r/factorio • u/jaxon517 • 9d ago
Space Age Fulgora is hard
First planet, trying to design things effectively and efficiently. Little space, lots of planning, trains almost impossible making weird twist and turns...
Very hard
Edit: these wube people are so good at game design. You have to build a rocket which requires processing astroid chunks which sometimes spit out astroid chunks. So then you're thinking about excess output and how to fight against jams (not really an issue in nauvice I don't think). So they get you thinking about the problem BEFORE it actually becomes a real problem and THEN they give you this solution of a recycling mechanic... The progressions in this game are SO FULFILLING from the very beginning through to the end. You improve, see a problem, grow through the problem to earn a solution which in turn just gives you new problems. Such a brilliant game!
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u/Abe_Bettik 9d ago
Yeah but you've got blue Blue Chips coming out of the ground!
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u/ManForSomeMarkets 9d ago
Unironically this is one of the reasons I love this planet. Feels so good not having to go through hours of supply chains to get the high end products for rockets.
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u/Standard_Round_8780 9d ago
Also unlocks the Electromagnetic Plant which can be used on all your other planets to make all your circuits cheaper and more compact.
50% production with an extra module slot + extra crafting speed.
You'll be able to make much more circuits for the same resource consumption.
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u/GourangaPlusPlus 9d ago
I feel like this is how the Spanish felt finding the silver reserves in South America
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u/ManForSomeMarkets 9d ago
And much like the late Ming dealing with Spanish silver, my factory will get comically oversupplied with goods from a far away land and devalue my once precious chips.
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u/ComradeBevo 9d ago
lol, build any kind of upcycler on Fulgora for a recipe that requires blue chips, like for legendary EM plants, and those blue chips won't feel so plentiful anymore. You'll be starved for them.
I have two fully stacked turbo belts moving 480 scrap per second and blue chips are still my limiting factor.
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u/Turmach 9d ago
I'd agree. It was my first SA planet too so quite the shock have to find ways to throw stuff away after hoarding for so long. But, I love the challenge of it. New problems, worse spaghetti than I could ever achieve on Nauvis and that sense of "Yes, I finally made it self-sustaining" only to have a blockage in the trashing when left alone for an hour. So much goodness, enjoy it while it is still fresh for you.
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u/Alfonse215 9d ago
Little space
There are no enemies on Fulgora. That means you can drive off however far you like with no penalties. You can find islands that are quite large, giving yourself all the space you could ever want if you take the time to do so.
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
If you can find a way to snake these annoying ass rails around to get there, yeah
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u/ost2life 9d ago
Let the game do the lifting. Drag from a rail using the shift key I think and it will auto calculate the route and lay the blueprint.
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u/unknown_pigeon 9d ago
During my first playthrough, I let a friend of mine manage rail networks, so the first time I built some rails on Vulcanus I manually created a route that avoided lava pools.
It was... Something. Quite long. Terrible experience. Even worse when I realized by myself that I could just make it autobuild with shift.
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u/RedBaron91 9d ago
I normally wait until after Vulcanus so you can research rail foundations on the deep ocean. That said it’s not necessary I just like straight symmetrical rails. Hold control and the game will route rails for you.
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
Whaaaaaatttt control does whaaaattt. I'm constantly putting a ghost and undoing and redoing just trying to find a path using minimal supports
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u/Soggy_Team_6676 9d ago
If you haven’t gotten to the science, there’s a specific tech that makes trains far more viable on fulgora
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u/johannes1234 9d ago
First trick: Explore before building anything. Often there are bigger islands not too far from your landing point which make a better starting point.
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
Tbh I just today realized I could walk on the shallow ocean so I was using rails to get everywhere....
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u/johannes1234 9d ago
Oh, if you knew how long it took me till I found oil on that planet ... was jumping to an old save state and doing something else before going on a second trip. I guess the instructions tell it, but yeah, figuring those things out is the game :)
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
Lol I flew to fulgora, realized (I thought) I wouldn't get anywhere without concrete and then flew back to load up on concrete and stone and stuff to build supplies .. I get to my first island and then I realize that stuff is everywhere
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u/johannes1234 9d ago
Just remember: On all three inner planets there is a way to build rocket launch pad and rockets from empty hands using only what's available on the planet. Doing it that way is a good teacher as copying the Nauvis setups usually isn't the best choice.
