earlier. Colonizing one planet by hand was fine.
On the second i used the console to get items i forgot because how much of a pain it is to load more rockets.
After that i stopped.

[blazespinnaker]

Yeah, I admit I saved a few games before launching. That said, planning your rocket inventory before launching I think is one of the key aspects of the mod.

Another is the idea that each new planet you land on is a green field for development. Sort of like starting a new game.

If you don't bring something, you use ingenuity to make do with local resources.

It's a thinking / planning mod for sure. Folks who prefer just ad hoc gaming will likely get turned off by it.

But I disagree with the slog comment. It never felt repetitive as it sometimes does with Factorio vanilla where you end up with nothing to do but spamming copies / blueprints of assemblers to expand production. With SE, I rarely found myself in a situation where I had nothing left to do but spam dupes. Unless you want to build mass PMs of course.

Very curious to see if jetpack gets added to the DLC. That's a huge change to the game for sure. My prediction is yes, though it might be further down the tech tree than it is in SE.

[Vulkandrache]

Factorio vanilla where you end up with nothing to do but spamming copies / blueprints of assemblers to expand production.

Thats the part of the game i cant wait for.
I usualy build every large thing in the editor and copy over the blueprint instead of making it in the real game.
If these mods were useable with BNW i would take that instead. The less the character is involved the better.

Another is the idea that each new planet you land on is a green field for development. Sort of like starting a new game.

If you don't bring something, you use ingenuity to make do with local resources.

Yes, like a new game. The first hour is still the weakest part of Factorio.
Restarting 4+ times with no access to a powergrid or logistics network is ass.

This is not just with SE. Ive tried multiple overhaul mod lately and its a common theme that the actual recipes
look like alot of fun to figure out but the rest is too much of a chore.

Very curious to see if jetpack gets added to the DLC. That's a huge change to the game for sure. My prediction is yes, though it might be further down the tech tree than it is in SE.

The satelite view is WAAYY more important to add.

[Illiander42]

Opposite.

I'm going to wait for all the new space features to get incorporated into Space Exploration before I try it again.

[jamiechi1]

I am not really 'hyped', but I started a new game with SE and several other QOL mods. I guess I was bored. I also reset my blueprints to zero and restarted that from scratch.

[blazespinnaker]

Yes, like a new game. The first hour is still the weakest part of Factorio.
Restarting 4+ times with no access to a powergrid or logistics network is ass.

Well, you generally have bots at this point.

The trick is just to build everything remote first with ghosts and than load up your rocket with the inventory required. Ghosts on ghost tiles will be a nice addition.

[Vulkandrache]

Well, you generally have bots at this point.

The trick is just to build everything remote first with ghosts and than load up your rocket with the inventory required. Ghosts on ghost tiles will be a nice addition.

I do obviously have things like a blueprint for a 2x4 reactor and a blueprint with blue chests that request the items/raw materials for the reactor already.
But then 10% of your payload just disappears on landing.
So you either send a second rocket or you send a bunch of raw material along or you overshoot initialy and then have leftovers or you fly in a naked rocket first to build a landing pad to then send the real cargo.
All 4 of these are pointless exercises that shouldnt be neccesary and making me have to worry about this stuff
is a nice contribution to mod-burnout. I didnt build a big mall to then leave it behind for several hours.

Designing something that makes vulcanite blocks was fun.
Was wasnt was the stuff surrounding it.
The oodles of byproduct with no use.
The small stacksize of the raw ore.
The small loop to turn tiny amounts of steam back into water.
Running out of belts partway through and needing to fiddle remotely with requester chests to get more stuff.

SE (among other overhauls) pushes the game way to much towards "doing the chores" while the fun stuff
gets thinner and thinner inbetween.

[blazespinnaker]

so, this thread will probably get yanked, but fwiw. SE by a mile.

my guess is that the expansion/dlc is going to be more for new mods than it is going to be for some kind of huge new space thing.

Which, I suppose in retrospect is just fine. The whole reason SE is so good is because what wube did for the base. the mod author also made the courageous and in retrospect incredible decision to just build what he thought would be really cool. and we got really cool.

let me just finish off with this, and I'll say no more on the topic - if you like factorio at its most absurdly complex and haven't tried SE yet, you're really missing out. There's a reason even notch is a huge fan https://twitter.com/notch/status/1674310514699116544

[aka13]

so, this thread will probably get yanked, but fwiw. SE by a mile.

my guess is that the expansion/dlc is going to be more for new mods than it is going to be for some kind of huge new space thing.

Which, I suppose in retrospect is just fine. The whole reason SE is so good is because what wube did for the base. the mod author also made the courageous and in retrospect incredible decision to just build what he thought would be really cool. and we got really cool.

let me just finish off with this, and I'll say no more on the topic - if you like factorio at its most absurdly complex and haven't tried SE yet, you're really missing out. There's a reason even notch is a huge fan https://twitter.com/notch/status/1674310514699116544

I had initially written a rather long toxic rant as a reply, but I don't think SE warrants harsh criticism.
It is not complicated, but tedious, I disagree on how the bots are handled, and the 4 different incremental sciences are not fun at all. They are tedious and were boring even before I automated the first of them.
I like the remote access mechanic, and I really like the phase where you set up rocket loading. The pseudo-gravity-lessness is also a lot of fun.

Everything else, especially that every specialist ressource is simply a high-throughput enrichment recipe, which is solved by the 2x2 chest in an instant also is a buzzkiller.

I had fun, quite some fun, about 700h I think, but I did not make it to the spaceships and acrospheres, since everything was a chore for 300 hours even before that.

SE is great, and looks phantastic, but it is not complex, or engaging as vanilla factorio is.


Tbh, what I learned from the SE playthrough, is how great the trains from project cybersyn are. I only used vanilla trains before, and man are the on demand trains great.
SE became a secondary experience in the end.

[CheeseMcBurger]

I thought about it. Then I decided to wait for the real deal.

[blazespinnaker]

"It is not complicated, but tedious"



The fundamental problem is the entire (and very large) fan base is on the discord, so all you get on the forums here are the naysayers.