Upcoming features

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

Plans

• Q: What?
  • A: "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." [1]
• Multiple people, including the modder Earendel were hired to work on the expansion pack. [2]
• As of August 2023, development is at the end of step 5 "First pass of tweaking" out of 7 total steps until release. [3]
• Friday Facts #367 shows some concept art for the expansion.
• Friday Facts #372 shows some item icons from the expansion.
• It is planned to be "as big an addition as the whole vanilla game." [4]
• The planned price is $30.00. [5]
• The expected release date is around August 2024. [6]
• Rockets will be significantly cheaper [7]
• Tech tree gets overhauled: [8]
  • Chemical science unlocks rocket silo and access to space
  • Space science unlocks access to other planets
  • Artillery, cliff explosives, spidertron, top module tiers and some personal equipment upgrades are unlocked on another planet.

Additional paid features

• A recycler. [9]
  • "Recyclers will "uncraft" items into 25% of their ingredients. For items with no recipe or a chemical process (like smelting), they will return the same item at the same 25% rate. The reason it is so low is to avoid net positive loops with productivity. Fluids cannot be recycled." - _CodeGreen [10]
• Extra tiers of entities, represented by Quality. This mechanic allows more efficient modules and buildings to be crafted by using higher quality materials randomly generated from machines using Quality modules, in a similar way to the Productivity module. Quality has 5 tiers, going from Normal, Uncommon, Rare, Epic and Legendary, with each quality providing a flat 30% boost from the tier below it, with the exception of Legendary items which garner a 60% boost above Epic items.
  • Most entities gain a reasonable mechanical boost from quality as well as a health boost, with any entities that don't fit just receiving the health boost. These entities as listed in the FFF are belts, pipes, rails, chests, combinators, walls, and lamps.
  • For every other machine and item, it's effects are made better in some way. For example, power poles and equipment grids have larger areas to work with.
  • Using recycling, FFF 375 dictates that it takes 56 times as many resources to craft legendary items as it does to craft their normal quality counterpart. However, independent testing by the community based on the numbers listed dictates a multiplier of 116, over twice what was specified in the FFF.
  • The quality system will be a separate mod, which can be enabled or disabled at will.
• Raised train tracks [11]
  • These will be in a separate mod, which can be enabled or disabled at will.

Known free changes for 2.0

• Expensive mode gets turned into a mod. [12]
• Train stop disabling will be removed. [13]
• Improvements to controlling spidertrons. [14]
• Added the ability to use the pipette anywhere, including the crafting menu. [15]
• Added the ability to automatically remove fuel from locomotives. [16]
• Ghost pipes will visually connect to each other. [17]
• Improvements to control of train systems. [18]
  • Likely including logic for going to or skipping stations depending on fuel inventory [19]
• Better blueprint building. [20]
• Improved flying robot behaviour. [21]

See also

• Friday Facts #365 - Future plans
• Friday Facts #367 - Expansion news
• Friday Facts #370 - The journey to Nintendo Switch
• Friday Facts #373 - Factorio: Space Age
• Friday Facts #374 - Smarter Robots
• Friday Facts #375 - Quality
• Planned releases