Factorio Forums

I just got to Vulkanus and I'm wondering how to tackle it. Foundries can only be crafted on that planet from what I have read, however they require lubricant and refined concrete. Thus should I just import those materials every time I need to craft them? There is also the matter of demolishers. How do you guys take care of them? Due to the terrain I was thinking, if I should go with the strategy of just exporting minerals from vulkanus and importing them to nauvis.

Vulcanus is typically viewed as the centerpiece of "cheap production" for Iron and Copper recipes, since the Foundries make so much material when run with Speed beacons - out of free Lava! Stone is a byproduct; very useful for the Brick/Concrete chain Oil requires a bit more setup via Coal Liquefaction - either the normal recipe that takes a bit of barreled Heavy Oil to kickstart the process, or through the new Calcite based recipe.

Demolisher tactics vary - see what works for you. I like to use imported Uranium Magazines to feed a field of Turrets, and "kite" them using a remotely-driven Tank. Once you unlock Artillery Turrets and Railguns it becomes simple to rain down fire from a distance.... or unlock the Nuclear Bomb rocket and Spidertron.

Lubricant or Refined Concrete is no problem on Vulcanus, but you might bring some (lubricant in barrels) to bootstrap things.

You can pickup all the rocks (construction bots and personal roboport is helpful), which gives you a decent amount of ores and stone of all kinds.
No need to place miners on tungsten just yet.
Water is a bit tricky, but I'm sure, you will find out. Also power is quite easy, when you bring some steam turbines. Or just solar.
There is simple coal liquefaction for heavy oil, which allows for all kinds of oil products.

The terrain gets better, when you research cliff explosives. Or use elevated rails.
The obvious advantages is, that you can use lava for metals and you have no biters. Demolishers stay in their "lawn". Killing them is only needed, when you want to place miners or other buildings in that area, which is usually needed for tungsten.

Depending on your tastes, IMO you should give each of Vulcanus, Gleba, and Fulgora a try where you don't bring anything with you except some basic QoL stuff: i.e. your armor, materials to make some bots to use with your personal roboports. Maybe a stack of belts if you're impatient.

By working through each planet on its own terms, rather than with off-world support, you can get a decent idea of what the planet is good/bad at, and then you can make an informed decision about what things you'd really like to import and export.

(and this might help you avoid the mistake I've seen a few people make of rushing through their build and overlooking some key things the planet is really good at)

Factorio is mainly about converting available resources to desired material. Usually it requires multiple transforms to get the desired items. So the task is to analyze available resources (ore, oil, lava, coal, ...) and see what you can do with that with the available recipes.

A few resources are planet specific and the crafting of a few selected items are locked to one planet.
Some resources are finite on one planet and infinite on another planet.

Examples (non-exhaustive):

• Uranium, biter eggs and Biolab is specific to Nauvis. Oil and water is infinite.
• Tungsten, Foundry and Big Mining Drill is specific to Vulcanus. Stone, copper and iron is (almost) infinite (requires calcite, which is finite on Vulcanus)
• Biochamber is specific to Gleba. Copper, iron, plastic is infinite. Due to some biochamber recipes, the absence of crude and refined oil is irrelevant. Stone is severely limited.
• Electromagnetic plant is specific to Fulgora. Oil is infinite.
• Cryogenic plant is specific to Aquilo. Almost all fluids are infinite. Solid resources are not available at all.
• On space platforms everything except stone is infinite, and stone is not available at all.

If there is coal, you can create heavy oil with coal liquefaction.
If there is heavy oil, you can create every oil byproduct with cracking.
On Gleba, there are alternative recipes for all relevant oil products.

In general, every planet except Aquilo has a complete set of resources and recipes that enables you to craft everything from local resources.

Gaining foothold on a new planet is usually a 2 step approach. First, you create a small initial bootstrap factory to get first access to the planet's resources and research, and to craft the planet specific production buildings (foundry, big mining drill, biochamber, electromagnetic plant, cryogenic plant). You do this with the conventional tech you unlocked on Nauvis: the assembling machine.

After you've done that, you start to build a "real" factory that also includes producing the planet specific science pack, this time including the planet specific production building since this is way more efficient than to continue with assembling machines. You will probably retire your initial bootstrap factory. Foundry, biochamber and electromagnetic plant have a built in productivity bonus of 50% even for end products, so if you craft a foundry with a foundry, or a biochamber with a biochamber, you get 3 for 2.

Nauvis, Vulcanus and Gleba are "complete" planets with classic ore-type resources - it's easy to produce everything everywhere with the same concept. Fulgora has almost all, however it's slightly more difficult because getting rid of unwanted byproducts becomes a real challenge. On Aquilo, you need to import most stuff and your factory will probably not include any mall but will import even trivial items.

You'll have to run around and mine Tungsten ore by hand(robot) for a while, dropping it off at an assembler to combine with charcoal (from coal) to make Tungsten Carbide. Carbide allows foundries and then big miners. Once you get about 5 foundries, everything gets much easier as you can direct-cast most iron and steel products very rapidly with a 50% production bonus. Foundries are also required to make big miners.
You can get heavy oil from coal + sulfuric acid, and that gets you the lubricant you need for your engines.

After that, keep building and eventually get a few dozen turrets with red ammo to go kill a demolisher with to open up a tungsten patch.

Vulcanus is fun!

I like to land on each planet naked, and start from scratch. On Vulcanus, there's an easy (often overlooked) way to take care of the small and medium Demolishers with some very early, simple materials that you can craft yourself on Vulcanus: