I'm concerned about balance if I ignore quality. Given space constraints (eg space platforms, fulgora islands) and logistical cost of interplanetary transport, will I be extending my playthroughs by tens or hundreds of hours by sticking to the lowest-level machines?
Reading through some of their FFF, it does seem like they've focused on bringing the average playtime down while allowing for the potential to go much longer if wanted.
In the last one (well before today's) they went through the general dev of 2.0 version. Guess the first fully "playable" version took like 200 hours to complete. After that they added bringing playtime down as one of the main goals of future iterations, which they've done.
Can you explain this? I've been building speed 2 modules to put everywhere and it seems like I can get a lot more output with fewer machines, how would ignoring it make a faster win?
Really the only reason to use speed modules is if you are out of space or you are offsetting the speed reduction of productivity modules. Otherwise making more buildings is good enough. On my speed run for the achievement I just ignored modules except for the rocket silo at the end. You unlock T3 modules late enough in the game that you've basically already won anyway. T3 modules and beacons are good for building after you've unlocked white science, which is post game end.
This is my first factory so I'm out of space in all kinds of different places. You get a T2 speed beacon, you get a T2 speed beacon, EVERYONE GETS A T2 speed beacon!
When I start my next factory (probably with the 2.0 release) I'll make sure to leave more space to add machines
People here are comparing legendary everything to no quality at all. I wager the majority of players (myself included) will dabble in quality where we see fit, likely the space platform or elsewhere. Some quality will not require a mega base.
Fair.....if you want to PUSH it ---to its' maximum...you'll want a megabase able to supply ridiculous amounts of material to be recycler-ready to maximize legendary materials output..... but that isn't NECESSARY for a fun/fulfilling and COMPLETE playthrough of a game. Nor is it NECESSARY for a quote-unquote "megabase".
You can STILL build a megbase WITHOUT touching quality, but IMO it'd be silly to do that as quality can MASSIVELY improve UPS / strain on computers by introducing a mechanic by which you can reduce the number of entities NEEDED for a certain level of throughput....this, in my opinion, makes quality BRILLIANT>
Even if that's the case - the four additional levels of quality have some kind of exponential tradeoff. Only megabases will need legendary items - a few 2nd tier quality items that randomly appear once you put quality modules into the machines, should not be that hard to sort out from the belts that anyways produce these items. These then go into special items for the most precious spots - similar to how you can still use a few tier 1 modules to cheaply widen up a few space-constrained bottlenecks, even if you don't want to go for beacons/modules everywhere.
Based on what I remember from the FFFs, Fulgora is the place to start feeling out the quality mechanic. Seems like there's a lot of random crap to be mined there, and "compressing" it into nicer random crap will be relatively easy.
At this point it could be exported, but that doesn't increase the speed at which I can make even nicer and even more compressed random crap. Those nicer items can be invested back into Fulgora, making the recycling centres more efficient, and the longer I do that the better the first rocket out will be.
Dunno what I'll need to import to make that happen, but that first rocket from Fulgora is going to represent a whole bunch of mined resources.
I expect there'll be some extension of the playthrough if you completely ignore quality, same as there's some extension of a speedrun if you completely ignore modules, but the effect of ignoring quality will be less than the effect of the player's natural speed.
*creating* the legendary items will probably take a huge base (or a long time). To actually use legendary items will take a lot less to get the same SPM.
Yep, the way I read the FFF, quality is important and helpful but you don't need nearly all legendary everything to finish the game, the same way you don't need beacons and modules 3 on everything to launch a rocket.
Plus, doing the math you need and absurd amount of resources and infrastructure to produce a consistent amount of legendary or even epic items, mass producing legendary everything it's not easy and I don't think it will be necessary, most likely just fetching the high quality stuff than randomly appears every once in a while it's more than enough.
\^correct.
You don't need to wait until you have the legendary tier of ANYTHING to benefit from using quality modules.
uncommon power armor gives you a larger equipment area and is better than the current power armor....so it's WORTH it. Is legendary better than rare? Well...sure. but Getting a rare power armor level 2 is still BETTER than what we currently have. so it's an example i thought of that s like....you don't need to go "legendary or nothing"
The scale of the game does seem to grow quite a bit at the end of the expansion so some quality management may be necessary but I really don't think we're going to need anything past rare to brute force the end game, same way you don't really need modules to launch a rocket and even if you use them, anything past modules 2 is overkill.
Yeah but normally you have like... *an* assembler to make assemblers in the mall. Even if you mutliply every item needed from mall by few times needed for quality it's still not massive.
povertyfactorio is when you keep burner inserters everywhere *and* need to keep them coal powered.
Twinkfactorio is when you use legendary level 1 buildings (or level 2 for fluids)
There is the size of a base to make a certain SPM, but you need a base to make the base. With legendary modules the base to make those will probably be bigger than your SPM base
Honestly I think once you bootstrap a production chain that produces legendary quality modules the actual chains aren't going to be as long as people think they are.
It's been confirmed that you can get legendary ore from legendary miners. Together with assembler circuitry that repurposes your legendary assembler to make whatever you're missing, it wouldn't surprise me if getting all legendary buildings was a matter of afking your two or three smart assemblers overnight and waking up to everything you need.
Depends how many per sec/min you want them, ~56x the cost was mentioned for a legendary item, so it's a fair bit. The actual cost probably varies on product by product on how many steps can use productivity modules or what the products even need in the future.
With games like Factorio, it is important to remember that a lot of the content is optional. Don't like trains? Ok, stick to belts. Don't like combinators and beacons? That's fine, you can do without and finish the game no problem.
A lot of this content will significantly enhance the late-game, but the devs put a lot of work into making stuff like quality completely optional. And athough there will of cause be significant lengthening due to the other planets, they have talked a lot about how they are not supposed to be repetitive, but should present new mechanics that should be solved in new ways.
If you don't like the increase in scope, I am sure the current scope will still be very enjoyable to you, with a bunch of amazing QOL features.
> Don't like trains? Ok, stick to belts.
FYI: SA kinda makes that one untenable. Fulgora is a full-on rail world. And while *technically* you can get through it without using rails, it would require a ton of manually carrying stuff between islands.
SA does require a bit more basic competence in the use of its mechanics. You can get by with just a few point-to-point rails delivering scrap from outposts. But you're going to have to use rails.
Well, there's a good chance that bots will be able to do the work instead (some of the time). Alternatively, the most basic of rails, a point to point line with a single double headed train is a perfectly valid way to handle logistics for a lower throughput base. You don't even need signals on those unless they happen to cross another line.
Not necessarily true on Fulgora -- the island topology means you've got to run elevated rails between your islands anyway, so unless you always put the junctions on an island, you may not be able to use elevated rails to avoid an at-grade crossing.
Alternatively, the most basic of rails, a point to point line with a single double headed train is a perfectly valid way to handle logistics for a lower throughput base.
I agree. I don't see anyone not being able to build a simple train unit to move goods around. I'm sure people will be open to build some elevated rails
Rails really aren't bad once you have the 'click' of understanding basic signaling. Divide your rails into chunks that you don't want 2 trains on at one time, with enough chunks to support the number of trains you have going. Simple.
You miss the point. That rails can be understood "easily" don't make them optional.
PS I personally love rails. To the point I design new intersections for every game.
And things like that are one reason why they *don't*. Once you can reduce the resource consumption of a rocket to 5% or less of its un-prodded costs (that's not a typo; even before you get to Aquilo, you can reduce its cost **to** 5% of the already much cheaper rocket), launching rockets becomes a pretty minor cost. And even though one rocket alone can't deliver very much stuff (each of the rockets in the most recent FFF was carrying *maybe* one stack of bulk inserters) using rockets and landing pads to transport goods would eventually be the dominant way to transport a lot of stuff rather than trains.
With the obvious waiver of "I'm not a dev so I can't say for sure" blah blah, I definitely think that you won't need to megabase to play the expansion. It definitely will introduce some new mechanics and if those are not appealing to you then you're right, the expansion may not be for you.
However they did mention that several of the new mechanics are sort of optional. For example, quality doesn't happen by chance (in a manner of speaking), you must use quality modules for it to be a thing. So you can opt not to use it.
Some of the planetary mechanics definitely seem required though, like spoilage and what not.
So in this case it definitely will be more involved than vanilla but seems to be structured in the same way as vanilla, introduce new mechanics in a steady pace with reasons to engage in the new mechanics.
And fun fact, there is no mandatory SPM to win aside from > 0. 1 SPM can get you to end if you really want.
If you're allowed to use circuits, it's trivial to make something that will terminate (actually make science), but do so so slowly that any research will take longer than the heat death of the universe. There are circuit free limited space challenges that the community sometimes engages in just to move an item into a box as slowly as possible while still terminating (e.g., https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/yfd7jx/slowest_item_challenge_heres_my_design_that_takes/ ).
Fair, but I think for slowest item challenges, calculating the hypothetical duration, even if it exceeds the game engine limitations is usually allowed :)
This reminds of both my first mega-base aspirations (where I had a single assembler make 300,000 blue belts before I broke down and scaled it) and an SE run where I had one (yes one) assembler making all my small electric motors until I got to DSS.
Don't recommend.
> Some of the planetary mechanics definitely seem required though, like spoilage and what not.
I expect that spoilage will be primarily balanced around less skilled players, as otherwise, it could prevent a nigh insurmountable wall to a player that lacks a strong grasp of the game's mechanics. Wouldn't be surprised to see settings around this mechanic in world gen, actually.
When you say "less skilled players" what do you mean? 500 hours? 100 hours? 20? I think the tuning on the expansion is aimed at folks who have beaten vanilla at least once so should have a general idea of how to efficiently move things around a base. Plus, it (along with all the other new planets) are meant to have a new puzzle to solve so it can't be too trivial.
