Upcoming features

This is a list of known information about the upcoming expansion pack Factorio: Space Age and the upcoming 2.0 version.

• As of August 2023, development is at the end of step 5 "First pass of tweaking" out of 7 total steps until release. [1]
• The planned price is $35.00 because it is "as big an addition as the whole vanilla game.". [2]
• Space Age is expected to release on October 21, 2024. [3]

Factorio: Space Age

Friday Facts #367 shows some concept art for the expansion. Friday Facts #372 shows some item icons from the expansion.

"Factorio: Space Age continues the player's journey after launching rockets into space. Discover new worlds with unique challenges, exploit their novel resources for advanced technological gains, and manage your fleet of interplanetary space platforms." [4]

Consists of 3 major mods which can be enabled and disabled at will: Space Age, Quality, and Elevated Rails.

Space Age

Relevant FFFs: FFF 373 - Factorio: Space Age, FFF 381 - Space Platforms, FFF 386 - Vulcanus, FFF 387 - Swimming in lava, FFF 398 - Fulgora, FFF 399 - Trash to Treasure, FFF 413 - Gleba, FFF 414 - Spoils of Agriculture

• Space Age features 4 new planets, each with their own "unique theme, resource, challenges, and gameplay mechanics", and new enemies to deal with.
  • Vulcanus, a molten, waterless planet whose pools of lava can be casted into metal.
  • Fulgora, a lightning-prone desert planet where the only resource is Scrap left by an alien civilization.
  • Gleba, a world overgrown with trees and mushrooms whose biological products eventually degrade into spoilage.
  • The final planet is yet to be revealed, but is thought to be named Aquilo.

• Rockets will be significantly cheaper. Chemical science unlocks rocket silo and access to space. Space science unlocks access to other planets. Some technologies have been moved to one of these planets; artillery, cliff explosives, spidertron, tier 3 modules, and some personal equipment are in this list.

• Playthroughs of Space Age are expected to take approximately 60-100 hours.

New Music

• The expansion will come with five hours of new music, some of it recorded using a live orchestra. [5] There will be around one hour of new music for each new surface (space, plus the four new planets).

• It will also feature a new "variable music tracks" system [6], which seeks to "provide some variety in the music after tens or hundreds of hours spent in game". But, the developers note: "regular music is still the main focus and large majority of the soundtrack".

• The Space Age soundtrack will be available as a separate digital purchase. [7]

New Buildings

• Agricultural tower, harvests trees within range and can replant certain plants with seeds [8].
• Asteroid collector, sends out tentacle-like grabbers to collect asteroids [9]
• Big mining drill, upgraded electric mining drill [10]
• Biochamber, processes biological products [11]
• Crusher, assembler-like building for breaking down asteroids [12]
• Electromagnetic plant, builds electricity-based items [13]
• Foundry, processes molten materials [14]
• Fusion generator, converts plasma from the fusion reactor into electricity and warm coolant [15]
• Fusion reactor, uses fusion fuel cells and cold coolant to generate plasma [16]
• Rocket turret, fires rockets, explosive rockets, and atomic bombs [17]
  • Rockets have had electronic circuits removed from their recipe, to compensate for higher demand
• Selector combinator, used for filtering out various signals from a wire. [18]
• Space platform hub, central unit for space platforms [19]
• Stack inserter, a new inserter tier with the ability to place item stacks up to 4 items tall on belts [20]
  • The current stack inserter will be renamed to the bulk inserter
• Tesla turret, fires a chaining beam of lightning which damages and stuns enemies [21]
• A higher tier of transport belt, transporting 60 items per second. [22]

Space Platforms

• Space platforms are player-created surfaces that function both as factories and as transport to other planets.

• Platforms are created by launching a space platform starter pack on a rocket, which creates the surface with a hub on it with a small amount of flooring. More flooring can be placed, but can't contain any holes. The entire platform is lost if the hub is destroyed.

• The hub counts as a construction and logistics handler (as the player is confined to the hub) as well as a train-like entity (for moving between planets).

• Rocket silos now act as a requester chest and can request all items needed by a connected hub in orbit, including ghost entities. Silos can also be manually filled.

• A number of buildings can't be built on platforms, including construction and logistics robots, chests, vehicles, and burner entities.

