Factorio - a factory building game - Space Age expansion coming October 21st

[Vic]

Should have the full fields mining (at least for iron, other resources probably aren't a bottleneck), full lanes of iron plates, at least 10 assemblers producing science (are you... hand crafting science? I don't see anything making it). I haven't really played Deathworld only Deathworld Marathon but it looks like you're way behind to me. Spending time building walls isn't really a great idea because the biters are just gonna expand around you and then you have to painstakingly push them away to gain ground, you're better off running out there and destroying their bases ASAP. Walls are more for very long term "I don't care about this area" decisions. For short term defense you're better off just placing a 2x2 or 3x3 turret setup with 2 layers of walls around them.

With regards to fighting higher tier stuff, there's a few things to do. The best is obviously flamethrowers, but that requires oil. You kind of want Damage 3 for turrets to have enough damage to beat med biters with regular ammo efficiently, below that you need the piercing ammo to have enough damage to overcome their DR.

Also having 124 mining drills in your inventory is way excessive, that's a lot of pollution/mining time wasted.

I knew there would be some guy who would be all "ackshually!".. that's why I said:

PS: I just slapped shit in there, I know the designs suck, I wanted to try and build more liberal this time instead of optimizing throughput and such. It will all get scrapped once I unlock robotics anyway, so I'm not too worried about getting the early base right, but it will turn quite messy and spaghetti-y.

As for the walls, they are a necessity I'm afraid, waves of 20-30 biters every minute or so with 3 nests nearby and the nests start of huge, no way to destroy them that early imo

now that I have my walls I am going to start to actually get some production going, time to mine those ugly resource patches out of my base, improve my base's defensive capabilities and starting building.

 

[anvi]

My factory is better

 

[Jaedar]

PPS: Also nobody posting their bases here?

Bases are kind of spoilers, but sure let's see some cool and janky space exploration stuff:

Spoiler

I wanted to try belting gears and copper cable for the first time.

The reason this is generally dispreferred is that they have very low density and are trivial to craft, so it's expensive to belt them over long distances.

 

[Vic]

Bases are kind of spoilers, but sure let's see some cool and janky space exploration stuff:

is this mod similar to the DLC or kind of its own thing?

 

[-M-]

is this mod similar to the DLC or kind of its own thing?

It's a less complex, streamlined version with a number of in-engine upgrades and new additions. They hired the guy that made the SE mod to work on the DLC.

There's a mod for that Earendel​

A lot of people are going to make comparisons between the Space Age expansion and the Space Exploration mod. I've worked on the game design for both: On Space Age I made the first space + planets prototype builds and plus I've been involved in most of the gameplay discussions since. On Space Exploration, well it's my mod, I made it.


I think that makes me the most qualified to talk about how these two things are very different from the ground up. Sure there's some overlap in the broader topics: you go to space, you visit planets; but these similarities end up being fairly superficial when all of the decisions along the way are made with different design goals:

• Target Audience: Space Exploration is targeted at a small set of challenge-seekers, it's not for everyone by design. Space Age is targeted at all Factorio players with better approachability in mind.
• Game Length: Space Exploration is a long-form adventure designed for players to gradually uncover many interconnected challenges over 150-500 hours (or more). Space Age challenges are more streamlined and self-contained for a faster pace of 60-100 hours (rough estimate).
• Complexity: Space Exploration challenges ramp up to a very high difficulty towards the end. Some of the last challenges cannot be automated without a set of arithmetic combinators, so it is not expected that all players will be able to complete it. Space Age has a lot of different challenges but they never get too extreme and the usage of combinators is quite lightweight, so we expect that most players will be able to complete it.
• Engine Support: There are so many things that Space Exploration just can't do because it's a mod. Space Age has very different capabilities because the game engine can be made to support it. Large parts of the expansion are focused on game mechanics that just aren't possible otherwise, so the gameplay will be unique and refreshing even if you're a Space Exploration veteran.

There are many more differences that will become apparent when we look at individual features of the expansion in upcoming FFFs.

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-373

 

[Vic]

finished the day by lining up turrets around my walls and expanded iron smelting a bit. Going to start on science tomorrow.

