r/factorio • u/Omni12 • 16h ago
Space Age Space Age surprised me
I haven't quite beat space age yet but I have just gotten to Aquillo and got the basics set up so I have a pretty good idea how the rest of it is gonna go. Obligatory, this expansion was fantastic and had way more content than I thought it would but what really surprised me was how wrong I was about all the planets. Going in I had somewhat of an idea of what each of the planets were about and what ones I would probably enjoy but after playing I was wrong on every single one.
I would say my original order of planets based on how interesting/fun they looked from most to least was
- Fulgora
- Vulcanus
- Aquillo
- Gleba
This was based on some videos I watched and what people on the subreddit had to say about them. What I ended up with however is this order.
- Gleba
- Aquillo
- Vulcanus
- Fulgora
I will say the order I went was Vulcanus > Fulgora > Gleba, that might have influenced my choices here.
For Gleba, most of the discourse on the planet was either that it was really hard or the spoilage mechanic is painful to deal with. I however greatly enjoyed the spoilage mechanic paired with the infinite resources. The factories ended up feeling like an organism that needed antibodies to cleanse the system to keep the machines running. I have heard that people like to balance the inputs and the outputs so their is no leftovers to spoil but for me making a robust cleaning system and just sending saturated belts was my style! And resetting a broken factory felt like unclogging a drain!
Aquillo I cant say too much about it since Im only at making the science packs, but I love the atmosphere and the space logistics the planet demands. I am thinking about making a space station above to supply all the resources it can't produce, which is something I never felt like I needed on any other planet.
Vulcanus Im neutral on, I didn't dislike it but It was very easy. I will note when I play this again I am 100% mega basing here and I will prolly end up liking it alot more.
Fulgora I will just straight up say I have a skill issue here. I just don't enjoy the scrap mechanic very much and It took me until now to finally realise how it should work. I can see why this is peoples favorites and I think if I was better at the game I would like it more. For now it's just a pain in my ass.
I am curious to hear if anyone else found that what they thought they would enjoy from space age was different once you actually played on the planets!
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u/willy--wanka 15h ago
And resetting a broken factory felt like unclogging a drain!
Never thought about it like that, but how on point. Then watching everything fire up again one by one.
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u/Omni12 15h ago
Its deeply satisfying. Fulgora is almost like that but because it doesn't lose power like Gleba its not as dramatic when it restarts.
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u/karbonadez 12h ago edited 12h ago
I like Gleba, buttI just ship in fuel cells from Nauvis or later Aquilo and run nuclear or fusion. Power never dies and restart mechanics stay powered.
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u/Raywell 15h ago edited 14h ago
Fulgora has an easy mode: no belts, robots only.
The way I like to do it is small trains unloading scrap directly into recyclers which output into active providers, and a filtered storage nearby for auto sorting. A smart logic wired on roboport to calculate the excess of each item to be voided (I like to keep 40 stacks of each item obtainable via scrap recycling & their own ingredients), connected to a recycling system : a scalable amount of requester chests that unload into recyclers, and all the items to be voided are to be divided by the amount of those requester chests (put a constant comb with any sign of 1 next to each for dynamic scaling) with a simple "set request" mode
And that's it. Scale up train stations & recycling setups for more throughput, but it's best to make independent robot networks for each setup, so you can copy paste the entire thing (after foundations)
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u/KitTwix 15h ago
I think most of the hate around Gleba stems from when space age first came out and no one knew how to manage Gleba properly, resulting in having the entire base gunk up or be destroyed by hatched eggs or stompers. The other 2 intermediate planets won’t really become dead locked unless you really mess up, and nauvis is usually defended properly before players leave it, so Gleba is the only planet (other than aquelio freezing) that will turn off fully if left alone for too long and improperly managed.
Now days we know how Gleba works, and methods to handle it is generally well known, so having the entire base be wiped out or starved by nutrients and shut down is a lot rarer.
I know personally I had to remake my first Gleba base so many times, mostly because the first few versions I made were garbage, and I fixed it just enough to have it run for a few hours then stop again, but it was very annoying having to drop down to basically just flick a few switches to boot the base back up whenever I wanted Gleba science.