• Storage within the hub can be expanded with cargo bays, which is important as you can't place chests on platforms. Cargo bays can also attach to other cargo bays.

• Platforms act as a power transmitter, removing the need for power poles entirely.

• Asteroids appear around space platforms and act as a renewable way to obtain iron, ice, and carbon. All three are required to produce fuel and oxidiser to move between planets. Moving causes larger, hazardous asteroids to appear that can be shot down into the smaller, collectible form. All asteroid types are collected and then crushed.
  • Metallic asteroids are crushed into iron ore
  • Carbonic asteroids are crushed into carbon
  • Oxide asteroids are crushed into ice, which can be melted into water

• Excess items can be dumped by "inserting" them into a space with no flooring.

• Satellites now only net 10 science packs per launch. Space science packs have been given a new recipe, however, and can be crafted with crushed asteroids and imported uranium-235. Uranium processing and tier 2 modules are now locked behind space science.

Vulcanus

Relevant FFFs: 386 - Vulcanus, 387 - Swimming in lava

• Vulcanus is a new volcanic planet. Its surface is divided between three distinct biomes: mountains, ashlands and lava basins.

• Mountains are large volcanoes, covered in cliffs and with a large lava pool at their center. They are home to sulfuric acid vents where sulfuric acid can be directly obtained, and a new material, calcite, which is used as a cleansing agent in recipes.

• Ashlands are plateaus speckled with sparse vegetation and deposits of coal. They are home to leafless alien trees, presumably a source of wood. They are relatively free of cliffs and lava, making them ideal for building.

• Lava basins are filled with winding lava rivers. Within them are deposits of a new material, tungsten, which can only be mined using the new big mining drill.

• The foundry, a new building for crafting with molten materials, can be researched here. It is used to process lava and calcite into molten iron and molten copper, with a byproduct of stone. It can also be used to melt iron and copper and cast molten metals into items such as iron gear wheels, copper wire, steel, and low density structures more quickly than other methods.

• Lava can be used to destroy items by placing items over it with an inserter.

• Big mining drills have a range of 13x13 tiles, harvest materials at 2.5/s, have 4 module slots, and have a 50% chance not to reduce resource richness, which can be further decreased at higher qualities.

• Sulfuric acid and calcite can be obtained to create water, which is the only local source of water on the planet.

• Coal liquefaction is now only obtainable on Vulcanus. A simplified liquefaction process is also available, wherein coal can be processed into oil without the need for heavy oil.

• Tungsten is used in a foundry to create the metallurgic science pack.

Fulgora

Relevant FFFs: 398 - Fulgora, 399 - Trash to Treasure

• Fulgora is a new barren desert planet. Its surface is split between island-like plateaus, and deep oilsands.

• Oilsands can be walked through, but only elevated rail supports and offshore pumps can be built in them. Offshore pumps will produce an unlimited supply of heavy oil.

• Factory buildings can only be built on plateaus. The only way to bridge the gaps will be with elevated rails, but you will be able to landfill the oilsands in the late game.

• Fulgora is prone to lightning storms at night. Lightning will damage buildings not protected by the new lightning rods.

• Lightning rods will also take energy from lightning and turn it into electricity for the power network. A bank of accumulators is needed to store it through the daytime.

• The plateaus are too far apart for electric poles, so each island will need its own electric network.

• The electromagnetic plant, Fulgora's equivalent to the foundry, is found here. It is used for crafting electrical-based items such as lightning rods, supercapacitors, and modules. It has an inherent productivity bonus of 50%, which, unlike modules, is not restricted to just intermediate items.

• The main resource on Fulgora is scrap, which can be processed in the recycler to create 12 different basic and intermediate products.

• These products include the new holmium ore, which can be used to create the electromagnetic science pack.

Gleba

Relevant FFFs: 413 - Gleba, 414 - Spoils of Agriculture, 424 - Pentapods

• Gleba is the new swampy forest planet. Its surface is split between swampy lowlands and the fungal-infested hills.

• Two types of local trees can be harvested with the new agricultural tower to give fruit, which can be processed in an assembling machine into further products.

• Processing fruit also gives seeds, which can be put back in the agricultural tower to replant trees, which the tower will harvest automatically when matured.