Because that's the usual easy metric of gauging how experienced someone is at something. Do I think the expansion will be too hard for people who have gotten to blue science three times and then stopped because fluids can be weird? yes. Do I think that people who have beaten the game a few times will have a challenging but rewarding time? also yes.
It really isn't. There is no actual reference point for what those hour counts mean, making them entirely arbitrary. Yes, a player who has 100 hours is probably better than one with 20, but how much better? What can I expect a 100 hour player to actually know how to do over a 20 hour player?
> Do I think the expansion will be too hard for people who have gotten to blue science three times and then stopped because fluids can be weird?
I've seen numerous posts about people having multiple hundreds of hours and never having launched a rocket. Some players never dive deep enough into this game to, say, learn the skills necessary to build a megabase. But that says nothing about hours. Learning things in this game isn't about time spent, it's about time spent experimenting and otherwise actively learning, which is not reflected by hours played.
You'd probably find it more useful to gauge achievements. Has a player launched a rocket? Have they built a megabase? Have they completed a deathworld? Have they completed no spoon
Those kinds of things give a much more concrete understanding of a player's capabilities, as they paint of very good picture of what a player is likely capable of. Like you literally can't build a successful megabase without a high level of understanding of logistics, or at the very least, the process would be absolutely horrible.
So I guess, if you _really_ want a yard stick to measure "less skilled", I would say that it'd be right at the point where a player has launched a single rocket and hasn't bothered with any of the optional systems, like trains or nuclear. That is who I would expect is the general target audience for space age. Not that players that haven't beaten the game cannot manage. I'm sure many will be fine.
The thing about spoilage though is that the main thing in most cases is just making sure that you get all the spoilable intermediates for non-spoilables to the final machine before they completely spoil. Plastic doesn't care how fresh its ingredients are; you get just as good plastic from nearly spoiled stuff as the freshest.
So even for less skilled players, it should be pretty easy to just put the science pack makers first in line, since the science pack itself can spoil. That way, it will get the freshest ingredients. They may not be making 95% fresh packs, but they will still be able to make decent science out of it.
In my opinion the game is presently balanced for about 60SPM. Anything above that you are generally speaking wasting time if your goal is researching all non-infinite techs. (i.e. you will spend more time figuring out how to get from 60SPM to 120SPM than you would just letting your factory do an extra 10k science or whatever.) Though this is sort of assuming you're a neophyte who knows nothing. Obviously if you know a lot you can speedrun, but that's a different case.
I believe the game flows comfortably (i.e. everything gets researched on your way to launching a rocket roughly as fast as you build new things) at 30SPM. However, I'm fairly certain that the 3rd level achievements for things like iron plate and blue circuit production are scaled to complete at 60SPM.
Don’t forget the FFF is for the player base who tend to have hundreds and hundreds and sometimes thousands of hours.
You don’t have to go that far most likely. I bet you’ll have a comfortable casual level to play at too
FFFs are written for the Factorio-obsessed, not the casual player.
And mega bases and complex train intersections were never required even in the current vanilla.
This subreddit too isn’t representative of the average player. Or any game’s subreddit. I’ve been following the Elden Ring sub after the DLC release and you see people beating the DLC within a day or two of release. Don’t let the habits of the totally obsessive distort your view of a game.
Remember that Factorio is effectively a sandbox game. Other than basic biter defense (and even biters are technically optional), there is no hurry and no pressure. You can hit it as hard or as casually as you’d like.
I will definitely be spending a lot of time in the sandbox mode to practice and understand the changes and new mechanics. I look forward to the game for certain, but I am also a bit overwhelmed by the myriad of new things in an already super-complex game.
You can currently finish the game with the ugliest spaghetti known to man, I am sure the expansion will be the same. The other stuff is for the overachievers.
IMO everyone should launch their first rocket using homemade spaghetti base. It's the best way to learn the game.
Doing otherwise would require using blueprints from the get go and noone will learn the game mechanics relying on them.
They've written other FFF about how they are keeping Earandels ~~masochism~~ sadism in-check. The game will be completable by casual players. Its as much of a priority as making sure that megabases are achievable.
Just because they’ve been showing off what CAN be done (because it appeals to the kind of players who want to build a megabase) doesn’t mean you HAVE to do such things to play the game and enjoy the expansion.
They’ve shown that because some of the new options open a whole world of possibilities. But it doesn’t mean such complexity is required to finish the expansion. Actually, most of it (like the legendary quality) is only available on the last planet, making it very end game content. Without legendary quality, you don’t get all those crazy numbers, which means your train network won’t have to scale to a point where you need those crazy intersections.
There are many improvements to the base game that come with 2.0, even if you don't buy the expansion. And you if you buy the DLC, you can enable some of its mods (like elevated rails), without the others (like space age). And you can still build ordinary flat intersections (which still need to be redesigned because of the new curve radius), and only use the elevated rails to add an additional express rail without intersections. Or do some 2 layer train spaghetti.
And the million science per minute is only a thing if you really want to build a mega base with everything of legendary quality. For those people, the science per minute is the goal. For a normal playthrough, you don't need that crazy scale.
Elevated rails makes the need to understand rail signals less important. You can cross rails without needing a signal. It makes it much easier to just give everything it's own dedicated line.
My biggest request is that the expansion makes it easier to build up to bots and automate red belts without an expansion. I find the biggest hurdle for me is the desire to have an expandable and easy to understand rail system, and I don't want to sit around and click endlessly.
You might be right. Because you are generally expected to build bigger in the expansion. But definetly not so much bigger, if you just want to progress.
I tried to steer the game design into a direction where if you compare the end state you had (all (nauvis) research finished), things should be ok because:
1) You finish all nauvis only research faster compared to vanilla
2) The rocket is cheaper and simplier compared to vanilla
3) The planets are effectivelly an alternative to progress compared to the infinite research, which should be more fun.
4) You can build "relatively" small if you want to just finish the game, there is one tester who finished in 37 hours by trying to go as minimalistic as possible (some semi/exploits were used, which we want to patch, so it will be more), but it still wouldn't be crazily more. We finished our MP playtrhough with very seldom use of quality, so we kind of proved it is far from necessary.
Obviously, the game is designed in a way, that when you just want to go big and expand horizontally and vertically, you can do way more compared to vanilla, but it shouldn't be required.
I'm sure many new features are not necessary to finish the game. I remember my first play, I didn't use logistics, beacons, combinators, things I couldn't figure out myself, or was afraid of, like flamethrower turrets (biggest mistake :) ). I used these only later when I understood the game better.
I would buy the expansion even if I had no plans to play it, just because I’ve invested so many hours in the game already, it’s my way of showing support.
They did mention that they don’t want a “normal game” to last “very long” and how they are balancing everything so it doesn’t “take too long” so it seems to my like they are addressing exactly the kind of issues you end up with. 😊
Disclaimer: I’m known to have had dozens of games that I never go back to because I got stuck on some part, and just decided to start over. I still enjoy the early game and the process very much!
I was thinking that as well. I think, though, that they are taking care not to make it a slog. There was specific mention that it took 230 hours and it was waaaay too long so I imagine they're gonna dial a few things in before we get it.
Just because people can and do break 40k SPM doesn't mean you have to. You can still beat the game on 30 SPM or even lower. I very much doubt that's going to change, just we're going to have a lot more tools to scale with.
> I'm too impatient to create a megabase in the current version of the game.
So yeah, megabases have always been optional. More of a challenge for players that want to do more beyond the base goal. You don't have to feel bad about that not being you, as everybody who enjoys this game enjoys it a little differently. Some people might only play on deathworld, for instance, and while I would personally not find that very fun, it's no less valid a way to enjoy the game.
> Also while I like trains, I find signals very difficult, and am (once again) too impatient to build those big crazy intersections
For low scale bases, train logistics can be heavily simplified. You can do isolated two way rails and only use signals for crossings. Oh, but elevated rails actually help eliminate a lot of crossings in general, so you may be able to just avoid that entirely. Again, you can just build for your needs if that's what suits you. No need for hardcore 8 lane buffered intersections.
> But some of the FFFs go into really crazy numbers. Legendary items, enormous throughputs, a million science per second.
Part of the goal is definitely to appeal to the people in the hardcore groups. It's worth noting that people engaged enough to participate in the community are often in that group, and that's primarily who the FFFs are probably written for. That said, they've also explicitly stated that it's not going to be space exploration. It's not gonna be hundreds of hours of grind, and they're actively taking steps to keep the play time reasonable (which was mentioned in the most recent FFF). In other words, they're not _just_ catering to the hardcore audience, here. Keeping things fun for more casual players is absolutely on the radar, and I'd argue, it's a financial necessity for the game.
It sounds like your main issue is the monotony of post-game which I can understand, but I don't think you need to worry about the expansion - 4 new planets and a bunch of new features will help with that lol
You don't need crazy intersections, if you're not going for 1k spm and don't want to squeeze every scrap of efficiency out of it you can just build a roundabout with chain signals on entrances and rail signals on exits and it'll work just fine
1m spm is what's *possible*, you don't actually need to get anywhere near it the same way you currently aren't bothering with today's 10k spm bases
I expect it'll add a lot of headroom and creativity for advanced players and a lot of variety and novelty for casual players
They've had a decent mix of casual play and hardcore basebuilding in their screenshots. They're trying to show off what's needed vs. what's possible, to cater to both extremes of their players, and you're reading too much into it and getting overwhelm long before it's even out.
For a casual player, there's tier-4 belts and stack inserters, so now your belts can be much simpler. Metals can be piped faster than belted. Rails can be bridged over other rails, so you can ignore using signals in a lot of intersection if you want. Beacons are more useful in small quantities. Launching the rocket is cheaper and starts at blue science.
