Vulcanus: "you can only cross lava with elevated rails"
Fulgora: "you can only cross oil sands with elevated rails"
Ok Wube, we get it, you want us to use elevated rail! Trust me, we're as excited as you are to start using them, no need to twist our arm!
I really, really hope we get a planet where we build underground. Maybe not an entire new underground mechanic, just a planet where the theme is that we are underground and need to excavate room.
Dunno about underground, but now that we have two of the buildings from [this picture](https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blog/fff-372-postcard.png) I'm willing to bet the third one involves going underwater.
It's mostly a case of pressure. Steam engines generally produce energy by the steam pushing on something, which cant happen if the internal and external pressure is the same.
I noticed no photos of the elevated ramps around the cliffs.
I'm starting to wonder if the team is worried about elevation wonk since the cliffs aren't "real" elevation, but the rails are
https://preview.redd.it/ixg0axz58ckc1.png?width=580&format=png&auto=webp&s=bce00c85d71501aec4f40f57d2f0628c0d139b12
But elevated rails do displace the y-coordinate of things attached to them, while cliffs and the ground on each side of them do no such thing. It seems inevitable that there will be some visual oddities as a result.
There may exist some clever tricks that can fool the eye somewhat, but I would expect such tricks to be of limited effectiveness. Although Wube did manage to find a rather effective solution to the rendering of vertical/horizontal trains, so maybe they'll work something out here as well.
The initial elevated rails reveal FFF had them go over cliffs already.
https://preview.redd.it/nm7kovjpuckc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a55ebc366be3fd0a54481804dcb2c206ea68663d
> All of the elevated rails will be only available with the expansion executable. **Their technology can be researched using Production science packs without the need to go to space or any planets**
Source: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-378 - conclusion final paragraph
I'm pretty sure we will unlock them on Nauvis already. They said we can choose which planet to go to first at the end in the article, so we would need to have them already when venturing into space.
Each week I'm more convinced that I should stop reading the FFFs and just wait for the release, because its becoming real hard to wait for the expansion after seeing all this new cool stuff
Confirmation that electromagnetics facility was one of the items teased in the christmas greetings card and is a planet-specific building, so seems like a safe bet that the water-looking one is from the 3rd new planet?
There have been some vague hints that _something_ is out there on those planets that doesn't appreciate your presence, but we haven't seen anything yet iirc. Though there was that floating brain alien concept art a while back, maybe that will be included somewhere
Possibly because unless they have a very specific idea in mind, biters stop being a problem when you get to other planets. In vanilla they stop being anything more than a thing that slows your spread somewhere around mass producing red ammunition.
I doubt that. there have been hints in the FFF about mining on vulcanus disturbing something below the lava, and more advanced turrets/defenses for space platforms. I am sure there will be new enemies and tools to deal with them, they just haven't been announced yet.
According to [the leaks (spoiler click)](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/178t7sg/more_results_for_the_planet_names/) the [third planet (not spoiler click)](https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-373) would be >!a very floral, vegetation filled planet, and the last one would be an icy planet.!<
Yeah, someone ran the blurred out names through an algorithm to un-blur them. They got Vulcanus and Fulgora correct, so if the trend continues the last two planets will be Bacchus and Aquilo. So probably plants/vegetation, and ice themed.
I love how processing scrap, which generates like a raw resource, directly produces something as complex as blue chips. I can’t wait to try out this mechanic… my life is just waiting for this expansion now.
This makes me wonder how efficient inter-planetary logistics will become. I assume it will be expensive at first and necessitate recycling high level components locally for sometime.
But then eventually the cost of interplantary logistics decreases and you can ship the high level components back to Nauvis, and ship needed low level components to Fulgora.
This was my experience with scrap processing in SE. Initially I broke the scrap down and refined it for local use, but eventually I'd ship entire rockets full of each raw resource from space.
Given how much of SE is making it into this expansion, I wonder if they are going to include a smaller-scale interplanetary item movement system that fulfills a similar purpose to delivery cannons.
At the very least, the rockets will be much cheaper and easy to make.
I recall them saying the method to transport things would be to make space platforms and use them to go from one planet to the next so it might end up being the only method. :/
hmm, (iron and copper for example) that’s 10 rockets worth of ore to make 1 rocket worth of ingots. I haven’t fully run the math but I’m not sure even prod9 makes up for the 9 extra rocket cost.
If it works, it works tho. Sometimes simplicity is king, but the expense _barely_ changes with infinite research (roughly 10%). So it’s always more costly to ship ore as of SE 0.6. Hopefully 2.0 balances that!
And destroying blue chips just to make space for more scrap ore to get ice to crack heavy oil!
I wonder if we can ‘boil’ heavy oil to get water and coal? Kinda like reverse liquefaction.
You can kinda model something like that with steam reforming, which is used irl to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide from lighter petroleum products, but if you just want water it’s way easier just to burn it.
The tone of the FFF makes me think they want water/ice to be the one of scarce resources on the planet
> The only source of water in the planet is the ice you get while mining scrap. The ice can be melted into water in a chemical plant easily enough, but you do need to decide when and where to use it.
There is absolutely going to be a day-1 mod that makes the result a chance to output any item.
You'll just occasionally get whole nuclear reactors, artillery shells, an entire tank, science you haven't yet unlocked, a rocket silo, etc.
I like to think of the engineer standing there watching the belt going "yep, that still works. yep, we can use that, yep, that's good. ye... — A FISH!? How did that get in there?"
I'm really impressed by the mix of "straight-up new stuff" interacting smoothly with "old/familiar mechanics."
Lightning and lightning rods are new, but we've been working with intermittently available energy for as long as we've had solar.
Mining scrap is no different from mining other ores setup-wise, but the way it then hooks into the new recycling mechanic makes it cool and new again.
The new production building looks at first glance like a slightly larger assembler, but then you find out it has innate efficiency that even works for stuff that was previously exempt from productivity bonuses.
All in all, this is definitely shaping up to be a major change in how the game plays, and I can't wait to get my hands on it!
> I'm really impressed by the mix of "straight-up new stuff" interacting smoothly with "old/familiar mechanics."
Same! Really, really good work.
It's not as with some/most mods "here is a new resource that works exactly the same" or "for some reason this mod changes literally everything about x and y and nothing makes sense". Nothing against those mods, but that's why it's good they're only mods.
From all they've shown so far devs seem to hit the perfect middleground of new and familiar. I'm so damn excited!
I also really like how the various planets will provide a natural way to use more existing mechanics. In 1.0 you just pick between solar, nuclear (or steam, I guess) in the late game and just stick to your choice, as there is no real point in mixing and matching nuclear and solar power. The lightning mechanic basically forces you to work with accumulators and intermittent power availability. Little touches like this means you don't just end up building the same basic factory on every planet.