• Fruit can be further processed into more industrial products within the new biochamber, which requires a new item called nutrients to operate.

• Biological items will eventually and inevitably degrade into spoilage. The exact time differs per item, ranging anywhere from a few minutes to 2 hours.
  • Spoilage can be burned in a boiler, semi-destroyed in the recycler, or processed into half-spoiled nutrients.
  • Spoilable items are used as ingredients in a few non-spoilable items. Once that final item is created, it does not degrade further.
  • Inserters will be able to prioritize the most or least spoiled items.
  • Mods will be able to dictate what item a spoilable item turns into. [23]

• The agricultural science pack, crafted here, will also spoil, which will reduce its research value.

• Gleba's atmosphere naturally absorbs most pollution from industrial buildings. Instead, "pollution" comes in the form of spores and aroma from biological harvesting and processing, which will attract the native pentapods.

• Pentapods are new spider-like enemies native to Gleba. They have three units: wrigglers, strafers and stompers. Strafers and stompers are able to walk over walls. They are fairly passive compared to biters; pentapods will defend themselves and only attack once provoked.

• Pentapods spawn in egg rafts, found in Gleba's marshlands. Egg rafts drop pentapod eggs when destroyed, a key ingredient in crafting the biochamber. With some research, pentapod eggs can be automated at the risk of them spoiling and hatching into wrigglers.

• Wrigglers are newly hatched pentapods with average damage. They are very weak individually, but strong in large numbers, and can be spawned by both strafers and stompers.

• Strafers are fast, agile creatures that circle targets at a distance and spit out wrigglers, which can go over walls. Strafers can outrange both gun and laser turrets, and will back off when suffering damage.

• Stompers are slow and heavily armored that attack with both their crushing feet and a close-range spit. Their feet deal high damage in a small area of effect. When killed, stompers spawn a cluster of wrigglers.

Quality

This is a short overview of Quality, for more details see Quality.

Relevant FFFs: FFF 375 - Quality, FFF 376 - Research and Technology

Quality offers "vertical" growth for factories and influences a variety of building and item stats. There are 5 quality tiers: Normal, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary.

Known effects per quality level of items include improved crafting speed, turret range, health and module strength. These effects are per quality strength and additive, a Legendary Productivity module 3 would grant 25% productivity.

Quality items above Normal are created when quality modules are used in the machine that is crafting the item. Quality modules have a strength of 10%/15%/25% in line with the 2/3/5 system other modules use, as well as a speed penalty. Quality modules can be used on any recipe, unlike productivity modules which can only be used on intermediates. Quality is also random, whereas productivity is a cumulative effect.

The quality mod also adds a new building: The recycler, which gives a 25% chance of returning items created from recipes.

There is a new achievement for having best legendary armor full of legendary equipment [24].

Elevated Rails

Relevant FFF: FFF 378 - Trains on another level

New buildings:

• Rail ramp, to change layers
• Rail support, to support elevated rails

Elevated rails offer a second layer of rail planning, including curved rails and signals. Elevated rails require periodic supports which can be placed on water.

