[Poll] Would you be happy to pay for more official planets and expansions?

[Fabriken AGI]

Hi!

Im nearing the end of my playthrough, and the dread of "finishing" the game is coming closer and closer.

I just realized that i would happily pay another 35 euros for another quality expansion. Do you feel the same?

if performance is an issue, maybe an expansion where you reach another different solar system and leave the old one behind

[meganothing]

I don't think there is any question about many players liking the space age mod and those players would want more of the same. With all successful games though the limiting resource is the developers who can't produce content as fast as players can consume it and also eventually burn out on always working on the same game and want to do something new. And the later part is happening with Wube as they indicated in an FFF.

Simply said, there won't be another DLC in the forseable future it seems, and any poll on our side is largely irrelevant as the problem is not how many of those they could sell.

[Fabriken AGI]

I don't think there is any question about many players liking the space age mod and those players would want more of the same. With all successful games though the limiting resource is the developers who can't produce content as fast as players can consume it and also eventually burn out on always working on the same game and want to do something new. And the later part is happening with Wube as they indicated in an FFF.

Simply said, there won't be another DLC in the forseable future it seems, and any poll on our side is largely irrelevant as the problem is not how many of those they could sell.

True!
Although we as a community will still be here. Just look at Valheim. They put out content at their own pace now, like they should!

Now that WUBE has made enough $$$ to support their team for a good while, I would suggest taking a few months to travel and treat Factorio like a pure passion side project mentally. If you want to work on a rainy day at the resort, work. If not, tell the needy ones (me included) to f off and do something else for a while.

Wube makes the rules. We adapt. - Remember, you (Wube) owe us nothing! You already delivered

(Although actually implementing this mindset, is hard. But when done right, removes the stress completely)

You once went into dev because it was fun, remember? If it makes you lye awake at night, do something completely different for a while. Buy an excavator and dig some holes or something, then fill it back in. it works!

[NineNine]

I would've happily paid $100 USD for Space Age. I'd happily pay a similar amount for more planets. There's nothing in my life that gives me more entertainment per $.

[meganothing]

We can actually hope for some modders filling in for the devs. We have already seen great total conversion mods, but most of them went into the direction of more complexitiy, more grind and harder. Space age makes it possible for modders to add much smaller mods with just another planet having an interesting gimmick how you produce and a few new items and buildings you can build there. With or without a new science bottle, with or without enemies.

In other words I have the feeling the entry level for producing a content mod dropped considerably.

[waterBear]

During my first playthrough, I immediately thought "man I can't wait for them to release more planets as an expansion. You can basically make and release as many as you want, it's a gold mine!" Then they released their last FFF. I have nothing but respect for the developers and their decisions. Here's to hoping some of the planets added by the community are as good as they look!

[adam_bise]

I think we will see plenty of planet mods. I wish I could make my own, but I am clueless with graphics.

[Eternal]

i dont see any point in adding more planets... i also play dyson sphere prg and i dont even tackle 10 % of planets.

also

if more planets means more type of sciences that means some other research ...for what? i already barely touch the ores and barely use science packs to research...

megabasing with planets is not worth the dev work in my opinion... plus dunno if engine can sustain more ships.

unless...

we get more dimensions, as in separate instances, so we can exponentially grow factories, and each planet to held ofc its own special thing and ores... and i dunno what goal would be then.... im imagining one big machine per planet

[meganothing]

i dont see any point in adding more planets... i also play dyson sphere prg and i dont even tackle 10 % of planets.

also

if more planets means more type of sciences that means some other research ...for what? i already barely touch the ores and barely use science packs to research...

megabasing with planets is not worth the dev work in my opinion... plus dunno if engine can sustain more ships.

unless...

we get more dimensions, as in separate instances, so we can exponentially grow factories, and each planet to held ofc its own special thing and ores... and i dunno what goal would be then.... im imagining one big machine per planet

You could ask the same question "why ..." to mod authors who add dozens of sciences and intermediate recipes that basically only "delay" the inevitable reaching of whatever goal you set to yourself. Either you want more factorio or you don't.