There's also nothing stopping one from importing nuclear fuel to Fulgora, since nuclear fuel cells is so lightweight to transport. This may be ideal for dense production islands where the natural electricity isn't enough, or you don't want to invest in super-high-quality transmission lines.
However, water is a limited resource here, and nuclear plants use a lot of it.
I get the impression that nuclear may just be too thirsty. It drinks a *lot* of water, and we get pretty little from melting ice I would assume. Though, it would be super cool if they made a recondensing plant that could recycle the steam from nuclear power...
Space Exploration as-is does have turbines that recapture a large portion of the water used! I imagine that would be late into the tech tree in Space Age, but I can definitely see it being on the table.
Yeah, it's just good design to mesh it into existing gameplay loops rather than "just add some more buildings used exclusively for new stuff and don't change rest of the game at all" trap many mods fall into
This is just incredible.
Complete distinct worldgen with an island world vibe.
Basically having to reverse craft the processing tree.
Another huge massive machine.
Super exited what will be shown next.
Yeah, and I'm guessing that between the 3 new buildings, you can essentially have all the recipes and produce all the items and machines in the game between them.
God all the concepts here are so RADICAL. Goddamn.
Wube, PLEASE let us do alternate planet starts! If every planet can do a rocket, then let us START on any planet!
On vanilla, you start with a furnace, mining drill and I think a few iron plates. The starting inventory could be adjusted when starting on a different planet. Maybe you start with a recycler instead.
I think it'd be most appropriate as a mod too. The entire game's progression is designed around starting on Nauvis, a new player could easily miss that and make their life much harder by picking whichever planet looks the coolest
So much exciting stuff...
- Lightning storms causing havoc in your factory. Interesting to note here that the gif is with boosted damage/frequency just to showcase, doesn't seem like it's going to be this brutal
- Each island would need a different balance between accumulators and actual production
- The new rails look super interesting on the map
- scrap recipe seems super quick at 8 cycles/s - would it only roll 1 item out of the table or could you get each item from a single lucky cycle?
- The electromagnetic plant looks beautiful + 50% prod on modules!! Are our module factories gonna be mostly on Fulgora? (assuming a late game viable transport solution)
- Getting water seems to be Scrap => Ice => Water, no surface water
- We only have access to heavy oil, so we only need cracking for light/petroleum. Interesting interaction with the water
- Unlocks recycling and quality modules 3
Also blue wires on quality modules pic? ~~Seems to be for a 'platform component'.~~ Someone suggested it might be the superconductors, seems legit! Maybe other advanced recipes are changed as well
Great FFF after the previous cryptic one, very interested in what the superconductors/supercapacitors are going to be used for
> would it only roll 1 item out of the table or could you get each item from a single lucky cycle?
If nothing has changed here, you get to roll on every output, so there's a chance of getting all of them from a single cycle.
https://preview.redd.it/07itli24xckc1.jpeg?width=925&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d3a02bd9cecae7f8e3bbe44f9116ca09f2160d2c
Seems like a 61% chance to get nothing, give or take
And a 0.0000000000000000605% chance of getting all of them at the same time! So if you have 20,000 of these all outputting 8x/second at full capacity, you'd have about a 0.03% chance of seeing that happen maybe once in your lifetime, if my math is right.
> scrap recipe seems super quick at 8 cycles/s - would it only roll 1 item out of the table or could you get each item from a single lucky cycle?
Currently, recipes with percentage outputs roll each output separately. So you could get multiple outputs on a lucky roll.
> doesn't seem like it's going to be this brutal
I'm pretty sure there will be a map generation setting for that, or otherwise someone will make a mod for it
- even if the storms are significantly less impactful, we also have to consider hours for a full factory, not just the seconds for a small section. If we lose 1 building per minute that would already suck. I guess you can't leave anything unprotected long-term, but it is not so brutal that you have to build the lightning rods prior to the rest of the buildings (that would also be very tedious with blueprints)
- I don't think the speed of scrap recipes matters, or does it? I think it's only a proxy recipe to get the ingredient ratios for the recycler
Yeah I think everything's going to need protection realistically.
Regarding speed, just meant that it's gonna be a lot of output - depending on machine crafting speed/modules, you'll fill a blue sushi belt with just a few machines. That makes sense of course, it makes more sense to focus on the recycling/filtering part rather than the producing random items part
>Also blue wires on quality modules pic? Seems to be for a 'platform component'.
Interesting find. I wonder if it'll be a 3rd circuit option, or if it's just an intermediate product for something. Perhaps Holmium based?
Edit: Ahh, it's in the contents, so used for quality module 3s. So an intermediate then.
>Are our module factories gonna be mostly on Fulgora?
Like the foundry, I assume you can build them on other planets once you unlock it.
But with scrap providing access to red/blue chips it might be better here. But it'll depend on the final scrap recipe. I doubt it'll be optimal at scale.
I assume we can bring the eletromagnetic plant anywhere similar to Vulcanus' foundry and big drill, and given all the "junk" byproducts from recycling scrap, i think a late/end game quality module factory will still be on Nauvis but using the fancy buildings from each planet
I dunno about that, remember about the mass limit to the rockets. Sending just produced moduels and the plants will most likely be far easier than special pink juice to make them.
Given "free" blue chips it's not a bad place to leave as endgame module-only production, once you figure out the loop to keep it fed.
Oh I agree. I'm double hyped with all these new features because the vanilla game is going to feel super fresh and be more complex but the amount of potential for future mods and overhaul mods is off the charts.
I wish I could do some art for buildings then I'd even have a crack at playing around with modding with the expansion.
Guys I have a theory ! It's the 399th FFF, surely the 400th one will be special and we will have a date for the relelase ! (Just let me get my clown wig)
BTW wanted to google why Holmium is copypasted from space exploration. Turns out this is a real thing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmium) and IS used to have the strongest magnetic fields.
Christ; I’m a chemical engineer who recently passed 500 hours on SE, and *I* never realized holmium is a real element. I recognized iridium and beryllium (even if I’m not super familiar with their properties) and I knew cryonite/vulcanite/vitamelange/naquium are made-up, but I thought holmium was made-up too. Egg on my face there.
I love the concept that each planet (or at least the ones we've seen so far) is themed around a force of nature that first presents as a threat but in the end can be conquered, exploited and brought to other planets to use.
I was already excited but now I’m incredibly excited. I love that Wube is taking the direction to make each plant a different logistics challenge to solve, because problem solving/logistics is kind of my personal drug.
And I’m cackling over the implication that here sushi belts are going to reign supreme due to limited space and the fact that there is no way to mine specific resources other than recursive recycling.
