mad-mathematician

[mad-mathematician]

Thoughts on Vulcanus!

I have many thoughts, but none are in order, so here we go bitches!!!

Demolishers!!

I think the demolishers are VERY cool!! I feel like every good scifi story or media has at least one Fucking Giant Worm, and seeing Factorio get one is very nice!! When I first read the FFF post about Vulcanus, I was waiting the entire time like "show me the worm show me the worm show me thE WORM-" and I was SO excited when they showed us the worm!!!

Their mechanics are cool I think! A twist on how the enemies in Factorio usually operate. The lack of a constant pressure from biters is a nice change of pace, and needing to kill them to expand your building area is fun! They are deceptively easy to kill if you know what you're doing, but if you don't, they can be real nasty to deal with.

I took down smalls and mediums with gun turrets and red ammo, which is basically free on this planet, which I'll comment on later.

Their atmosphere and presence is very cool as well!! The whole idea of them is very well done, seeing them visually slither across the map is terrifying and majestic. I always find it fun when they come right up to the edge of their territory, right next to where my factory is. Seeing this giant, destructive beast inches away from my carefully built machines, it's a very cool feeling!!

Environment!!

The environment of the planets and Nauvis in general has really been stepped up for Space Age/2.0! Landing on Vulcanus, obviously it is an alien world, but it's also so well done for being a factory game!! The biomes are all distinct, each with their own characteristics, and they all feel different to be in! The sulfuric acid vents feel different to the lava oceans which feel different to the volcanic plateau! It actually feels like I'm on a fully featured planet, with variation and development and history!!! It's all amazingly done.

The music is super sick and adds to this as well!! The big brass feels very dramatic, very grand. It sounds like the planet is BOOMING, which it kind of is in various ways. I'm honestly debating buying the soundtrack to have the Vulcanus tracks in my playlist, which is the first time I've seriously considered buying a game soundtrack.

Production!!!

I think the production lines on Vulcanus are very interesting! The mix of resources you have access to makes you think about your supply chains and logistics in a different way, and it's a very fun change.

The simple fact that you get iron/copper from lava and calcite alone changes so much. In my factory, I don't bother shipping iron or copper anywhere but a couple tiles away by belt. All my long distance transport and trainlines only move the calcite, and source lava locally. It DRASTICALLY reduces train traffic, which is VERY nice!!

Casting items in the foundry is fun!! The 50% productivity bonus on everything is so nice, especially for my belt mall. The speed that things cast also changes how you think about basic supplies like gears. While in a standard factory, you'll likely need a good few assemblers making gears elsewhere for a belt mall, you can very easily get away with just one or two with foundries. And steel casting is SOOO nice. Steel being produces so much faster makes so many things easier. I'm making purple science on Vulcanus, and not needing to have the equivalent area of a small european nation to fit the steel smelting is a godsend.

Power generation is a fun twist as well! Getting steam straight from sulfuric acid and calcite seems like it would be odd at first, but because the machines produce so fast, it ends up meaning that a single chemical plant making steam can supply your water needs AND your power needs for a very long time. I currently have 2.2GW of steam power setup, and I think I'm literally using like 10 chemical plants to make it all lmao.

One thing I was absolutely not expecting was how ABSURD the sulfuric acid vents are. Each individual node, on average, produces like a HUNDRED sulfuric acid per second!!!! Before mining prod and beacons!!!!!!! I was worried about my sulfuric acid supply for power production early on, but after killing one (1) small demolisher, I am absolutely set for LIFE on sulfuric acid.

Overall, the production lines end up being very similar to Nauvis, where you start by making plates, then crafting more advanced intermediates, then eventually science packs. But the way you get to those plates, and the logistics involved, make it a very interesting challenge!!

THOUGHTS!!!

I really enjoyed my time on Vulcanus!! I think it's a very good place to start in the expansion, with enough variety to make you have to rethink some things you thought you knew, but with enough similarities that you won't have to smash your head against a wall to make things work. Very well done, very well thought out, I can't wait to go back here and rework things with later game upgrades!! I feel like Vulcanus is going to become a mass production hub for a lot of the heavier things, like space platform and steel products.