Simply moving some of the important sciences to some other world would make that world enticing. Or someone really finds a new science to offer that is necessarily optional (if nothing is removed from the original worlds). If someone doesn't care for that optional feature, oh well. But if he wants to play with it, there's the planet for it.

The big advantage and disadvantage of a sandbox game is ... no surprise here ... inevitably ... that it is a sandbox

[Edited because I made a mess when presenting my argument, hope it makes more sense now]

[Premu]

Right now each planet is in some way different and stands out.

If you just add more it comes with the risk that the new planets are just like the existing planets redressed and not unique. So any potential further expansion might go in a total different direction.

[quineotio]

I don't think space age is finished at the moment, so I don't think I would pay for more planets unless more is added to the base expansion first. A lot of the planet's tech is just stuff ripped from nauvis and much of the new stuff is just a productivity upgrade. Nauvis was made worse in space age.

And most of the new recipes are just different ways of doing the same thing. You can get iron plates in 4 different ways now...

There's no real endgame in space age, and no real need to export anything except the science packs and new buildings, which (for what feels like artificial reasons) can only be built on specific planets. The productivity research feels like a substitute for actual content (there are no new machines/recipes associated with it).

1.0 had a long dev cycle with constant feedback, and was the better for it. I understand that after you've worked on something for a long time you want to move on, but SA is just not finished, or at least is nowhere close to it's potential.

To give you an idea of what I expect from a finished SA, nauvis has everything from 1.0 plus some new stuff, and then there are multiple new resources on every planet. The planets don't have to be as big as nauvis - in fact I think it's better if they are just outposts for obtaining a small number of new things.

So sure, more content could be good, but the content currently there is lacking, so I won't pay any more for factorio unless that's addressed.

After saying all this let me state that 1.0 was excellent and very good value.

[Muche]

[M]ost of the new recipes are just different ways of doing the same thing. You can get iron plates in 4 different ways now...

There's [...] no real need to export anything except the science packs and new buildings, which (for what feels like artificial reasons) can only be built on specific planets.
...
To give you an idea of what I expect from a finished SA, nauvis has everything from 1.0 plus some new stuff, and then there are multiple new resources on every planet.
The planets don't have to be as big as nauvis - in fact I think it's better if they are just outposts for obtaining a small number of new things.

You seem to be contradicting yourself.

Planets already export "a small number of new things" (i.e. science packs and new buildings); and are utilizing multiple new resources.
Yet you're saying SA's not finished.

You don't want iron plates to be made in 4 different ways. Thus you should appreciate Gleba with totally different recipes.
Which means they are pretty much limited to Gleba only (as they depend on multiple new resources specific to that planet), and you against such "artificial reasons" for limiting them.

[quineotio]

[M]ost of the new recipes are just different ways of doing the same thing. You can get iron plates in 4 different ways now...

There's [...] no real need to export anything except the science packs and new buildings, which (for what feels like artificial reasons) can only be built on specific planets.
...
To give you an idea of what I expect from a finished SA, nauvis has everything from 1.0 plus some new stuff, and then there are multiple new resources on every planet.
The planets don't have to be as big as nauvis - in fact I think it's better if they are just outposts for obtaining a small number of new things.

You seem to be contradicting yourself.

Planets already export "a small number of new things" (i.e. science packs and new buildings); and are utilizing multiple new resources.
Yet you're saying SA's not finished.

You don't want iron plates to be made in 4 different ways. Thus you should appreciate Gleba with totally different recipes.
Which means they are pretty much limited to Gleba only (as they depend on multiple new resources specific to that planet), and you against such "artificial reasons" for limiting them.

It's easy to feel like you've got an internet win when you're pendantic and selective in what you respond to - ignoring the parts of the post that give context to the statements your critiquing.