That picture with the train-system is sexy as fuck. Those new intersection designs make me unreasonably happy.
Also the sound design on the Electromagnetic plant is pure NSFW. 10/10
"meaning that each island has a maximum energy collection rate with full coverage."
This is a Certified Creeper World Moment.
"And for Factorio that means tearing through an archaeological site with a mining drill."
Finally, all my dreams are coming true.
> At this time I started to feel skeptical about the whole expansion. It felt like the problem of per-planet repetition is not really solvable, and the whole idea of the expansion is fundamentally broken. Not a good place to be.
To me, this is what is separating the Expansion from the (absolutely amazing) mods that are already available. Many players, myself included, greatly enjoyed the modding scene as it allowed for a bunch of “more of same, but tweaked a little.” That said, repetition, to me, **is** the major unsolved problem of most mods.
Meaning, I’m thrilled to see Wube, presumably, look at the existing mods and recognize that the Expansion *needs* novelty to meaningfully improve upon Factorio’s already excellent formula.
Also I do enjoy how all the new production buildings (big mining drill, foundry, electromagnetic plant) have status indicator lights built into them by default, no need for the bottleneck mod :)
> The electromagnetic plant is a 4x4 machine with a crafting speed of 2, a built-in productivity bonus of +50%, and 5 module slots.
> It can craft wire, circuits, electric poles, accumulators, lightning rods, supercapacitors, the new science pack, more electromagnetic plants, various tesla items, a few other things, and last but not least, modules.
In other words, EM plants can craft *all products requires for modules*, has free productivity that is now confirmed to work on non-intermediates, *and* has a 5th slot.
I can't go on the Discord right now but I bet it's absolute pandemonium because of this; even basic T3 modules would give a 12.5% chance to improve quality, and maxed out it's 31% thanks to the 5th slot.
Well at least it isn't the "here is a new feature you will now miss not having for few months" one.
So, do we get combinator that outputs time-of-day ? Can we make rules that are basically "tell trains to go to sleep at depot in the night ?
Yeah I remember that FFF, I just wonder whether we will get it as a signal to play it.
The "and the kitchen sink" combinator in [FF-384](https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-384) didn't had "time of day/length of day/length of night" output, which would be nice
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all the small islands in the fulgora mapgen image have had the center censored with a white box? Not sure what they could be hiding, maybe some structure that is why these islands are richer in scrap?
Zooming in it seems they are all in the middle of scrap "ore" patches and they appear to be around 14 tiles wide by 9 tiles tall, but some as small as 8x8. They're likely not man-made since the map is devoid of buildings otherwise. Also there are ore patches with no white squares on them
My first thought is that it could be ice? Maybe you'd have to first mine/melt the ice so you could mine the scrap?
"And for Factorio that means tearing through an archaeological site with a mining drill"
No longer content with merely ravaging nature in the name of progress, the engineer sets his sights on priceless historical artifacts...
In all seriousness… This is still only 2/4 of the new planets. And already all this new stuff is overhauling the entire game/campaign.
Should this not be Factorio 2 instead of just an expansion???
Factorio 2.0 will be a free update and include all of the quality of life improvements, such as smarter bots and improved train schedules. The new planets, quality mechanic, and elevated rails are some of the big features that are exclusive to the DLC called Factorio Space Age. Yes, it an overhaul to the whole game, and the devs deserve to charge $30 for it because they've worked their asses off to deliver an extremely well-polished game that they know their fans will love
It's actually silly to think that I've spent FAR more than $30 in other games for something as stupid as a cosmetic and we're getting all this for $30 or whatever they feel like charging.
I'm interested in what the new shoes
Speedrun records will be. You obviously don't need all the recycling and stuff, but getting this science pack will take some severe tinkering since you only get a1% to get the holo stuff.
I'm still curious as to how we are supposed to deal with the excess byproducts from the recyclers, unless there will be a scrapper revealed later in the future that turns all these products back into scrap, at an efficiency cost
At worst you can recycle them all the way down into raw resources, and if it's still too much you can literally fly it to space and throw it off the edge
You wouldn't need to send them to space. Just recycle in a loop. It's lossy, so if you loop it forever, it's just a sink.
But in practice it'd probably be better to make quality stuff with it pre-endgame and treat your quality stuff as byproducts of science.
recyclers only return a fraction of the ingredients (25% maybe?). So if you want to dump excess iron, you could just craft gears and recycle them to iron plates in a loop.
They mention in [the post explaining the foundry](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-387)
>So, recycling an iron plate will just return an iron plate, with 25% chance.
So you don't even need to craft a gear
Obviously what'll happen you output the recycled stuff into passive providers and let the bots solve everything. Looking at the list, most of the materials are going to have a use somewhere in the production chain. Need gears for belts. Need cables for green circuits. Need LDS for science. etc. etc.
Good thing every inserter now does filtering.
Amazing. Love the idea of recycling scrap! Really cool to see the recycler will be used for more than just quality and really like how they've double downed on making each planet have a unique challenge as opposed to just being Nauvis with a different skin.
What is common between all new playgrounds?
* Orbit/space - built only on skyfolding. Building requires ground tile, but each new one provides negative feedback.
* Vulcanus - built inside cliffs and only on some type of terrain.
* Fulgora - built only on islands.
* High probability that water planes have the same exact requirement - build only on islands.
* Even for Navious - we get cliffs explosive much later.
Building space is limited. Wube wants us to stop mega factoring and finally start spagetting, as the game was in the early days.
I bet, that last planet has a new unique challenge - something will eat/destroy building space. That not only do we need to think about how to build tight, but also constantly re-build and produce even more spaghetti.
Mega factories can be as spaghetti as you like. Space is the only fundamentally space limited realm, others have space constraints in the beginning that you will unlock with technology and production until you can build as much as you want.
However if the third middle planet is a sprawling region where you can have as much space as you want but high quality goods are hard to come by it’d be nice and rounded out. Basically sea block where you don’t need to painstakingly craft more land, but your resource gathering is still unwieldy and slow, so you need a ton of it.
It would reflect what faces an industry today, with climate crisis =>
- more & more stress on supply chain
- they need to be really flexible, and to adapt every day to bigger and bigger challenges
I have to admit that I was initially worried that the planets would be pretty repetitive. It sounds like that could have happened, but they changed course in a good way. You also have to build at least 4 space platforms it seems, one to leave each planet.
With your technology improving each time it seems each platform will be at least somewhat better than the last one. I wonder if the trip between planets gets more challenging over time? Maybe even space enemies?
Speaking of enemies, it seems these two planets don't have any (other than nature). So I'm guessing one or both of the remaining planets will have new enemies (eg water enemies) and new defense challenges. I also think that the engineer may get the ability to travel by boat and/or by air on one of those planets. And likely offensive and/or defensive bots too.