 

[Average Manatee]

As for the walls, they are a necessity I'm afraid, waves of 20-30 biters every minute or so with 3 nests nearby and the nests start of huge, no way to destroy them that early imo

The usual way to do it is to have like 30 turrets, 500 ammo, just plop them down and then load them (use z and move mouse back and forth over them).

As a general rule needing to fight your pollution cloud with ammo is a bad idea on deathworld, you're spending pollution (in the form of mining and power) to beat the biters spawned by your own pollution. Destroying the nests is basically a one time investment of resources in order to not need to keep paying that price every few minutes. Though I'm not sure if this is nearly as important on Deathworld as it is on Deathworld Marathon, where tech is far more expensive (and therefore you're less able to get flamethrowers/damage upgrades/lasers) and piercing ammo is more expensive too.

I knew there would be some guy who would be all "ackshually!".. that's why I said:

Still should automate science, that's like the first thing to do. You automated mining drills and have 120 in your inventory when you could have 2 levels of damage if they had been producing science.

If we're just posting bases then here's my current one:

A useful thing I've found for the main belt system is to leave some buffer space in between your main belts and your assembler lines so that you can do some short runs of intermediate product belts. Very handy for when you have more intermediate products like in space exploration

 

[Vic]

Still should automate science, that's like the first thing to do. You automated mining drills and have 120 in your inventory when you could have 2 levels of damage if they had been producing science.

I play for fun and this was a fun way to start a new game.

Update:
Restructuring my base a bit to have more space for construction, considering that I have limited space to work with. I wanted to go for a compact, walled off factory. The biters are starting to grow stronger and able to destroy an outer wall in 2-3 assaults. I should start researching turret upgrades soon.

Update2:
made a separate thread for my shit https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/vic-plays-factorio.150730/

 

[Vic]

As a general rule needing to fight your pollution cloud with ammo is a bad idea on deathworld, you're spending pollution (in the form of mining and power) to beat the biters spawned by your own pollution. Destroying the nests is basically a one time investment of resources in order to not need to keep paying that price every few minutes. Though I'm not sure if this is nearly as important on Deathworld as it is on Deathworld Marathon, where tech is far more expensive (and therefore you're less able to get flamethrowers/damage upgrades/lasers) and piercing ammo is more expensive too.

how does that work btw? Aren't they just going to expand again? Afaik you need a defensive perimeter with turrets to prevent biters from expanding into your territory. Looking at your base you have biters at your smelters, why not wall off your factory lmao

destroying biter spawners also increases evolution iirc

 

[Jaedar]

As a general rule needing to fight your pollution cloud with ammo is a bad idea on deathworld, you're spending pollution (in the form of mining and power) to beat the biters spawned by your own pollution. Destroying the nests is basically a one time investment of resources in order to not need to keep paying that price every few minutes. Though I'm not sure if this is nearly as important on Deathworld as it is on Deathworld Marathon, where tech is far more expensive (and therefore you're less able to get flamethrowers/damage upgrades/lasers) and piercing ammo is more expensive too.

how does that work btw? Aren't they just going to expand again? Afaik you need a defensive perimeter with turrets to prevent biters from expanding into your territory. Looking at your base you have biters at your smelters, why not wall off your factory lmao

destroying biter spawners also increases evolution iirc

Destroying spawners does yeah. I think biters will not expand to within a certain radius of your buildings/walls, but they will expand into your cloud of pollution.

Personally, I've never found much use for full walls, just strategic gun emplacement along biter approach vectors. But I also never played deathworld.

 

[Vic]

Personally, I've never found much use for full walls, just strategic gun emplacement along biter approach vectors. But I also never played deathworld.

This is my first time playing Deathworld too and in normal mode I like to wall off my base at chokepoints if possible to have my "territory" and peace of mind . I can see how placing turrets at the right places would probably work just as well, though.

 

[Demo.Graph]

As for the walls, they are a necessity I'm afraid, waves of 20-30 biters every minute or so with 3 nests nearby and the nests start of huge, no way to destroy them that early imo

First I was going to say that it's rookie numbers and you need double dakka. But then I saw blue inserters on gun turrets and six ammo assemblers on two-sided ammo belt and...
Carry on.

