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Does anybody know what connection there is between SE and SA? Did Wube hire developers of SE to help them work on SA? I can't imagine SA just took a bunch of ideas from SE without giving the developers of SE money or jobs or credit or something. I don't see any formal acknowledgement from Wube that SA uses a lot of SE ideas.

Yes, Earendel (SE Mod developer) wrote about it in the announcement FFF last August.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-373

Suitcase08 wrote: Sat Nov 23, 2024 9:28 pm Yes, Earendel (SE Mod developer) wrote about it in the announcement FFF last August.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-373

Thanks for that, but it doesn't really answer my question. Was "Earendel" a WUBE employee when he/she made SE? Did he/she make SE by him/her self? If WUBE had been planning SA since 1.0, did WUBE design SE? Was SE some sort of first draft of SA? I'm even more confused now.

Maybe this helps?

https://www.patreon.com/posts/im-factorio-now-47218319

As noted there, the announcement of Earendel's hiring was made here:

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-365

Since we are finally going to add new content and we are financially doing quite okay, it is the best time to invest into reinforcing our team. One of the steps we have already taken is hiring a concept artist, he might be known to you under the nick of Earendel.

So, "Earandel" just happened to be developing SE at the same time the WUBE team was building SA? That was just a co-incidence? And then WUBE hired Earandel full time after SE came out because WUBE saw how awesome it was?

SE goes back to 2019:

viewtopic.php?f=190&t=68319

If I recall correctly SE was inspired by an early idea given by Wube in an FFF about planets. So Earendel started SE based on a Wube idea.

Regardless, Space Age is it's own interpretation of multi planetary logistics. The only real connection between the two is that there's planets, and things flying betweem them. The rest is very different, different designs, puzzles, target audience, etc.

Stringweasel wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 10:31 am If I recall correctly SE was inspired by an early idea given by Wube in an FFF about planets. So Earendel started SE based on a Wube idea.

Regardless, Space Age is it's own interpretation of multi planetary logistics. The only real connection between the two is that there's planets, and things flying betweem them. The rest is very different, different designs, puzzles, target audience, etc.

There's some overlap... The home planet has the same name in both. Both have holmium as a new mineral to mine. That's part of the reason I was wondering what the connection between the two is.

NineNine wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 10:41 am

Stringweasel wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 10:31 am If I recall correctly SE was inspired by an early idea given by Wube in an FFF about planets. So Earendel started SE based on a Wube idea.

Regardless, Space Age is it's own interpretation of multi planetary logistics. The only real connection between the two is that there's planets, and things flying betweem them. The rest is very different, different designs, puzzles, target audience, etc.

There's some overlap... The home planet has the same name in both. Both have holmium as a new mineral to mine. That's part of the reason I was wondering what the connection between the two is.

I was refering more to game design philosophy than naming things. And for reference, Nauvis is what Wube calls the home planet and was part of the game way before SE. And Holmium is a metal that has magnetic properties typically used by games. And comparing names is like saying Minecraft and Factorio is almost the same cause both have Iron Ore

So, from what I understand,...
WUBE always wanted to do SA, but didn't have time, and wanted to get 1.0 out. After they release 1.0, Earendel singlehandedly wrote his/her own enormous SE mod, equal in complexity (or moreso, if you consider the secret ending) to what WUBE was working on as SA. After Earendel wrote and released SE, WUBE hired him/her to help them finish up SA?

NineNine wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 11:10 am So, from what I understand,...
WUBE always wanted to do SA, but didn't have time, and wanted to get 1.0 out. After they release 1.0, Earendel singlehandedly wrote his/her own enormous SE mod, equal in complexity (or moreso, if you consider the secret ending) to what WUBE was working on as SA. After Earendel wrote and released SE, WUBE hired him/her to help them finish up SA?

Your question looks more and more like being in a search of some kind of "gotcha! mask off" moment...heads up: there isn't any.