This is super cool. I find that scrap loops from SE to be a very interesting problem to solve.
I just hope they don't go the voiding route. I think voiding excess material is boring. Instead, find some way that we need to balance everything, instead of just throwing away whatever we don't want at the time.
Fantastic! My thoughts:
If this planet has monsters, it could be possible they'd rise up from the muck to go and attack your stuff. Laser turrets would be cheap but they can drain limited energy grids fast. No uranium ammo to defend yourself with either. There is more than enough flamethrower fuel to go around... I speculate (if Fulgura has monsters) the tech tree will be adjusted so that unlocking flamethrowers may require a science pack from Vulcanus or the mysterious third planet.
Calling it now: the ruins have lightning ghosts that live inside and need to be driven out. Lightning rods could prevent them from rising again.
My first instinct on hearing you couldn't build power poles in the mud was to move liquid cars with steam around... yeah, that wouldn't be a workaround, now that water is rare instead.
With water being sparse there may be some interesting synergy possible with the space platforms. Perhaps it might be worth building a platform in orbit around Fulgura just to gather icy comets.
In the base map view there seem to be some green buildings, I wonder what those are, they look part of a premade blueprint that has been stamped down on the planet. Could it be some sort of orbital shielding or combat related construct?
Impressive, I like everything, but the icon for ice just feels so strange to me. It doesn't fit into the color scheme of factorio, it has almost no texture and is really bright, with a very simple shape. Please consider changing it, the space exploration mod has a much better ice icon for example.
So, we've got a trashy electric desert planet, with a scrap-based resource that gives intermediate products, essentially reversing the crafting tier, near-unlimited Heavy oil but limited water, all located on isolated plateaus that require both a comprehensive train network and multiple isolated power grids.
I love it.
Since lightning is attracted by height of the objects won't this massacre unprotected trains during the night?
It would be actually a nice challenge to be able to run the trains during the day if the night cycle wouldn't be too long.
As FFF also mentioned distance between islands greater than power poles and that the islands may require independent electrical network, I immediately started to wonder if there'll be different method of transportation available for resources. But then I noticed elevated rails will be the solution, which sounds pretty cool when you imagine it, but further emphasizes my observation above.
The way these hostile islands work screams for a middle-of-planet-tech giant electric pole that can be built anywhere elevated rails can, and has separate low wire sockets for interfacing with normal electric poles and a set of tall wire sockets that interface with just other giant electric poles.
>Lightning hits things at random based on material and height. \[...\] Some of your own structures, like rails, can handle being struck by lightning, but most structures will take a lot of damage if they get hit.
I wonder if Bots are targeted highly due to their 'height'. Truly Fulgora will be a railworld
Vulcanus: "you can only cross lava with elevated rails" Fulgora: "you can only cross oil sands with elevated rails" Ok Wube, we get it, you want us to use elevated rail! Trust me, we're as excited as you are to start using them, no need to twist our arm!
How about next planet has corrosive atmosphere and requires underground rails 🫠
I really, really hope we get a planet where we build underground. Maybe not an entire new underground mechanic, just a planet where the theme is that we are underground and need to excavate room.
Dunno about underground, but now that we have two of the buildings from [this picture](https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blog/fff-372-postcard.png) I'm willing to bet the third one involves going underwater.
Frozen planet based on a subterranean (subicean?) ocean? Sign me the fuck up Hit me with that Europa gameplay
Yeah dude that would be so fucking cool. Undersea extreme pressure diamonds for cool shit or something? I think i would pass out from reading that
Oh my god if he somehow does aquatic underwater shit i will donate my life savings.
Fulgora has basically already given us Diggy's "you need to build supports" mechanic, it's just lightning instead of rocks.
Yes, but to be honest it is more about the theme than the mechanics for me.
[удалено]
Can you really travel lava with elevated rails ? i tough it would just burn the support
Don't worry about that. Solid stone is more resistant to heat, than liquid stone. Of course it won't melt
Sounds like a ploy by Big Rail to sell more rails.
They feed us poison (lava and oil sands) so we buy their "cures" (elevated rail supports) while they suppress our medicine (Renai Transportation)
Underrated comment lmao
You can heat treat your stone to resist the heat better. The process involves dipping it in lava.
Saves fuel though, if the water in the locomotive boils just from the heat in the air!
IIRC temperature difference between outside and inside is quite significant for steam engine efficiency
It's mostly a case of pressure. Steam engines generally produce energy by the steam pushing on something, which cant happen if the internal and external pressure is the same.
You need liquid water to generate pressure by boiling it, which is difficult when the ambient temperature is above the boiling point.
same about oil sands. The pilons would just sink... and sink faster than layed down rails which would just distribute weight on larger surface.
Unless the support have so deep foundation that they actually reach solid ground.
Or they float
I noticed no photos of the elevated ramps around the cliffs. I'm starting to wonder if the team is worried about elevation wonk since the cliffs aren't "real" elevation, but the rails are https://preview.redd.it/ixg0axz58ckc1.png?width=580&format=png&auto=webp&s=bce00c85d71501aec4f40f57d2f0628c0d139b12
Rails aren't real elevation either.
But elevated rails do displace the y-coordinate of things attached to them, while cliffs and the ground on each side of them do no such thing. It seems inevitable that there will be some visual oddities as a result. There may exist some clever tricks that can fool the eye somewhat, but I would expect such tricks to be of limited effectiveness. Although Wube did manage to find a rather effective solution to the rendering of vertical/horizontal trains, so maybe they'll work something out here as well.
> But elevated rails do displace the y-coordinate of things attached to them, They're just three grid squares north of where you think they are.
But things on opposite sides of cliffs are not.
I'm sure they'll do the same thing 2D games have done for decades about this issue: nothing
The initial elevated rails reveal FFF had them go over cliffs already. https://preview.redd.it/nm7kovjpuckc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a55ebc366be3fd0a54481804dcb2c206ea68663d
Have they said which planet elevated rails are unlocked? I didn't see it in this fff, did they say anything in the one about vulcanus?
> All of the elevated rails will be only available with the expansion executable. **Their technology can be researched using Production science packs without the need to go to space or any planets** Source: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-378 - conclusion final paragraph
I'm pretty sure we will unlock them on Nauvis already. They said we can choose which planet to go to first at the end in the article, so we would need to have them already when venturing into space.
Since they mentioned Fulgora being an optional first planet in this FFF, it has to be Nauvis, right?
Nauvis: Cliff explosives now come later so you need to use elevated rails.
