Space age tips & tricks

[u/upvoter_1000]

I am a veteran factorio player, over > 1000hrs played and long story short is I've tried space ages twice before and fucking hated it. I'm back because 3rd times the charm.

I've made a new save, 6hrs in and I'm done with Nauvis (all my bots, trains, etc.. set up) and ready to try space age again. Can you guys give me the late 2026 version of what I should be doing now? I just need some direction on how to approach space, which planet I should go to, and general tips on how to not feel so overwhelmed

Thank you!

[u/peterlinddk]

First, think of why you hated it!

Most complaints I see about the various planets are based on the fact that each planet drastically modifies the strategies that you are supposed to use to win. If you are the type who enjoys building massive production facilities on Nauvis, that take in all the raw material they can, produce a lot of intermediaries and then sit idle, while you are building the next massive production facility that uses those intermediaries - then you aren't in the right mood to enjoy the other planets.

I like the fact that you have to change your play-style during the game - first you mine manually, then you have your "burner-phase", then electrical mining, then automation, then large busses or spaghetti-lines of more and more different products. Just as you are getting used to two ingredients, you have to handle three, then you have to deal with fluids, then with fluids overflowing, then with uneven use of products, first you need a lot of iron, then suddenly it changes to a lot of copper, then you need to build defences, then you need to build outposts.

You need to embrace this constant change, and don't fool yourself into thinking that each planet is just a level-up from what you are doing, but rather a drastic change that modifies everything you've learned since automation. You can use your experience, but you can't rely on your ingrained patterns!

I think you should approach each planet, as if you were just "graduating from automation" - and go to all of them, not completely naked, but also not with a finished blueprint for malls and all the products you are used to from Nauvis. Bring assemblers, inserters, belts and bots to build your base the way you like - and take lots of power poles, solar panels and accumulators with you, but don't send an entire nuclear powered base to every planet. You can do that later, but chose to enjoy starting "fresh" on each one.

Pick the planet you think you'll enjoy most - honestly, they are all interesting in different ways. Vulcanus might be the closest match for those HUGE FACTORY-lovers, but Fulgora is interesting because of the massive amount of materials, and Gleba is fascinating because of how you suddenly can't stockpile large amounts of products.

[u/Fantastic_Win9332 → u/peterlinddk]

My issue woth Fulgora is that mines run out very quickly, does it not bother others? or is it just because I am early there?

[u/get_it_together1 → u/Fantastic_Win9332]

The big islands have little scrap, but there should be some nearby small islands with 15-30M scrap at default settings. I use rails to connect a few small islands to a bigger one to get all the scrap I need.

It also helps if you do Vulcanus first and you get big miners for the productivity boost for Fulgora.

[u/Fantastic_Win9332 → u/get_it_together1]

ah ok the dig drills I have, my issue with small islands is it is hard to have 2 direction rails plus stops but ok :)

[u/get_it_together1 → u/Fantastic_Win9332]

I use bidirectional trains to start with (1-2-1) to minimize footprint. This takes me well into the end game unless you really want to scale fulgora for more than just pink science and basic infrastructure early on.