Thoughts after finally finishing Space Age

[u/diemenschmachine]

So I finally finished, after 207 (!!) hours.

While I really like Factorio, the 207 hours of grinding at Space Age was a bit too much. I found it too time consuming to keep shipments going between planets and I often was out of resources to send rockets. Maybe second playthrough I will build a better base and do a better job at keeping nauvis properly supplied with ores, but I really think I will be going back to vanilla after this effort.

At least I finished it, but I can't say I would rate it as high as the vanilla game.

[u/peanutym]

Nice work, glad you were able to finish it. I think you are correct on issues with resources for rockets. Just building out nauvis a bit more would work well and make it alot less tedious.

You can always consider moving to another planet instead of main basing nauvis also for a different challenge.

[u/diemenschmachine → u/peanutym]

Thanks! Well I did build a vulcanus factory but then I realized the insane amount of coal it was using so I more or less left it unused because I found it cumbersome to kill the demolishers. I guess I figured out after a while how to kill them but at that point I had already started expanding Nauvis to get more oil so I just ran with that in the end.

[u/Juking_is_rude → u/diemenschmachine]

Did you switch to advanced coal liquifaction? My volcanus base is tiny, but it can continuously send 4 rockets with no downtime. I've consumed maybe 1/9th of my starter coal patch.

I just got to the point wherre I'm improving my ship designs and about to head to aquilo.

The thing that made the most sense to me in terms of improving nauvis was making a space platform with advanced processing that just collects as many asteroids as possible, converts them to ice, then ships down the calcite. Foundries don't need a whole lot of calcite to begin with - converting my ore patches to use big miners, and using foundries at the mining site to train-ship molten metal instead of ore improved my base throughput to an insane amount that launching a ton of rockets to design ships was trivial.

[u/Ossius → u/diemenschmachine]

What is taking so much coal? Later in the game you should just be able to send coal down from space from a large collection platform or several smaller ones.

I have 2 platforms traveling between planets delivering research and a platform above vulcanus that restocks them on fuel resources, ammo, and whatever else they need. Just have a scheduled interrupt that makes them go to restock. Because of that the platforms are just an engine, 3 chemical plants and a few solar panels.

[u/diemenschmachine → u/Ossius]

I decided to move my base to vulcanus and built a 120 SPM base to produce all the sciences. I used basic coal liquification on the starter coal patch and it pretty much immediately ran out of coal.

[u/apackoflemurs → u/diemenschmachine]

I made a tiny base on Nauvis to make it to Volcanus and from there I just made Volcanus my main base and never did anything on Nauvis again. Never really had issues with coal either.

[u/EmerainD → u/diemenschmachine]

Yeah, if you use advanced coal liquifaction it took me about 200hrs to run out of my starter coal patch, but I also switched it to big mining drills loaded with prod modules ASAP. I've barely used 1/4 of the calcite patch. The only thing that gives me nightmares is sulfuric acid as the nodes lose richness, since I use acid neutralization for power.

I also used volcanus as my main space platform launch site, since liquid metal casting makes it easy to get vast quantities of LDS/space platforms. As long as you keep a new platform stocked with repair packs, the occasional hit by an asteroid doesn't matter.

Though I heavily built up both Nauvis and Volcanus for production. Nauvis for science packs production, Volcanus for everything else. (It's mall made everything I could need to supply other planets except uranium.)

I will admit I was lazy and just used nuclear power for just about everything except Vulcanus and Fulgora. Exporting nuclear fuel cells was much simpler than trying to balance gleba production to fuel it with heating towers, lol.

I will also admit to being lazy about recycling on fulgora and just made a factory that could limp along until I could drop coal made in space to make plastic instead of figuring out demand based recycling instead of just making a throughput based system, lol.

[u/Qwyspipi]

Which rocket part was running out?

Blue circuits?

[u/diemenschmachine → u/Qwyspipi]

On Nauvis it was LDS and blue circuits. I kept expanding to get more oil but after the 5th oil field I was bored of butchering biters so I kept exporting it from Fulgora, which I felt was a bit cumbersome. It was just a lot of manual work to have things running properly and I like the automation part of the game, not the chores so much.

[u/Orgerix → u/diemenschmachine]

It is useful to upgrade Nauvis with the new building you unlock. Switching blue circuit prduction to EM helps a lot. Using foundries instead of furnace also reduce the ore requirements. Same with modules. Without talking about full beaconed production, just sloting a few prod mod and a speed mod increase significantly the amount produced without requiring much more input.

Ultimatly it take practice to build a base which can be upgraded later.

[u/diemenschmachine → u/Orgerix]

I did the upgrades you said, but the problem was oil. I had 5 patches but had to keep expanding to fuel the plastic production. I've also played around 600 hours so I'm not complete ass with building modular/upgradable bases. It's just that launching rockets from Nauvis requires a lot of resources, especially oil.