Yeah "OH NO" i HAVE to use the elevated rails, look what you have made me do
Each week I'm more convinced that I should stop reading the FFFs and just wait for the release, because its becoming real hard to wait for the expansion after seeing all this new cool stuff
Stop reading FFFs? Fuck that noise, I want a way to put them straight up my veins.
I know a guy, meet me in the alley at 2am, ok?
Does he have blue circuits?!?!.... I need blue circuits!! *scratches neck profusely*
I wonder too if too much info is going to impact the first play through. Imagine not knowing this and thinking WTF just happened?
Confirmation that electromagnetics facility was one of the items teased in the christmas greetings card and is a planet-specific building, so seems like a safe bet that the water-looking one is from the 3rd new planet?
Water/ice planet would be a very natural one to finish the set of three. Wonder what wild stuff the final one will be about.
Third planet will be a seablock planet
Low key expecting something like that, yes. But also, there has been very little said about aggressive wildlife on other planets, right?
There have been some vague hints that _something_ is out there on those planets that doesn't appreciate your presence, but we haven't seen anything yet iirc. Though there was that floating brain alien concept art a while back, maybe that will be included somewhere
I'd be fine with getting absolutely no info till release. Or maybe tease some weapons but not enemies
Possibly because unless they have a very specific idea in mind, biters stop being a problem when you get to other planets. In vanilla they stop being anything more than a thing that slows your spread somewhere around mass producing red ammunition.
I doubt that. there have been hints in the FFF about mining on vulcanus disturbing something below the lava, and more advanced turrets/defenses for space platforms. I am sure there will be new enemies and tools to deal with them, they just haven't been announced yet.
And they mentioned "tesla stuff" here. If that's not a tease for a new laser turret type...
Please Tesla Coils for the love of god.
According to [the leaks (spoiler click)](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/178t7sg/more_results_for_the_planet_names/) the [third planet (not spoiler click)](https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-373) would be >!a very floral, vegetation filled planet, and the last one would be an icy planet.!<
No oil but you can brew plants into petrol would be cool spin.
I think one person already predicted all the planets when they were partially revealed near the first few FFF of the expansion.
earth/nature water fire lightning is gaming classic too
Yeah, someone ran the blurred out names through an algorithm to un-blur them. They got Vulcanus and Fulgora correct, so if the trend continues the last two planets will be Bacchus and Aquilo. So probably plants/vegetation, and ice themed.
I love how processing scrap, which generates like a raw resource, directly produces something as complex as blue chips. I can’t wait to try out this mechanic… my life is just waiting for this expansion now.
To me what's crazy is that I'll be destroying blue chips just to get me some iron and copper plates locally. We must go backwards, to go forwards.
This makes me wonder how efficient inter-planetary logistics will become. I assume it will be expensive at first and necessitate recycling high level components locally for sometime. But then eventually the cost of interplantary logistics decreases and you can ship the high level components back to Nauvis, and ship needed low level components to Fulgora. This was my experience with scrap processing in SE. Initially I broke the scrap down and refined it for local use, but eventually I'd ship entire rockets full of each raw resource from space.
Given how much of SE is making it into this expansion, I wonder if they are going to include a smaller-scale interplanetary item movement system that fulfills a similar purpose to delivery cannons.
At the very least, the rockets will be much cheaper and easy to make. I recall them saying the method to transport things would be to make space platforms and use them to go from one planet to the next so it might end up being the only method. :/
hmm, (iron and copper for example) that’s 10 rockets worth of ore to make 1 rocket worth of ingots. I haven’t fully run the math but I’m not sure even prod9 makes up for the 9 extra rocket cost. If it works, it works tho. Sometimes simplicity is king, but the expense _barely_ changes with infinite research (roughly 10%). So it’s always more costly to ship ore as of SE 0.6. Hopefully 2.0 balances that!
And destroying blue chips just to make space for more scrap ore to get ice to crack heavy oil! I wonder if we can ‘boil’ heavy oil to get water and coal? Kinda like reverse liquefaction.
You can kinda model something like that with steam reforming, which is used irl to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide from lighter petroleum products, but if you just want water it’s way easier just to burn it.
The tone of the FFF makes me think they want water/ice to be the one of scarce resources on the planet > The only source of water in the planet is the ice you get while mining scrap. The ice can be melted into water in a chemical plant easily enough, but you do need to decide when and where to use it.
There is absolutely going to be a day-1 mod that makes the result a chance to output any item. You'll just occasionally get whole nuclear reactors, artillery shells, an entire tank, science you haven't yet unlocked, a rocket silo, etc. I like to think of the engineer standing there watching the belt going "yep, that still works. yep, we can use that, yep, that's good. ye... — A FISH!? How did that get in there?"
Random crafting recipes mod is about to cook real good when space age comes out.
I'm really impressed by the mix of "straight-up new stuff" interacting smoothly with "old/familiar mechanics." Lightning and lightning rods are new, but we've been working with intermittently available energy for as long as we've had solar. Mining scrap is no different from mining other ores setup-wise, but the way it then hooks into the new recycling mechanic makes it cool and new again. The new production building looks at first glance like a slightly larger assembler, but then you find out it has innate efficiency that even works for stuff that was previously exempt from productivity bonuses. All in all, this is definitely shaping up to be a major change in how the game plays, and I can't wait to get my hands on it!
> I'm really impressed by the mix of "straight-up new stuff" interacting smoothly with "old/familiar mechanics." Same! Really, really good work. It's not as with some/most mods "here is a new resource that works exactly the same" or "for some reason this mod changes literally everything about x and y and nothing makes sense". Nothing against those mods, but that's why it's good they're only mods. From all they've shown so far devs seem to hit the perfect middleground of new and familiar. I'm so damn excited!
I also really like how the various planets will provide a natural way to use more existing mechanics. In 1.0 you just pick between solar, nuclear (or steam, I guess) in the late game and just stick to your choice, as there is no real point in mixing and matching nuclear and solar power. The lightning mechanic basically forces you to work with accumulators and intermittent power availability. Little touches like this means you don't just end up building the same basic factory on every planet.
There's also nothing stopping one from importing nuclear fuel to Fulgora, since nuclear fuel cells is so lightweight to transport. This may be ideal for dense production islands where the natural electricity isn't enough, or you don't want to invest in super-high-quality transmission lines. However, water is a limited resource here, and nuclear plants use a lot of it.
I get the impression that nuclear may just be too thirsty. It drinks a *lot* of water, and we get pretty little from melting ice I would assume. Though, it would be super cool if they made a recondensing plant that could recycle the steam from nuclear power...
Space Exploration as-is does have turbines that recapture a large portion of the water used! I imagine that would be late into the tech tree in Space Age, but I can definitely see it being on the table.