Known free changes for 2.0

• Expensive mode gets turned into a mod. [25]
• Better blueprint building. [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31]
  • "Super force building": Will place landfill underneath blueprints when building on water, or delete any other buildings in the way. Underground belts will be placed automatically, if possible.
    • Landfill can now also be mined both by the player and by construction robots, in addition to being automatically marked for deconstruction when "super force building" an offshore pump. [32]
  • Quick adjustment of blueprint grid offsets: SHIFT + Arrow keys adjusts the grid position, CTRL + Arrow keys adjusts the absolute grid offset.
  • Rail planner now works in map mode (and works especially well with the new "super force building" feature).
  • Fluid-based buildings like the oil refinery can now be flipped.
  • Parametrized blueprints: Assign parameters to entities within a blueprint, and change their values en masse when pasting the blueprint. Useful for changing a large number of entities within a generic blueprint, such as a line of filter inserters at a train station.
  • Redo: Use CTRL + Y (or Command + Z) to redo a previously undone order.
  • Using undo on actions more than 5 minutes old will show a confirmation box showing a preview of what is to be undone.
  • Wire connections, pasting entity settings, and blueprint rotations can now be undone (and redone).
  • Configure entities while they are still ghosts [33]
• Remote interactions [34]
  • Open any entity to configure it
  • Rotate any entity instantly
  • RMB to mark things for deconstruction
• Improvements to control of train systems. [35],[36], [37], [38]
  • Any item: A new wildcard signal that will replace itself with the first item in the train, allowing for generic trains
  • Disabling: Disabled stations will now act as if their station limit is set to 0.
    • A train en route to a station that is disabled will now continue to the station regardless, instead of skipping it and re-pathing.
    • A train told to go to a disabled station will enter the "destination full" state and wait until it is enabled again.
  • Locomotive colors: Locomotives can update their color based on the destination station's color.
  • Manual push: Push trains with your feet. Very slow.
  • New rails: Rails have a new texture. The geometry behind rail curves has been redone, allowing for 2 and 4-tile S-bends.
    • Trains will still drive on old rails in existing worlds, but old rails can no longer be built by any means, including copy/paste or blueprints.
  • Reservations: Trains will give up their reservation in a station when they leave the block the station is in, opposed to immediately.
  • Remote control: It's now possible to remote drive trains, which is convenient for controlling a train on another surface without traveling to it
  • Train interrupts: Trains can be directed to a different station when a condition is met, such as when fuel is low.
  • Train stop priority: A new slider in the train stop GUI. Stops have a priority of 0 to 255, with a default of 50.
    • When deciding between multiple destinations, trains will prefer stops with a higher priority.
    • Trains at stops with higher priority will be dispatched first.
  • Train groups: Trains can be assigned a group, and have their schedules changed en masse.
  • Train stop GUI Improvements:
    • The GUI now has a 'Trains on the way' tab.
    • When you set the name of a stop, it will copy the limit and color from an existing stop with that name.
    • A stop's name is now shown when hovered over on the map.
    • Train stop now shows path of incoming trains.
    • Ability to copy-paste train stops from the map.
    • Mass stop rename: holding CTRL when confirming a change will rename all stops with that name to the new name.
• UI additions [39], [40], [41]
  • Accumulator charge: The electric network info screen now has a third graph which displays accumulator charge over time.
  • New alerts GUI: Alerts are more intuitively separated by category and location, with the option to pin the alert location to the map. Hovering over the alert will bring up a small view of the alert location. If using Space Age, alerts are further separated by planet.
  • Factoriopedia: A new GUI which shows all items in the game, how they are crafted, what recipes they're used in, and what technologies unlock them. Can also be built upon for Space Age and modded content.
  • Map pins: Pin specific locations to your map for later use. If in multiplayer, these are unique to each player, unlike map tags.
  • Map search: While in map view, you can search for production buildings, map tags, and train stops.
  • Online players: A new GUI exclusive to multiplayer that will show all online players, with the ability to show their current location and pin that location to the map. If using Space Age, will also show each player's current planet.
  • Science consumption: Hovering the mouse over the research progress bar in the top right will show a small graph showing the last 10 minutes of science consumption, and the estimated time remaining based on the last 1 minute.
  • Science production: The production statistics GUI now has a special selectable item which shows the total of all science packs being produced.
    • If using Space Age, production statistics can show any or all planets.
    • If using quality from Space Age, production statistics can show any or all quality grades.
• Abstract items: Red wire, green wire, artillery targeting remote, discharge defense remote, and spidertron remote are no longer physical items you craft and take up inventory space, but now buttons on the shortcut bar. [42]