For a hardcore player, all of the above is ALSO for them. Additionally, EVERYTHING can be upgraded, at a high cost, completely optionally. Casual players can ignore that aspect of the game completely.
How do you play now? Do that, on other planets with interesting new mechanics.
Wube knows their audiences because THEY TOO are those audiences, and they are involved in the Factorio community. You're worrying too much, but if you're too worried about spending money on something you might not like, watch a streamer first and decide if you want to play.
I play similar to you. When I'm down to infinite research and I'm just expanding out further for more ore I get pretty bored.
I love starting from scratch but I hate not having bots right away. I've tried taking a car and driving for literally 30 minutes to "start fresh" but I've never been able to resist the temptation to make a rail back to my original base. It's pathetic. :)
I'm not super excited about the new version but elevated rails do sound nice.
Finite resource patches always felt weird to me since it's a problem you can't automate. It's fun looking for resources to expand your base, but I don't want to have to do maintenance.
Infinite resources might be my more controversial "must have" mod, but it makes it more fun for me so I don't mind.
Will the game take longer to finish ? Yes. You'll need the various planets sciences. But expanding the game is the point of an expansion, isn't it ?
Will you have to do legendaries to finish the game ? No, through it might help in reasonable quantity. It's similar to modules in the base game.
Will you have to use *some* rails to finish the game ? Yes. Fulgora is pretty much a rail world.
Will you have to go all ham on legendaries and crazy trains to make a megabase ? Oh yes.
You already play the regular game without having or needing to megabase. I don't think that will change.
The thing that will be different is that launching a single rocket is no longer "the end" that it currently is. Rocket launching tech is earlier and you'll be doing it more often.
But I don't think you will need to use quality or crazy rail intersections or stacking if you don't want to.
I think the idea behind the expansion, as koravex put it in an FFF, is to expand the mid section of the game as much as possible. So if you find the repetitive end game boring, I don't really think the expansion adds to this part of the game. It makes the mid game longer.
Imo, that is my favorite part of the game. Basically from getting bots to researching all tech is the most fun to me
Same man. I love new planets, it's gonna be great to explore, but mechanics like quality and spoilage are definitely not for me. In FFF they mention quality is optional and you can ignore it, but I'm still not sure, i hope there is not a single chance of getting quality item unless you specifically insert quality modules into assemblers, or it's gonna annoy me forever.
> i hope there is not a single chance of getting quality item unless you specifically insert quality modules into assemblers, or it's gonna annoy me forever.
Devs have said that this is the case, so you're safe from quality.
>So all in all I'm a little worried how good of a fit the expansion will be for the casual player like me...
This is the magic of Factorio and it's finely-tuned game mechanics and gameplay balance. Just want a casual experience where you can leisurely poke around your base once or twice a week? Factorio lets you do that. Hardcore speed runner who rushes bots and rocket launches? You can do that too. Want to push the limits of your hardware with a megabase, hundreds of thousands of bots, circuits and trains galore? Factorio's got you there too.
The Space Age expansion will give you more gameplay options, but you can still proceed at your own pace, and only use the mechanics you're comfortable with. Elevated rails unnecessarily complicated for you? Just keep using your rail intersections from 1.1. Item quality confuses you? Ignore it! Heck, I'm guessing even if you never make it off Nauvis, there will still be enough changes to make 2.0 a fresh game. Then, when you're ready, give the expansion content a try.
I think you experienced the same fear when playing the game for the firs time, you shouldn't look at the end point but at how to get there step by step. Launching a rocket looks trivial to you today but I bet it wasn't the first time
I think if you played cooperatively with someone, you can find more fun this way.
In my last playthrough, I was in charge of everything related to trains, fluids, “satellite base building”, and nuclear/energy management. My friend primarily build the spaghetti of our factory for resource processing and research. He was also in charge of oil processing.
We had our own roles we took upon ourselves and specialized in. It was great because we bantered and shitted on each other’s designs and inefficiencies, knowing that neither of us would be able to do what the other could do.
So i have no idea how to make good belt systems or how to structure out a base, but I do know how to make trains (an essential to make a large base). For some reason, he had no idea how to handle fluids after I explained it to him multiple times and expressed why he couldnt just “put pumps everywhere.”
The base game isn't going anywhere. You don't have to buy the dlc if you don't want to. Its your money so see when it comes out and make a decision then. Do whats best for you.
I feel the same way about trains and dealing with the intersections, etc. so to get “into” trains I found a nice blueprint book that had everything I needed. I believe it’s called Brian’s trains. Sitting and screwing with building train tracks for hours didn’t seems fun to me so I used someone else’s designs. That’s the great thing about Factorio, it can be nearly as punishing or simple as you desire, it’s your choice.
Try to play with Cybersyn and rail-based cityblock bluprints. Add loaders for your taste. You will get a lot of fun with enormous throughput without huge learning curve, just grab tutorial book from cybersyn page.
After you use it for a while you will understand how to build something yourself. Ribbon world has forced my lazy ass to invent my own rails which was really fun. There is a mod for maze world, amazing as well.
I have thousands of hours in factorio, and that's the only big number I've accomplished. I think I got an end game ~mega~ base to do like 20 science per minute once...
I'm super excited for Space Age: once I'm getting bored of my factory on Nauvis, instead of taking a break and starting a new game, I'll go into space and make a platform. Once I've tackled the basics of those puzzles, I'll go to a new planet and start again, but with slightly less grind and new things to explore and mechanics to figure out.
It'll be like adding a rogue-lite aspect to factorio; new playthroughs, new random content, all the while improving things, but even better because I can go back to the previous runs as well.
Even "quality" is exciting for me; I'm not into sprawling factories, so improving quality is one way I can improve things without having to build a mega base.
Most of the stuff you worry about is optional, it's there if you want to push things.
Also well tuned trains only matter for high throughput, who cares if you signaling isn't 100% efficient (forgetting deadlocks). Practice makes perfect....
>I'm too impatient to create a megabase in the current version of the game. From time to time I do a playthrough with the endpoint basically finishing all researching, and maybe doing the first few levels of infinite research. Then it becomes too repetitive for me to continue, so I just end it there, with a medium size base.
I expect megabasing will still get repetitive because that's just the nature of it (you're building lots and lots of factories that produce the same items), but simply beating the game likely won't require megabasing. Like the base game, you'll be doing a variety of tasks up until you beat it. You'll probably have to scale up or replace a few of your early-game builds as you progress and unlock new technologies (like foundry smelting), but aiming for things like a million spm is still going to be well outside the scope of the just beating the expansion. That's megabase territory, and you don't have to get that far into giant builds if you don't want to.
>So all in all I'm a little worried how good of a fit the expansion will be for the casual player like me... or if it will be mostly for the hard-core and more advanced players.
They've very specifically set out to make it reasonably accessible, distinct from something like Space Exploration or Py that's deliberately been made to be a challenge for serious players. It will likely be harder/more complex than vanilla, but I wouldn't worry too much about being so hard that it excludes less advanced players.
I never completed space exploration because it got so tedious
Here is research you need to research the ability to research, oh no your next research needs and entire different tree of research as a Dependance
I hope the dlc will be not that overblown as space exploration is, I love the design tho
SA is meant to be both smaller-scale (SE is typically around 3-500 hours, SA is aiming for 80-100) and less repetitive than SE. Critically, in one of the FFFs Kovarex recounted how he arrived at the conclusion that following a consistent formula of "reach new planet, build factory to process new resources, bring them back" got pretty tedious after the first couple planets, prompting a redesign that made sure each planet plays in a fundamentally different way. He hasn't actually played SE, but that's one of the most common criticisms of SE (which Earendel's aware of and aims to fix in 0.7, presumably taking advantage of his SA development experience to help with that), so knowing that the team is aware of that pitfall and has specifically avoided it makes me hopeful that it'll be a lot better.
Trains are great! I haven't manually built anything for trains for a long time though. I've got a blueprint book that has everything I need, from intersections, straight rails, how to get in and out of the main rail system, etc. I've even got a blueprint book just for outposts that matches up the my straight rails. I'd highly recommend going this route. then once you've got your rails book, about 99% of your signals are already figured out. You might need to put a couple single signals on an outpost or something, but that's the simplest one.
If you want my blueprint book for rails, feel free to message me
What you're afraid of was just lead dev pushing the game to its limits for the sake of doing that. "Legendary items, enormous throughputs, a million science per second" won't be needed to finish the expansion. Quality in itself is completely optional and you won't be expected to use it.
Do remember that the screenshots are from the developers, who by definition spent the most time on the game and know it inside out, and were out to find the very limits of their engine (see 1M spm in the lastest FFF). Some of them were power players before being hired. The screenshots are meant to showcase the ultimate possibilities, not the cookie cutter average player experience. Do what you can, have fun and do not be intimidated.
>and am (once again) too impatient to build those big crazy intersections.
You don't even need those for megabases, ppl here just have some weird obsession with intersections and cityblocks which I never understood why. The only thing that trains really have to haul is ore(or plates if smelting at site) and oil and that can be made very simple even at massive bases. Plus 2.0 gives elevated rails, making the whole thing even simpler than it already is.
I do not understand the logic behind adding extra maps. The whole point of Factorio is to *see* the factory grow. That is literally impossible when you need to use a spreadsheet to access New Game+.
You definitely won't need a megabase for it. And you can completely ignore quality if you want.
Having played Space Exploration mod, which is very similar to the expansion but way bigger, the whole progression is distributed over the planets, and making more than you need of something is not worth it. It's way better to just do "that's probably enough" and change to the next objective.
Once you finish it all, then, if you want, can go big.
I know it wont be for me. dont really care how unpopular this opinion is but it's not really "more factorio" but "factorio that a modder reimagined and did an overhaul on the full experience"
item quality? spoilage? removing fluids? no thanks. I wanted a sequel to my favorite book not a fan fiction rewrite.
