Feedback on Space Age's overall design

[quineotio]

Firstly, thank you to the devs - I can see that a lot of work went into it, and the performance/stability/quality of life is amazing. I've gone through the whole game, including going to the shattered planet, and I wanted to give a review/feedback.

TLDR: I think the design of Space Age is cursed [technical term] (https://youtu.be/8uE6-vIi1rQ?si=qmdctNlGZCausu4n).

I'm referring specifically to the number of planets. The main issues are: front loaded difficulty, railroaded design, scaling problems.

Re: front loaded difficulty - you have to learn a lot of new things when arriving on a new planet. But then after you've learned the basics you're repeating essentially what you've already done on Nauvis. For example, the fun part of Gleba was figuring out all the new builds, but then after that you have to build blue circuits and LDS. But this is necessary because you need to launch rockets, so you necessarily need access to all the Nauvis basics. But because of this, much of the new content is actually old content and you're limited to a small number of new things.

Some of the 1.0 tech was moved to other planets, and this feels punishing - it makes Nauvis worse. But if this wasn't the case, there would be even less reward for going to the new planets. For example, take away cliff explosives, coal liquifaction and artillery from Vulcanus and what is there left? The foundry, big mining drill and faster belts all replicate things you can already do and aren't necessary, which leaves tungsten, which could have been added to Nauvis. [EDIT: the new buildings can't do anything fundamentally new, because it's uncertain which order you'll attain them]. Which leaves Vulcanus as pretty empty with regard to content, and yet there still needs to be some way to produce the rocket parts, which means new recipes for basic stuff you're already making on Nauvis.

Space science is literally forgettable. I built a platform early to make enough, and never touched it. You'd think it'd be a bigger part of the game, but it can't be because it would take away reasons to go to the planets. Annoyingly it gates certain tech (Kovarex enrichment, requester chests) that I'd like to have before launching a rocket, and it's not the gate for things it logically should be (the asteroid related techs). With the current design, it does make some sense to disallow gaining calcite until you've been to Vulcanus, but this just further points to Vulcanus being redundant - Vulcanus forces other areas of the game to be worse to justify it's existence. Everything on Vulcanus could have been moved elsewhere with the added benefit of not having to introduce new recipes (and build a new factory) for things we already mostly have.

The Fulgora sorting mechanic is interesting, but the planet itself has basically nothing else. The lightning/power is trivial to solve, and the limited build space doesn't fundamentally change much because you don't need much space (and it's not particularly fun). It's really only one new challenge, a few new recipes, and the need to build rockets. Ruins/scrap could have been added to Nauvis to get pretty much the same effect. As far as new tech, the mech armour is cool, but it could have been added to any of the new planets and it would have made sense. Losing roboport mk2 from Nauvis is annoying, and shields mk2 make Nauvis worse because it makes biters harder (and they already are harder because of added HP). What this meant in practice is that I felt more locked to my initial area on Nauvis, because evolution and less tools made it harder to expand.

Lacking the spidertron on Nauvis also felt bad. I understand that the tank is a semi-replacement, except it isn't. The spidertron is easy to control without paying attention, but when I had to attend to my walls with the tank I had to manually drive it - around obstacles and often through the fog of war. All in all I wasn't happy about ANY of the tech being removed from Nauvis. In no way did it make the game more fun/rewarding - it just made it more work to get to the same place.

Being restricted by surface with the construction of certain buildings feels arbitrary. Even something like not being able to place crushers on the planets. Is this because functionally they kind of overlap with recyclers?

The restrictive rocket capacity, especially on certain items, feels arbitrary and annoying. I understand the intention of not wanting players to trivialize the game through exporting, but in practice it just makes it harder to get into the game. The point of the game is to launch a lot of rockets and export things. It would feel a lot better if the rocket capacity was doubled, or more - which would make the early game more forgiving. The productivity for rocket parts could even be removed, leaving this as a problem to be solved by scaling. But this can't be done because you need to launch rockets from 5 different planets, so it's cursed.