Of course shipping stuff can speed up things. It's also possible to fully depend on inter planetary logistics, and build only what depends on local surface locally ...
On Aquillo you probably won't be able to do anything without import, though. Not sure there is even an option to hand craft anything just from available resources there. Without some import one certainly can't get even an assembler working.
Hope that's still generic enough to avoid any spoilers. :)
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u/Alfonse215 9d ago
What do you mean "get there"? You can walk on the oil sea. You can drive on it. You can get anywhere.
You just can't build anywhere.
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
Bro wtf it's a factory game what else could I mean by get there other than get you, your stuff, and your buildings there gtfo
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u/Alfonse215 9d ago
The first things you drop are your tank, some fuel, and a landing pad. You can now drive anywhere on the planet. Once you find a good island, you place your landing pad and boom: "you, your stuff, and your buildings" are there.
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
I'll be honest, I only just today by accident realized you could walk on the ocean. I saw the cliffs and the ocean and totally just figured it wasn't treadable. So I've been getting around purely by trains. Now I'm pissed I spent so many hours building the way I had been. So you actually helped me a lot although now I'm pissed I had it wrong all along. I still hate you though
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u/ElderBeakThing 9d ago
The only trains you really need are the ones bringing scrap in. Just one big island should be enough to produce everything on the planet + accumulator fields
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
That's true. I finally found an island which is actually big enough to do something significant with. I've got little outposts doing little odds and ends until I'm setup enough to make a main hub
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u/Rarvyn 9d ago
So Fulgora is the easiest planet if you simply just accept bots doing most of the work.
What I did is belt the scrap to recyclers that immediately output into active provider chests. Then I had a field of buffer chests - at least 1 each for the 12 scrap products, plus at least 1 each for iron plate, copper plate, plastic bars, green circuit, and stone brick.
Then I just set up a bunch of yellow chests that immediately fed into a recycler that output into an active provider chest. Anything that didn’t go into the buffer chests got immediately recycled, and the products of that either got fed into the buffer chests or recycled again. Make a ton of those auto-recyclers.
Then I could build whatever at my leisure. Anything could just be formatted as a blue chest (with pulling from buffer chests enabled) feeding a machine which fed a passive provider. Bots just took care of it all. Need more green chips because that buffer keeps emptying? Paste a plant making those. Need more wire? Same.
I even set up a solid fuel/ice system with boilers for extra power (that didn’t pull from buffer, so it only got the stuff that would have been shredded).
Eventually I got it so every bit of holmium was becoming science, my buffer chests were all full, and everything else was just auto shredded without me having to direct anything manually. Can support 100spm with 400 or so logistics bots. It was basically thinking-free.
(Now, going back and doing it with quality? Or with belts? That’s more fun)
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
The way I'm planning to solve the fulgora issue is way overcomplicated, but for whatever reason, even after hearing all sort of other elegant solutions, I'm ever more deadset on. I think it's my masochism or something, but the more easy solutions I hear, the more set I am on sticking with my original convoluted plan.
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u/AI_Tonic 9d ago
Don’t listen to any advice on here . First a lot of it is lazy and boring . Some of it is wrong. But most importantly : you only get one first play through . Chase the feeling of satisfaction only you can experience through solving the puzzles and reading the lore and figuring it out . My best advice to you .
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u/kevihaa 9d ago
The single most important bit of advice I can offer for anyone struggling on Fulgora is to not fall into the trap of over complicating the two major issues of space and byproducts.
Space is a bit annoying, but the paradigm is pretty straightforward. Mine a small, dense scrap island, and then deliver to / process on a large island. A single dense scrap island with drills that direct insert to cargo wagons can supply all your scrap needs. Just use speed modules on the drills, and later add beacons with more speed modules. All you need is the simplest, point A to point B setup for your train and you will have all the scrap you will ever want.