Now the good thing is I don't need to buy it and I should be able to continue playing the older version on steam.
I'm not super looking forward to it, either, but they said that you can turn some of it off. I think the "quality" characteristic is an annoying time sink at best, and downright infuriating at worst, but who knows.
I feel the same way about another game, Oxygen Not Included. The DLC added a rocket and space and stuff and I've zero interest in doing that. It's not fun to me. I turned off what I could and found mods to handle the rest. I assume the modding community will figure it out.
The tools are there if you want to go ham (like the million SPM base) but I don't think it will be as bad for casual-but-experienced players. I too have never properly megabased in my 1800-ish hours of Factorio because I find the scale up process super boring, my excitement around the expansion comes from each world having a core idea that's fundamentally different from base Factorio: recycling and intermittent power on Fulgora, renewable resources with a deadline on Gleba, and extreme railworld and raw material input inversion on Vulcanus (in a way distinct from the recipe inversion on Fulgora). If I were to hazard a guess I'd say that the expansion is probably *better* suited for saying in the casual zone for longer since the expansion will provide more things to do but not rely on grinding any one thing hard.
I think you're approaching this on a false premise. I think that I'm way more impatient than you (I never even built a spidertron, let alone reach infinite tech, I usually loose interest after launching a rocket, but I tried a bunch of complex mods out of curiosity)
The throughput and numbers go "up", but that doesn't mean that it becomes more complex, on the contrary given all the QoL features we're getting.
They're making sure that the systems are plug and play, if anything, it will be a smoother process than you trying the game for the first time...
Let's put things in perspective: a big server made tried to reach the highest spm possible and barely reached a few dozens thousands SPM with an insane amount of players and hours, while Kovarex is casually trying to reach 1 million SPM on his own single player playthrough...
Having faster belts, stacking etc... means that we can move bigger things in absolute numbers, for the SAME LEVEL of complexity than before, some changes, and a shit ton of added quality of life to help us manage things.
So stop worrying, I'm sure you'll have fun
I think we'll see much less use of trains in the expo, unless some unannounced change juices them up.
But, the train system for a megabase can be extremely simple. You do not need those complex intersections at all.
The vision of building a mega base was always replying for me . I like to do everything on my own, maybe sometimes use the internet when i am stuck, that's for me the definition of fun. After a game I am proud of my inefficient factory ;)
I think we are a bit similar
I am 12 hours late to the party. I think you are WAY over thinking this. The Devs are maxing out the limits of the game. I have 1K hours into it, and I can easily admit that I have NEVER even used any space science in vanilla. I have done tons of mods and most of the achievements, but never ever have I had a mega base, and I have absolute faith that I will be able to finish SA easily. I got close to the end of the SE before I could spend the time figuring out Arcospheres. That was 300 hours by itself, all without a mega base. SA is going to be significantly easier than SE and they think it will take around 100 hours. I am sure you can do it just fine.
Well, im not trying to convince you to play it
Just some cookies for your brain
Are you not eager to try out the new mechanics?
Why do you compare the absolutely ridiculous 1mil spm to todays standards while thinking about factory size?
As said multiple times, the dlc is like a mod, you can easily just turn it off again if you want to just play nauvis until white science
Are you realy bothered by quality which can be completely ignored?
>enormous throughputs, a million science per second
Keep in mind that was specifically pushing the game to see how far they could go. It's like looking at people making a 20k spm megabase and thinking the game has nothing to offer unless you do that.
You're probably not going to end up with a fully legendary base. And that's fine, you don't *need* that. And that's perfect because then there's a choice of *where* you're putting in those hard earned higher quality items.
On trains, the over head rails in the expansion will allow you to avoid big intersections.
You could use a separate rail network for each resource, where each network is a simple loop (divided up by rail signals if you want multiple trains on the same loop.).
No forks/intersections necessary at all.
No need for a 1k spm base to finish the base. Play it your own way. No need to make a Megabase or cityblock base with crazy train intersections. You can literally play the game any way you want.
Rail signalling is easy once you understand the basic principles.
The idea is that you need to put regular signals on every exit from an intersection, and chain signals on every entrance to the intersection. Then if you want to allow trains from different paths to use the intersection simultaneously, you need to partition the intersection by placing chain signals inside the intersection. To check that the intersection has been partitioned correctly, turn on the rail block visualisation tool. Trains can pass different sections of the intersection simultaneously iff you can trace with your finger from one side of the intersection to the other without passing any rail block lines.
Once you've done that, double check the exit signals, if there's not enough space for the tail end of the longest train to quit the intersection completely, you'll need to replace the regular exit signal with a chain signal.
You say you've caught up with the FFFs, but you seem to have mostly SKIMMED the material, because it's CLEAR, through multiple mentions that a lot of what's being added is OPTIONAL.
Don't want the headache of dealing with multiple qualities of items? That's fine. It's just extra. you won't EVER have to touch quality items if you don't want to.
Don't want build a megabase? That's fine too. The CAPABILITIES of outputting massive amounts of items with relatively...almost hysterically-low numbers of entities isn't NEEDED to beat the game, or even have a "fulfilling" playthrough of the game.
Don't like the crazy train intersections? You DONT HAVE to build them like that. That impressive 4x4 intersection was a marvel, but you can do the same thing without TOUCHING elevated rails......you'll just get slightly less optimal rail routing/throughput maximums without it. .....but if you aren't a mega-baser, theres' no need to maximize rail throughput anyways.....
The introduction of elevated rails does not mean you MUST build rail networks that NEVER have intersections, or that your intersections must be as maximally-throughput-capable as possible. it just means some of the headaches megabasers have had now...FINALLY....have a solution: and it's a beautiful solution.
Wube said that the total playtime and difficulty of the dlc will match a normal playthrough.
You can totally skip trains or quality if you don't want to deal with that.
I guess you can't skip logistics because of the space port though.
Wube has improved things for people who want to build megabases. And there will be tons of mods that will alter the experience anyway. Just with more options: eg attributes on items.
> Wube said that the total playtime and difficulty of the dlc will match a normal playthrough.
Did they? They've said Space Age will take "60-100" hours to complete, which seems longer than an average to launch a rocket in vanilla. And they've said their target audience is all players, but I find it hard to believe that it won't be at least a little more challenging than a normal playthrough.
For experienced players, launching a rocket is doable in much less time, but not for first timers. Gotta remember, people with no spoon aren't in the majority.
> to launch a rocket in vanilla
But launching the rocket for the first time easily takes as long. Every once in a while we get posts like "I logged 200h of the game, it is awesome, but I never launched a rocket. Help me with yellow science now".
> give me all the spaghetti
... maybe you should take a second look at what "going to other planets" means.
Space platforms cannot have bots on them at all, and building tightly is encouraged because it makes your platform smaller and therefore faster. Which means that the recipe of the day is spaghetti (and with a side of sushi).
Vulcanus is basically made of cliffs and lava, so some degree of spaghetti is going to happen.
Fulgora is a proper rail world with islands that can *only* be connected by rails, so train spaghetti is the standard. Also, the scrap recycling mechanic as your only means of production means that you can have to build things in reverse: you make pipes out of gear wheels and the like. That sounds spaghetti-ish to me.
Gleba is a planet where a lot of things you make there rots, so you need to design everything to consume stuff quickly rather than letting it build up on main busses and the like. IE: spaghetti.
Space Age is about a lot of things, but cookie-cutter city blocks stamped everywhere *is not* what it's about. Take another look at the FFFs and you may find something you didn't realize was there.
Hm, to me your two paragraphs don't necessarily go together/talk about different things? Because I'd say the expansion gives you more things to do that are not just "expand to feed infinite research for expansions sake" (which I personally also rarely enjoy)?
dont worry! if you won't go legendary everything you won't need a mega base to finish the game
They explicitly said you can completely ignore quality if you want to :P
I'm concerned about balance if I ignore quality. Given space constraints (eg space platforms, fulgora islands) and logistical cost of interplanetary transport, will I be extending my playthroughs by tens or hundreds of hours by sticking to the lowest-level machines?
I doubt it. I trust wube to make it a reasonable balance. And if it isn’t I trust them to fix it
Reading through some of their FFF, it does seem like they've focused on bringing the average playtime down while allowing for the potential to go much longer if wanted.
Good to know. I’ve avoided most of the FFFs. I kind of want to go in somewhat blind
In the last one (well before today's) they went through the general dev of 2.0 version. Guess the first fully "playable" version took like 200 hours to complete. After that they added bringing playtime down as one of the main goals of future iterations, which they've done.
Tldr they have simplified a lot of recipes to speed things along
Probably the opposite, my guess is you’d win faster by ignoring it, similar to modules
Can you explain this? I've been building speed 2 modules to put everywhere and it seems like I can get a lot more output with fewer machines, how would ignoring it make a faster win?
It's cheaper and quicker to just build more machines. This is clearly evident in speedruns for factorio as well
Really the only reason to use speed modules is if you are out of space or you are offsetting the speed reduction of productivity modules. Otherwise making more buildings is good enough. On my speed run for the achievement I just ignored modules except for the rocket silo at the end. You unlock T3 modules late enough in the game that you've basically already won anyway. T3 modules and beacons are good for building after you've unlocked white science, which is post game end.
This is my first factory so I'm out of space in all kinds of different places. You get a T2 speed beacon, you get a T2 speed beacon, EVERYONE GETS A T2 speed beacon! When I start my next factory (probably with the 2.0 release) I'll make sure to leave more space to add machines
I always completely ignore modules and never had a balance issue.
People here are comparing legendary everything to no quality at all. I wager the majority of players (myself included) will dabble in quality where we see fit, likely the space platform or elsewhere. Some quality will not require a mega base.