The space platforms pose an interesting design challenge, but this challenge doesn't really change and is made redundant through infinite tech. They are essentially glorified trains that you need to spend too much time building, and the hardest one to build is the first one.

So all in all, I think the existence of multiple new planets is actually a detriment, because the player now has what feels like artificial restrictions and repetitive gameplay.

Re: scaling problems, it feels like much of the design is intended to work best in the very late game - after the victory screen. Quality is a good example. The full potential of quality is only unlocked on the final planet, but then not really until you've built a large base designed around producing it. I did use quality, but I used small bot setups to produce a few select items. I can see how it could be a fun design challenge to produce high quality items at scale, but by the time you're capable of doing this you've already finished the game.

Unlike vanilla Factorio, I don't feel inclined to play after the victory screen - or even to repeat going through the game. The reason for this is the amount of time and busy work it takes unlock all the tools. And then the same limiting factor that existed in the original game is still there - the CPU. You can build more with less in Space Age, but you need working factories across 5 different surfaces + space platforms (and much of this replicating the same work), so I can't imagine it will be possible to scale much further than in the original game. The numbers will be higher, but this will be artificial due to infinite researches + built-in productivity.

Basically, the sense of progression is gone in Space Age - at least until a LONG way into a playthrough. It took a day or two for me to get all the tech in Vanilla, at which point I could work on a larger design. To reach the same point in Space Age would take weeks. In Vanilla I was building one factory of increasing size and complexity, and able to leverage what I'd built to solve new problems. In Space Age my factories are very disconnected until very late game, and the focal point is Aquillo (the place you need to import things), and Aquillo is the smallest, least capable factory. I barely touched any of my factories after finishing them, so in practice it was like playing a series of levels rather than one big game.

Which brings to mind a contrast between a sandbox and an adventure. Vanilla is more of a sandbox and Space Age an adventure - meaning that the achievement is finishing. Except that the victory condition is Space Age is very underwhelming. I used the Aquillo tech on one platform to reach the end, and then built another in the editor to reach the shattered planet. There's self evidently no need for it, because by the time you've got it, you're already at the end. Factorio is a game about automation, but the final space platform doesn't need any new automation to build, because you only need a small number of railguns. Much of the challenge in Vanilla is self imposed, but in Space Age it's game imposed.

So I think there is both too much content in Space Age, and not enough. Too much in that a lot of it is repetitive, and not enough in that there isn't actually much new stuff, especially if you consider that much of the function of the new buildings is just productivity. It feels like a lot of the design is wasted - which is a shame, because the new planets do have a lot going from them if taken in isolation.

I think the expansion would have been better if it was just Nauvis + space platform + a single new planet, with the content split between these three. The infinite researches are just numbers - it would have been more interesting if instead there were advanced recipes to get better productivity. The challenge of managing an interplanetary logistics network would still exist if there was only one planet, but with less redundant work, and it would have felt more rewarding because you could put a higher volume of new resources in one place. Demolishers and Pentapods could both have fit onto the same surface.

As far as the endgame, I think there needed to be a broader goal to work toward. I think having more happen on the space platform would have worked - building bigger and producing more - sending things up and sending things down. This way you could have added to your space platform over the course of the game rather than having multiple functionally similar smaller platforms (trains), and it wouldn't have forced you to start from scratch multiple times - the platform and planet could have produced different things. And this would have allowed for something like a space elevator to reduce transport cost - a difficult to produce late game alternative to rockets. Or perhaps a shuttle so that you can easily travel between the surface and the platform (but not cart goods).

But overall, I think there should have been less disconnected things to manage, because I didn't feel attached to anything I built in Space Age - having spent relatively little time in each place. This also would have helped with the front loaded difficulty. New systems (i.e. spoilage/ agri tower/ soils/ nutrients) could have been introduced more gradually if they were introduced on Nauvis - and this also would have exposed the player to the new content more quickly. In addition to scaling more smoothly, I think this also would have allowed the game to scale further (beyond what currently exists), because less time would have been spent developing the basic recipes on the new planets. Also, Vulcanus and Fulgora are not particularly interesting visually, but would have worked well as biomes.

