Space Exploration – Factorio Mods

Status: Experimental / Alpha.Wiki: https://spaceexploration.miraheze.orgDiscord: https://discord.gg/t6BtZqCPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/earendel

Warning: If you are on the experimental Factorio 1.1, there will probably be new bugs popping up over the next few days.

Space Exploration is an overhaul mod about unique experiences and challenges. After you launch a rocket you start discovering new planets, moons, asteroid belts, and other stars. You build an expansive space station as your main research facility, explore new planets and moons, outpost for special resources, and gradually progress into the darkness of deep space as you expand your interstellar empire.

There's a lot in the mod already, but it is still in heavy development and things are changing rapidly. For this reason the mod is considered to be in Experimental Status (see below). There may be occasional bugs, but they get resolved quickly.

You want to use lots of mods at the same time, conflicting mods, or other overhaul mods.You dont care about game balance, and dont want a mod to balance things.You dont want to start a new game and you dont like long games. Wiring a circuit condition to an inserter is too much for you.

You want to explore new worlds, and new civilizations.You want a refined, balanced, cohesive experience from a minimal mod list.You want some genuinely new and unique game mechanics and challenges.You want gradual progression and new mechanics introduced over a 100+ hour game.You like uncovering secrets and puzzles.

The mod focuses on experience and challenge over modular content, this means that Space Exploration does not work well with many other mods. One of the main themes is interplanetary logistics, and that is driven by different resource and energy balances in different locations. It is easy for other mods to disrupt this balance, especially if the mod has ways to generate power that dont rely on solar or scarce resources. If you are starting your first Space Exploration game you should stick to only the recommended mods + quality of life mods you cant do without, otherwise you wont have the background knowledge to see what gameplay is broken by other mods. The current mod compatibility situation will improve in the future, especially in regard to other overhaul mods. (See Experimental Status below).

A space Exploration game is long. Early game is characterised with basic sciences on your homeworld and launching a satellite rocket into space.

Mid game has you building a research space station, exploring new planets looking for strategic resources, and getting started on the 4 specialist science packs. You have 4 types of specialist science to choose from, your decision can be based solely on the techs you want, but may also be influenced by the strategic resources you have discovered so far.

Late game leads you to deep space, expanding an interstellar empire, and working on the complexities of deep space science. Finally you gain the ability to escape the stellar cluster and win the game.

Over 600 new places to visit - planets, moons, stars, asteroids fields and more. Each location has its own resource bias and challenges.

The planet you start on, Nauvis, is huge but ultimately limited. You are unlikely to run out of the resources it has, but your homeworld wont have all the resource types you need to complete the game.

Other planets and moons have different sizes, resources and climates. Tight integration with the Alien Biomes mod means each planet and moon has some visual character. Different planets have different challenges, some may be waterless, some have low solar, some may be windy (bad for robots) and some may have excessively hostile natives. There will be more environmental challenges added in the future.

Places in your solar system can be discovered by launching more navigation satellites.

Later you can use telescopes to look for places outside of your solar system via zone discovery research.

Launching a navigation satellite unlocks the Navigation Satellite Uplink. This allows you to look around from the satellites point of view, detached from your character. You can look at any planet you have discovered and scout the surface. You can even make data-changes while in this mode, changing combinator, requester, or inserter settings. You can also use blueprint library blueprints, the deconstruction planner, copy and paste, etc. Press N to start/end an uplink.

Space exploration adds a number of new resources.

Water ice, and methane ice can be found in space and make life up there a little easier. Ice is a convenient way to transport water, and methane can be converted to other hydrocarbons, giving you a 2nd route to oil products.

Cryonite has applications in cooling, supercomputing, and some refinement of other materials.

Vulcanite has a number of uses as a smelting additive, fuel, and is needed for rocket science.

Beryllium is used for lightweight construction and logistics, spaceships, and astronomic science.

Holmium is used for energy systems, shields, and energy science.

Iridium is used for heavy industry and military purposes, and material science.

Vitamelange is an organic substance used in bio-science.