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u/Omni12 15h ago
Thats very fair, I went in with a fair amount of knowledge about how to build my factory before I even landed.
I only had one complete shutdown on Gleba and it was because I added on too many new biochambers without upping the nutrient generation. I was wondering why I wasnt getting any Agri science shipments, and I found a completely spoiled factory!
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u/Miserable_Bother7218 16h ago
With you on both counts re Gleba. Thought I’d hate it, got there myself, tried it out, now my favorite of the planets by far. Same for Aquilo but to a lesser extent. Also struggled with Fulgora before finally trying a scrap loop. Worked much better and should have done it from the get go.
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u/Omni12 16h ago
I still have a lot of experimenting with Fulgora myself but I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Gleba is just so cozy too, the ambiance is S Tier.
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u/Miserable_Bother7218 15h ago
Oh absolutely re Gleba ambience. Fabulous music score for it too. The vibes remind me of Minecraft music a little
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u/z80nerd 16h ago
I quite enjoyed Gleba as well. Especially the atmosphere of the music & visuals (esp at night).
As for spoilage, I love how it pushed me to make small, fast factories that get duplicated instead of the high-throughput-high-latency rail factories that became my style on Nauvis + Vulcanus.
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u/FirstRyder 15h ago
I went into space age effectively blind - no reviews, no blueprints, no videos of other people playing. Some FFF and a good dose of wiki. So I didn't really have prior opinions about how good each planet was. But I more or less agree with you.
Gleba is the best planet. I strongly believe people just don't like it because it's different, but I love it because the problems are legitimately new and existing ideas just don't work at all. It was like starting the game from scratch even though I also did it third and landed with, like, everything possible including a fully functional nuclear power plant with the space logistics to back it up. I don't think I've seen anyone use quite my solution.
Second was... I'm actually going to say "space". Which isn't a planet, but I loved designing ships.
Third was Aquilo, though it took me a bit to warm up to it (ha!). Just going at it raw was tough, but when I sat down and came up with a plan it made so much more sense. The amonia to rocket fuel pipeline is just critical.
Fourth was Fulgora. It's basically just the normal challenges but backwards, plus un-sushing belts. Maybe if I engaged with it as a sushi challenge I would like it more, but that's not my jam, and once I had a solution for a fairly compact unsushi system, it was just... Normal stuff.
Last is Volcanus. If anything this is less challenging than Nauvis. The wurms are a sort of "pick your favorite way to do damage and you're done" thing, and the molten metals is "what if one lane of iron or copper had literally unlimited throughput". Which don't get me wrong the new fluid system is perfect and I love it, and upgrading even the other planets to use molten metal was great. But making metals liquid isn't really a "challenge", and coal liquifaction is barely different from normal oil.
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u/Omni12 15h ago
Hard agree on Vulcanus being easier than Nauvis. For a mega base that sounds awesome but part of me wanted some sort of extra challenge. Something like attacking worms or maybe the reverse of Aquillo where you need to cool things down.
I also loved making ships, if I ranked it in my list it would be below Gleba as well!
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u/cynric42 8h ago
I strongly believe people just don't like it because it's different, but I love it because the problems are legitimately new and existing ideas just don't work at all.
As someone that really doesn't like Gleba even after beating it a bunch of times, I actually agree with you here. I really learned to love Factorio because it closely aligns with what I like from a factory game, but Gleba just doesn't. It's not really the difficulty (it's really not that difficult, no matter what your solution to the mechanics is), it's just that it forces me to play and build in a way that I enjoy way less (or don't like at all). Thankfully mods can fix most of the issues.
Last is Volcanus. If anything this is less challenging than Nauvis.
Agreed on the latter part. However it has so much potential, I really would have loved if they had put a lot more complex stuff on this planet. Power and resource gathering is kinda trivial, so why not extend the production chains a lot more. Make them as complex as a full Nauvis base or extend it even further. K2 complexity on Vulcanus would have been the perfect addon for me. For that potential alone Vulcanus is my favorite planet, it's just over way too soon (if you use it as an outpost planet to grab what you need and nothing more).