Nevertheless, I think Space Age is an achievement, and Factorio is one of the best games of all time. I've learned a lot while playing - not just about the game but about life. Thank you and I hope this feedback is constructive. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.

[Stargateur]

I agree that moving tech that was vanilla to other planet, specially artillery feel punishing. I disagree that kovarex process needing space science is bad cause it's still nauvis for me. Also, you don't really need kovarex for nuclear energy. I would add that I really really really don't like tech that increase productivity, it's feel soooooo cheating, you don't pay for it once it's done, mining productivity YES cause I don't want build outputs every minutes(thus I would argue it's op too since it's reduce the number of mining needed, I think ressource should scale up a lot more with distance (also with quality mining drill it's less a problem)), but that all, the new infinite productivity research are way too much OP (maybe limit it ? max +50% ?).

I agree overall with the feedback, I don't really want scale up other planet + nauvis, it's just "too much", I started a playground with vanilla + quality + elevated rail... I think I will regret electromagnetic plant

The restrictive rocket capacity, especially on certain items, feels arbitrary and annoying. I understand the intention of not wanting players to trivialize the game through exporting

I would like to punish this. I really don't understand why FINISHED product are HARDER to transport than raw resource. Do they really want we export calcite to nauvis ???!!! that make NO SENSE for me. I really dislike the way they want us to play this. I really don't like planet logistic for now.

[CyberCider]

I would like to punish this. I really don't understand why FINISHED product are HARDER to transport than raw resource. Do they really want we export calcite to nauvis ???!!! that make NO SENSE for me. I really dislike the way they want us to play this. I really don't like planet logistic for now.

Calcite isn’t really a resource, it’s more like a fuel. Same with bioflux, another item with a similar use. They’re pretty much the only exceptions to the general pattern of finished products being easier to ship. Because these two don’t actually turn into any products, they just disappear in order to let you process another resource.

[Stargateur]

They’re pretty much the only exceptions to the general pattern of finished products being easier to ship

Lol that so false I have no words

[quineotio]

Just to add one thing - I wrote about moving the scrap mechanic to Nauvis... well actually, if there was only one planet - Gleba - you could move scrap here, and that would solve building rockets (easy access to blue chips and lds), and give easy access to all the basic resources. The Gleba recipes for iron, copper and plastic could then be repurposed for something new.

[CyberCider]

You should stop looking at vanilla Nauvis and Space Age Nauvis as the same thing. Space Age’s tech shuffle doesn’t simply make Nauvis worse, it redefines what Nauvis is. In vanilla, Nauvis contains everything, from the start game to the end game. While in Space Age, Nauvis is only your early-mid game. So, why would late game items be on the early-mid game planet? They simply don’t fit there, progression-wise.

Though, you appear to have also noticed one thing: Vulcanus is boring. I am a proud Vulcanus hater, and I tell you that you are completely correct. Fulgora and Gleba are excellent in my opinion, Aquilo has its flaws but it’s unique. But Vulcanus simply has nothing. It’s Nauvis but with remixed resources, that’s it. Its “new mechanic” sucks, because it
a) Isn’t actually very new or unique, players have already dealt with fluid handling by this point, and
b) Reduces complexity and difficulty rather than increasing it.
Resources are also way richer than they have any need to be, to the point where it feels like the game is underestimating you or something. I’m genuinely considering turning calcite way down in the settings, next time I start a new base.
All these things combine to make it such a flat, boring planet compared to its peers. To me, it’s the “rotten egg” of an otherwise lovely expansion. Which is funny, because the literal rotten planet is actually really good

[CyberCider]

They’re pretty much the only exceptions to the general pattern of finished products being easier to ship

Lol that so false I have no words

You know what, you got me. I forgot about foundation. That’s another notable exception. I’m lucky I discovered that fact before reaching Aquilo, I’ve saved myself from launching dozens of stone rockets.
But, um… Any others? I’m genuinely asking, no sarcasm or anything.