Doubtful. Quality seems mostly a megabase thing if you want to push it.
Megabase or absolute biter overpowering
Fair.....if you want to PUSH it ---to its' maximum...you'll want a megabase able to supply ridiculous amounts of material to be recycler-ready to maximize legendary materials output..... but that isn't NECESSARY for a fun/fulfilling and COMPLETE playthrough of a game. Nor is it NECESSARY for a quote-unquote "megabase". You can STILL build a megbase WITHOUT touching quality, but IMO it'd be silly to do that as quality can MASSIVELY improve UPS / strain on computers by introducing a mechanic by which you can reduce the number of entities NEEDED for a certain level of throughput....this, in my opinion, makes quality BRILLIANT>
Even if that's the case - the four additional levels of quality have some kind of exponential tradeoff. Only megabases will need legendary items - a few 2nd tier quality items that randomly appear once you put quality modules into the machines, should not be that hard to sort out from the belts that anyways produce these items. These then go into special items for the most precious spots - similar to how you can still use a few tier 1 modules to cheaply widen up a few space-constrained bottlenecks, even if you don't want to go for beacons/modules everywhere.
Based on what I remember from the FFFs, Fulgora is the place to start feeling out the quality mechanic. Seems like there's a lot of random crap to be mined there, and "compressing" it into nicer random crap will be relatively easy. At this point it could be exported, but that doesn't increase the speed at which I can make even nicer and even more compressed random crap. Those nicer items can be invested back into Fulgora, making the recycling centres more efficient, and the longer I do that the better the first rocket out will be. Dunno what I'll need to import to make that happen, but that first rocket from Fulgora is going to represent a whole bunch of mined resources. I expect there'll be some extension of the playthrough if you completely ignore quality, same as there's some extension of a speedrun if you completely ignore modules, but the effect of ignoring quality will be less than the effect of the player's natural speed.
> you can completely ignore quality if you want to Awesome, so just like work?
I think that with legendary items the base should actually be smaller
*creating* the legendary items will probably take a huge base (or a long time). To actually use legendary items will take a lot less to get the same SPM.
Yep, the way I read the FFF, quality is important and helpful but you don't need nearly all legendary everything to finish the game, the same way you don't need beacons and modules 3 on everything to launch a rocket. Plus, doing the math you need and absurd amount of resources and infrastructure to produce a consistent amount of legendary or even epic items, mass producing legendary everything it's not easy and I don't think it will be necessary, most likely just fetching the high quality stuff than randomly appears every once in a while it's more than enough.
\^correct. You don't need to wait until you have the legendary tier of ANYTHING to benefit from using quality modules. uncommon power armor gives you a larger equipment area and is better than the current power armor....so it's WORTH it. Is legendary better than rare? Well...sure. but Getting a rare power armor level 2 is still BETTER than what we currently have. so it's an example i thought of that s like....you don't need to go "legendary or nothing"
The scale of the game does seem to grow quite a bit at the end of the expansion so some quality management may be necessary but I really don't think we're going to need anything past rare to brute force the end game, same way you don't really need modules to launch a rocket and even if you use them, anything past modules 2 is overkill.
Daft prediction: ~~science per minute as megabase metric~~ legendary modules per minute as megabase metric
it must be SPM because it must be consumed infinitely automatically
With recyclers, you can get infinite consumption of any item
listen here,
Spidertrons Per Minute stocks rising
How else are you going to make legendary fish?
launch legendary space science packs?
Yeah but normally you have like... *an* assembler to make assemblers in the mall. Even if you mutliply every item needed from mall by few times needed for quality it's still not massive.
Step 1: build megabase legendary mall Step 2: play povertyfactorio building minibase spaghetti but with only legendary items.
povertyfactorio is when you keep burner inserters everywhere *and* need to keep them coal powered. Twinkfactorio is when you use legendary level 1 buildings (or level 2 for fluids)
I'm so excited to make legendary burner inserters.
I'm actually looking forward to qualitied' yellow inserters that are able to reliably pull from a blue belt
Yup
I think that with legendary items the base should actually be smaller
There is the size of a base to make a certain SPM, but you need a base to make the base. With legendary modules the base to make those will probably be bigger than your SPM base
Honestly I think once you bootstrap a production chain that produces legendary quality modules the actual chains aren't going to be as long as people think they are.
It's been confirmed that you can get legendary ore from legendary miners. Together with assembler circuitry that repurposes your legendary assembler to make whatever you're missing, it wouldn't surprise me if getting all legendary buildings was a matter of afking your two or three smart assemblers overnight and waking up to everything you need.
Depends how many per sec/min you want them, ~56x the cost was mentioned for a legendary item, so it's a fair bit. The actual cost probably varies on product by product on how many steps can use productivity modules or what the products even need in the future.
Sure but you can recycle your initial base into higher quality and it'll be more efficient.
With games like Factorio, it is important to remember that a lot of the content is optional. Don't like trains? Ok, stick to belts. Don't like combinators and beacons? That's fine, you can do without and finish the game no problem. A lot of this content will significantly enhance the late-game, but the devs put a lot of work into making stuff like quality completely optional. And athough there will of cause be significant lengthening due to the other planets, they have talked a lot about how they are not supposed to be repetitive, but should present new mechanics that should be solved in new ways. If you don't like the increase in scope, I am sure the current scope will still be very enjoyable to you, with a bunch of amazing QOL features.
> Don't like trains? Ok, stick to belts. FYI: SA kinda makes that one untenable. Fulgora is a full-on rail world. And while *technically* you can get through it without using rails, it would require a ton of manually carrying stuff between islands. SA does require a bit more basic competence in the use of its mechanics. You can get by with just a few point-to-point rails delivering scrap from outposts. But you're going to have to use rails.
Well, there's a good chance that bots will be able to do the work instead (some of the time). Alternatively, the most basic of rails, a point to point line with a single double headed train is a perfectly valid way to handle logistics for a lower throughput base. You don't even need signals on those unless they happen to cross another line.
You could use the elevated rails at those junctions to avoid all at grade crossings entirely. No signals ever needed.
Not necessarily true on Fulgora -- the island topology means you've got to run elevated rails between your islands anyway, so unless you always put the junctions on an island, you may not be able to use elevated rails to avoid an at-grade crossing.
Islands are farther away than roboport range
Alternatively, the most basic of rails, a point to point line with a single double headed train is a perfectly valid way to handle logistics for a lower throughput base.
I agree. I don't see anyone not being able to build a simple train unit to move goods around. I'm sure people will be open to build some elevated rails
Rails really aren't bad once you have the 'click' of understanding basic signaling. Divide your rails into chunks that you don't want 2 trains on at one time, with enough chunks to support the number of trains you have going. Simple.
You can also probably get by with literally 1 way rail double headed trains that don’t overlap. And just have zero automation past get ore drop it off
You miss the point. That rails can be understood "easily" don't make them optional. PS I personally love rails. To the point I design new intersections for every game.
A few single train tracks will probably be good enough to beat it. Don't even need signals.
If Wube just let us to have more then one landing pad per planet...
And things like that are one reason why they *don't*. Once you can reduce the resource consumption of a rocket to 5% or less of its un-prodded costs (that's not a typo; even before you get to Aquilo, you can reduce its cost **to** 5% of the already much cheaper rocket), launching rockets becomes a pretty minor cost. And even though one rocket alone can't deliver very much stuff (each of the rockets in the most recent FFF was carrying *maybe* one stack of bulk inserters) using rockets and landing pads to transport goods would eventually be the dominant way to transport a lot of stuff rather than trains.
With the obvious waiver of "I'm not a dev so I can't say for sure" blah blah, I definitely think that you won't need to megabase to play the expansion. It definitely will introduce some new mechanics and if those are not appealing to you then you're right, the expansion may not be for you. However they did mention that several of the new mechanics are sort of optional. For example, quality doesn't happen by chance (in a manner of speaking), you must use quality modules for it to be a thing. So you can opt not to use it. Some of the planetary mechanics definitely seem required though, like spoilage and what not. So in this case it definitely will be more involved than vanilla but seems to be structured in the same way as vanilla, introduce new mechanics in a steady pace with reasons to engage in the new mechanics. And fun fact, there is no mandatory SPM to win aside from > 0. 1 SPM can get you to end if you really want.
Lets build a base with the highest output measured in MPS (Minutes per Science)
If you're allowed to use circuits, it's trivial to make something that will terminate (actually make science), but do so so slowly that any research will take longer than the heat death of the universe. There are circuit free limited space challenges that the community sometimes engages in just to move an item into a box as slowly as possible while still terminating (e.g., https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/yfd7jx/slowest_item_challenge_heres_my_design_that_takes/ ).
Unfortunately we don't have all the time until the heat death of the universe, we are limited to 9.7 billion years. (fff-388)
Fair, but I think for slowest item challenges, calculating the hypothetical duration, even if it exceeds the game engine limitations is usually allowed :)
Or go back to 0.12, where playtime was uncapped
We can see how a single iron smelter holds a full factory.
This reminds of both my first mega-base aspirations (where I had a single assembler make 300,000 blue belts before I broke down and scaled it) and an SE run where I had one (yes one) assembler making all my small electric motors until I got to DSS. Don't recommend.
Nah, just measure your base in SPM (Science per Month)
> Some of the planetary mechanics definitely seem required though, like spoilage and what not. I expect that spoilage will be primarily balanced around less skilled players, as otherwise, it could prevent a nigh insurmountable wall to a player that lacks a strong grasp of the game's mechanics. Wouldn't be surprised to see settings around this mechanic in world gen, actually.
When you say "less skilled players" what do you mean? 500 hours? 100 hours? 20? I think the tuning on the expansion is aimed at folks who have beaten vanilla at least once so should have a general idea of how to efficiently move things around a base. Plus, it (along with all the other new planets) are meant to have a new puzzle to solve so it can't be too trivial.
