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Still playing factorio space age. I think we've had a thread about it every Friday since its release. It deserves it though, solidly awesome game.
We finally made it to Aquilo. Kept feeling like every other planet still had minor things we needed to fix. Aquilo feels like the seablock mod a bit. You need to build your own land.
The high power costs of drones, and the requirement to use heating pipes adds some new challenges. Builds tend to look pretty different.
I'm also trying to build a massive space platform for some forms of production. Its almost 4500 tons so far. I expanded it from a ~1000 ton ship that was producing its own space platform. I think I want to see how ridiculous the space platforms can get.
Quality has also been a fun mechanic. Feels like burning massive amounts of resources for slightly better stuff. But factorio is all about using up massive amounts of resources. And usually the resource sink is science, but sometimes science isn't enough.
I have probably 80-90 hours into my Space Age world, though I'm not into space yet (I'm right at the point where I can launch rockets though). I've been enjoying it, though obviously I don't really have access to most of the new content yet.
My biggest complaint so far is that quality seems half baked and that it makes the game more inconvenient. Just unlocking it meant that every "select a recipe" type dialog takes two clicks (select the recipe and hit OK), even for the vast majority of cases where I don't care about quality yet. And the logistics get more complicated, because you can't tell machines "take this quality or higher, I don't care". So quality parts will jam up your logistics unless you plan carefully. I like quality in principle, but the implementation doesn't hold up to the very high standards Wube has met in the past for how smooth the gameplay should be.
Quality doesn't shine until Fulgora. I would almost advise avoiding it altogether on Nauvis.
Fulgora has you developing lots of sorting builds and figuring out how to avoid the jam ups that result. It's a good crash course in how to make safer quality builds, that don't gunk up your factories.
There are also only three use cases where I've found quality to be absolutely worth it: spaceships, personal items, and resource extraction devices (pump jacks and miners). Almost everything else is solvable more easily through the traditional factorio solution: make your factory bigger. The resource extraction devices preserve more resources at higher quality levels. Allowing you to tap mines and oil fields for longer. So they are sort of a convenience, but still ultimately ignorable with just "expand the factory more".
I'd recommend just trying to go to space, and maybe even Vulcanus before you feel fully ready. Just get Nauvis to a defensible position, or shut most of it down to minimize pollution while you are gone.
A lot of what I've spent time on is fortifying Nauvis. I had the misfortune to get a desert world, so I set about building walls and turrets basically first thing. Then the biters were evolving to the point normal ammo wasn't enough, so I had to get red ammo, turret upgrades, etc. Then by that time my starter resources were low so I had to expand the walls to include new resources... you know how it goes. I would say I probably spent half of the time in my save either building defenses or researching defense upgrades.
But hey, I am going to go to space today unless things really go sideways. The defenses are solid, I have machines building rocket launch pads and fuel, I'm finally ready. It'll be nice to finally get to Vulcanus (my planned first planet)!
Vulcanus is a great first planet. It is most similar to Nauvis gameplay, but even lower maintenance. You can basically get infinite copper, iron, and sulfuric acid within the drop zone.
Meta is go big and build massive factories. Which is good cuz the enemies on the planet require an extensive expenditure of resources.
There is also some minor opportunity for space mining. Little asteroids will come at you above Nauvis. Early game that just means iron, carbon, and ice. But a free trickle of iron after an initial investment isn't bad.
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