Edit: I literally discovered this one myself, I can’t believe I already forgot it: Whole yumakos are more efficient to ship than finished carbon fiber. Even if there are no nutrients on the destination planet, and you make everything out of the shipped yumakos, it’s still better. So, that’s yet another one, I guess.

[Stargateur]

They’re pretty much the only exceptions to the general pattern of finished products being easier to ship

Lol that so false I have no words

You know what, you got me. I forgot about foundation. That’s another notable exception. I’m lucky I discovered that fact before reaching Aquilo, I’ve saved myself from launching dozens of stone rockets.
But, um… Any others? I’m genuinely asking, no sarcasm or anything.

Edit: I literally discovered this one myself, I can’t believe I already forgot it: Whole yumakos are more efficient to ship than finished carbon fiber. Even if there are no nutrients on the destination planet, and you make everything out of the shipped yumakos, it’s still better. So, that’s yet another one, I guess.

MmM maybe I miss understand, my point is almost if not all item are more efficient to craft from raw ressource than to ship finished product, like explosive cliff, artillery shell, carbon fiber.... etc etc... and for me it's bad, cause logistict between planet should be about finished product. Send raw tungsten, raw x to nauvis or whatever planet feel wrong and IMO is wrong. We should on contrary encourage to ship only refined product cause in theory they should take LESS SPACE. The good think is special building can only be craft from specific location. And omg I hate aquilo, just send sooo many raw ressource to aquilo, that STUPID. Who in the whole space would send billions of tons of stone to space ! Ok you can do the reverse send the lithium that that a raw resource for me. I hate that so much.

[CyberCider]

MmM maybe I miss understand, my point is almost if not all item are more efficient to craft from raw ressource than to ship finished product, like explosive cliff, artillery shell, carbon fiber.... etc etc... and for me it's bad, cause logistict between planet should be about finished product. Send raw tungsten, raw x to nauvis or whatever planet feel wrong and IMO is wrong. We should on contrary encourage to ship only refined product cause in theory they should take LESS SPACE. The good think is special building can only be craft from specific location. And omg I hate aquilo, just send sooo many raw ressource to aquilo, that STUPID. Who in the whole space would send billions of tons of stone to space ! Ok you can do the reverse send the lithium that that a raw resource for me. I hate that so much.

Cliff explosives? I mean, I never really noticed those. Nauvis and Gleba are already receiving calcite for ore melting, so I just used that. No dedicated deliveries needed. And you can’t make explosives or grenades on Fulgora, so you kind of have no choice but to ship the whole things there (though personally, I made them in orbit).
As for artillery shells… I pretty much agree, yeah. They’ve always had this unique quirk of being easier to ship in parts, but with space it’s different because you’re only shipping one of their parts, so you don’t actually have to deal with correctly ratiod mixed cargo. So, the charm is lost.
Aquilo is definitely deliberate with its choice to flip the mechanic on its head and force you to ship resources/intermediates, when you’ve never wanted to do it before. It even makes sure to give all three Fulgora items a use. The only thing you don’t ship there is bioflux. Whether or not all of this is good design, well, that can certainly be debated…
But yeah, it appears that you were too late to notice the hidden secret way of dealing with foundation: You should definitely not make it on Aquilo. Make it on Vulcanus and Fulgora instead. They’re the only places where it’s used, and on both of them stone is free. And foundation has horrible rocket capacity, so launching it is a bad idea anyway. And to top it all off, Vulcanus is the source of tungsten plates, so you save even more shipping. I suspect that it was the devs’ way to make sure you also have a reason to ship lithium plate. Every other planet ships out its basic intermediates to Aquilo, but Aquilo seemingly has no reason to ship out lithium plates. Well, this is actually that reason, it’s just not very obvious at first.

[quineotio]

I've been thinking more about how I'd do things differently, in alignment with the OP. If this is vain please give me grace.

1. Give all the Nauvis tech back to Nauvis, and tungsten (+big mining drill/forge), and some basic agricultural tech.

Tungsten would be obtained by washing iron ore, and only in small quantities - enough to build big mining drills and forges, but not enough for anything more. Larger quantities would be obtained from asteroids later on. No lava or calcite on Nauvis, so those recipes are initially unobtainable.