NineNine wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 11:10 am So, from what I understand,...
WUBE always wanted to do SA, but didn't have time, and wanted to get 1.0 out. After they release 1.0, Earendel singlehandedly wrote his/her own enormous SE mod, ...

This still sounds a bit off in my opinion: Wube did 1.0 with no intention to have SA already included (AFAIK). They just had the idea for a long time to add some planets if they ever wanted to do a factorio 2 or add an extension to the game, probably far before finishing 1.0. It is a rather obvious idea when you let the first game end with starting a rocket into space.

And the timeline needs some clarification: If Earendel started the mod in 2019, he started well before 1.0 came out (AFAIK in 2020). And Wube was still busy some time after that with a few revisions of Factorio 1. This development stopped only with Factorio 1.3 or 1.4.

meganothing wrote: Sun Jun 08, 2025 6:01 pm

NineNine wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 11:10 am So, from what I understand,...
WUBE always wanted to do SA, but didn't have time, and wanted to get 1.0 out. After they release 1.0, Earendel singlehandedly wrote his/her own enormous SE mod, ...

This still sounds a bit off in my opinion: Wube did 1.0 with no intention to have SA already included (AFAIK). They just had the idea for a long time to add some planets if they ever wanted to do a factorio 2 or add an extension to the game, probably far before finishing 1.0. It is a rather obvious idea when you let the first game end with starting a rocket into space.

And the timeline needs some clarification: If Earendel started the mod in 2019, he started well before 1.0 came out (AFAIK in 2020). And Wube was still busy some time after that with a few revisions of Factorio 1. This development stopped only with Factorio 1.3 or 1.4.

Space stuff was originally planned to be in the base game - it was mentioned I think in the crowd funding stuff, but was definitely mentioned in multiple FFFs - see https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-95 where they say it was delayed until 0.13. It was later scrapped as being too much work to put into base game and became the expansion - I think it was the 1.0 release date announcement where they say it's definitely not included, but could be wrong on that.

Durabys wrote: Sun Jun 08, 2025 5:42 pm

NineNine wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 11:10 am So, from what I understand,...
WUBE always wanted to do SA, but didn't have time, and wanted to get 1.0 out. After they release 1.0, Earendel singlehandedly wrote his/her own enormous SE mod, equal in complexity (or moreso, if you consider the secret ending) to what WUBE was working on as SA. After Earendel wrote and released SE, WUBE hired him/her to help them finish up SA?

Your question looks more and more like being in a search of some kind of "gotcha! mask off" moment...heads up: there isn't any.

You're not understanding my question, then. I was simply asking to try to understand who was who and who made what when. I don't know how or why I would be trying to "gotcha" anybody or anything. That really doesn't make any sense.

Silari wrote: Sun Jun 08, 2025 10:44 pm Space stuff was originally planned to be in the base game - it was mentioned I think in the crowd funding stuff, but was definitely mentioned in multiple FFFs - see https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-95 where they say it was delayed until 0.13. It was later scrapped as being too much work to put into base game and became the expansion - I think it was the 1.0 release date announcement where they say it's definitely not included, but could be wrong on that.

Interesting. Was that only about space platforms around the planet (like mentioned in the fff link) or really new planets as well? Now that you reminded me I seem to remember them mentioning platforms, but I still can't remember anything about new planets as well

Some other good FFFs are:

#74 actually has space platform graphics

#111 brings up the idea of moving the space platform to an expansion

It wouldn't surprise me if Kovarex/Wube helped fund SE before modder joined Wube..

Very unfortunate they didn't (or couldn't?) just start extending SE out of gate after they hired him instead of doing SA.

I am pretty sure they could have taken a free updates forever approach like Terraria and done very well.

One thing that Factorio lacks is lore, which ofc Terarria has. Everyone loves a good story.

Ironically, SA turned out to be more challenging in some ways than SE due to Gleba.

I dunno if the forced 'play-at-our-pace' mechanic is what Factorio needed tho.

Maybe they will find some way to fund ongoing development of SE after the initial buy rush on SA goes down.