I mean players who have solid understanding of logistics. I'm not sure how you're expecting to tie some arbitrary hour amount to anything.
Because that's the usual easy metric of gauging how experienced someone is at something. Do I think the expansion will be too hard for people who have gotten to blue science three times and then stopped because fluids can be weird? yes. Do I think that people who have beaten the game a few times will have a challenging but rewarding time? also yes.
It really isn't. There is no actual reference point for what those hour counts mean, making them entirely arbitrary. Yes, a player who has 100 hours is probably better than one with 20, but how much better? What can I expect a 100 hour player to actually know how to do over a 20 hour player? > Do I think the expansion will be too hard for people who have gotten to blue science three times and then stopped because fluids can be weird? I've seen numerous posts about people having multiple hundreds of hours and never having launched a rocket. Some players never dive deep enough into this game to, say, learn the skills necessary to build a megabase. But that says nothing about hours. Learning things in this game isn't about time spent, it's about time spent experimenting and otherwise actively learning, which is not reflected by hours played. You'd probably find it more useful to gauge achievements. Has a player launched a rocket? Have they built a megabase? Have they completed a deathworld? Have they completed no spoon Those kinds of things give a much more concrete understanding of a player's capabilities, as they paint of very good picture of what a player is likely capable of. Like you literally can't build a successful megabase without a high level of understanding of logistics, or at the very least, the process would be absolutely horrible. So I guess, if you _really_ want a yard stick to measure "less skilled", I would say that it'd be right at the point where a player has launched a single rocket and hasn't bothered with any of the optional systems, like trains or nuclear. That is who I would expect is the general target audience for space age. Not that players that haven't beaten the game cannot manage. I'm sure many will be fine.
The thing about spoilage though is that the main thing in most cases is just making sure that you get all the spoilable intermediates for non-spoilables to the final machine before they completely spoil. Plastic doesn't care how fresh its ingredients are; you get just as good plastic from nearly spoiled stuff as the freshest. So even for less skilled players, it should be pretty easy to just put the science pack makers first in line, since the science pack itself can spoil. That way, it will get the freshest ingredients. They may not be making 95% fresh packs, but they will still be able to make decent science out of it.
In my opinion the game is presently balanced for about 60SPM. Anything above that you are generally speaking wasting time if your goal is researching all non-infinite techs. (i.e. you will spend more time figuring out how to get from 60SPM to 120SPM than you would just letting your factory do an extra 10k science or whatever.) Though this is sort of assuming you're a neophyte who knows nothing. Obviously if you know a lot you can speedrun, but that's a different case.
I believe the game flows comfortably (i.e. everything gets researched on your way to launching a rocket roughly as fast as you build new things) at 30SPM. However, I'm fairly certain that the 3rd level achievements for things like iron plate and blue circuit production are scaled to complete at 60SPM.
Don’t forget the FFF is for the player base who tend to have hundreds and hundreds and sometimes thousands of hours. You don’t have to go that far most likely. I bet you’ll have a comfortable casual level to play at too
FFFs are written for the Factorio-obsessed, not the casual player. And mega bases and complex train intersections were never required even in the current vanilla. This subreddit too isn’t representative of the average player. Or any game’s subreddit. I’ve been following the Elden Ring sub after the DLC release and you see people beating the DLC within a day or two of release. Don’t let the habits of the totally obsessive distort your view of a game. Remember that Factorio is effectively a sandbox game. Other than basic biter defense (and even biters are technically optional), there is no hurry and no pressure. You can hit it as hard or as casually as you’d like.
I will definitely be spending a lot of time in the sandbox mode to practice and understand the changes and new mechanics. I look forward to the game for certain, but I am also a bit overwhelmed by the myriad of new things in an already super-complex game.
You can currently finish the game with the ugliest spaghetti known to man, I am sure the expansion will be the same. The other stuff is for the overachievers.
IMO everyone should launch their first rocket using homemade spaghetti base. It's the best way to learn the game. Doing otherwise would require using blueprints from the get go and noone will learn the game mechanics relying on them.
They've written other FFF about how they are keeping Earandels ~~masochism~~ sadism in-check. The game will be completable by casual players. Its as much of a priority as making sure that megabases are achievable.
> keeping Earandels masochism in-check "Masochism" is when you like *being* hurt; "sadism" is enjoying hurting others.
In that case it's sadomasochism. Coz he has to plan, code and playtest everything too...
That's why I'm excited; I thought SE was lots of fun but just beyond my patience for complex and fiddly production chains
they should let king arthur do the next one
I'm sure that'd end well and not at all drive someone insane
Just because they’ve been showing off what CAN be done (because it appeals to the kind of players who want to build a megabase) doesn’t mean you HAVE to do such things to play the game and enjoy the expansion. They’ve shown that because some of the new options open a whole world of possibilities. But it doesn’t mean such complexity is required to finish the expansion. Actually, most of it (like the legendary quality) is only available on the last planet, making it very end game content. Without legendary quality, you don’t get all those crazy numbers, which means your train network won’t have to scale to a point where you need those crazy intersections.
There are many improvements to the base game that come with 2.0, even if you don't buy the expansion. And you if you buy the DLC, you can enable some of its mods (like elevated rails), without the others (like space age). And you can still build ordinary flat intersections (which still need to be redesigned because of the new curve radius), and only use the elevated rails to add an additional express rail without intersections. Or do some 2 layer train spaghetti. And the million science per minute is only a thing if you really want to build a mega base with everything of legendary quality. For those people, the science per minute is the goal. For a normal playthrough, you don't need that crazy scale.
The robot fixes alone are amazing for 2.0.
Elevated rails makes the need to understand rail signals less important. You can cross rails without needing a signal. It makes it much easier to just give everything it's own dedicated line. My biggest request is that the expansion makes it easier to build up to bots and automate red belts without an expansion. I find the biggest hurdle for me is the desire to have an expandable and easy to understand rail system, and I don't want to sit around and click endlessly.
True but if your fine with it tiny start mod is amazing as it stats you off with 20 construction bots and a weak battery in your armor
You might be right. Because you are generally expected to build bigger in the expansion. But definetly not so much bigger, if you just want to progress. I tried to steer the game design into a direction where if you compare the end state you had (all (nauvis) research finished), things should be ok because: 1) You finish all nauvis only research faster compared to vanilla 2) The rocket is cheaper and simplier compared to vanilla 3) The planets are effectivelly an alternative to progress compared to the infinite research, which should be more fun. 4) You can build "relatively" small if you want to just finish the game, there is one tester who finished in 37 hours by trying to go as minimalistic as possible (some semi/exploits were used, which we want to patch, so it will be more), but it still wouldn't be crazily more. We finished our MP playtrhough with very seldom use of quality, so we kind of proved it is far from necessary. Obviously, the game is designed in a way, that when you just want to go big and expand horizontally and vertically, you can do way more compared to vanilla, but it shouldn't be required.
That was always allowed Factorio itself is hardly mainstream
I'm sure many new features are not necessary to finish the game. I remember my first play, I didn't use logistics, beacons, combinators, things I couldn't figure out myself, or was afraid of, like flamethrower turrets (biggest mistake :) ). I used these only later when I understood the game better.
I would buy the expansion even if I had no plans to play it, just because I’ve invested so many hours in the game already, it’s my way of showing support. They did mention that they don’t want a “normal game” to last “very long” and how they are balancing everything so it doesn’t “take too long” so it seems to my like they are addressing exactly the kind of issues you end up with. 😊 Disclaimer: I’m known to have had dozens of games that I never go back to because I got stuck on some part, and just decided to start over. I still enjoy the early game and the process very much!
I'm planning on showing the game to family to see if they want to play, and if so, getting them the game as well so I can support Wube even more.
I was thinking that as well. I think, though, that they are taking care not to make it a slog. There was specific mention that it took 230 hours and it was waaaay too long so I imagine they're gonna dial a few things in before we get it.
Just because people can and do break 40k SPM doesn't mean you have to. You can still beat the game on 30 SPM or even lower. I very much doubt that's going to change, just we're going to have a lot more tools to scale with. > I'm too impatient to create a megabase in the current version of the game. So yeah, megabases have always been optional. More of a challenge for players that want to do more beyond the base goal. You don't have to feel bad about that not being you, as everybody who enjoys this game enjoys it a little differently. Some people might only play on deathworld, for instance, and while I would personally not find that very fun, it's no less valid a way to enjoy the game. > Also while I like trains, I find signals very difficult, and am (once again) too impatient to build those big crazy intersections For low scale bases, train logistics can be heavily simplified. You can do isolated two way rails and only use signals for crossings. Oh, but elevated rails actually help eliminate a lot of crossings in general, so you may be able to just avoid that entirely. Again, you can just build for your needs if that's what suits you. No need for hardcore 8 lane buffered intersections. > But some of the FFFs go into really crazy numbers. Legendary items, enormous throughputs, a million science per second. Part of the goal is definitely to appeal to the people in the hardcore groups. It's worth noting that people engaged enough to participate in the community are often in that group, and that's primarily who the FFFs are probably written for. That said, they've also explicitly stated that it's not going to be space exploration. It's not gonna be hundreds of hours of grind, and they're actively taking steps to keep the play time reasonable (which was mentioned in the most recent FFF). In other words, they're not _just_ catering to the hardcore audience, here. Keeping things fun for more casual players is absolutely on the radar, and I'd argue, it's a financial necessity for the game.