[Tertius]

I don't think space age is finished at the moment

I don't agree, in my opinion it's definitely finished. It has a few rough edges, and I would be happy if they could be addressed for some 2.1 release. But so far I enjoyed everything from Space Age very much, right from the release. And I don't agree the new content is just more of the same. It's extending and bringing new concepts. The big general enhancements are 1) the new machines you get on every planet, so you can upgrade your factory after each planet instead of just stamping down "final" beaconed blueprints that cannot be enhanced even more, 2) the new mechanics to master on the new planets, especially on Gleba and Fulgora, 3) the space platforms, 4) Quality, so there is another tier of enhancement, so there are still no "final" blueprints you just stamp down, 5) interplanetary logistics with independent production areas and wide area "trading" of ingredients between the various production locations.

Having said that, I will not ask for more content. The game has a lot of content, and it's enough. If there was even more, you start to lose the common thread that runs through the game. You lose sight of the goal at the end, because it's so far away, and that's discouraging to even start. The game would become bloated.

Other games do this in a way to not extend the journey to the final goal. Instead, they add additional goals you can achieve in parallel and independently from the main goal. However, they usually add tools that can also be used with reaching the main goal, trivializing the journey to the main goal. But this is not a game that should make it faster to reach the goal over the course of game expansions. It's a game about puzzles and technical challenges, and every challenge to solve doesn't need to be more easy to solve. This would lower the game value in general.

One thing I see is that many people seem to use mods to make gameplay easier and faster, because they skip some challenges you need to solve in vanilla, then asking for more content when they finished the faster game. That's invalid. For example, it took me one month to master Gleba, and I enjoyed every single game session with that. People who use mods to change the spoilage mechanics skipped that part of the game, which is perhaps 30% of the whole expansion. It's their fault if they remove parts of the game, not the fault of the developers to not supply more. If the game grows even more, there would be even more parts people will skip, so this will become an endless circle.

[quineotio]

I don't think space age is finished at the moment

I don't agree, in my opinion it's definitely finished.

Etc

I like fulgora. I find the sorting mechanic really interesting and I haven't mastered it yet.

I enjoyed Gleba initially, after getting over the cliff that is the learning curve. But I actually think it has very little after you've solved the initial problems. I'm disappointed that most of what you're doing is just producing basic resources, and also that there's no second tier of recipes - which is a complaint I have on all the new planets. The complexity never goes beyond the basic set-up of produce nutrients, combine with bioflux, makes product. So once you're producing the science pack you're essentially done.

In 1.0, you're regularly increasing the complexity of recipe chains, combining things - building on previous knowledge in more complex challenges. Not so in space age.

Vulcanus I think is the worst offender. It's so easy. I've played through twice now, and I've only spent about 2 days on vulcanus. I would like the tech tree to go further, and introduce more cross pollination between planets and better utilisation of the new buildings.

I think quality is badly implemented, because it would be the perfect place to introduce these new recipes without bloating the number of items in the game. Putting modules into machines is not a challenge. Managing the different outputs from quality IS a challenge, but it's similar to the fulgora challenge, and kinda annoying once you unlock epic and legendary quality. The easiest way to solve the problem is with bots, which I don't find fun, but the alternative is building parallel replica factories that do the same thing, or just recycling unwanted stuff, which isn't challenging or fun.

I half enjoy space platforms. They are an interesting and unique challenge, but once again it feels like something is missing. Why are there no new resources in space? And why is the travel between all the inner planets exactly the same?

And the most obvious underdone part of the game is the end. Making prometheum science is an interesting challenge, but kinda pointless. There could easily be more added here.

And there's a lot more I'd like to see, like biological science on nauvis. The devs said that it's hard to introduce biology into factorio, but there are plenty of things you could do, such as new alloys, new fluids (eg a way to produce electrolytes on nauvis). And the cryoplant could have a role - e.g. maybe a highly spoilable item (like 5 seconds) can be turned into a snap frozen version that lasts longer. I know fluids don't interact with spoilage but maybe a liquid that needs to be kept cool, like the coolant loop.