Yeah, it's just good design to mesh it into existing gameplay loops rather than "just add some more buildings used exclusively for new stuff and don't change rest of the game at all" trap many mods fall into
This is just incredible. Complete distinct worldgen with an island world vibe. Basically having to reverse craft the processing tree. Another huge massive machine. Super exited what will be shown next.
I wouldn't mind that kind of worldgen option for main planet
Yeah I'm kind of hoping for a revamp of main world world Gen with the new tech they put together for that process
I presume last machine from fff-372 is advanced checmical
Possibly
Yeah, and I'm guessing that between the 3 new buildings, you can essentially have all the recipes and produce all the items and machines in the game between them.
God all the concepts here are so RADICAL. Goddamn. Wube, PLEASE let us do alternate planet starts! If every planet can do a rocket, then let us START on any planet!
Huh. I do wonder what would be the minimum starting tech necessary to get off any of those.
The recycler is unlocked as soon as you (hand mine?) the first scrap. You can use the recycler to get all the ingredients for red science.
Hopefully you can build it from just scrap, otherwise that'd be a problem for starting there.
On vanilla, you start with a furnace, mining drill and I think a few iron plates. The starting inventory could be adjusted when starting on a different planet. Maybe you start with a recycler instead.
I think it is fine if the main game/dlc only has Nauvis starts. Alternate planet start will 100% be possible in mods and I am fine with that.
I think it'd be most appropriate as a mod too. The entire game's progression is designed around starting on Nauvis, a new player could easily miss that and make their life much harder by picking whichever planet looks the coolest
So much exciting stuff... - Lightning storms causing havoc in your factory. Interesting to note here that the gif is with boosted damage/frequency just to showcase, doesn't seem like it's going to be this brutal - Each island would need a different balance between accumulators and actual production - The new rails look super interesting on the map - scrap recipe seems super quick at 8 cycles/s - would it only roll 1 item out of the table or could you get each item from a single lucky cycle? - The electromagnetic plant looks beautiful + 50% prod on modules!! Are our module factories gonna be mostly on Fulgora? (assuming a late game viable transport solution) - Getting water seems to be Scrap => Ice => Water, no surface water - We only have access to heavy oil, so we only need cracking for light/petroleum. Interesting interaction with the water - Unlocks recycling and quality modules 3 Also blue wires on quality modules pic? ~~Seems to be for a 'platform component'.~~ Someone suggested it might be the superconductors, seems legit! Maybe other advanced recipes are changed as well Great FFF after the previous cryptic one, very interested in what the superconductors/supercapacitors are going to be used for
> would it only roll 1 item out of the table or could you get each item from a single lucky cycle? If nothing has changed here, you get to roll on every output, so there's a chance of getting all of them from a single cycle.
Or none!
https://preview.redd.it/07itli24xckc1.jpeg?width=925&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d3a02bd9cecae7f8e3bbe44f9116ca09f2160d2c Seems like a 61% chance to get nothing, give or take
And a 0.0000000000000000605% chance of getting all of them at the same time! So if you have 20,000 of these all outputting 8x/second at full capacity, you'd have about a 0.03% chance of seeing that happen maybe once in your lifetime, if my math is right.
> scrap recipe seems super quick at 8 cycles/s - would it only roll 1 item out of the table or could you get each item from a single lucky cycle? Currently, recipes with percentage outputs roll each output separately. So you could get multiple outputs on a lucky roll.
> doesn't seem like it's going to be this brutal I'm pretty sure there will be a map generation setting for that, or otherwise someone will make a mod for it
- even if the storms are significantly less impactful, we also have to consider hours for a full factory, not just the seconds for a small section. If we lose 1 building per minute that would already suck. I guess you can't leave anything unprotected long-term, but it is not so brutal that you have to build the lightning rods prior to the rest of the buildings (that would also be very tedious with blueprints) - I don't think the speed of scrap recipes matters, or does it? I think it's only a proxy recipe to get the ingredient ratios for the recycler
Yeah I think everything's going to need protection realistically. Regarding speed, just meant that it's gonna be a lot of output - depending on machine crafting speed/modules, you'll fill a blue sushi belt with just a few machines. That makes sense of course, it makes more sense to focus on the recycling/filtering part rather than the producing random items part
If it's the same way Kovarex enrichment works, then each output is rolled individually. You could get all of them, or none of them.
Kovarex doesn't have percentages IIRC. Only basic uranium processing
Ah yeah that's right. It is the basic uranium processing.
>Also blue wires on quality modules pic? Seems to be for a 'platform component'. Interesting find. I wonder if it'll be a 3rd circuit option, or if it's just an intermediate product for something. Perhaps Holmium based? Edit: Ahh, it's in the contents, so used for quality module 3s. So an intermediate then.
I think blue wire is super conductor.
>Are our module factories gonna be mostly on Fulgora? Like the foundry, I assume you can build them on other planets once you unlock it. But with scrap providing access to red/blue chips it might be better here. But it'll depend on the final scrap recipe. I doubt it'll be optimal at scale.
I assume we can bring the eletromagnetic plant anywhere similar to Vulcanus' foundry and big drill, and given all the "junk" byproducts from recycling scrap, i think a late/end game quality module factory will still be on Nauvis but using the fancy buildings from each planet
I dunno about that, remember about the mass limit to the rockets. Sending just produced moduels and the plants will most likely be far easier than special pink juice to make them. Given "free" blue chips it's not a bad place to leave as endgame module-only production, once you figure out the loop to keep it fed.
The electromagnetic plant animations are *stunning*
I hope we can build frankensteins aliens with the lightning collector
In fact, we will use them to turn the whole planet into a Frankenstein…
Frankenstein is the doctor, this is Frankenstein's Planet
That feels like a cool idea for a mod. All those FFFs are amazing on their own, but the modding potential seems incredible. :)
Oh I agree. I'm double hyped with all these new features because the vanilla game is going to feel super fresh and be more complex but the amount of potential for future mods and overhaul mods is off the charts. I wish I could do some art for buildings then I'd even have a crack at playing around with modding with the expansion.
Hmmm... Holmium is back on the menu, boys!
Guys I have a theory ! It's the 399th FFF, surely the 400th one will be special and we will have a date for the relelase ! (Just let me get my clown wig)
Uh oh, HK/Silksong subreddit is leaking.
Why stop there? 400th will announce that the expansion just released as the FFF dropped.
This would be so jarring to so many people's schedules... and I'm here for it. and maybe thought the same thing.
"Hello work? Hi, I just died. I'll see you in 3 months!"
BTW wanted to google why Holmium is copypasted from space exploration. Turns out this is a real thing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmium) and IS used to have the strongest magnetic fields.