Naquium is a strange material with no chemical properties only found in interstellar asteroid fields. It is used for deep space science and end-game structures.

Arcospheres are unlike other resources. They are not mined, but gained from launching collection probes from interstellar asteroid fields. The numbers found diminishes with repeated launches from the same site so it is difficult to gather large numbers of them. The ones you do get however, are never lost. They are needed in certain recipes and are always returned, though not in their original state.

One of the big advantages to claiming a new planet is the use of a core miner. A core miner gives you access to unlimited resources, but you can only use one at full efficiency on a planet. Multiple core miners on the same planet or moon have diminishing returns. Each planet or moon has its own core fragment type that yields different resources.

Homeworlds always return a mixed fragment type with some basic resources. Core fragments from other planets and moons will return a fragment type that matches their primary resource.

Space exploration science packs need to be made and used in space so you are required to build your own space-based research station.

The rocket science pack acts as an introduction to space platform construction and that basic infrastructure needed for later science packs.

Most of scientific progress in Space Exploration is split between 4 parallel specialist science packs. Each one needs specialised equipment and specific resources. These new sciences are data-driven and more difficult to set up.

Material science is focussed on testing existing and new experimental materials. It unlocks some improved industrial and military systems.

Astronomic science is focussed on observation data from telescopes and astrophysics. It unlocks improvements to cargo rockets and spaceships, and other space logistic improvements.

Energy science is focussed on particle physics and energy fields. It unlocks improved power systems, energy shields, and energy weapons.

Biological science is focussed on genetic engineering and testing specimens. It unlocks character upgrades, bio weapons and productivity boosts.

You can choose how you want to progress through these sciences. A basic initial setup is not going to be resource efficient or fast, but you can develop the sciences further to unlock faster, more resource efficient recipes.

Finally you move on to deep space science which unlocks the most advanced end-game technology but has the most difficult production challenges.

Build your own space stations using space platform. Space stations are usually research stations, mining stations, solar collectors, waypoint stations, or orbital bombardment platforms.

Space platform is made from platform tiles like landfill. Most structures dont work in space so you need specialised versions.

To survive in space you need a space suit. The space suit you build is a thruster suit with magnetic boots so you can walk on space platform.

While not on space platform you float around in space with momentum. Your thruster has a built-in jetpack so you can fly around in style.

The space suit also has built-in lifesport equipment. Lifesupport is made possible by consumable lifesupport canisters, and the lifesupport equipment improves the efficiency of these canisters. It is needed in space and planets with hazardous atmospheres (such as plague worlds).

Cargo rockets can launch a huge cargo inventory from anywhere to anywhere.If you enter the cargo rocket silo before launch then you can go along for the ride. This can take you into orbit, other planets and moons, even to other solar systems.

If a rocket is sent to a landing pad you get rocket parts back and reusability can be improved with technology. Cargo rocket launches can be automated in a number of ways to help you manage your interplanetary logistic system.

If the rocket is not sent to a landing pad it will disassemble and deploy the cargo pods. If a cargo pod contains a Spidertron, the Spidertron will be deployed.

Build your own spaceship block by block. The core component is the spaceship console. Make sure it is on spaceship floor and surrounded by spaceship walls or doors. It needs containment from outside space so make sure there are no gaps. Attach a rocket engine, launch booster, some accumulators and lasers and youre good to go. Fly from anywhere to anywhere.

Upgrades let you build bigger ships with better equipment. You can even have trains on your spaceship for fast loading and unloading of cargo.

Build a large spaceship and power a space-warping device on it. If you can get to the required speed in interstellar space and hold it for 60 seconds you win the game.

A delivery cannon can fire a disposable capsule filled with a stack of basic resources to most places within the same solar system. The package must be caught safely in a delivery cannon chest, otherwise the capsule hits the ground with a lot of force and will spill any surviving contents.

The weapons delivery cannon is a larger variant of the delivery cannon designed for interplanetary bombardment. It fires munitions such as the atomic bomb, iridium piledriver, or plague bomb.