I was really hoping for more cross pollination with the planets, but space age is so restrictive in that regard, which is why I mentioned not liking buildings being restricted to a specific planet.

Here's an example combining ideas above: you go to fulgora and learn how to build the electromagnetic plant. The only restriction to where you build it is access to holmium. There's a recipe for holmium bacteria you can learn after visiting gleba, and you can make it on nauvis if you set up an appropriate nutrients chain.

You can then make uncommon electromagnetic plants by using tungsten instead of steel. Rares require mixing tungsten in the foundry with a fluid produced in the biochamber. You learn how to grow gleba fruits on nauvis and can combine them with nauvis fruits to produce rare minerals that combine with holmium solution to produce epic holmium for epic electromagnetic plants. Etc.

So producing high quality items would actually be difficult and require solving increasingly complex logistics and automation challenges, which is what is fun about factorio. And you could delete the productivity research and instead make more complex crafting chains to achieve higher productivity.

At the moment, you're essentially done once you've produced a planet's science pack, and quality is mostly a waiting game, and there's no big goal at the end of it all. I LIKE factorio. I want to play it. But I'm struggling to find the fun in space age, which wasn't the case in 1.0.

[Tertius]

I like fulgora. I find the sorting mechanic really interesting and I haven't mastered it yet.

Ha, I solved the trash recycling and material sorting mechanic of Fulgora in a few hours by using 5 combinators and (literally) 1000 bots. Once I got the idea, it was surprisingly trivial. Call it cheating, I call it good engineering. It consumes 2 stacked green belts and involves 76 recyclers to produce enough material to support a regular (belt-based) production line for the science pack of ~700 SPM, the SPM I set out for my initial walkthrough before employing quality. Quite a relaxing puzzle after Gleba.

But did you realize the additional challenge of collecting enough trash? Railway through the oil sea to the better trash mines? Getting energy from the native energy source? This is as important and an entertaining puzzle to solve as producing the science pack. It's similar with the other planets. On Vulcanus, one of the important game changers is cliff explosives. Interesting the energy source by directly producing steam. On Gleba, you realize that Jellynut is meant to be the energy source. Directly, or as jelly, or finally as rocket fuel. Science production is not all you need to investigate and master.

In my opinion all that is very entertaining. Not only the way to science, but everything taken together. It seems to me some people don't see this but just run straight to the science and don't see what's also to the left and to the right. If you're able to see this, you see double the game content.
[/quote]

[meganothing]

I don't think space age is finished at the moment

I don't agree, in my opinion it's definitely finished.

Etc

I like fulgora. I find the sorting mechanic really interesting and I haven't mastered it yet.

I enjoyed Gleba initially, after getting over the cliff that is the learning curve. But I actually think it has very little after you've solved the initial problems. I'm disappointed that most of what you're doing is just producing basic resources, and also that there's no second tier of recipes - which is a complaint I have on all the new planets. The complexity never goes beyond the basic set-up of produce nutrients, combine with bioflux, makes product. So once you're producing the science pack you're essentially done.

In 1.0, you're regularly increasing the complexity of recipe chains, combining things - building on previous knowledge in more complex challenges. Not so in space age.

Vulcanus I think is the worst offender. It's so easy. I've played through twice now, and I've only spent about 2 days on vulcanus. I would like the tech tree to go further, and introduce more cross pollination between planets and better utilisation of the new buildings.

I think quality is badly implemented, because it would be the perfect place to introduce these new recipes without bloating the number of items in the game. Putting modules into machines is not a challenge. Managing the different outputs from quality IS a challenge, but it's similar to the fulgora challenge, and kinda annoying once you unlock epic and legendary quality. The easiest way to solve the problem is with bots, which I don't find fun, but the alternative is building parallel replica factories that do the same thing, or just recycling unwanted stuff, which isn't challenging or fun.