I'm very satisfied with Vulcanus! I cannot wait to see what the other planets have in store :3

Next stop, Fulgora!!!!!

[mad-mathematician]

Space Age update 11/28, PT2

Picking up right where I left off, have an interesting rail junction:

With multiple large production blocks for all the products I need...

Rockets!! With the silos built, I can start exporting calcite, science, and buildings back to Nauvis!! So that's exactly what I did.

Space platforms are fun!!

The absolute beauty of being able to just blast through rock like this, it does things to me

"Starter" base overview, it has expanded to include a bot mall for pretty much every resource and building I need to do stuff on the planet, it produces rockets from parts imported from elsewhere on the planet, and it produces all the foundries and big drills to be exported!

When I saw how absurdly unlimited the resources are here, as well as the fact that steel, LDS, and mining productivity all only need RGB+Purple and sometimes Metallurgic science, I set myself the goal to produce 500SPM of each of them on the surface of Vulcanus. It ended up being a very fun challenge, requiring me to expand a lot of my production lines around the world, as well as being a very VERY useful utility. I'm currently at steel/LDS prod 7, and mining prod 23, and I'm just letting it run while I do other things. I suspect I'll be somewhere around steel/LDS prod 10 and mining prod 33 by the time I'm done with the next planetary science pack!!

A map view of the science production modules. I designed 2 modules, 1 for RGB science, one for purple science, each rated at 250 SPM, and tileable. I then pasted down 2 of these modules for each design, and connected them to the train grid.

Full base overview!!

The labs lighting up with the first shipment of science packs, a truly beautiful sight.

Medium worms going down easily with a massive wall of gun turrets and red ammo spam. Both of which are essentially free, given how cheap calcite is lmao

Metallurgic science was actually the easiest module to get online, as the tungsten products are quite simple to produce, and everything else I needed was already on the train network somewhere.

More interesting train intersections.

And with that, my work on Vulcanus is finished!! (for now...) After this I set off back for Nauvis, to expand with the new tools and toys I've unlocked on this very interesting planet!!

I'll be posting my overall thoughts on Vulcanus in a separate post, coming Soon™

[mad-mathematician]

Space Age update 11/28, PT1

SOOOO much has happened since the last update!! So I'm just gonna write things out in no particular order 1. Vulcanus is done!! I landed, setup the science, killed some worms, launched offworld with science packs to take back to Nauvis!

2. I've got a ship design that works! It's basic, it's slow, it doesn't hold much, but it WORKS. And I've flown it around the solar system with no problems!!

I dropped to the planet with a bunch of supplies, so I wasn't starting completely from scratch. It made jumpstarting production a lot faster than it would have been otherwise.

With a couple more minutes of building stuff, I ended up with this starter base! It's very simple, very clunky, but it works, and it's been producing the basic materials I've needed to expand on this planet ever since I built it!

At this point I also noticed that the pollution cloud that my Nauvis base is usually completely covered with had almost completely been absorbed:

The only remaining source of pollution is the uranium processing to keep the lights on, but otherwise, the base is completely idle.

My first worm kill!! Importing uranium ammo was a tad expensive, but it made killing the small demolisher guarding my first tungsten patch very easy. Went around and killed a couple more early on, expanded to a couple useful resource patches.

Some janky bot fed science!! It's working!!!!!

Expanded a bit with big drills, added a belt production area.

Imported some science and researched the most important research on this planet: Cliff explosives!!! Then proceeded to go around blowing up every cliff I could find lmao

The very common cliffs and late unlocking of cliff explosives meant that I had to get a little... creative with my railway junctions hehe

The interesting nature of radar scanning lining up perfectly with a demolisher's speed means that it looks like there's a massive demolisher guarding this area 0_0

Environmental storytelling.

Oklahoma.