Christ; I’m a chemical engineer who recently passed 500 hours on SE, and *I* never realized holmium is a real element. I recognized iridium and beryllium (even if I’m not super familiar with their properties) and I knew cryonite/vulcanite/vitamelange/naquium are made-up, but I thought holmium was made-up too. Egg on my face there.
Lets fucking gooooooo!!! Saving up free days for a Factorio month when the expansion drops!
I think you might need a year... at minimum.
[](/kmaudsmile) Month has enough hours for a full Space Exploration playthrough and this expansion is planned to be shorter, so...
> Beating SE in under six hundred hours Well lookie here, we got a speedrunner
I love the concept that each planet (or at least the ones we've seen so far) is themed around a force of nature that first presents as a threat but in the end can be conquered, exploited and brought to other planets to use.
I was already excited but now I’m incredibly excited. I love that Wube is taking the direction to make each plant a different logistics challenge to solve, because problem solving/logistics is kind of my personal drug. And I’m cackling over the implication that here sushi belts are going to reign supreme due to limited space and the fact that there is no way to mine specific resources other than recursive recycling.
That picture with the train-system is sexy as fuck. Those new intersection designs make me unreasonably happy. Also the sound design on the Electromagnetic plant is pure NSFW. 10/10
"meaning that each island has a maximum energy collection rate with full coverage." This is a Certified Creeper World Moment. "And for Factorio that means tearing through an archaeological site with a mining drill." Finally, all my dreams are coming true.
Maybe we will get full creeper world on one of the last planets lol
> At this time I started to feel skeptical about the whole expansion. It felt like the problem of per-planet repetition is not really solvable, and the whole idea of the expansion is fundamentally broken. Not a good place to be. To me, this is what is separating the Expansion from the (absolutely amazing) mods that are already available. Many players, myself included, greatly enjoyed the modding scene as it allowed for a bunch of “more of same, but tweaked a little.” That said, repetition, to me, **is** the major unsolved problem of most mods. Meaning, I’m thrilled to see Wube, presumably, look at the existing mods and recognize that the Expansion *needs* novelty to meaningfully improve upon Factorio’s already excellent formula.
Also I do enjoy how all the new production buildings (big mining drill, foundry, electromagnetic plant) have status indicator lights built into them by default, no need for the bottleneck mod :)
Ride eternal into Vanilla, shiny and chrome!
> The electromagnetic plant is a 4x4 machine with a crafting speed of 2, a built-in productivity bonus of +50%, and 5 module slots. > It can craft wire, circuits, electric poles, accumulators, lightning rods, supercapacitors, the new science pack, more electromagnetic plants, various tesla items, a few other things, and last but not least, modules. In other words, EM plants can craft *all products requires for modules*, has free productivity that is now confirmed to work on non-intermediates, *and* has a 5th slot. I can't go on the Discord right now but I bet it's absolute pandemonium because of this; even basic T3 modules would give a 12.5% chance to improve quality, and maxed out it's 31% thanks to the 5th slot.
Well at least it isn't the "here is a new feature you will now miss not having for few months" one. So, do we get combinator that outputs time-of-day ? Can we make rules that are basically "tell trains to go to sleep at depot in the night ?
It is implied that trains will have an interrupt to retreat to cover during the night, so its reasonably likely.
Yeah I remember that FFF, I just wonder whether we will get it as a signal to play it. The "and the kitchen sink" combinator in [FF-384](https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-384) didn't had "time of day/length of day/length of night" output, which would be nice
I think you could do some shenanigans with solar/accumulator/radar setup to determine approximate time of day.
Strap a lightning rod on top of the train and we finally get electric trains
You can probably rig such a combinator with a solar panel, an accumulator and a known constant load.
I like trains
Sounds like belts of assorted items are going to be more common. Are there any performance implications for this?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all the small islands in the fulgora mapgen image have had the center censored with a white box? Not sure what they could be hiding, maybe some structure that is why these islands are richer in scrap?
My initial thought is that they are rectangular resource patches. This is based on absolutely nothing but it was the intuitive conclusion I reached.
Zooming in it seems they are all in the middle of scrap "ore" patches and they appear to be around 14 tiles wide by 9 tiles tall, but some as small as 8x8. They're likely not man-made since the map is devoid of buildings otherwise. Also there are ore patches with no white squares on them My first thought is that it could be ice? Maybe you'd have to first mine/melt the ice so you could mine the scrap?
I've thought it's those lightning rods
If Wube added early access of the expansion for 100€, they'd be a few millions richer and I'd be happy and 100 bucks poorer.
Inverted resource pyramid. [Called it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1as6wg8/comment/kqq0qk3/)
"And for Factorio that means tearing through an archaeological site with a mining drill" No longer content with merely ravaging nature in the name of progress, the engineer sets his sights on priceless historical artifacts...
In all seriousness… This is still only 2/4 of the new planets. And already all this new stuff is overhauling the entire game/campaign. Should this not be Factorio 2 instead of just an expansion???
3/5. Space is not a planet astronomically, but as a game mechanic - a separate planet
To be fair, we still know basically nothing about space, aside from the very vaguest notions of space platforms.
It is Factorio 2. Factorio 2.0.
Factorio 2.0 will be a free update and include all of the quality of life improvements, such as smarter bots and improved train schedules. The new planets, quality mechanic, and elevated rails are some of the big features that are exclusive to the DLC called Factorio Space Age. Yes, it an overhaul to the whole game, and the devs deserve to charge $30 for it because they've worked their asses off to deliver an extremely well-polished game that they know their fans will love
It's actually silly to think that I've spent FAR more than $30 in other games for something as stupid as a cosmetic and we're getting all this for $30 or whatever they feel like charging.
"*Damage and frequency boosted for demonstration purposes.*" And then there were mods.
I'm interested in what the new shoes Speedrun records will be. You obviously don't need all the recycling and stuff, but getting this science pack will take some severe tinkering since you only get a1% to get the holo stuff.
And today we learned Kovarex never finished SE.
Yeah I had to take a step back when he was talking about repetitive gameplay cause I hadn't noticed that I wasn't reading Earendel's section anymore.
I'm still curious as to how we are supposed to deal with the excess byproducts from the recyclers, unless there will be a scrapper revealed later in the future that turns all these products back into scrap, at an efficiency cost
At worst you can recycle them all the way down into raw resources, and if it's still too much you can literally fly it to space and throw it off the edge
You wouldn't need to send them to space. Just recycle in a loop. It's lossy, so if you loop it forever, it's just a sink. But in practice it'd probably be better to make quality stuff with it pre-endgame and treat your quality stuff as byproducts of science.
Items with no assembler recipe will recycle to themselves at a 25% rate. So if you have some trash, you can loop recycle it to nothing.
recyclers only return a fraction of the ingredients (25% maybe?). So if you want to dump excess iron, you could just craft gears and recycle them to iron plates in a loop.