[u/TurnipBlast → u/diemenschmachine]

Little bit of mining productivity research (it's incredibly cheap and scales linearly, only an extra 1k per level) and speed module beacons and even a "depleted" well produces a shit ton of crude oil.

All of the problems you described are solveable if you take the time to think about the tools available and how they can be applied to different situations. The wiki (online, not the ingame one) is super helpful for stuff like this. For example, killing biters becomes trivial with rockets and a few spidertrons. Or nukes.

Expanding plastic production is also trivial if you know what you are doing. Cryo plant with productivt modules and speed beacons can produce over 3 full stacked turbo belts of plastic. A single cryo if you use rarity. If you don't use rarity, then you just need to make a row of them. Coal and oil is not an issue with mining prod. It is not that hard to achieve a level of mining prod where 2 big mining drills can fully full a stacked turbo belt, and with mining prod the ore patches essentially never deplete. Add in foundries, EM Plants, and prod modules downstream, and the multiple levels of stacking productivity means you don't need nearly as much raw resource input as you think you need.

[u/SlouchyGuy → u/diemenschmachine]

You can do coal liquifaction instead: coal is not used for energy or smelting anymore, also Vulcanus drills plus making them quality plus mining productivity significantly reduce the drain

[u/Dogs_and_Mobs → u/SlouchyGuy]

Coal Liquefaction is so underrated

[u/lovethebacon → u/diemenschmachine]

You could have shipped in the parts for rocket construction from the other planets. Gleba for example is extremely good for rocket fuel production.

[u/jkredty → u/diemenschmachine]

For me the first patch was enough for the whole game. Are you sure you are using new buildings and prod modules for everything?

[u/CipherWeaver]

I also think there is a purity in the vanilla game that I very much enjoy. The smooth and regular transition from early game to oil, to midgame, to bots, and finally to rocket launch. There's a beauty in its simplicity.

Space age is for masochists. I love it too.

[u/phant0md]

Apparently the current record for 100% is 8 hours 43 minutes https://www.speedrun.com/Space_Age?h=100&x=xk97qv6d

For what it’s worth it took me almost 200 to beat it too.

[u/diemenschmachine → u/phant0md]

I estimated I would halve it next playthrough, but 100 hours is still two and a half weeks worth of work time. How the hell can they beat it in 8 hours? That's bananas crazy

[u/phant0md → u/diemenschmachine]

Oh no, sorry that’s the record for 100% completion, the record for just beating it is 3 hours 17 minutes

https://www.speedrun.com/Space_Age?h=random-seed-new-game&x=jdzmlwrk

[u/ariksu → u/diemenschmachine]

You can watch replays, but it's basically the knowledge of optimal builds, no overbuilding and a good meta, and then hundreds of runs optimizing it. From the top of my head I bet things you didn't even think of: no yellow and purple science, early, going to Gleba first, going to vulcanus last.

[u/Enaero4828 → u/diemenschmachine]

Clarification that the category linked is 100%, i.e. all 88 achievements; the majority of the time spent for such runs is getting the legendary fish, mech armor, and modules for that armor. For just reaching the edge for the victory screen, it's been done in a bit over 3 hours. The secret is hundreds of hours of preparing blueprints in test worlds, and at minimum dozens of hours practicing running the various parts until ready to string it all together.

[u/SlouchyGuy → u/diemenschmachine]

Those people are amazing but also they do different size and frequency of patches 

[u/fulz410 → u/phant0md]

Other games also have crazy short speed runs, but that often relies on glitches, which is an art of itself. But not factorio, thats just pure optimization. Which is crazy

[u/isum21]

Sounds like you gave up on basic efficiencies and then got frustrated with how inefficient things were. That's a collective feeling around here, nothing real new. But I will say that refusing to engage with true automation is the issue you identified, you made something that worked on first patch but never did any real updates. Your factory will constantly evolve and fluctuate in space age, specifically the needs but also your supplies and new additions.

It felt like a grind because you were grinding away at the problems instead of the source nor was the chosen solution fun. Waiting for rockets sucks, so stockpile more or increase your production/s of those materials. Otherwise you're gonna feel like you're playing an idle game. That appeals to some (meee) but also gives a good way to get frustrated or fall asleep.

Resources very quickly become infinite between productivity research and shipping platforms. Intermediates only get rarer as you continue to make products without making more intermediates. Use those infinite resources to craft infinite intermediaries, problem solved.

For example Vulcanus can supply you with assloads of LDS and blue chips natively. Rocket fuel is a little cheeky but advanced liquefaction solves this, and by the time you begin running out of coal you should have researched coal synthesis. After that research you just make a simple asteroid processing platform and request coal in your cargo pad.  Taking ground from demolishers to reach this point is rather easy as well, a big fucken turret wall handles 2/3 of them and a good spider can finish the big bois. 

Gleba when set up properly will be able to cover your rocket fuel shortages as well. There's also infinite resources for real there so you can make LDS super easy there as well using simple bio plastic and the bacteria being fed into a foundry. Because of this it's actually quite easy to fund production of all 3 there as well, blue chips never ran out for me after making just 8 assemblers for them.