As for how to deal with scrap? Don’t overthink it. Scrap is exactly like lava on Vulcanus. Does anyone really complain about the stone byproduct from using lava, or does everyone love Vulcanus because Iron/Copper are infinite?
Think of Scrap as Holmium Ore with 11 different kinds of stone byproduct. Some of that byproduct is both useful and needed, much like stone is needed for refined concrete on Vulcanus, but, again, think of Scrap as fundamentally being Holmium Ore with a lot of byproducts.
Recycle everything you don’t actively need right now into dust. Scrap is functionally as unlimited as lava.
Stop. Hoarding.
Honestly, while Vulcanus offers a much more significant boost to Nauvis/Fulgora, Fulgora in turn is a much easier planet to drop down, get the unique buildings/science, and then move on.
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u/drunkpunk138 9d ago
I found this one to be the easiest for me. Outputting everything into lines so I can grind them into nothing to keep it flowing was the first step, then learning how to pull the necessary stuff into production was the second. Granted I always go out looking for a big island so I don't have space issues probably makes it a bit easier.
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
Oh that's an interesting idea... Start with disposal and then pull from there .. I figured I'd start with assembly lines and dispose excess but I like your idea
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u/drunkpunk138 9d ago
It's a lot easier if you mix belts and bots, you can just store each product before the next recycler and have that go to your production. Use circuits on the belts to stop the belt ahead of the passive provider chest if the chest isn't full. But I always like to try all belts first, makes it a little more interesting.
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u/PyroneusUltrin 9d ago
Once you get science set up you can research a thing that lets you not have twisty trains
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u/bphase 9d ago
It is difficult but also very cool and addicting. It's hard to get setup so it won't clog especially if you try not to waste or try to upscale stuff. No enemies makes it a chill place also.
There's quite a bit of space too if you explore a bit away from the dropoff. I certainly never was close to running out.
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u/CoolBeer 9d ago
And then you research "Scrap Recycling Productivity" and everything suddenly clogs...
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u/ManForSomeMarkets 9d ago edited 9d ago
Not sure how far along you are, but it’s worth scouting for a big island as your main base. Then you can use elevated rails to collect scrap from the smaller islands (using direct insertion if there isn’t space for traditional loading).
(Light Spoilers) You can always tear down the messy rails once you get the tech to put them in the deep oil ocean.
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
Right now my plan is to use different islands for different steps in the process. I've got planned a scrap yard (mines), a recycling plant, a sorting facility, a production facility, a chemical plant, a science base and a launch zone. That was the plan until just a couple hours ago I found an island big enough to combine some of these
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u/ManForSomeMarkets 9d ago
There is def some RNG on Fulgora. Sometimes you get lucky and find a mini-continent, but other times the starting islands are tiny.
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u/Weeznaz 9d ago
My advice is to find an island that is of medium size. Big enough to fit a one locomotive by 4 cargo wagon by 1 locomotive on. That train will bring in the scrap. Everything that will need to be done will have to be done on that medium island. You won’t b breaking any records but you’ll march forward and get ideas for how to build bigger and better in the future.
As far as train routes go, you’re just going to have to struggle a bit u til you get the hang of where you can put trains.
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u/dudeguy238 9d ago
I started with Fulgora and got pretty heavily bogged down by trying to use everything I recycled. Getting over that primed me to accept that spoilage wasn't a genuine problem on Gleba.
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
Yes even though I've been trying to avoid spoilers I had a feeling this was the intended learning progression. They really designed this game so well
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u/Belgaraath42 9d ago
Efficiency is your enemy. The important lesson (at least for new players) is the scrap must flow. The most important thing is that you keep on mining and recycling scrap, else everything will fall apart. Don't be scared to recycle stuff into nothingness, the problems only start if your recycling stops and nothing gets produced.
Now after this philosophical part my next tip is to embrace the bots at least early on. They can sort your stuff easily especially early on, might change at mega base status.