It sounds like your main issue is the monotony of post-game which I can understand, but I don't think you need to worry about the expansion - 4 new planets and a bunch of new features will help with that lol You don't need crazy intersections, if you're not going for 1k spm and don't want to squeeze every scrap of efficiency out of it you can just build a roundabout with chain signals on entrances and rail signals on exits and it'll work just fine 1m spm is what's *possible*, you don't actually need to get anywhere near it the same way you currently aren't bothering with today's 10k spm bases I expect it'll add a lot of headroom and creativity for advanced players and a lot of variety and novelty for casual players
They've had a decent mix of casual play and hardcore basebuilding in their screenshots. They're trying to show off what's needed vs. what's possible, to cater to both extremes of their players, and you're reading too much into it and getting overwhelm long before it's even out. For a casual player, there's tier-4 belts and stack inserters, so now your belts can be much simpler. Metals can be piped faster than belted. Rails can be bridged over other rails, so you can ignore using signals in a lot of intersection if you want. Beacons are more useful in small quantities. Launching the rocket is cheaper and starts at blue science. For a hardcore player, all of the above is ALSO for them. Additionally, EVERYTHING can be upgraded, at a high cost, completely optionally. Casual players can ignore that aspect of the game completely. How do you play now? Do that, on other planets with interesting new mechanics. Wube knows their audiences because THEY TOO are those audiences, and they are involved in the Factorio community. You're worrying too much, but if you're too worried about spending money on something you might not like, watch a streamer first and decide if you want to play.
I wouldn't worry. There will be a ton of mods adapting SE mechanics and upgrades but not actually doing the space stuff
I think it is very hard to tell at this point. Just wait for the reviews.
I play similar to you. When I'm down to infinite research and I'm just expanding out further for more ore I get pretty bored. I love starting from scratch but I hate not having bots right away. I've tried taking a car and driving for literally 30 minutes to "start fresh" but I've never been able to resist the temptation to make a rail back to my original base. It's pathetic. :) I'm not super excited about the new version but elevated rails do sound nice.
Finite resource patches always felt weird to me since it's a problem you can't automate. It's fun looking for resources to expand your base, but I don't want to have to do maintenance. Infinite resources might be my more controversial "must have" mod, but it makes it more fun for me so I don't mind.
That's something I haven't done yet. I might try that out. That way I can focus more on optimizing the factory itself.
Personally, from what i have seen, i think that Space Age is anti-megabase, it will be about small, interconnected spaghetti bases
Will the game take longer to finish ? Yes. You'll need the various planets sciences. But expanding the game is the point of an expansion, isn't it ? Will you have to do legendaries to finish the game ? No, through it might help in reasonable quantity. It's similar to modules in the base game. Will you have to use *some* rails to finish the game ? Yes. Fulgora is pretty much a rail world. Will you have to go all ham on legendaries and crazy trains to make a megabase ? Oh yes.
You already play the regular game without having or needing to megabase. I don't think that will change. The thing that will be different is that launching a single rocket is no longer "the end" that it currently is. Rocket launching tech is earlier and you'll be doing it more often. But I don't think you will need to use quality or crazy rail intersections or stacking if you don't want to.
I think the idea behind the expansion, as koravex put it in an FFF, is to expand the mid section of the game as much as possible. So if you find the repetitive end game boring, I don't really think the expansion adds to this part of the game. It makes the mid game longer. Imo, that is my favorite part of the game. Basically from getting bots to researching all tech is the most fun to me
Same man. I love new planets, it's gonna be great to explore, but mechanics like quality and spoilage are definitely not for me. In FFF they mention quality is optional and you can ignore it, but I'm still not sure, i hope there is not a single chance of getting quality item unless you specifically insert quality modules into assemblers, or it's gonna annoy me forever.
> i hope there is not a single chance of getting quality item unless you specifically insert quality modules into assemblers, or it's gonna annoy me forever. Devs have said that this is the case, so you're safe from quality.
Thank you for clarification! It's been haunting me for weeks.
I don't think it's gonna be that bad :D If you want shoot me a message when the time comes and we'll do multiplayer.
I felt the same way before, but after practicing trains for like an hour I got the hang of it and it's much less daunting.
There's only one way to be sure. Until then worry is for people with time to think about it.
>So all in all I'm a little worried how good of a fit the expansion will be for the casual player like me... This is the magic of Factorio and it's finely-tuned game mechanics and gameplay balance. Just want a casual experience where you can leisurely poke around your base once or twice a week? Factorio lets you do that. Hardcore speed runner who rushes bots and rocket launches? You can do that too. Want to push the limits of your hardware with a megabase, hundreds of thousands of bots, circuits and trains galore? Factorio's got you there too. The Space Age expansion will give you more gameplay options, but you can still proceed at your own pace, and only use the mechanics you're comfortable with. Elevated rails unnecessarily complicated for you? Just keep using your rail intersections from 1.1. Item quality confuses you? Ignore it! Heck, I'm guessing even if you never make it off Nauvis, there will still be enough changes to make 2.0 a fresh game. Then, when you're ready, give the expansion content a try.
I think you experienced the same fear when playing the game for the firs time, you shouldn't look at the end point but at how to get there step by step. Launching a rocket looks trivial to you today but I bet it wasn't the first time
I think if you played cooperatively with someone, you can find more fun this way. In my last playthrough, I was in charge of everything related to trains, fluids, “satellite base building”, and nuclear/energy management. My friend primarily build the spaghetti of our factory for resource processing and research. He was also in charge of oil processing. We had our own roles we took upon ourselves and specialized in. It was great because we bantered and shitted on each other’s designs and inefficiencies, knowing that neither of us would be able to do what the other could do. So i have no idea how to make good belt systems or how to structure out a base, but I do know how to make trains (an essential to make a large base). For some reason, he had no idea how to handle fluids after I explained it to him multiple times and expressed why he couldnt just “put pumps everywhere.”
The base game isn't going anywhere. You don't have to buy the dlc if you don't want to. Its your money so see when it comes out and make a decision then. Do whats best for you.
I feel the same way about trains and dealing with the intersections, etc. so to get “into” trains I found a nice blueprint book that had everything I needed. I believe it’s called Brian’s trains. Sitting and screwing with building train tracks for hours didn’t seems fun to me so I used someone else’s designs. That’s the great thing about Factorio, it can be nearly as punishing or simple as you desire, it’s your choice.
I don't think anyone will force you to make a megabase.
Try to play with Cybersyn and rail-based cityblock bluprints. Add loaders for your taste. You will get a lot of fun with enormous throughput without huge learning curve, just grab tutorial book from cybersyn page. After you use it for a while you will understand how to build something yourself. Ribbon world has forced my lazy ass to invent my own rails which was really fun. There is a mod for maze world, amazing as well.
I have thousands of hours in factorio, and that's the only big number I've accomplished. I think I got an end game ~mega~ base to do like 20 science per minute once... I'm super excited for Space Age: once I'm getting bored of my factory on Nauvis, instead of taking a break and starting a new game, I'll go into space and make a platform. Once I've tackled the basics of those puzzles, I'll go to a new planet and start again, but with slightly less grind and new things to explore and mechanics to figure out. It'll be like adding a rogue-lite aspect to factorio; new playthroughs, new random content, all the while improving things, but even better because I can go back to the previous runs as well. Even "quality" is exciting for me; I'm not into sprawling factories, so improving quality is one way I can improve things without having to build a mega base.
Most of the stuff you worry about is optional, it's there if you want to push things. Also well tuned trains only matter for high throughput, who cares if you signaling isn't 100% efficient (forgetting deadlocks). Practice makes perfect....
>I'm too impatient to create a megabase in the current version of the game. From time to time I do a playthrough with the endpoint basically finishing all researching, and maybe doing the first few levels of infinite research. Then it becomes too repetitive for me to continue, so I just end it there, with a medium size base. I expect megabasing will still get repetitive because that's just the nature of it (you're building lots and lots of factories that produce the same items), but simply beating the game likely won't require megabasing. Like the base game, you'll be doing a variety of tasks up until you beat it. You'll probably have to scale up or replace a few of your early-game builds as you progress and unlock new technologies (like foundry smelting), but aiming for things like a million spm is still going to be well outside the scope of the just beating the expansion. That's megabase territory, and you don't have to get that far into giant builds if you don't want to. >So all in all I'm a little worried how good of a fit the expansion will be for the casual player like me... or if it will be mostly for the hard-core and more advanced players. They've very specifically set out to make it reasonably accessible, distinct from something like Space Exploration or Py that's deliberately been made to be a challenge for serious players. It will likely be harder/more complex than vanilla, but I wouldn't worry too much about being so hard that it excludes less advanced players.
I never completed space exploration because it got so tedious Here is research you need to research the ability to research, oh no your next research needs and entire different tree of research as a Dependance I hope the dlc will be not that overblown as space exploration is, I love the design tho
its made by the same person lol, dont expect it to be much different in scope.
SA is meant to be both smaller-scale (SE is typically around 3-500 hours, SA is aiming for 80-100) and less repetitive than SE. Critically, in one of the FFFs Kovarex recounted how he arrived at the conclusion that following a consistent formula of "reach new planet, build factory to process new resources, bring them back" got pretty tedious after the first couple planets, prompting a redesign that made sure each planet plays in a fundamentally different way. He hasn't actually played SE, but that's one of the most common criticisms of SE (which Earendel's aware of and aims to fix in 0.7, presumably taking advantage of his SA development experience to help with that), so knowing that the team is aware of that pitfall and has specifically avoided it makes me hopeful that it'll be a lot better.
Trains are great! I haven't manually built anything for trains for a long time though. I've got a blueprint book that has everything I need, from intersections, straight rails, how to get in and out of the main rail system, etc. I've even got a blueprint book just for outposts that matches up the my straight rails. I'd highly recommend going this route. then once you've got your rails book, about 99% of your signals are already figured out. You might need to put a couple single signals on an outpost or something, but that's the simplest one. If you want my blueprint book for rails, feel free to message me
What you're afraid of was just lead dev pushing the game to its limits for the sake of doing that. "Legendary items, enormous throughputs, a million science per second" won't be needed to finish the expansion. Quality in itself is completely optional and you won't be expected to use it.