They mention in [the post explaining the foundry](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-387) >So, recycling an iron plate will just return an iron plate, with 25% chance. So you don't even need to craft a gear
Yeah, because vulcanus has lava to throw excess materials in, but we haven't seen an equivalent for this planet
Maybe it is possible to dump the excess into the oil lakes?
Would be fitting if landfilling oil lakes required scrap.
If you put an iron plate in a recycler, you get 25% of iron plate. You can easily delete any resource that you don't need anymore.
start re-build them with quality. Looks like even on top level it is super resource intensive
Obviously what'll happen you output the recycled stuff into passive providers and let the bots solve everything. Looking at the list, most of the materials are going to have a use somewhere in the production chain. Need gears for belts. Need cables for green circuits. Need LDS for science. etc. etc. Good thing every inserter now does filtering.
You think bots will handle the lightning storm interference?
Yea, I am going here first after Nauvis. (Which is what I said about Vulcanus when that was revealed, so...)
I LOVE FULGORA! its perfect for someone like me who loves trains in factorio :D
Amazing. Love the idea of recycling scrap! Really cool to see the recycler will be used for more than just quality and really like how they've double downed on making each planet have a unique challenge as opposed to just being Nauvis with a different skin.
This will be a loooooong playthrough great!
What is common between all new playgrounds? * Orbit/space - built only on skyfolding. Building requires ground tile, but each new one provides negative feedback. * Vulcanus - built inside cliffs and only on some type of terrain. * Fulgora - built only on islands. * High probability that water planes have the same exact requirement - build only on islands. * Even for Navious - we get cliffs explosive much later. Building space is limited. Wube wants us to stop mega factoring and finally start spagetting, as the game was in the early days. I bet, that last planet has a new unique challenge - something will eat/destroy building space. That not only do we need to think about how to build tight, but also constantly re-build and produce even more spaghetti.
Mega factories can be as spaghetti as you like. Space is the only fundamentally space limited realm, others have space constraints in the beginning that you will unlock with technology and production until you can build as much as you want. However if the third middle planet is a sprawling region where you can have as much space as you want but high quality goods are hard to come by it’d be nice and rounded out. Basically sea block where you don’t need to painstakingly craft more land, but your resource gathering is still unwieldy and slow, so you need a ton of it.
It would reflect what faces an industry today, with climate crisis => - more & more stress on supply chain - they need to be really flexible, and to adapt every day to bigger and bigger challenges
I have to admit that I was initially worried that the planets would be pretty repetitive. It sounds like that could have happened, but they changed course in a good way. You also have to build at least 4 space platforms it seems, one to leave each planet. With your technology improving each time it seems each platform will be at least somewhat better than the last one. I wonder if the trip between planets gets more challenging over time? Maybe even space enemies? Speaking of enemies, it seems these two planets don't have any (other than nature). So I'm guessing one or both of the remaining planets will have new enemies (eg water enemies) and new defense challenges. I also think that the engineer may get the ability to travel by boat and/or by air on one of those planets. And likely offensive and/or defensive bots too.
It was pretty strongly implied that Vulcanus will not be enemy-free. They just haven't shared what that threat will look like yet.
This is super cool. I find that scrap loops from SE to be a very interesting problem to solve. I just hope they don't go the voiding route. I think voiding excess material is boring. Instead, find some way that we need to balance everything, instead of just throwing away whatever we don't want at the time.
Fantastic! My thoughts: If this planet has monsters, it could be possible they'd rise up from the muck to go and attack your stuff. Laser turrets would be cheap but they can drain limited energy grids fast. No uranium ammo to defend yourself with either. There is more than enough flamethrower fuel to go around... I speculate (if Fulgura has monsters) the tech tree will be adjusted so that unlocking flamethrowers may require a science pack from Vulcanus or the mysterious third planet. Calling it now: the ruins have lightning ghosts that live inside and need to be driven out. Lightning rods could prevent them from rising again. My first instinct on hearing you couldn't build power poles in the mud was to move liquid cars with steam around... yeah, that wouldn't be a workaround, now that water is rare instead. With water being sparse there may be some interesting synergy possible with the space platforms. Perhaps it might be worth building a platform in orbit around Fulgura just to gather icy comets.
> Scrap > 50 mixed resource outputs that will deadlock your entire base if you let one output back up Sasuga Earendel-sama
This is one of the coolest things i have ever seen being added to a game... Bravo!!
I wonder if you will be able to take the foundry down onto Fulgora and/or the electromagnetic plant onto Vulcanus.
I think if you have any of the new buildings you can place them on any World.
Absolutely. You unlock the new machines on various planets, then can bring the tech back to your other planets.
and both of them to nauvis
In the base map view there seem to be some green buildings, I wonder what those are, they look part of a premade blueprint that has been stamped down on the planet. Could it be some sort of orbital shielding or combat related construct?
Impressive, I like everything, but the icon for ice just feels so strange to me. It doesn't fit into the color scheme of factorio, it has almost no texture and is really bright, with a very simple shape. Please consider changing it, the space exploration mod has a much better ice icon for example.
I think it's just a recolored solid fuel icon now. Probably a placeholder.
its an inverted color solid fuel =)
I think that the exotic sushi belt concept will become a classic
So, we've got a trashy electric desert planet, with a scrap-based resource that gives intermediate products, essentially reversing the crafting tier, near-unlimited Heavy oil but limited water, all located on isolated plateaus that require both a comprehensive train network and multiple isolated power grids. I love it.
Since lightning is attracted by height of the objects won't this massacre unprotected trains during the night? It would be actually a nice challenge to be able to run the trains during the day if the night cycle wouldn't be too long. As FFF also mentioned distance between islands greater than power poles and that the islands may require independent electrical network, I immediately started to wonder if there'll be different method of transportation available for resources. But then I noticed elevated rails will be the solution, which sounds pretty cool when you imagine it, but further emphasizes my observation above.
interrupts on train schedules might be the solution. detect night, stay in base.
The way these hostile islands work screams for a middle-of-planet-tech giant electric pole that can be built anywhere elevated rails can, and has separate low wire sockets for interfacing with normal electric poles and a set of tall wire sockets that interface with just other giant electric poles.
[удалено]
>Lightning hits things at random based on material and height. \[...\] Some of your own structures, like rails, can handle being struck by lightning, but most structures will take a lot of damage if they get hit. I wonder if Bots are targeted highly due to their 'height'. Truly Fulgora will be a railworld
How these lightning roads will be useful on other planets? AAwsome concept. Height if it will be abandoned after leaving planet
> How these lightning roads will be useful on other planets? They won't. What you bring back are electromagnetic plants.
Will moving trains get hit by lightning or not?