Factory building sim Factorio is getting a huge expansion with Factorio: Space Age set for release on October 21st along with a big free 2.0 update for everyone. The expansion will be priced at $35, the same as the base game and seems it will be absolutely full of new toys for you.
This expansion continues your journey after finishing the base game where you blast off into space. Here you get to discover new worlds with unique challenges, exploit their novel resources for advanced technological gains, and manage your fleet of interplanetary space platforms. Of course that comes with its own set of perils like asteroids that need to be shot down, or captured for fuel and ammo.
The new planets will each be rather different with these being revealed:
- Vulcanus - Blazing volcanic mountains, imposing geological landforms, plains blanketed in ash, and thick yellow sulfuric fog that burns your lungs and etches your eyes.
- Fulgora - A lifeless and desolate place. The thin air is freezing cold but bone dry. A distant sun twinkles in the dull purple of the sky. Wispy clouds race by as a gale whips up sand that grates against your armour.
- Gleba - A vibrant multi-coloured swampy landscape shrouded in a light mist. The air is thick and humid, carrying the muffled cries of unseen animals from far away.
They say a 5th planet yet to be shown "promises some of the most unique gameplay but it remains shrouded in mystery". It's the furthest from the sun so it's going to be dark and cold. Curious.
We're also getting elevated rails, so your rail networks can cross over obstacles, cross the oceans and — you get the idea. You'll be able to make much more fancy rail systems. There's also a new quality system for items, entities and equipment, new music, new enemies and defence systems and plenty more to be announced.
And that's all on top of the big 2.0 update that will give us goodies like a new fluid system, smarter worker robots and much more.
You can see their full blog post for more on what's to come.
Factorio is available to buy on GOG, Humble Store and Steam.
There's also now a Steam page up for Factorio: Space Age.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
The line "This expansion continues your journey after finishing the base game where you blast off into space." is a bit suggestive in that you might assume that it just adds to it and leaves the base game unchanged. But they've already said that adding "Space Age" to a game significantly changes the tech tree and while it's possible to do that on an existing game, it's not recommended. So strange that they worded it like that. So I'll be going from scratch.
I'm currently going through the "Space Exploration" mod pack. The main developer of this modpack is Earendel, who now works at Wube and had a major role in the design of Space Age. It's good, but clearly not suitable for an average player. Balance between build times and research needs is off and parts of it are a giant slog. Solo it'll take hundreds of hours. The FFF stories were interesting in that regard as they mentioned the first gameplay iterations having similar problems and needing extensive changes and balancing to make progression more reasonable. Still, I now have a deadline for finishing it!
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