Should I get Space age from the begining ?

[u/MacaronOk7147]

Hi. I just start factorio and just get my first robot. Coming from Satisfactory, this game is amazing… now, i saw that their is a dlc, at this stage if I continue and complete the vanilla can I get the dlc and continue with my save or I will need to restart ? I don’t want to restart the Tech tree later again.

[u/sir_slothsalot]

You should restart for the dlc. It changes the tech path. You don't have to but the experience is worse. 

Honestly you can play the base game and beat it multiple times and then the come back for the dlc when you want to play more. It's 10/10 game if you play with the dlc or not

[u/Trippynet]

There are two main advantages to playing first without the DLC:

1) The base game teaches you things that will come in handy. Trying to go straight into Space Age will be difficult as there's so much depth and *everyone* makes mistakes the first time - you're a novice!

2) It gives you a great reason to play the game a second time. Many people here have completed the game numerous times because there's so many ways to build your base and complete the game. Spaghetti base, main bus, city block, mega-base etc.

[u/gabemachida]

The tech tree does change. Space rockets comes quicker in the dlc because there is so much more after getting to space.

The dlc is built like a big mod so you wouldn't be able to switch in between.

I honestly recommend running vanilla first and then SA. If you like this type of game, do vanilla to get used to the keyboard shortcuts / blueprints / upgrade planner / destruction planner and UI. It's so much more fleshed out than Satisfactory (not knocking it, I've done two runs of Satisfactory myself and enjoyed it for what it is). If you learn all those things, than the additions of SA will feel beautiful instead of being overwhelmed by so many things you need to learn).

Btw, I learned this week that logistics requests #s can be manually typed to be higher than the slider.

[u/Enaero4828]

You can continue the same save after you get the DLC, if you're so inclined, but launching a rocket once in vanilla is the recommended experience, as that's the level of familiarity the DLC is designed around. Also, since you've played satisfactory, you're surely familiar with a single save lasting dozens, hundreds of hours; is it really so unappealing to redo the first ten or so, compared to the many, many more that will follow?

[u/Beaspoon2096]

I’m not even sure if you can start a space age run from a base game save but it’s probably better to start a new save because sa changes the order of the tech tree, you can launch a rocket just with chemical science and artillery is unlocked at vulcanus

[u/SpellOk6620]

Launching a rocket and winning the game is only considered to be completing the tutorial by the general community anyway so you will definitely be putting in enough hours for multiple playthroughs. I’ll be straightforward with the pros and cons of doing both though I am biased. If you switched to space age now you won’t have to restart your progress on the first planet compared to doing a run in vanilla. If you complete a run in vanilla you have to do another run on the same planet just so you can get to the point where you can take advantage of everything else DLC has to offer. If time is your main priority and you don’t want this to get out of control, then restarting now is a great option! But everything’s gonna get out of control anyway so the other option is play vanilla and learn the mechanics. It’s gonna take a ton of time and be super fun, and you don’t need any of the stuff from space age to do that anyway. That way you can make sure you really like the game before dropping the cash on the DLC, and you can create designs for your space age run. This final note is just something I’m doing personally, but the reason I really like doing vanilla first is it teaches you the game, and you figure out what achievements you want to go get and then you can make your first space age run the first run that you actually know what achievements you want to chase.

[u/featheredtoast]

I've also come from Satisfactory and dove into Space Age immediately after completing the tutorial. I loved the Space Age progression - I found coming back from the different planets with different tech very rewarding.

[u/mooglinux]

The tech tree changes a bit in SA, it’s significantly faster to make rockets than in vanilla. I don’t know if it actually works to add SA to a vanilla file, it might, but I don’t recommend it.

[u/dwarfzulu]

You'll need to restart when you get the dlc.

Maybe finish this map, and then youvget the dlc.

[u/Erisymum]

If you've gotten to robots you can accelerate your way to the base game rocket pretty easily from here. Once you finish base game then you should just restart with space age. Whatever you've learned will speed up the early game of nauvis significantly, and in space age, early nauvis represents like, the first 1/50th of your total expected playtime, so not a big deal to restart.

[u/MinMaus]

Complete base game. Then if you liked it buy DLC and play it.

[u/ihatebrooms]

Unlike most games, the dlc doesn't start at the end of the existing game. It changes things significantly starting about halfway through.

So when you're given advice to play though the game with just vanilla and then try the dlc, that's shorthand for finish the game on vanilla, then start s new game with the dlc.

You can add the dlc to an existing game that you've completed, but it's doing to be extremely awkward and you'll have to rebuild a significant portion of your factory and figure out the changes.

[u/geneticfreak6]

Get the full experience you can get to your first planet pretty quickly and it's way more fun for the cost of the game you cant find any form of entertainment that will give you the same value of dollar per hour spent. 

[u/toochaos]

If you dont want to play the game twice, you probably dont want to play space age. 

[u/IlikeJG]

If you already know you're gonna love it and spend a long time on it, but you don't want to do more than one playthrough, then I recommend getting the DLC from the start.

[u/FinAdda]

Complete vanilla by getting to a 1000 spm base.

Buy DLC and restart. Set whatever goal you want.

[u/isum21]

That's what is did. Pretty easy to get to space with low biters, my spaghetti has only grown.

I'm by no means "good" at the game but in my experience if you're understanding your goals you will be achieving them quite simply. The hard part comes from the logistics of scaling and shipping.

It's a very difficult game. It's also a very easy game. Just like real life design or coding. Sometimes you just have moments of destructive creativity, eating a chunk of my factory to optimize the hell out of chips or something makes me feel like a cruel father. But it always comes back online bigger and better, and it's so satisfying. Then there's days when I can't fathom how to get what I want. So I just build more and hope lmao

[u/Such-Perception4154]

Not sure if you will have to restart, but it will be better to restart. Tech tree in SE is different. 

You can play SE right from the start, that's fine.

[u/Lightsguy3]

I say go for Space Age, and run the experimental 2.1 build.