Agricultural tower available early on Nauvis - probably green science. Allows tree harvesting. Trees drop fruit which gives temporary bonus to crafting speed when eaten. Give a new recipe to build plantable soil. Wood can be crafted into carbon and fruit can be turned into carbon fiber to allow rocket turrets + spidertron.

2. Space platform doesn't move, more tech unlocked/researched here, new resources gathered here.

The space platform (station) is stationary and all the asteroid related/space related techs are researched here, and the science recipe is made more complex (e.g. requiring uranium) to require shipping resources. The small asteroid chunks still spawn here, but to obtain new resources a space platform (ship) must be built to travel to the asteroid field. The asteroid field increases in density the further you travel a la the shattered planet. Asteroids contain new resources e.g. tungsten, calcite and lithium. This begins to unlock the recipes of the foundry. Lithium must be processed on the space platform.

3. Re-build your spaceship to leave Nauvis

After reaching space, the next goal is to rebuild your crashed ship. This requires advanced tech and some new recipes. After completing the ship you can then travel to Gleba, which is your home planet. When you arrive you find it abandoned, and the wildlife has taken over. There is a message written on a stone... (your princess is in another dimension).

4. Gleba

In addition to the current Gleba content, there are also ruins (i.e. Fulgora) and volcanic areas with worms in them. Your spaceship is big enough to carry you, which allows easy personal travel, but for cargo you need to build rockets/space platforms. There are different routes - fastest is most dangerous. Basic resources on Gleba are obtained by from scrap, and sulfur vents/ lava/ ammonia/ fluorine are also here. The recipes for iron/copper/plastic/sulfur from the Gleba plants instead produce other things, e.g. holmium. The cryogenic plant is used to keep buildings cool instead of hot, and is required for the more advanced recipes. There is no stone on Gleba - it must be obtained from lava/scrap. Electromagnetic plants require electrolytes to work, which are obtained from fruit.

Prometheum is used in regular recipes (not only infinite science). Railgun ammo requires tungsten instead of copper wire and cooling from the cryogenic plant. The final goal is to build a quantum computer and open a doorway to a parallel dimension, which requires a large amount of power + cooling. There could be a "minigame" where you have to play with cubits.

5. Other

* All the new productivity researches are removed. I feel like these trivialize/remove the need to scale.
* Quality requires more complex recipes, and requires ingredients from fruit - uncommon from Nauvis, rare and epic from Gleba, legendary from a combination of all three. This would be the hardest content, but also not strictly necessary to finish the game.
* Basic Nauvis science packs are eventually phased out. The first phase is allowing red, green, blue and purple to be combined into a new science pack (Nauvis science), and a new recipe is later made available on the space station to build them directly.
* the foundry cannot be built on the space platform, leaving a space for the electric furnace
* allow biter pacification (through feeding them) as an alternative to extermination. This combined with pollution reduction through tree planting would be a nice option for endgame biter control. Perhaps it could be possible to bring Gleba soils to Nauvis and vice versa to control enemy spread - maybe biters hate the pollen from Gleba plants and move away.

There are plenty more things that would need to be figured out, but something like this would address the problems I outlined in the OP. New concepts could be introduced more gradually, you would spend more time attending to a single (and then two, then three) factories - each of which would produce different things, and the difficulty would ramp up more consistently. I've tried to minimize the amount of new things that would need to be added. I enjoy thinking about game design, so if you have feedback I'm interested to hear it.

[Koub]

[Koub] Moved to General discussion.

[470lm]

What I really can't agree with is the tech shuffle
I played many games which had DLCs, and I can't recall any that ripped out content from the base game and moved it to DLC areas and called it new content
I'm okay with infinite research requiring off-world science, but what was once unlocked on Nauvis, should stay on Nauvis, and just because we are used to it, but also because new planets just don't feel new enough due to old tech being moved there.

Just take Vulcanus for example, what's -NEW- there? The big miners, which are just better normal miners; foundries, which are smelters and semi-assemblers but with productivity bonus, and lava. Even from these, if had to say which felt the newest, it would be the lava, because the others are reskins and stat tweaks to be honest.