I half enjoy space platforms. They are an interesting and unique challenge, but once again it feels like something is missing. Why are there no new resources in space? And why is the travel between all the inner planets exactly the same?

And the most obvious underdone part of the game is the end. Making prometheum science is an interesting challenge, but kinda pointless. There could easily be more added here.

I haven't been there yet. But is it more pointless than shooting a rocket into space that does nothing except pop up a message?

And there's a lot more I'd like to see, like biological science on nauvis. The devs said that it's hard to introduce biology into factorio, but there are plenty of things you could do, such as new alloys, new fluids (eg a way to produce electrolytes on nauvis). And the cryoplant could have a role - e.g. maybe a highly spoilable item (like 5 seconds) can be turned into a snap frozen version that lasts longer. I know fluids don't interact with spoilage but maybe a liquid that needs to be kept cool, like the coolant loop.

I was really hoping for more cross pollination with the planets, but space age is so restrictive in that regard, which is why I mentioned not liking buildings being restricted to a specific planet.

Here's an example combining ideas above: you go to fulgora and learn how to build the electromagnetic plant. The only restriction to where you build it is access to holmium. There's a recipe for holmium bacteria you can learn after visiting gleba, and you can make it on nauvis if you set up an appropriate nutrients chain.

What about the gleba-exports you can do in SA to tame spawners on nauvis? Seems to be very similar to your example, except only two planets are involved.

Also, once you solved interplanetary delivery of stuff, what additional complexity does your example offer? Whether the stuff comes from one or two planets or a train station does not make much of a difference.

You can then make uncommon electromagnetic plants by using tungsten instead of steel. Rares require mixing tungsten in the foundry with a fluid produced in the biochamber. You learn how to grow gleba fruits on nauvis and can combine them with nauvis fruits to produce rare minerals that combine with holmium solution to produce epic holmium for epic electromagnetic plants. Etc.

So producing high quality items would actually be difficult and require solving increasingly complex logistics and automation challenges, which is what is fun about factorio. And you could delete the productivity research and instead make more complex crafting chains to achieve higher productivity.

At the moment, you're essentially done once you've produced a planet's science pack, and quality is mostly a waiting game, and there's no big goal at the end of it all. I LIKE factorio. I want to play it. But I'm struggling to find the fun in space age, which wasn't the case in 1.0.

But factorio 1.0 was rather trivial to win as well, without some big goal at the end. The people who stopped playing after starting the rocket can probably be counted on one hand . But it was new and it is always more fun to play something new you have to learn, eventually people get sated when playing something for a long time. SA offers new concepts, at least on fulgora and gleba, but not enough to make you feel playing a completely new and different game. And the puzzles in the game were always only difficult if you set yourself goals outside of simply reaching whatever end.

One problem may be that you might think the SA mod would be the game specifically for veterans. Though Wube wanted SA to be nearly as beginner-friendly and "short" as the base game, according to an old FFF, if I remember correctly. An alternate game mode, not a game as continuation of the base game.
More complex or just more grindy for veterans is something that happens in player-produced mods. Did you every try Krastorio/Space Exploration/Industrial Revolution/Bobs Mods/Angels Mods for 1.1 ? Those are the mods that probably scratch the itch of veterans who want more, though whether they just go into more grind or also into more complexity is a valid question. And I am sure there will also be big overhaul mods finished on top of SA

[NineNine]

In 1.0, you're regularly increasing the complexity of recipe chains, combining things - building on previous knowledge in more complex challenges. Not so in space age.

Huh? Aquilo combines what you make from all of the other planets. It's a much more complex recipe than anything in 1.*.

I would like the tech tree to go further, and introduce more cross pollination between planets and better utilisation of the new buildings.

It makes sense to use almost every new building on every planet. That seems like a heck of a lot of cross-pollination to me.