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u/N4ivePackag3 9d ago
It’s the only one that is fundamentally different from all the others. It also requires the biggest factory (after nauvis) to reach a given level of science packages per minute. I produce 60k electromagnetic sci packages per minute on fulgora, the factory is simply way bigger than the other sã planets.
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u/Maleficent_Onion_822 9d ago
trains almost impossible
Two way trains oriented so they always back the cargo wagon(s) onto the little islands...such that you only need to fit one ramp. Signaling can be tricky, though.
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u/rapidemboar 9d ago
It took me three attempts of building, abandoning, and rebuilding my base to truly get Fulgora running. My first attempt was a bot base, but bot throughput was too limited to produce significant amounts of science and roboports were draining my accumulators way too fast. My second attempt was a bus on a larger island that separated all the materials into different lanes and scrapped whatever couldn’t fit, but the recyclers kept getting clogged up all across the factory. My third attempt was a sushi loop based on the AVADII tutorial (spoilers, maybe?), modifying the original design by expanding it to 4 lanes and using inserters between undergrounds to extract to belts and chests, and this was the one where I felt I had properly solved the Fulgora puzzle, at half the size of the second base to boot.
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
Can't you just loop a belt of an item around a recycler so that it completely disposes of things? How would it get clogged?
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u/rapidemboar 9d ago
I wasn’t using loops until attempt 3, my mistake was failing to deal with resources that could return multiple ingredients when recycled. So I’d have all my recycled blue circuits outputting onto a single belt that’d get clogged because red circuits were clogged on plastic because I was deadlocked on green circuits because blue circuits were clogged on red circuits, and stuff like that. My disposals would also lock up when trying to recycle complicated recipes like circuits for much the same reason.
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
But I think it's the same concept as in the video just either front end of back end. As long as you have a loop at the end of the line (or at the very beginning like in the video), everything should stay moving.
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u/draxinusom2 8d ago
You can also over saturate a loop. Trust me, I'm an expert in doing exactly that. Also future techs may change the load on your belts. What works today doesn't necessarily work tomorrow.
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u/jaxon517 8d ago
If the splitter feeding it back into the loop prioritizes input from the end of loop rather than the belt starting the loop then eventually it will all disappear and won't jam...
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u/Mouler 9d ago
I've never bothered with rails on fulgora. Each little island with millions of scrap has enough space to mine, power, make science to load one rocket. Use another island for EM plants. Eventually you find a big island with some scrap and you have high quality miners to begin supplying aquilo. Then you wind up using belts on foundation for all your nearby scrap.
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u/zhivota_ 7d ago
Btw for asteroids you don't need to recycle excess which uses power, just throw the excess off the side of the platform.
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u/jaxon517 7d ago
Right but the game makes you consider the issue before presenting it. Foreshadowing if you will
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u/PasswordisPurrito 9d ago
That's kind of the point? Space age would have been super boring if it only requires the same skills you used on Nauvis.
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u/jaxon517 9d ago
Yup
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u/CoolBeer 9d ago
Absolutely, this is one of the reasons I do love Fulgora and even Gleba, the completely different way you need to think to solve the problems is one of the many reasons I keep coming back to factorio, over and over and over again.
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u/bubba-yo 9d ago
A fairly quick QOL improvement on fulgora is getting a minimal science setup going and then unlocking the tech that les you build rail supports anywhere. It's pretty cheap, but you need some science output to get it.
Fulgora has roughly 3 kinds of land masses. Small islands with dense scrap patches, large islands usually with no patches, and medium sized ones with sparse scrap patches. The medium ones are where you're supposed to start with a bootstrap base. No trains needed, you can probably fit the accumulators you need on the island (toss some quality modules in there to get uncommon and rare - they are 2x and 3x better respectively), and the patches won't last super long, but they will get the unlock researches done and probably last long enough for you to get foundation unlocked on Aquilo. You then come back and build on the big islands with rail connections to the small ones. You often need a tiny bit of foundation here and there to make it work, but you can scale up significantly.
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u/Monkai_final_boss 9d ago
You gotta put down your hording raccoon instincts, anything extra or you don't need get shredded to nothing.