Expanded power!!

Larger production blocks coming online.

Map overview!!

This post is getting long, so I'm gonna split it into 2 posts here...

[mad-mathematician]

Space Age Playthrough Update 11/15/2024

Got many many things done!!! Setup space science, it's a really interesting challenge!! I like the way space platforms are built and setup, the animations are all really fucking sick, and the recipe chain is interesting and teaches the player about the new mechanics in a very nice way!!

I've setup a bot mall, upgraded production with modules and tier 3 assemblers, expanded some production lines that were bottlenecking things

I've also started outposting!! The resources within my walls have started to run a little thin, so I've expanded my walls out and made a couple outposts for valuable patches!

I'm reusing a wall design I made some time ago, revamped for the new fluid mechanics, and using bots instead of belts. Working very well so far, we'll see how it holds up against max evo biters!

My next objective really is to head to other planets!! I'm headed to Vulcanus first, then Fulgora, then finally Gleba, as decided by my wonderful partner :3

We will see what the future holds!!

(^^^ has not flown yet, is purely a theory crafted ship for me to play around with things)

Wonky ratios, but GOD it's so nice that I don't need to built nuclear on top of a fucking lake to make things work!!! Water expanding into steam is top 10 changes in 2.0 for sure

Also what the hell is this ^^^

[mad-mathematician]

Space Age Playthrough Update!

Just got yellow science setup!! Honestly, it was surprisingly easy given how I'm used to mods like Space Exploration. Setup a couple circuit lines with a generic blueprint, copy and pasted it to make LDS, I have bot frames already because I'm in love with construction bots, and there we go!!

Next step, I'm gonna see what space science is like! I already have the things to make rockets, since rocket fuel is stupid easy if you have light oil, so now I've just got to figure out how it works!!

Attached are some random screenshots of my base, for future reference :3

[mad-mathematician]

Space Age Update!!

Got red, green, military, and blue science all up and running, got my factory enclosed in a wall protected by flamethrowers, basic mall operational, and robots!! Now it's time to start scaling up, gotta capture a couple more resource patches, then I'm going big!!!

Really enjoying the changes to fluids so far, I think it's absolutely a change for the better.

Excited to see how the train changes work soon!!

[mad-mathematician]

FIRST DAY OF SPACE AGE!!!!

Started playing Factorio Space Age today!! It honestly feels surreal to say those words, but here we are!

First of all, this is the first time I'm ever playing Factorio on fully default settings. No extra starting area, no deeper resource patches, just fully stock settings! It'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

Second, while I haven't gotten that far in just the first day, things already feel more streamlined!! Ghosts have a nicer blue color, remote view is very useful, factory search is so nice!! I cannot WAIT to see how the other QOL changes affect the game :D

Third, FISH SPOIL. It makes perfect sense, but it still surprised me!!!! Fish spoil now!!! I'll (hopefully) be posting updates about my playthrough as the days go on!!

[mad-mathematician]

Been a while since I posted, got the cryonite outpost nearly online!

Brought along a couple blueprints to help make the process easier, notably these two factory buildings:

The one on the left is a fully functional, power saving, 2x2 reactor, shoved into a portable MK3 Factorissimo building! Made setting up power very convenient.

The right building is a meteor defense ammo maker! It comes with this compliment inside it for easy building:

Just set the signal frequency, aim delivery cannons, and you're good to go!

Along with those buildings, this is my main staging area for setting up the rest of the factory on this world:

Uranium power production, train fuel production, a landing pad for when I need to send in more equipment, and a small bot network.

Now onto the meat of this world, the cryonite production!

Making cryonite rods is actually quite a simple process, so the design isn't anything too fancy at all, but I'm still very proud of how it came out!

This is build for 15 rods/second, and I think it's a very satisfying build to look at!

And then finally, here's a map-wide overview of the planet:

Within the next couple hours I should have utility science up and running! Wish me luck! :3

[mad-mathematician]

I got bored waiting for modules to produce, so I started loading up the cryonite outpost rocket. So far I've packed up the basics, all the various belts and inserters I could want, plus rails and railway equipment.