[adam_bise]

I agree that space science is dry. If space science required ice, carbon, and sulfur, then it would make more sense IMO

[FunMaker]

• I agree that the initial space science (white flasks) is a little bit dull, because you don't have to scale it later.
• I am fine with moving technologies to other planets that were at Nauvis in the first place. At first i was a bit annoyed by this, but it feels much more rewarding as it would be given at nauvis prior to going to space.
• I hoped, that they would add something new to Nauvis. I am missing the brain bug! So SA feels a little bit like Vanilla Factorio the first 10-20 hours - and that is a little bit disappointing. If i compare SA to Brood War from Starcraft (well the comparison lags something) i would say Brood War as at a great place with adding additional units and technologies, but looking at the play time of starcraft vs factorio, factorio is a huge beast and imho you should encounter something new after 2-3 hours of gameplay
• There is too much gating of Content that makes you rebuild something. You have to do some hard stuff to get the easy stuff. I am okay with that - but in SA it is a little bit overkill (i know that overhaul mods tend to do such things) and i would have liked that to be a litle bit reduced. Examples: Rebuilding space platforms multiple times because of new recipes, coal liquification, Nutrient Recipe, Quality gating and unlocking better qualities. IMHO there is some space for rebuilding existing factories because of new stuff, but SA does it too much.

[TechyBen]

You should stop looking at vanilla Nauvis and Space Age Nauvis as the same thing. Space Age’s tech shuffle doesn’t simply make Nauvis worse, it redefines what Nauvis is. In vanilla, Nauvis contains everything, from the start game to the end game. While in Space Age, Nauvis is only your early-mid game. So, why would late game items be on the early-mid game planet? They simply don’t fit there, progression-wise.

Though, you appear to have also noticed one thing: Vulcanus is boring. I am a proud Vulcanus hater, and I tell you that you are completely correct. Fulgora and Gleba are excellent in my opinion, Aquilo has its flaws but it’s unique. But Vulcanus simply has nothing. It’s Nauvis but with remixed resources, that’s it. Its “new mechanic” sucks, because it
a) Isn’t actually very new or unique, players have already dealt with fluid handling by this point, and
b) Reduces complexity and difficulty rather than increasing it.
Resources are also way richer than they have any need to be, to the point where it feels like the game is underestimating you or something. I’m genuinely considering turning calcite way down in the settings, next time I start a new base.
All these things combine to make it such a flat, boring planet compared to its peers. To me, it’s the “rotten egg” of an otherwise lovely expansion. Which is funny, because the literal rotten planet is actually really good

I think I'm more looking at the meta.

The planets are not about being special. But each having a different optimisation route. Glebe? Spoilage time for JIT throughput and management. Volcanus for pure throughput rate. Fulgora at sorting meta. Those are the kinds of things those planets are aiming for. It's about making each planet have a different meta, even though each is "easy" to play as such (each has a type of infinite resources the other planet finds harder... but also WHERE'S MY ROCKS ON GLEBE???).

PS, my only change so far would be to make artillery Nauvis based but have "Iron Gun Barrels" that wear out after like only 10 or so shots (So ammo and barrels need replacing). Then have "Tungsten Gun Barrels" that last 100 (or forever) from Vulcanus. Not pure gating, more gentle limits.

[J-H]

PS, my only change so far would be to make artillery Nauvis based but have "Iron Gun Barrels" that wear out after like only 10 or so shots (So ammo and barrels need replacing). Then have "Tungsten Gun Barrels" that last 100 (or forever) from Vulcanus. Not pure gating, more gentle limits.

This is a nice idea!

[schorsch_76]

I fully acknowledge the OP. This are the points that make the scaling to mega factory unrewarding. When I think back to my 1.1 factory, it was so rewarding to see it growing from the starter base to the bus base and later to the megabase.

The new infinite productivity techs feel like cheating. The point of the automation is producing more. Bigger factories, more products. Not the same factory that gets magicly more productive. You just have to wait until it happens.... Yes build it and the tech....