The easiest way to solve the problem is with bots, which I don't find fun, but the alternative is building parallel replica factories that do the same thing, or just recycling unwanted stuff, which isn't challenging or fun.

The challenge is the same as every other challenge in Factorio: build more of something. When you're building quality items, once you solve the mechanism of producing quality items, you've solved maybe 10% of the problem. The other 90% of the problem is now scaling up everything behind it to create enough of that item to make quality versions of it.

I half enjoy space platforms. They are an interesting and unique challenge, but once again it feels like something is missing. Why are there no new resources in space?

There are several new resources in space. Carbon, the three types of asteroid minerals, prometheum...

And why is the travel between all the inner planets exactly the same?

It isn't.

And the most obvious underdone part of the game is the end. Making prometheum science is an interesting challenge, but kinda pointless.

It's a game. The whole thing is pointless. But the science you make with promethium is arguably the most important science going forward, so I would say it's the opposite of "kinda pointless".

There could easily be more added here.

SA was a huge expansion. It has to end at some point.

I was really hoping for more cross pollination with the planets, but space age is so restrictive in that regard, which is why I mentioned not liking buildings being restricted to a specific planet.

They're not. You can use all buildings on all planets, I'm pretty sure.

Here's an example combining ideas above: you go to fulgora and learn how to build the electromagnetic plant. The only restriction to where you build it is access to holmium. There's a recipe for holmium bacteria you can learn after visiting gleba, and you can make it on nauvis if you set up an appropriate nutrients chain.

You can build it on any planet right now.

At the moment, you're essentially done once you've produced a planet's science pack, and quality is mostly a waiting game, and there's no big goal at the end of it all.

If you're "waiting" for something, then you might want to consider building more of whatever it is that you're waiting for. That's sort of how the game works.

And, the big goal is to reach the edge of the solar system. So, I don't know what you mean when you say "there's no big goal at the end of it all".

I LIKE factorio. I want to play it. But I'm struggling to find the fun in space age, which wasn't the case in 1.0.

So strange. Space Age is version 1 + so much stuff, yet you find the bigger game that's inclusive of smaller game that you profess to love, "less fun".

I feel like I'm maybe responding to a bad "AI"...

[quineotio]

Also, once you solved interplanetary delivery of stuff, what additional complexity does your example offer? Whether the stuff comes from one or two planets or a train station does not make much of a difference.

The example I gave was related quality. With regard to making the planets more interesting, it's hard because I think the SA core design is cursed. I talked about this in another thread "feedback on space age's overall design". So ideally I'd change a bunch of stuff, but keeping things as they are I'd add more to each planet.

The problems I have, trying to summarise briefly, stem from 1. Needing to be able to start from scratch on every planet, which means lots of recipes for power and the basics. 2. Allowing players to go to any planet in any order, forcing progression to start from zero and limiting dependencies/interaction between planets 3. Routing everything through the platform hub, limiting throughput and making it an awkward bottleneck, making it difficult to have a lot of different resources coming in.

So there's a lot of new stuff in space age but almost all the new content is roughly equivalent to building blue science (on each planet). I assume the devs ran out of time and so stripped a bunch of stuff from nauvis and added more infinite research to stretch things out.

With that context, to answer your question, the way I assumed it would work before release is you're importing large amounts of resources from other planets and then integrating them into local supply chains. Basically, building a big factory. But as it stands, you mostly only import science and some buildings. Yes gleba has bioflux importing, that is an example of what I'm talking about.

But factorio 1.0 was rather trivial to win as well, without some big goal at the end.

1.0 had plenty to do after rocket launch. The issue with space age is that by the time I reach the end screen I'm already far into infinite tech, and it's taken me a long time to get there. With 1.0 it only took a day or two to launch a rocket, so it was short enough to be endured if I wanted to build a big base. In SA it takes a long time to get all the basic tools, so the idea of playing after that is less appealing. So I don't think 1.0 and SA are comparable in that regard. Getting to the end screen in SA is a MUCH bigger part of the game.

