Upcoming features
This is a list of known information about the upcoming expansion pack Factorio: Space Age and the upcoming 2.0 version.
Space Age expansion
Consists of 3 major mods: Space age, quality and elevated rails.
- 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]
- As of August 2023, development is at the end of step 5 "First pass of tweaking" out of 7 total steps until release. [2]
- 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." [3]
- The planned price is $30.00. [4]
- The expected release date is around August 2024. [5]
Space Age
Relevant FFFs: FFF 373 - Factorio: Space Age, FFF 381 - Space Platforms
Space Age features 4 new planets (possibly named Vulcanus, Bacchus, Fulgora, and Aquilo) with their own "unique theme, resource, challenges, and gameplay mechanics", as well as new enemies to deal with.
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, compared to 150-500+ hours for Space Exploration.
New Buildings:
- Crusher, assembler-like building
- Asteroid Collector, sends out tentacle-like grabbers to collect asteroids
- Space Platform Hub, central unit for space platforms
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 "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.
All three asteroid types are also required to produce space science efficiently, as the satellite method now only produces 10 science packs, as well as needing some enriched uranium. Enrichment was moved to space science to compensate for enriched uranium being a required resource. Tier 2 modules were also moved to space science.
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.
Quality tiers are Normal (0), Uncommon (1), Rare (2), Epic (3), and Legendary (5). Note that legendary quality has a doubled level increase to 5 instead of 4.
Known effects per level increase:
- +30% health
- +30% energy output
- +30% crafting speed
- +10% turret range
- +30% robot limit (rounded down)
- +30% robot recharge rate (both number and speed, rounded down)
- +1 tile reach for power poles
- +30% positive module effects
- +1 equipment grid size (both dimensions)
- Larger inventory (unknown boost size)
- Increased ammo damage (30%?)
- Faster inserters
- Reduced resource depletion on miners
- Larger capacity on accumulators
- Increased output rate on nuclear reactors, boilers, and steam engines/turbines
- Reduced power consumption on beacons
- Larger scan range on radars
- +100% durability on consumable items (repair packs, science packs)
Quality items above Normal are created via quality modules. 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.
When crafting an item, each step up applies a 10% (moddable per quality) multiplier to the quality strength to the chance of receiving at least that quality. With four tier 3 quality modules providing a 100% quality strength, this results in 10% odds of at least +1 quality, 1% of at least +2, and so on. The base quality of a craft is the lowest input quality, ignoring fluids; it's impossible to get a Normal iron gear from two Uncommon iron plates.
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.
New building: Recycler, gives a 25% chance of returning items created from recipes.
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. [6]
- Train stop disabling will be removed. [7]
- Improvements to controlling spidertrons. [8]
- Added the ability to use the pipette anywhere, including the crafting menu. [9]
- Added the ability to automatically remove fuel from locomotives. [10]
- Ghost pipes will visually connect to each other. [11]
- Improvements to control of train systems. [12]
- Better blueprint building. [14]
- Improved flying robot behaviour. [15]