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

[meganothing]

Again this depends on what you see as your goal and your finish line. If reaching aquilo or the asteroid belt is your goal then yes. But if that is your goal you don't need biolabs and then you could use Gleba as your science hub.

This part illustrates my point, particularly "if the asteroid belt is your goal... you don't need".

You don't need very much of the game at all to reach the asteroid belt. You can completely forgo quality, foundries/EM plants (except for science), biolabs, and even building a factory on the new planets, other than for science, and you can import everything you need and just use bots for everything. Which points to reaching the "end" NOT being a major part of the game. Just as in 1.0, the end screen is not the point. So I don't understand the arguments about "progression". Factorio isn't, and never has been about tech progression. The mantra up until SA was "the game starts at the rocket launch", i.e. the point where you have all the tech.

So why are people defending it being harder to reach the "beginning of the game"? Go onto reddit and what do you see? The timeline filled with people celebrating reaching the solar system edge? No, you see people posting their builds, because that's the fun part of Factorio.

So it goes back to what I've already said - if the point is to reach the end screen, there needs to be more content, OR if the point is to play around in a sandbox and build things, give us the tech earlier.

What you posted as mantra of the game is not a mantra of the game, just a mantra of many players, maybe the majority, maybe not. I am not "proud" of my factory builds and I don't post them on reddit. If we would accept your measuring method then the mantra of many games would be about speed-runners. And Factorios mantra is not: "You have to make a SPM-factory".

"You can..." is the mantra of a sandbox game. If the developer removes ways to have fun with the game by checking what the majority will likely do and only support that gameplay then it isn't a sandbox anymore and you have a linear game with a fixed objective. Reaching the asteroid belt is a significant possible goal of this game similar to starting the rocket was in 1.0 and players have chosen that as their goal in space age and in 1.0. I personally know of a co-op group of players stopping at the asteroid belt, my co-op group will surely do the same, and I don't know yet what I will do in my single player game.

The disadvantage of sandboxes is unavoidable, if a developer provides many ways to play a game all those ways (and associated items) are by definition optional. Just like in 1.0. There is a player who posted here on the forum a while ago that he never built more than one science lab in 1.0, let the game largely run in the background and complained about all the unnecessary tech in the game (especially all the useless weapons because no biter ever visited him) and that it took so much time and he had nothing to do. This is the ultimate way to play only the non-optional parts of the game.

You are searching for "the point" of the game and the developers did not provide one because it is a sandbox. Do as you like, that includes playing 1.0 or 1.2 instead or playing space age with a mod. And specifically that means if you don't like some part or some puzzles of the game (like the puzzle how to work with the confined space of Fulgora) remove them yourself and don't expect the developers to do that, because there are other players who like those puzzles.

[Khagan]

if the point is to reach the end screen, there needs to be more content, OR if the point is to play around in a sandbox and build things, give us the tech earlier.

You [...] seem stuck repeating inconsistent request.

Like you want the number to be odd and even at the same time.

Which part of the word 'or' do you not understand? I don't have a dog in this fight (I've not played anything like enough hours of SA to have formed firm opinions about its balance) but this is an egregiously unfair response.

[Shulmeister]

Which part of the word 'or' do you not understand? I don't have a dog in this fight (I've not played anything like enough hours of SA to have formed firm opinions about its balance) but this is an egregiously unfair response.

I think you missed part of the discussion that was mentionned here :

viewtopic.php?p=667884#p667884

My impression is that the same player has been expressing BOTH reasonning :

" If not everything is available right away i'm going to complain i feel railroad and forced to unlocked stuff not in the way i personnaly want".

"If everything is available right away, i'm going to complain that the tech trees are shallow and there is no good reward on the other planets and really all could have been put in nauvis" .

Therefore such player cannot be statisfied. It seem more like a scheme to find a reason to complain or proposing to remove part of the games, pick one, then pick the other, to contradict whatever proposition could be made.