I've also been expanding my Nauvis factory with all the new module'd builds I've made, this is what the base looks like at the moment!

With many more ore patches and a very large solar field off screen.

That's another thing I've been expanding, I setup flat solar production in orbit and have been expanding my power grid with solar panels!! Up to nearly 1GW average solar production.

Things did get a little dicey before I got everything setup, though:

Very nearly drained the whole power grid! Given that it's solar, it would have been fine, but still!

[mad-mathematician]

Turns out, scaling up to make thousands of tier 3 modules takes a *lot* or resources lol. I've been expanding my mining operations, building out more solar panels, setting up production blocks for a good few hours now just waiting for the modules to be ready. After they're producing, next step is cryonite!!

[mad-mathematician]

Made a lot of progress!

Not in my actual game, but in the editor, mostly. By having vulcanite setup, I can now start designing things with prod 3 modules in mind, as well as pyroflux smelting and full scale beacon usage. This prompts me to a full scale redesign of most of my production blocks, as right now they're only using assembler MK2s and usually no modules at all.

Some of the production lines I've designed, in no particular order:

All of this so I can setup for these:

The Massive Module Makers™!! I'm going all out on module 3s everywhere, so to feed the needs of the factory, I've designed blueprints that can spit out roughly 1 tier 3 module per second of each speed and prod!! And I'll certainly be needing them, given how expensive some of my current builds are hehehe

Additionally, I designed and setup this bot-fed production line for production/utility science!

Not meant for speed, simply meant to produce a steady trickle of science until I can scale up with trains.

Also setup flat solar panels!

That's all the progress for now. Not a lot of science progress, but a lot of scaling up!! Excited to build with tier 3 stuff!!!

[mad-mathematician]

Alaz is setup! I'm making vulcanite!!

I've completed my setup for vulcanite production on Alaz!! Since I had already designed the production line itself, and I have many blueprints for chunk aligned rails and such, building was far quicker than I expected it to be.

Full factory from map view. I've setup a good few vulcanite mines, as my production line can eat 4 full blue belts of ore and I didn't design a beacon'd miner design. Also because I don't want to move things for a while.

First, raw vulcanite is unloaded from 3 trains at once, to maintain the 4 blue belts that this line can eat. The trains unload into a massive balancer, so each stop can provide for the line fully, if the others are empty. Additionally, each stop has a limit of 2, which means there can be 6 trains waiting/unloading at once. Tbh this is probably overbuilt, but I don't mind ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Production line overview. At the bottom right, I have a cannon chest receiving water ice from NOrbit. At the top, I have cannons to fire vulc cubes to Nauvis and NOrbit, as well as a small receiving chest area for cannon capsule deliveries from Nauvis.

As I don't have rocket infrastructure here, and Nauvis is about a billion miles away, I'm going to capsule emergency burn back home. Luckily I don't have too much stuff with me that I could lose on the way back!!

This planet was fun to setup!! Was quick and easy with the blueprints I have, fun to lay out the trains! Now I'm ready for production science, and next, cryonite!!

[mad-mathematician]

I'm setting up on Alaz, my vulcanite world!!

I launched a rocket full of solar panels and accumulators ahead of time, because the power needed for my production managed to fill an entire cargo rocket. Then I loaded up another rocket with the supplies to build the base and all the connecting infrastructure, flew out and started building!

The first thing I did was setup some solar panels. I thought I would be able to build the solars myself, but after building out about 1/10th of the power, I decided screw this and replanned things. Redesigned my solar BP with roboports!!

But now the problem was that I didn't have enough ports on Alaz, and there aren't enough local resources to make more. So I sent a third cargo rocket, with a few more solars, and a LOT more roboports.

After that arrived, I finally started setting up properly on the planet.

Currently planning out where the production lines and mines will go, will post more updates soon!!

[mad-mathematician]

Progress!!

