It takes too long to get to new Space Age content

[bombcar]

The biggest things I see as “easier” are the quality weapons that - if you focus on them when you can (a few miners with quality mods and a splitter to sort are all you really need) you become quite powerful early game.

Biters shouldn’t be an issue at all.

If it DOES feel too long and you’ve already played before, just blueprint everything to rockets - even a basic starter base + a mall gets you almost there.

Do we get bots earlier now? It feels like we did.

For me it feels like my modded play throughs - I would use QoL mods and LTN and some other “start quickly” mods that didn’t affect long term gameplay much.

[BraveCaperCat]

The biggest things I see as “easier” are the quality weapons that - if you focus on them when you can (a few miners with quality mods and a splitter to sort are all you really need) you become quite powerful early game.

Biters shouldn’t be an issue at all.

If it DOES feel too long and you’ve already played before, just blueprint everything to rockets - even a basic starter base + a mall gets you almost there.

Do we get bots earlier now? It feels like we did.

For me it feels like my modded play throughs - I would use QoL mods and LTN and some other “start quickly” mods that didn’t affect long term gameplay much.

I don't use biters, and didn't "rush" (quality) modules as a consequence.
Biters aren't an issue because I turn them off.
We don't get bots earlier, but we do get logistic chests earlier - with chemical science instead of utility science.
Me too, except I never used LTN - it was... beyond me. I used early robots (which I've updated to 2.0), as well as a few other early mods.

[BlueTemplar]

Logistic chests didn't change, you're confusing them with Requester chests.
Requester chests aren't really earlier either (and possibly later), they now require Space science instead of Utility (yellow).

IIRC last time bots were changed was in 0.17, and they were moved later, now also requiring blue science :
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-275
(And Requester chests were moved earlier I guess (?), losing the requirement of Purple (Productivity) science while keeping Yellow (Utility).)

A reminder of the 0.16 tech tree :

LogiSyst0.16.jpg (153.76 KiB) Viewed 203 times

Right, I wouldn't generally recommend using mods on your first game, but this might be the exception ?
But a new player is at the risk of making their game more complicated and slower as the result...
In particular, how would LTN help a new player in this case ?? Sounds like it would only slow the game down trying to figure it out. And it's not like you need a big rail network to get to space on default settings.
(Also, wasn't LTN kind of made obsolete except maybe for megabases / complex modpacks with the introduction of train limits in 1.0 (or was that 1.1 ?)

Quality modules are still quite late (expensive RG science), you have to survive that far !

[iestynne]

At 32h now and still didn't make it to the first planet... I completely rebuilt my space platform twice already and STILL asteroids destroy it en route. Tutorials are very thin for all the space platform stuff, maybe I'm missing some knowledge they assumed I'd have. But this further exacerbates the problem I initially described.

I would suggest making asteroids less dangerous for your first crossing, then later allow the player to do a risk-reward trade. As it is, it's way too punishing, another frustrating hurdle in the way of a player excited to experience new content...

[BraveCaperCat]

Logistic chests didn't change, you're confusing them with Requester chests.
Requester chests aren't really earlier either (and possibly later), they now require Space science instead of Utility (yellow).

IIRC last time bots were changed was in 0.17, and they were moved later, now also requiring blue science :
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-275
(And Requester chests were moved earlier I guess (?), losing the requirement of Purple (Productivity) science while keeping Yellow (Utility).)

A reminder of the 0.16 tech tree :
LogiSyst0.16.jpg


Right, I wouldn't generally recommend using mods on your first game, but this might be the exception ?
But a new player is at the risk of making their game more complicated and slower as the result...
In particular, how would LTN help a new player in this case ?? Sounds like it would only slow the game down trying to figure it out. And it's not like you need a big rail network to get to space on default settings.
(Also, wasn't LTN kind of made obsolete except maybe for megabases / complex modpacks with the introduction of train limits in 1.0 (or was that 1.1 ?)

Quality modules are still quite late (expensive RG science), you have to survive that far !

LTN was made obsolete in 2.0, when they introduced interupts.

[BlueTemplar]

But not completely I guess, or people wouldn't be clamoring for an update ?

I would suggest making asteroids less dangerous for your first crossing, then later allow the player to do a risk-reward trade.

That's already kind of the case, as you'll find out later.

Add more gun (&ammo), walls, maybe less speed.

[EndOfHistory]

I spent 150 hours to get off Nauvis.... but I play slowly and I wanted a big base with about 300SPM and fully walled off from the biters. This was just me though. I could absolutely have done it faster if I wanted but I really wanted Nauvis to be fully self-sufficient by the time I left. Now I am off world and I could just be spamming rockets with building materials, but I'm holding off as that seems to be a band-aid since I do need to get production up. I do, however, send materials if they will cut down time drastically.

I was a bit lucky though. I had huge lakes a distance from my Nauvis base and I managed to wall off the biters at four choke points between the lakes. I had one incident off-planet where a behemoth worm spawned and started taking down my laser turrets from out of their range, but since I had a roboport with construction bots and repair packs at the wall I could just deconstruct part of the defence and tower creep the worm and then rebuild the wall. Once a train ran out of fuel because I had forgot to set it's interrupt to go and refuel, and then I had to build roboports out into the middle of nowhere to get a refuelling chest next to it. Fun stuff.

I'm having fun though. Too much fun. The planets are much more diverse than I imagined and I'm toying with what I will do once I reach mega-base territory. It's been a while since I built one. Vulcanus is currently being developed, Fulgora is done, and then.... Gleba. I'm dreading Gleba with the spoilage mechanics. Dread and complain are not the same thing though. I look forward to the challenge.

[BlueTemplar]

Hah, yeah, ran into both of these issues, both solved the same way. (Add spoilers maybe ??)

I was a bit lucky though. I had huge lakes a distance from my Nauvis base and I managed to wall off the biters at four choke points between the lakes.

Sounds more like the average generated map than luck ?

[WOOL]

At 32h now and still didn't make it to the first planet... I completely rebuilt my space platform twice already and STILL asteroids destroy it en route. Tutorials are very thin for all the space platform stuff, maybe I'm missing some knowledge they assumed I'd have. But this further exacerbates the problem I initially described.

I would suggest making asteroids less dangerous for your first crossing, then later allow the player to do a risk-reward trade. As it is, it's way too punishing, another frustrating hurdle in the way of a player excited to experience new content...

Have you tried limiting the fuel to the engines? Then your platform will travel much slower and should be able to deal with the asteroids much better