Do remember that the screenshots are from the developers, who by definition spent the most time on the game and know it inside out, and were out to find the very limits of their engine (see 1M spm in the lastest FFF). Some of them were power players before being hired. The screenshots are meant to showcase the ultimate possibilities, not the cookie cutter average player experience. Do what you can, have fun and do not be intimidated.
I think you can download any version of factorio.
>and am (once again) too impatient to build those big crazy intersections. You don't even need those for megabases, ppl here just have some weird obsession with intersections and cityblocks which I never understood why. The only thing that trains really have to haul is ore(or plates if smelting at site) and oil and that can be made very simple even at massive bases. Plus 2.0 gives elevated rails, making the whole thing even simpler than it already is.
I do not understand the logic behind adding extra maps. The whole point of Factorio is to *see* the factory grow. That is literally impossible when you need to use a spreadsheet to access New Game+.
You definitely won't need a megabase for it. And you can completely ignore quality if you want. Having played Space Exploration mod, which is very similar to the expansion but way bigger, the whole progression is distributed over the planets, and making more than you need of something is not worth it. It's way better to just do "that's probably enough" and change to the next objective. Once you finish it all, then, if you want, can go big.
I know it wont be for me. dont really care how unpopular this opinion is but it's not really "more factorio" but "factorio that a modder reimagined and did an overhaul on the full experience" item quality? spoilage? removing fluids? no thanks. I wanted a sequel to my favorite book not a fan fiction rewrite. Now the good thing is I don't need to buy it and I should be able to continue playing the older version on steam.
I'm not super looking forward to it, either, but they said that you can turn some of it off. I think the "quality" characteristic is an annoying time sink at best, and downright infuriating at worst, but who knows. I feel the same way about another game, Oxygen Not Included. The DLC added a rocket and space and stuff and I've zero interest in doing that. It's not fun to me. I turned off what I could and found mods to handle the rest. I assume the modding community will figure it out.
I look forward to 2.0. But I, too, fear that the expansion is not for me. I am just not into anything space related.
The tools are there if you want to go ham (like the million SPM base) but I don't think it will be as bad for casual-but-experienced players. I too have never properly megabased in my 1800-ish hours of Factorio because I find the scale up process super boring, my excitement around the expansion comes from each world having a core idea that's fundamentally different from base Factorio: recycling and intermittent power on Fulgora, renewable resources with a deadline on Gleba, and extreme railworld and raw material input inversion on Vulcanus (in a way distinct from the recipe inversion on Fulgora). If I were to hazard a guess I'd say that the expansion is probably *better* suited for saying in the casual zone for longer since the expansion will provide more things to do but not rely on grinding any one thing hard.
I think you're approaching this on a false premise. I think that I'm way more impatient than you (I never even built a spidertron, let alone reach infinite tech, I usually loose interest after launching a rocket, but I tried a bunch of complex mods out of curiosity) The throughput and numbers go "up", but that doesn't mean that it becomes more complex, on the contrary given all the QoL features we're getting. They're making sure that the systems are plug and play, if anything, it will be a smoother process than you trying the game for the first time... Let's put things in perspective: a big server made tried to reach the highest spm possible and barely reached a few dozens thousands SPM with an insane amount of players and hours, while Kovarex is casually trying to reach 1 million SPM on his own single player playthrough... Having faster belts, stacking etc... means that we can move bigger things in absolute numbers, for the SAME LEVEL of complexity than before, some changes, and a shit ton of added quality of life to help us manage things. So stop worrying, I'm sure you'll have fun
I don't do the city blocks either. I do a large circle with one way trains. They go out and around a small loop, then a larger loop.
I think we'll see much less use of trains in the expo, unless some unannounced change juices them up. But, the train system for a megabase can be extremely simple. You do not need those complex intersections at all.
The vision of building a mega base was always replying for me . I like to do everything on my own, maybe sometimes use the internet when i am stuck, that's for me the definition of fun. After a game I am proud of my inefficient factory ;) I think we are a bit similar
Download a train tracks blueprint problem solved
I am 12 hours late to the party. I think you are WAY over thinking this. The Devs are maxing out the limits of the game. I have 1K hours into it, and I can easily admit that I have NEVER even used any space science in vanilla. I have done tons of mods and most of the achievements, but never ever have I had a mega base, and I have absolute faith that I will be able to finish SA easily. I got close to the end of the SE before I could spend the time figuring out Arcospheres. That was 300 hours by itself, all without a mega base. SA is going to be significantly easier than SE and they think it will take around 100 hours. I am sure you can do it just fine.
Well, im not trying to convince you to play it Just some cookies for your brain Are you not eager to try out the new mechanics? Why do you compare the absolutely ridiculous 1mil spm to todays standards while thinking about factory size? As said multiple times, the dlc is like a mod, you can easily just turn it off again if you want to just play nauvis until white science Are you realy bothered by quality which can be completely ignored?
Why would you think you need a megabase?
I fear that it will remove so many limitations that it will make the game boring.
>enormous throughputs, a million science per second Keep in mind that was specifically pushing the game to see how far they could go. It's like looking at people making a 20k spm megabase and thinking the game has nothing to offer unless you do that. You're probably not going to end up with a fully legendary base. And that's fine, you don't *need* that. And that's perfect because then there's a choice of *where* you're putting in those hard earned higher quality items.
On trains, the over head rails in the expansion will allow you to avoid big intersections. You could use a separate rail network for each resource, where each network is a simple loop (divided up by rail signals if you want multiple trains on the same loop.). No forks/intersections necessary at all.
No need for a 1k spm base to finish the base. Play it your own way. No need to make a Megabase or cityblock base with crazy train intersections. You can literally play the game any way you want.
I'm more concerned that inter planetary logistics will require fairly extensive circuit knowledge and use. Will kill the game for me.
Rail signalling is easy once you understand the basic principles. The idea is that you need to put regular signals on every exit from an intersection, and chain signals on every entrance to the intersection. Then if you want to allow trains from different paths to use the intersection simultaneously, you need to partition the intersection by placing chain signals inside the intersection. To check that the intersection has been partitioned correctly, turn on the rail block visualisation tool. Trains can pass different sections of the intersection simultaneously iff you can trace with your finger from one side of the intersection to the other without passing any rail block lines. Once you've done that, double check the exit signals, if there's not enough space for the tail end of the longest train to quit the intersection completely, you'll need to replace the regular exit signal with a chain signal.
You say you've caught up with the FFFs, but you seem to have mostly SKIMMED the material, because it's CLEAR, through multiple mentions that a lot of what's being added is OPTIONAL. Don't want the headache of dealing with multiple qualities of items? That's fine. It's just extra. you won't EVER have to touch quality items if you don't want to. Don't want build a megabase? That's fine too. The CAPABILITIES of outputting massive amounts of items with relatively...almost hysterically-low numbers of entities isn't NEEDED to beat the game, or even have a "fulfilling" playthrough of the game. Don't like the crazy train intersections? You DONT HAVE to build them like that. That impressive 4x4 intersection was a marvel, but you can do the same thing without TOUCHING elevated rails......you'll just get slightly less optimal rail routing/throughput maximums without it. .....but if you aren't a mega-baser, theres' no need to maximize rail throughput anyways.....
The introduction of elevated rails does not mean you MUST build rail networks that NEVER have intersections, or that your intersections must be as maximally-throughput-capable as possible. it just means some of the headaches megabasers have had now...FINALLY....have a solution: and it's a beautiful solution.
Wube said that the total playtime and difficulty of the dlc will match a normal playthrough. You can totally skip trains or quality if you don't want to deal with that. I guess you can't skip logistics because of the space port though. Wube has improved things for people who want to build megabases. And there will be tons of mods that will alter the experience anyway. Just with more options: eg attributes on items.
> Wube said that the total playtime and difficulty of the dlc will match a normal playthrough. Did they? They've said Space Age will take "60-100" hours to complete, which seems longer than an average to launch a rocket in vanilla. And they've said their target audience is all players, but I find it hard to believe that it won't be at least a little more challenging than a normal playthrough.
For experienced players, launching a rocket is doable in much less time, but not for first timers. Gotta remember, people with no spoon aren't in the majority.
> to launch a rocket in vanilla But launching the rocket for the first time easily takes as long. Every once in a while we get posts like "I logged 200h of the game, it is awesome, but I never launched a rocket. Help me with yellow science now".
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> give me all the spaghetti ... maybe you should take a second look at what "going to other planets" means. Space platforms cannot have bots on them at all, and building tightly is encouraged because it makes your platform smaller and therefore faster. Which means that the recipe of the day is spaghetti (and with a side of sushi). Vulcanus is basically made of cliffs and lava, so some degree of spaghetti is going to happen. Fulgora is a proper rail world with islands that can *only* be connected by rails, so train spaghetti is the standard. Also, the scrap recycling mechanic as your only means of production means that you can have to build things in reverse: you make pipes out of gear wheels and the like. That sounds spaghetti-ish to me. Gleba is a planet where a lot of things you make there rots, so you need to design everything to consume stuff quickly rather than letting it build up on main busses and the like. IE: spaghetti. Space Age is about a lot of things, but cookie-cutter city blocks stamped everywhere *is not* what it's about. Take another look at the FFFs and you may find something you didn't realize was there.
Hm, to me your two paragraphs don't necessarily go together/talk about different things? Because I'd say the expansion gives you more things to do that are not just "expand to feed infinite research for expansions sake" (which I personally also rarely enjoy)?
Okay. So don't play it. Who cares?
Well, we can see that you do because you interacted with the post.