And the puzzles in the game were always only difficult if you set yourself goals outside of simply reaching whatever end.

This was true in 1.0, but as I said above, the length of time it takes to get all the tools make just getting to the end a much bigger part of the game.

One problem may be that you might think the SA mod would be the game specifically for veterans. Though Wube wanted SA to be nearly as beginner-friendly and "short" as the base game, according to an old FFF, if I remember correctly.

I don't think SA succeeds in being beginner friendly OR specifically for veterans. The learning curve is way too steep for new players, but way too shallow for veterans.

To illustrate my point let's examine gleba. When you arrive, you have to deal with soil types, spoilage, the ag tower, the biochamber, two new resources and their seeds, nutrients, new power generation, and a bunch of new recipes. That is insane. I'm a veteran and it took me 3 days to get my head around it all. But then, once I'd figured out how to do it, it's very shallow.

Why weren't concepts introduced earlier? You can use the ag tower on nauvis - why not give it to the player early on, when it's low stress and you have a working factory next to you. You could also introduce the concept of soils, and you could have a nauvis fruit to introduce spoilage. Just basic, simple stuff - no complex recipes, and nothing critical. And you could give the heating tower to introduce burning waste. Give fish harvesting early as a source of nutrients. This way, when you get to gleba you already know a bunch of stuff.

I can't redesign the game in a forum post, but all this to justify my position - no I won't pay more for factorio unless more is added first. I don't feel like SA is worth it at the moment. 1.0 was more than worth it so it's ok - I don't feel ripped off or anything. But there's so much potential left, and it seems relatively easy to get there now, seeing as the systems and graphics have been made. I hope Wube keeps working on it.

[meganothing]

Your arguments make much more sense now, thank you.

Also, once you solved interplanetary delivery of stuff, what additional complexity does your example offer? Whether the stuff comes from one or two planets or a train station does not make much of a difference.

The example I gave was related quality. With regard to making the planets more interesting, it's hard because I think the SA core design is cursed. I talked about this in another thread "feedback on space age's overall design". So ideally I'd change a bunch of stuff, but keeping things as they are I'd add more to each planet.

The problems I have, trying to summarise briefly, stem from 1. Needing to be able to start from scratch on every planet, which means lots of recipes for power and the basics. 2. Allowing players to go to any planet in any order, forcing progression to start from zero and limiting dependencies/interaction between planets 3. Routing everything through the platform hub, limiting throughput and making it an awkward bottleneck, making it difficult to have a lot of different resources coming in.

I agree somewhat with point 2. A forced order could have made some ideas possible that are not possible now.

Point 1 though is touching on a rather important part of a sandboxy game like factorio. You can solve energy in very different ways on the different planets for example, why leave that out of the game, it might streamline it for people only interested in making gigafactories, but it would make the game smaller. It also makes it possible to fail completely on any planet and restart.

Is the hub a bottleneck? You can add more cargo bays to add throughput to the deliver from space and the limit of one hub per planet is none with a working railroad network. "making it difficult" you say, isn't that just another puzzle to solve? We want puzzles in the game.

So there's a lot of new stuff in space age but almost all the new content is roughly equivalent to building blue science (on each planet). I assume the devs ran out of time and so stripped a bunch of stuff from nauvis and added more infinite research to stretch things out.

With that context, to answer your question, the way I assumed it would work before release is you're importing large amounts of resources from other planets and then integrating them into local supply chains. Basically, building a big factory. But as it stands, you mostly only import science and some buildings. Yes gleba has bioflux importing, that is an example of what I'm talking about.

But factorio 1.0 was rather trivial to win as well, without some big goal at the end.