• Trigger technologies: Some technologies will now be unlocked by mining an entity or crafting specific items. For example, a new technology called steam power will unlock steam engine and related buildings after crafting 50 iron plates. As such, the number of recipes available at the start of the game is reduced from 28 to 12.
• Fluids 2.0: The fluid system has been completely rewritten. Pipes now have essentially unlimited throughput; a fluid pushed into a segment of pipes is now fully available across the entire stretch of pipes equally. Machines "push" fluids into pipes at an unlimited rate, and "pull" at a rate equal to how full a segment is. [43]
• Display panel: A new building that displays signal icons and custom messages, in-game or on the map screen. It can be connected to the circuit network to set conditions. [44]
• Circuit network changes [45], [46], [47], [48], [49] [50], [51]
  • Assembling machines can now be connected to the circuit network. Functions include setting recipes via signal, reading active ingredients, and outputting a signal when a recipe is finished.
  • Lamps now have an option to use colors and enable during the day without the need for a circuit connection.
  • The GUI for arithmetic combinators and decider combinators are redone. Decider combinators can now handle multiple conditions at once.
  • Connecting to transport belts has the option to read the contents of all belts in the same "transport line", survives going through underground belts; also has "less visual clutter".
  • Wireless circuit transmission using radar with a single radar channel for each surface.
  • Heavily reworked Logistic network GUI, with remote view panel and table of inventory icons.
  • Pump now has a filter, which can be set with signals.
  • When using the cut tool, the game remembers outside circuit wire connections, tries to reconnect if possible. This cannot be transferred to a blueprint export string.
  • Gun turret, laser turret, and artillery turret can now be connected to the circuit network, with options to enable/disable and read their applicable ammunition. Gun and laser turrets also have the ability to set a list of priority targets via signals.
• Small changes [52]
  • Logistic requests are re-enabled upon retrieving one's corpse.
  • Mathematical expressions can be typed in text fields, such as 4k, 4*5k, etc.
  • Save games can now be sorted by last time modified.
• Filter inserter and stack filter inserter will be removed. All remaining inserters will have the ability to filter 5 items. [53]
• Stack inserters will be renamed to "bulk inserter". This will be due to a new inserter in Space Age with the ability to stack items on belts, which will take the more appropriate name of stack inserter. [54].
• Inserters more reliably pickup items off of faster transport belts. [55]
• Portable fusion reactor will be renamed to "portable fission reactor", with a new nuclear reactor-inspired icon. This will be due to the introduction of a full-sized fusion reactor in Space Age, which will come much later in the game.
• Ghost pipes will visually connect to each other. [56]
• Improved flying robot behavior. [57], [58]
• Roboports have built-in radar coverage of 2 chunks. [59]
• Big power poles now have a wire range of 32 tiles. [60]
• An overhaul to the sound engine, allowing for more dynamic and layered sounds. [61]
• Improved world generation of Nauvis, the starting planet. [62]
• Crafting can now be faster than 1 craft per tick [63]
• Modding additions [64], [65]
  • Mods can create more than 255 tiles.
  • Mods can use the upgraded enemy pathfinding system, which allows enemies to ignore certain obstacles, even though this system is only currently used in Space Age.
  • Pollutant types: Mods can add different types of pollution, each with different name, emission and absorption rate, color, and more, with a restriction of one type per surface.
• Improvements to spidertron [66], [67], [68]
  • Spidertrons can now be blueprinted
  • The spidertron remote is renamed to the "RTS tool" and has been expanded with new controls.
    • It is no longer a craftable item, but a button on the quickbar ALT + A
    • It can select a group of spidertrons to control them all.
  • Improved pathfinding and performance when attempting to path over obstacles.
  • Spidertrons have a slightly different walking animation due to changes in the leg algorithm made for spidertron-like enemies in Space Age.
• The pipette tool now works in more places: Recipe slots, logistic slots, inventory slots; placeable tiles like concrete, landfill, platform foundation, etc.; Water, lava, oil ocean (to get offshore pump) [69]
• Rocket silo changes [70] [71]
  • Faster subsequent launches: The silo can craft and buffer an extra rocket inside. These buffered rockets will be launched without the silo going through its normal animation of closing and reopening its doors.
  • Rocket control units are removed. Rocket parts now take processing units instead.
• Beacon rebalance [72]
  • Beacons now transmit at a base strength of 1.5, instead of 0.5.
  • A beacon's effect on a building now scales based on the square root of the number of beacons effecting the building. Buildings with 8 or fewer beacons receive a buff, 9 or more receive a nerf.
  • If using quality from Space Age, higher quality beacons have a greater transmission power.
• Multiplayer improvements [73], [74]
  • Latency improvements when driving vehicles.
  • A dedicated server that was auto-paused will remain paused until a player has fully loaded in, rather than immediately.
  • Servers have the option to auto-pause when a player is joining.

See also

• Category:Upcoming - Pages for specific upcoming features
• Friday Facts #365 - Future plans
• Friday Facts #367 - Expansion news
• Friday Facts #373 - Factorio: Space Age
• Friday Facts #418 - Space Age release date
• Planned releases