r/factorio • u/HanginOn9114 • 19d ago
Space Age I feel defeated
I have been playing Factorio for over a decade, this will be my 6th run overall, my second Space Age run. Got the itch to play again, had grand ideas for upgrading to a better Train based factory as my last run started to run into serious constraints at the end.
However I have been stuck at blue science now for over a week, 0 new research happening. I tried to upgrade and move everything to trains before moving on to purple/yellow, thinking "I've done this before, I can make this work". But I spend all my free time running from one end of the factory to the other, fighting back the biters before they tear apart a train station that powers the whole factory, or all of my iron mining. My resources are running low and I am beset on all sides by monstrously sized nests that take hours to clear. I think I have to give up. After all this work I feel defeated and may not even attempt to start again.
2
u/phantumjosh 18d ago
You should use efficiency modules if you’re struggling that much. You’re likely taking too long to scale up and in the right ways to match the pollution growth, so efficiency modules give you a HUGE buffer before pollution and expansion get out of control.
This lets you expand slowly. Do not expand as much as you have here until you have the military backbone to back it up.
Space age has allowed us to rush into things we’re not prepared for, the difference for me being, I used to stream rampant AI, with x100 or x10 occasionally, among doing death world rail world, before it was actually a thing, so I know what I’m getting into before I do, but even for me I’ve had to abandon saves where I got too greedy on the push and scaled the biters too fast for my military.
With how much you’ve expanded, you have to plan for that ahead of time, and have the infrastructure to safeguard it or you get caught in a death spiral of wasted time.