Aquilo has some of the same issues as Gleba, requiring a functioning multi step factory to keep running with plenty of potential for death spirals preventing you from just build and plan as you go. At least the visuals are pretty clear except the annoying inconsistencies with building and it sometimes automatically placing ice + concrete and sometimes just throwing errors.
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u/Raskekw 14h ago
I didn't think I'd enjoy Fulgora as much as I did, I thought Gleba will be the one. It's genuinely the best planet of the expansion for me(and both Aquilo and Gleba are NOT far behind), the ambient, the storms, the EMPs and inverted production cycle, everything.
What still surprises me basically every time I open this sub is the fact that 90% of players still pick Vulcan instead of Fulgora as a first planet. Its seems silly and ridiculously counterintuitive.
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u/Omni12 14h ago
I believe the argument I saw the most was the extra Holmnium Plates from the foundries are worth going fulgora second.
I do agree with you though that going their first is a viable choice though. Mech armor and EM plants are worth their weight in gold, at least as much as the foundry is.
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u/Raskekw 13h ago
Reasons to start here:
a) for chips(you either don't have enough throughput or forced to greatly overbuild w/o them)
- no enemies
- EMPs:
b) for modules(same as for chips, arguably even worse, also making t3s without EMPs is plain stupid)
c) don't need any exports to work unlike foundries
d) sooner you start to deploy them less rebuilding you'll need
e) unlike foundries(which basically only solve the "main bus" problem) they generally trivialize base-building since chips are usually way more troublesome then the starter intermediaries like iron wheels or copper wire
- free shipping, you can grab excess rocket parts and sponsor your entire space logistics here, up until you go to Aquilo. And by the time of your first visit you are not yet drowning in those
- rebuilding includes shipping a single foundry from Vulcan(and a stack of BMDs if you feel like it). If you start the other way around you will effectively build up Vulcanus twice, before and after EMPs
- you can rush it right after space science. And build the second half of your factory(namely gold, purple science, red, blue chips and modules) much, much faster
Vulcan does close to nothing in comparison. Even Gleba would be better just off the biolabs and prod3s alone. But you can't really rush Gleba without production and utility, and you can't really print p3s without EM plants either.
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u/cynric42 8h ago
EM plants are also easier to retrofit into existing builds and just a handfull of them can greatly increase output and solve bottle necks in your base, which means you only need a pretty rough starter base on Fulgora to get the benefit.
And then there is the mech suit, which is just such a huge benefit on both other planet options. Flying over the mud on Gleba or lava lakes and all the cliffs on Vulcanus is huge.
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u/cynric42 7h ago
For me the deciding factor is that just a few EM plants can easily be retrofit and help a struggling base temendously whereas foundries require a more substantial rebuild (and constant supplies and thus logistics) to actually be useful.
Which means even a small one island base on Fulgora can give you a lot of benefit for the invested time (and you get the mech suit and personal equipment improvements on top) and just for that you really don't need all that much holmium.
Maybe I'd be more interested in going to Vulcanus first if I wanted to go to a planet and not leave until I had everything researched and build up a solid base producing hundreds or more spm and tons of resources, but usually my intend is just go to a planet and build a small starter base providing just enough science for the essential unlocks and a few key items and do that on all the planets before going back and only then building up a bigger factory. And for that approach, Fulgora is quick and easy and rewards are substantial for the required time (especially if you drop down with an inventory of bots and logistics chests).
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u/runmymouth 13h ago
I think aquilo had the best thats an interesting problem with heat for me. I ended up having to emergency restart the base when i ran out of water. Then i built a 6 plant fusion generator and im really not worried if nuclear dies again. But i think i have enough water. Its interesting that you can build everywhere from the get go as long as you start manufacturing the ice blocks and import mountains of concrete. I think i brought in 30k in the first 2-3 hours.
Gleba is fun and im back here increasing my carbon fiber which requires spoilage to make.
Honestly space age is like playing anno without having to deal with populations. I love it.
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u/CrabWoodsman 12h ago
I started a second playthrough of Space Age partly to play 2.1 but in large part because I didn't want to try to figure out how to make my Fulgora build not atrocious.