1.0 had plenty to do after rocket launch. The issue with space age is that by the time I reach the end screen I'm already far into infinite tech, and it's taken me a long time to get there. With 1.0 it only took a day or two to launch a rocket, so it was short enough to be endured if I wanted to build a big base. In SA it takes a long time to get all the basic tools, so the idea of playing after that is less appealing. So I don't think 1.0 and SA are comparable in that regard. Getting to the end screen in SA is a MUCH bigger part of the game.

So basically space age is the better balanced game as you don't need to invent a new goal just a day after starting . For me your argument looks exactly like the argument of some MMO-players who want the leveling game to be shorter so they can start with the "end game" which is the only part that interests them. This is correct for them, but short-changes the other half of players who don't have this singular and rather limited interest in the game.

I agree that for gigafactory-builders playing 1.0 or 1.x without space age mod may be the better choice in some cases. You just have one single big canvas in nauvis where you can try to reach x research bottles/sec or infinite research y. For many players though space age is the more rounded approach where you have multiple "built-in" goals for much longer of its typical run time.

And the puzzles in the game were always only difficult if you set yourself goals outside of simply reaching whatever end.

This was true in 1.0, but as I said above, the length of time it takes to get all the tools make just getting to the end a much bigger part of the game.

One problem may be that you might think the SA mod would be the game specifically for veterans. Though Wube wanted SA to be nearly as beginner-friendly and "short" as the base game, according to an old FFF, if I remember correctly.

I don't think SA succeeds in being beginner friendly OR specifically for veterans. The learning curve is way too steep for new players, but way too shallow for veterans.

To illustrate my point let's examine gleba. When you arrive, you have to deal with soil types, spoilage, the ag tower, the biochamber, two new resources and their seeds, nutrients, new power generation, and a bunch of new recipes. That is insane. I'm a veteran and it took me 3 days to get my head around it all. But then, once I'd figured out how to do it, it's very shallow.

Why weren't concepts introduced earlier? You can use the ag tower on nauvis - why not give it to the player early on, when it's low stress and you have a working factory next to you. You could also introduce the concept of soils, and you could have a nauvis fruit to introduce spoilage. Just basic, simple stuff - no complex recipes, and nothing critical. And you could give the heating tower to introduce burning waste. Give fish harvesting early as a source of nutrients. This way, when you get to gleba you already know a bunch of stuff.

This. Great idea. Spoilage is already happening in Nauvis with the fish, but other than having to get new fish regularily nothing can be done with the spoilage. Some way to interact with spoilage would make gleba a lot less of a culture shock.

I agree that space age is a compromise in that regard, certainly not as beginner friendly as the basic game. It might be worth steering novice players to the basic game for their first playthrough. Though as a veteran I would say gleba is much more effective without the introduction. When you say it is shallow after you have figured it out, this is true for all puzzles in factorio, even and especially in 1.0. They still are fun for me because I sometimes find or try new ways to solve them. And I suspect really hard puzzles are either not possible or would be simply too frustrating for most players. What makes me think this is that I haven't found a mod that made better puzzles yet. If the devs made poor work here why haven't modders filled that space?

You can prove me wrong by designing a puzzle that actually is better than the puzzles in current factorio, until then I'd say you are on the high horse of a critic. 1.0 had shallow puzzles as well and it obviously kept you entertained.

I can't redesign the game in a forum post, but all this to justify my position - no I won't pay more for factorio unless more is added first. I don't feel like SA is worth it at the moment. 1.0 was more than worth it so it's ok - I don't feel ripped off or anything. But there's so much potential left, and it seems relatively easy to get there now, seeing as the systems and graphics have been made. I hope Wube keeps working on it.

"it seems relatively easy..."? I don't think so. You have provided a few joints in the game where it could be taken into a different direction, but you haven't shown if that new direction would really lead to a better game (yes, the posibility exists that you have an excellent game in your head but it is too much writing all of that in a forum).
I agree that the game has rough edges here and there, and you have a great idea which could smooth out one of the edges for novice players. I expect Wube to implement some ideas in that regard as well. But for me space age fullfilled most of what I think is possible in the genre that factorio created.