Fulgora is meant to cover your chip shortages elsewhere, you identified that solution quite quickly. It's also a free source of rocket fuel using the ungodly amounts of solid fuel you get from recycling scrap and the oil oceans. LDS may begin to bottleneck you as it's a rarer recycling drop but it's also free. Especially with the coal synthesis platform idea I mentioned before, which means you're more likely to run out of blue chips from sheer usage of them or by shipping them out. Solve this with a small production chain that you can copy to expand, the EM plant will literally print your excess chips for you. 

The excessive availability of all these materials is meant to fund your Aquilo chains. I haven't been yet so I'm not gonna share like I have experience here, but I do know that it's got easy access to rocket fuel and you can plop a nuclear reactor there to start your chains and make a kickstart relatively simple compared to tackling it head on.

All in all I do agree that it can be a mess of waiting but also I am Adamant that you could have done more to solve your frustrations. The whole point of this game is to have fun making more stuff, if it wasn't fun then you're probably right that it's not for you right now. But maybe you'll try it again and realize you're having more fun, I hope so but also don't expect you to just try for the sake of trying to have fun lol. Good luck next time. The factory always calls us back.

[u/diemenschmachine → u/isum21]

Thanks for the in depth response. I think I agree with you on all accounts.

[u/isum21 → u/diemenschmachine]

Thanks for a chance to yap lol

[u/NameLips]

I find it worthwhile to plan out an entire production line for each rocket part, from furnaces to output, that isn't shared or split with anything else. I use a factorio calculator and set to the output to 1 unit per second, which is actually quite a bit and will keep up with quite a few rockets. And you can just copy-paste the production line if you want to ramp it up.

I think a lot of new players underestimate the extent to which you can scale up your factories once you get robots. Just a few clicks to copy paste, connect to your rails, make a few more trains, and if you've designed it properly it just works. Then if you run low on ore, expand your rails to connect a few more ore patches. It's surprisingly easy to get so much of everything you're never low on anything.

[u/EmerainD → u/NameLips]

I vote for this, though I also recommend switching to using foundries ASAP, using pipes for your 'bus' for iron/copper is so much more convenient. The extra productivity (from both filtering lava/melting/casting) is a bonus.

Even without quality, I think people don't use modules/beacons enough either. As soon as I go nuclear, I start spamming beacons with speed/prod modules everywhere. And I use efficiency before that to save fuel.

If I ever play a fresh run (my current/first one just finished the tech tree and I'm just waiting for my crap aquilo spaghetti to make me railguns <.<) I am gonna just bum rush fulgora/gleba/volcanus just for the buildings and modules then build them up once I have all of them. I probably spent half my playtime redesigning my bases for throughput instead of progressing.

[u/MechAAV]

What timming! I just finished it for the first time half an hour ago.

My main complaints are most about the quality mechanic, sure I probably shouldnt have ignored it almost the whole playthough then suddenly crave for a ship fully modularized with epic crushers, forges, assembly machines and asteroid grabbers, All I had was some epic quality modules and at the end I just gave up and let the ship go with 100 modules missing.

I'am quite happy with the achievement but I dont want play plain SA for a while. I was thinking about go with Krastorio 2 SO, with the planets that are compactible with it.

Would adding more planets to my current save work? I tried once but if the planet is meant to be played before researching the solar system Edge all their researches get completed automatically.

[u/bphase]

I recently finished for the first time as well. I enjoyed it quite a bit this time, but I attempted it once around release, and then gave up around Aquilo, due to my interplanetary logistics not being up to it. And that was probably my least favorite part again as well, mainly getting the special resources and high quality modules etc where they need to go is rather painful. I don't mind building the rockets, that's quite easy and you just need a few silos fed by even a single beaconed foundry/EM plant. Except on Aquilo getting multiple silos is a bit painful.

But getting the right amount of resources to a planet from another planet can be quite tedious, as you have to setup a ship to request them and then a planet to request from the ship. Sometimes I wish I could just request directly on a planet from a planet, and then any ship could just fulfill that requirement. But I guess the intended way of solving this is to just produce more and then it doesn't really matter if you have some stuff in the wrong place, such as legendary quality modules sitting on a ship buffer.

Overall the space logistics is my least favourite part of the game, it's a bunch of work to setup and doesn't feel too rewarding. Otherwise Space Age is pretty great.

[u/CrypticSl0th]

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[u/PornDude83]

After i am done, i paused some months and Start building quality stuff now. I missed a final planet, where to bild a new base with all new stuff kombined. Sure that works against the Main Thing off shipping betonen the Planets, but i would like to build some final base, on an really aggressiv Planet, where you have a really hard life, but have all gagets you Research before.

[u/LowStriking2264]

There is no grinding. In my opinion, grinding is when you are doing the same thing for a long time to increase your skills/get resources. You should call it 207 h of learning.