Space Age slowly changed how I think about planetary exploitation

[Alex von Stierlitz]

I think Space Age slowly changed the way I think about industrial expansion in games.

At first, my giant deep-space platform was supposed to be just another transport platform. But over time it evolved into something much larger.

The platform is still under active development, especially regarding science production, but already now it:
- produces white space science and two of the six Nauvis science packs directly in space,
- contains laboratories and performs scientific research onboard,
- harvests Promethium in deep space,
- and sustains enormous industrial throughput while traveling through dense asteroid fields at speeds of 150–250 km/s.

Besides the usual onboard production of ammunition, rockets, repair packs and platform foundation — necessary for continuous self-repair without depending on planetary deliveries — the platform is gradually evolving into a fully autonomous industrial and scientific ecosystem in space.

What surprised me most is that the deeper I went into late-game Space Age, the less I wanted to continue heavily exploiting planets like Nauvis and Gleba.

Those worlds feel alive.

Nauvis feels like a real living planet with forests, lakes and ecosystems. Gleba feels even more biological and alien. Even Fulgora feels more like the remains of a lost civilization than just another mining outpost.

Meanwhile, my deep-space platform already:
- produces fuel,
- processes enormous amounts of asteroid resources,
- sustains its own industry,
- performs research,
- and survives extremely dense asteroid fields completely autonomously.

At some point I realized that the gameplay itself had naturally led me toward a philosophy of minimizing planetary exploitation and moving heavy industry into space.

Asteroids already contain:
- iron,
- carbon,
- sulfur,
- ice,
- calcite,
- copper,

and because of that, the absence of stone/silicates in asteroid processing gradually started to feel a bit strange to me.

I know asteroid stone has already been discussed before, so I am not trying to “discover something new.” I simply found it fascinating that Space Age gameplay itself naturally pushed me toward the idea of a more sustainable and careful space civilization.

Even if stone could be obtained from asteroids, planets would still remain absolutely essential because of:
- unique science packs,
- biological resources,
- and their unique identities.

For example, Nauvis would still remain necessary because of biter eggs and several other unique scientific and biological production chains.

But basic bulk resources…

At this stage of the game, it increasingly feels logical that an advanced space civilization would move more and more heavy industrial resource extraction into asteroid processing instead of endlessly stripping living worlds apart.

Honestly, I never expected Factorio to make me think about industrial ethics and sustainable space civilization.

But somehow, Space Age managed to do exactly that.

And I love it for that.