I've never found much use for full walls ... But I also never played deathworld.

Exactly. Here's 85 evo DW wall.

Spoiler

I repair walls because repair alerts are irritating and bot losses are trivial.
I like to slightly overbuild walls.

 

[Vic]

Here's 85 evo DW wall.

that's a good idea to create obstacles infront of your turrets, I tried something similar (it was a maze/gauntlet) but they didn't fall for it. Might try your approach when biters start becoming a problem.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Here's 85 evo DW wall.

that's a good idea to create obstacles infront of your turrets, I tried something similar (it was a maze/gauntlet) but they didn't fall for it. Might try your approach if biters start becoming a problem.

If you make maze too long to navigate, biter pathfinding defaults to attack-closest-target and they begin chewing walls. You want them to spend more time running. Also, my variant sometimes tends to break incoming rape sausages

Spoiler

into spread out waves to get them in range of more turrets.

 

[Average Manatee]

how does that work btw? Aren't they just going to expand again? Afaik you need a defensive perimeter with turrets to prevent biters from expanding into your territory. Looking at your base you have biters at your smelters, why not wall off your factory lmao

destroying biter spawners also increases evolution iirc

Destroying spawners does yeah. I think biters will not expand to within a certain radius of your buildings/walls, but they will expand into your cloud of pollution.

Personally, I've never found much use for full walls, just strategic gun emplacement along biter approach vectors. But I also never played deathworld.

So, biters can expand anywhere and they will do so every 4-60 minutes by default (note that this is not random, at 0 evolution its 60 minutes, at 100 evolution its 4 minutes, interpolated). The chance of them choosing a spot to expand to is greatly lowered if a building is nearby.

This has a few implications. 1. Because its a global timer, the more of the map you've explore (or, more accurately, forced to generate) the less that random expansion matters. If you've sat in your base for 10 hours you'll be surrounded, if you got out and drove around in the care for 10 minutes they'll be busy expanding far outside your base perimeter. 2. If you lay down something like a few pipe segments you basically make that spot permanently "safe" until the rest of the map is filled.

You can check the amount of evolution you get from the various contributers by typing /evolution in the console. If you're making good progress the biggest contributor is likely always to be pollution, and if you aren't it's probably time.

For defense planning here's a few tests:



The difficulty is corners.

 

[Demo.Graph]

For defense planning here's a few tests:

Many of those would be annoying to build manually (1x1 checkerboard) and/or wall-item-intensive.
Another good option is checkerboard "+", kinda like that, but bigger.

Spoiler

Many MP groups like them the most. I think that they're worse than my variant (both in biter delay and item intensity), but marginally so, so it doesn't really matter what to use.

 

[Vic]

I like the idea of creating a "moat" around my walls

 

[Average Manatee]

Brainstorming how to setup a bus-fed mall in space exploration with a city block layout. Introducing the Factorio superloop.

Can hold 12 lanes but expandable up to 24 without too much difficulty.

 

[Jaedar]

Can hold 12 lanes but expandable up to 24 without too much difficulty.

Not to make you sad, but even 24 lanes will not take you very far in space exploration (especially not when you belt raw stone and gear wheels). I strongly recommend robots. The attrition is really negligible on planets.

City blocks are cool though.

Also, wasting good solar on the ground? shameful.

 

[Average Manatee]

Can hold 12 lanes but expandable up to 24 without too much difficulty.

Not to make you sad, but even 24 lanes will not take you very far in space exploration (especially not when you belt raw stone and gear wheels). I strongly recommend robots. The attrition is really negligible on planets.

City blocks are cool though.

It's just for the mall, everything that needs serious throughput will have a dedicated block.

Also, wasting good solar on the ground? shameful.

Test game, just creating the blueprint.

 

[Caim]

Some stuff for nuclear power.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-420

 

[Average Manatee]

bro wtf

 

[Ironmonk]

I think there is a hidden monster preview in the last FFF... zoom out on both images with a lamp array to better visualize it.

 

[Caim]

I think there is a hidden monster preview in the last FFF... zoom out on both images with a lamp array to better visualize it.

One of them kinda looks like the Starbug from Red Dwarf, but it might very well be a new enemy type.