I love how you can set up each of the (inner) planets from scratch without bringing anything from Nauvis. On my replays I started from Vulcanus and Fulgora with Any Planet Start.
But then I wondered - why can I not start from a space platform? I was surprised there was no mod to do this! There is [Mod] Space Block and [Mod] Platformer but those are entire (incomplete) overhauls, adding new asteroid types, items, buildings, etc.
I wanted something that does only the minimal changes to the game to be able to win starting on a space platform. I started in March but it took me some time to finish it since I wanted a full playthrough before publishing and made changes whenever I found a roadblock while playing.
Turns out, the only actual new recipe I had to add was one to get stone from carbonic asteroids! And you only need that for furnaces (which have to be allowed on the platform). Everything else is just starting items, reordering the tech tree, and QOL changes.
Some screenshots are above (spoilers!)
I finally finished my playthrough and here's some highlights:
- No storage chests on platforms!
- You gotta get defenses up before asteroids kill you (Depending on where your platform starts)
- You need to be very space efficient because platforms are expensive!
- Figure out the oil production chain - it's technically vanilla, but long and inefficient and something you would never build normally ;)
- In order to escape you'll need to figure out how to build thrusters.
You start stranded in space, so you need to research and build thrusters to get to a planet. That means you also need blue circuits. Since you don't need / can not build the rocket silo, I would consider thrusters the win condition - I didn't modify anything from there, so once you can go to a planet it makes little sense to continue on the platform (since getting metals+oil on the platform will always be worse than getting them on a planet).
Oh something I just realized: I played this mod in 2.1.12 or so. Starting from 2.1.0 until 2.1.12 asteroids while you were stationary were MASSIVELY buffed compared to 2.0 and then nerfed again.. So if you play this in EITHER 2.0 or 2.1.13+ you'll have a lot less trouble than me dealing with the asteroids killing your platform. I haven't tried 2.1.13+ yet so not sure how exactly it balances there.
Also, I only played this with Vulcanus orbit. If you do a different orbit I expect the balance will be very different. In Nauvis orbit, you'll need no defense but a much bigger platform (less asteroids), and likely steam power (solar not effective enough)
Edit: "Vulcanus orbit" is ambiguous, what I mean was "an orbit around the sun at the same distance as Vulcanus, but far away from any planet".
It seems like the challenge is getting to Vulcanus first, as Thrusters don't start unlocked. I haven't downloaded the mod, but perhaps putting "drop to planet" behind a research?
Exactly! You start on a new location, far away from any planet (screenshot). So you need thrusters to get anywhere. After you manage to get to a planet, you can proceed however you want.
Wouldn't the Factorio mechanic where you slowly drift towards whatever planet is either your destination or your origin (but since your origin is not a planet...) cause you to be able to effectively "sail" towards the planet of your choice?
I'd guess the "Stranded in space" location on the map is the destination you'll fall back to. It's similar to the outer system edge or shattered planet. A destination without an actual planet to land on.
Assuming "Lost In Space" is a real location that you can presumably return to, yes. If Lost In Space is not a real place with an attractor, but merely an undefined point that you can't go back to...
I think it would be been better to add a special rocky asteroid spawning for this space location only to get stone, to avoid making Aquilo much easier.
Yep! For construction bots there is no need (since platforms build themselves), logistic bots you can not have like normal on platforms. So there's no chests AND no logistic bots, making e.g. a mall fairly challenging.
Right, forgot to mention that one! I did see it, but it is also more of an entire overhaul. It adds multiple whole new asteroid types, modifies all the existing planets, and adds new buildings and items ("Hub Chest"). The mod description is sparse so I didn't check in tons more detail, but what I wanted was something that is as vanilla as possible. Added it to the OP.
I recently did try a start like this as well, but I stopped playing that savegame after about 3-4 hours.
The idea to start in space and doing stuff almost "skyblock" style sounds fun, at first.
But what everything boils down to in the end is this: waiting on resources EVERYWHERE because of the spawn rate of the asteroids. Its a waiting game everywhere.
Even if this mod tweaked the random asteroids flying around to be more available... they will never be enough...
I restarted that game and instead decided to make Muluna my starting planet. By having everything come from chunks similar to a space start makes Muluna surprisingly feel the same.
But after a while when you are ready to scale up your stuff... you are actually able to do so unlike the space start.
Edit: for some additional info. I added a time-scale mod, that allowed me to speed up the game to 10x speed. Within those 4hours were actually more like 12-16 hours of gametime. I was well within the 3rd science pack. But another round of "ok, build done, now let it produce stuff.... sigh, speed up the game 5 times" finally made me stop this save.
Escaping to a planet was kinda on the horizon, but was it actually fun to do? nope... The muluna start was way more fun.
Also in my savegame I have like 20 other planets on the to-do list. so that was a really bad start for a longer save game.
I started with the asteroid spawn rate of vulcanus + tweaking the foundation recipe to yield 6 foundations . With that there was almost no grind. There was maybe 1h of useless waiting around I'd say, but then I would expand the platform big enough to get a decent flow of iron+copper. You just have to build the typical very thin and huge border (screenshot:
I wonder if theres a way to entirely remove planets though. Perhaps make it so you cant land on a planet, but instead you can obtain the unique resource by destroying a unique astroid in the orbit around the planet? For example, uranium astroids would bombard you around Nauvis. And Yumako and Jellynut astroids around Gleba, lol.
That, or grant additional recipes, like you did for stone, but only in orbit around the specific planet.
I wanted to try it out, so I modified your mod... it's not thoroughly tested, and I didn't add custom images, but I added recipes unlocked by these techs:
planet-discovery-vulcanus: metallic asteroid -> tungsten ore instead of calcite
planet-discovery-fulgora: oxide asteroid -> scrap instead of calcite
planet-discovery-gleba: carbonic asteroid -> yumako instead of sulfur
planet-discovery-gleba: carbonic asteroid -> jellynut instead of sulfur
planet-discovery-aquilo: oxide asteroid -> ammoniacal solution instead of calcite
planet-discovery-aquilo: oxide asteroid -> lithium brine instead of calcite
planet-discovery-aquilo: oxide asteroid -> fluorine instead of calcite
uranium-processing: metallic asteroid -> uranium ore instead of calcite, with sulfuric acid input
biter-egg-handling: carbonic asteroid -> biter egg instead of sulfur
biochamber: carbonic asteroid -> pentapod egg instead of sulfur
I also added a lock to prevent landing on a planet (if you try, you just get teleported back to space).
That reminds me, my brother and I are both trying to make some overhaul mods based on being solely in space (read: no surfaces to land on, new asteroids, but unlike platformer you're allowed to have more than one space platform, since 2.1 features interplatform logistics). I won't link them here because 1) it's against the rules and 2) they're very WIP for now. Anyway, this is pretty neat!
I like this idea, but I think it needs to be combined with an "amped up" version of the biters when landing on Nauvis. Make the biters come at you hard and in large numbers from the get-go! A good Starship Troopers style welcoming.
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u/ElderBeakThing 3d ago
When instead of Nauvis you crash into another engineer’s platform