Not a whole ton of one specific thing, but many little things have been completed!

I've automated blue belts!! Made a little factory building to spit out all the blue belts I could ever want, supplied directly off my train grid!

2. I bodged together a couple hundred speed modules! Made a quick little hand-fed setup to produce some when needed.

3. I setup a teeny tiny core mining drill setup to collect iron ingots!

It's horribly inefficient, burns off all the ores that aren't iron, doesn't have any speed modules, but it doesn't need to be fast or good because it only has one job, which will be obvious in the next point...

4. I used the vulcanite blocks in the NOrbit base and the Canary, combined with the iron ingots from core mining, to build all the production science packs I could before automating the science myself!!

It was a very hastily thrown together, hand fed, spaghetti mess of a build, but it served its one and only purpose: Unlock beacons.

You don't actually need vulcanite, or any off-world resource, to build beacons, only to research them. So with the research now completed, I can build as many as I want!! Which is important becauuusee...

5. I designed a vulcanite production line!!!

It's setup to output 30 cubes/s from only raw vulcanite, water, and oil. Stone and sand byproduct can be output at the top, or voided if needed. And the reason I went through all the hassle above, is because it's designed around prod 2 in every machine, with speed 3 in beacons around them, feeding onto blue belts!!!

I'm planning on flying to my vulc world, setting this up with local oil and imported water ice, then using the cubes to mass produce prod 3 modules before setting up my cryonite outpost.

Currently I'm in the process of loading up a rocket to fly to the outpost, will post more updates soon!!

[mad-mathematician]

Space Science!!!

I've started producing space science packs!! Using the requester chests you find on the orbit platform, as well as the machines you find up here, I've automated the production of the first of many space-only sciences!!

Now you may notice that I'm using water ice, and not the normal 169K patch that always spawns on the platform. Well I got lucky this run, and my NOrbit has THIS:

7.7 MILLION water ice, practically a stones throw away from the orbit platform!!

When I saw this, I decided to set myself a challenge: I'm not going to unbarrel a single water barrel, the entire run.

I'm going to ship water from this ice patch and do vulcanite first, so I can upgrade my machines with productivity 3 modules. From there, I'll take beacons and prod 3 to the cryonite world.

It'll be interesting to see how much this ice patch is drained by the time I can mass produce my own ice!!

[mad-mathematician]

I made it!!!

I made it all the way to space!!

Launching to Calidus Belt 1 worked out exactly as intended. I lost slightly more items than anticipated, but that's exactly why I brought many many more than I needed!

After fixing up the Canary, I was ready to fly!

On the flight back, I did encounter a slight hiccup. Even though I rebuilt to the same spec I have in other SE runs, I was taking damage! Asteroids were breaking through the laser defense, even destroyed a wall!! Why?

Because I'm playing without biters on Nauvis, I hadn't researched any laser damage upgrades xD

I stopped flying, let my Nauvis base churn through all the damage upgrades I could, and decided to use the time to do some upgrading. I noticed there were some spare walls and floors in a chest...

With some slight rearranging and some slight expansion, the Canary now has 1.33x the power production and slightly more power storage as well!! After these upgrades, I was easily able to hold 40 speed zipping around Nauvis orbit.

I'm pretty proud of this upgrade as well, because

ON THE DOT, 300 stress :D

Once I made it to the NOrbit platform, I had quite a lot of cleaning up to do, so I'll show it in 3 parts:

Let the "Space" part of Space Exploration begin!!

[mad-mathematician]

I'm going to space!!

I've checked, double checked, and I'm ready to send my first rocket into space!!

I'm headed for the asteroid belt, to grab The Canary first. Then I'm flying to NOrbit to get started with the Space part of Space Exploration!

Here's what I'm taking with me:

Enough to make a good few space science packs, plus enough materials and buildings to setup a good bit of infrastructure while I'm at it!

Some space intentionally left empty as The Canary can only hold so much cargo.

Excited to see how this plays out!!