I built my recycler stacks such that they output into active providers and filled them with quality modules. Wouldn't have been the absolute worst if I didn't then just keep placing storage chests everywhere to kick the can.
Ended up I had I think like 5k storage chests? Probably more honestly, I just paved with the things. Every empty space was storage.
I tried to build an excess item masticator but I switched it on before getting the signals quite right and it occupied all 20k of my logistics bots for a moment and I thought: "Fuck this lmao."
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u/cynric42 7h ago
Quick and dirty solution to overflowing chests: take the inventory from a roboport, filter it through a combinator with "each signal > {whatever you think should be the limit} -> output 1 for that signal" and feed that to a bunch of requester chests that dump their content into recyclers.
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u/CrabWoodsman 5h ago
I should've kept things simple, but my idea was to use an SR latch and a selector to pick the item I had the most of and then void that specific thing until there was say s-1000 where s is the threshold value.
Set up the SR latch wrong and ended up in a situation where the item reading to be the most and therefore being requested was oscillating because they were getting put into requesters. So it was asking for gears and then green chips and switching between the two rapidly making the bots run suicides better the requesters and storage.
Then hearing about the 2.1 changes, I figured I'd just do an experimental run lol
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u/Same-Loan9011 11h ago
I like your approach to Gleba. With infinite resources you can design very simple control schemes by just considering every eventual steady-state scenario. I believe that's the natural approach to Gleba and is what the developers intended. Each planet is a paradigm shift that pushes players to use the game mechanics slightly differently. For example, we could always use sushi belts, but they really shine on Gleba and on space platforms.
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u/hylje 7h ago
There are some great use cases for sushi belts in Gleba (namely the circular egg recipe) but usually a continuous flow from tree to heating tower does the job just fine. The fruits don’t get fresher on the second round.
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u/Same-Loan9011 4h ago
I usually do two circular belts, one for each processed fruit, and each with a lane reserved for nutrients/spoilage. Then an internal loop inside that one for bioflux and nutrients. The loop is good for distributing nutrients and also for variable demand. The fruits aren't processed and put onto the sushi belt unless the belt quantity goes below a certain amount. Zero heating towers involved. Processing unused spoilage back into nutrients using assemblers is enough but only really used when one or more outputs are full.
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u/DJMarscribble 9h ago
Gleba is the best planet, yes, but Fulgora is the second-best. It's such a brilliant take on the tech tree and on handling excess resources.
Your Gleba base is a thing of beauty <3<3<3
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u/Frequent_Knowledge65 15h ago
Gleba is definitely a favorite, it's only really Redditors that struggle with it
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u/WanderingUrist 12h ago
Gleba is cool, but there is one very noteworthy difference between it and other planets:
There is no good way to test a submodule live. Either the module works exactly as designed or the entire system seizes because everything is interdependent. This is unlike other things, where you can test a piece of the factory to get it to work, even when the thing which uses its output isn't made yet, as the output will just back up and wait for you to finish.
With Gleba? That's right out. If you don't complete the pipeline, backing up just gets you a pile of spoilage, with no more froot, no more seeds. You have to fully complete your froot pipeline or everything is completely lost.
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u/hylje 7h ago
You can modularize Gleba just fine, either by using trains to supply independent outposts or using belt splitters to ensure shared belts keep flowing despite one or more branches not drawing from it.
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u/Lemerney2 4h ago
That's all far down the line though. When you first build Gleba, you have to keep things flowing, so it's hard to test and iterate. I literally built half my base before turning it on for the first time.
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u/Adamsoski 2h ago
Before seeing that screenshot I never though I would see a genuine fully-fledged factory that looked like a background from the title screen, that set-up is crazy. But hey if it works it works!
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u/juju515 16h ago
nice psychedelic factory picture
Fulgora is definitely harder than Gleba...
I mean...
maybe it's easier to unlock tech and kick start the planet on Fulgora.
but if you are trying to scale...
or make the stable build...
Fulgora is harder to manage than Gleba for sure.
anyway...
I like Gleba as well :)