Energy beaming allows you to send energy from an area of energy abundance to where it is needed. Close solar orbit is the typical place to build an energy beam emitter.

The strength of the beam at the source can be increased with energy injectors. The strength of the beam at the destination is reduced by distance. It can reach interstellar targets but is less efficient.

The energy can be used to generate heat in an energy beam receiver, or can be used in Glaive mode to cut lines through your enemies.

In Glaive mode the beam can choose targets autonomously. The speed, damage, and area of the beam is determined by the beams strength when it arrives at the destination (therefore is reduced by distance).

The stars in the area are unstable and frequently release Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). A CME is caused by a solar flare, but unlike a normal solar flare it ejects a substantial amount for the stars corona. In Space Exploration this takes the form of beams that wander around the surface of a planet for a couple of minutes, a bit like tornados. They start fires and damage structures, but only happen once every 1-2 days of real time. You always get a lot of early warning for a CME and can see a timer for the next one in Informatron. (Can be disabled with a mod setting.)

The Umbrella protects against energy beams.

When protecting against a CME the energy cost of the Umbrella for the event is given by the CME warning system.

When protecting against a hostile players Glaive energy beam (in PvP) the energy cost is 1/10th the strength of the hostile beam as it arrives. Weapon beams are already reduced in strength by distance so the Umbrella is very power efficient against them.

Universe Explorer lets you sort, filter, search for and prioritise zones. You can see most of the various zone attributes like solar multiplier, radius, climates tags, threat, and resources. You can also set a force-specific priority for different zones, set your satellite to automatically scan a surface, and delete unused surfaces to reduce your file size.

Space Exploration adds a lot of pages to Informatron so you can read about certain mechanics in-game, however it goes far beyond adding static encyclopedia style content.

On the Cargo Rockets page it shows you how many cargo rockets you launched.

On the Zone Discovery page there is an interactive interface that lets you choose the resource you are searching for.

The Exploration Journal page gets additional entries as you progress through the game and experience new things.

There are even some hidden pages that you can unlock by investigating secret exploration content.

Basic beacons now have 8 module slots and the normal 9x9 area.Wide area beacons have 15 module slots and cover a 32x32 area.Wide area beacon 2s have 20 module slots and cover a 32x32 area.

Each structure can only be affected by 1 beacon. If 2 beacons affect the same structure it overloads and stops working. These changes allow for more interesting designs where you are building machines around beacons instead of beacons around machines.

In Space Exploration there are 9 tiers of modules. Each module costs 3 of the tier before it, so tier 9 modules are prohibitively expensive for mass production. This encourages more strategic use of powerful modules where they make the most difference. For example, you might use tier 6 productivity modules to process certain resources, but use tier 9 modules in your science labs. Not all modules need to be gained through manufacture, you may also be able to gain some powerful modules through exploration.

The only space structures that can use productivity modules are labs and miners, for everything else productivity is disabled. This makes it much more efficient to go general resource processing, refinement, and component manufacture on planets where you can make use of productivity, however manufacturing in space can be convenient if you already have all the materials there. The compromise of resource efficiency vs convenience increases as you progress deeper into the game because rocket costs decrease with more technology and productivity boosts increase with better modules.

The recycling facility lets you break down certain items into scrap, and turns scrap into some basic resources. It can also turn barrels back into steel.

The Space Exploration solar panels are 4x4, powerful but expensive, but most importantly you can walk on them.

The Condenser turbine is like a normal steam turbine, but takes in steam and outputs water. Compared to the steam turbine a condenser turbine is 75% energy efficient but recovers 99% of the water.

The big heat exchanger and big turbine generator are much larger but more powerful options. They make and use 5000 degree steam. The big turbine recovers most of the steam as water, and outputs a small amount of unused 500 degree steam.

In late game you gain the ability to mass-produce antimatter. It costs a lot of energy to make, but is a fantastic form of energy storage. The energy can be retrieved from an antimatter reactor where it is needed. Antimatter engines are a big upgrade for spaceships.

See the article here:

Space Exploration - Factorio Mods