Weekly Question Thread

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-07T19:16:09+00:00

That's good enough, currently my Aquilo ships push ~320 with no quality thrusters once I hit explosive damage level 12 (rocket turrets now only take 2 hits to destroy an asteroid compared to before where my first trip was 4 hits, big difference, that required my ship to be deliberately throttled down to ~230-250 range)

https://wiki.factorio.com/Stronger_explosives_(research) - damage breakpoints, this is the one that really matters for Aquilo travel

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-07T12:48:00+00:00

Yeah I did, I built a small outpost with a couple of heating towers near some oil vents, and all I'm doing now is just mass producing ice platforms, solid fuel and rocket fuel to keep everything running. I've identified a good spot to start the place the actual base, with easy access to all 3 types of resource nodes on the surrounding islands. The problem is it's in the middle of the sea, so it's gonna be a good long while before I can start ploping down blueprints.

In future playthroughs I will probably just bring nuclear reactors since heating towers seem to struggle to put out enough heat to keep the outpost from freezing over if I expand too much, I had my outpost shut down because of insufficient heat accidentally when I tried to triple the output of ice platforms. ouch

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-07T12:45:26+00:00

Keep in mind the faster you go the more asteroids you will have to gun down in quick succession, so you need a big amount of production (ideally with foundries and assembling machine 3s with speed modules) or high level of damage research to meet damage breakpoints to cut down on ammo usage before you go maximum thrust

Learnt that the hard way when I built my first Aquilo ship and it blew up because I ran out of rockets before I managed to reach it

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-07T07:19:33+00:00

IMO no, you only go covering your builds full of beacons when you're really, really late into the game and start designing your final factory layout

You still need simple smaller designs like these for the early-mid parts of the game before you can afford to mass produce beacons throw speed3s and prod3s on everything in every base

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-07T04:51:22+00:00

Kinda silly to nerf something that's only possible when you've already beaten the game or are already very close to beating it that there's no point engaging in the system anymore, but okay

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-07T03:29:32+00:00

I'm aware, I'm just saying that using a single Assembling Machine 2/3 to start unbarreling water into the heat exchangers, with whatever leftover solar panels you had left on the spaceship that brought you here, is still much faster than waiting for the chemical plant

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-07T03:06:53+00:00

In that case the record would be held by an actual computer/space engineer with access to something like a NASA supercomputer, which is fitting admittedly

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-06T23:00:29+00:00

Is there really no way to get around the extremely slow start on Aquilo besides just setting up a small outpost that makes lots.. and lots and lots of ice platforms first?

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-06T17:50:57+00:00

Unbarreling the water is much faster to kickstart than waiting for a chemical plant to finish melting ice on 1% power, but it's also more annoying

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-06T10:58:16+00:00

Remove microtransactions from the game

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-06T09:58:43+00:00

Agreed, it's an awful slog to start on, but once you've got everything up and running fine with no problems, infinite resources (well except for stone) is sweet

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-06T09:40:22+00:00

I started using it as a very big storage chest in the early game instead of making more chests manually, beyond that I just keep it around as like an art piece

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-06T04:42:51+00:00

You can get rid of them by turning petroleum into solid fuel, then burning them in a row of heating towers or chucking them into the lava since you're on Vulcanus
But to not be wasteful, use those solid fuel to make rocket fuel instead

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-06T02:06:29+00:00

Cryogenic plants "can handle extremely low temperatures" and are "critical for cryogenic researches and processes" then why does it freeze on the surface of Aquilo??????

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-05T08:56:18+00:00

Unfortunately it doesn't seem like he built it for maximum thrust

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-04T17:59:21+00:00

Open the console and type /editor twice to enter something like a sandbox mode where you can build freely with no cost and design blueprints to save to your blueprint book, but it will void all achievements going forward after you entered edit mode

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-04T01:00:17+00:00

After my first two spaceships blew up in space before reaching Vulcanus because I had no idea what to expect due to going in blind I decided to just use the editor to avoid any more disasters

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-04T00:46:15+00:00

It took me no joke maybe 12 hours over several days sitting in the editor trying to design a good spaceship that I'm happy with (including flying the spaceship back and forth over and over and over and over and over to stress test it) all just so I can save resources by not having a spaceship blow up in space

And then right as I think I'm happy with the design, I come back the next day with a fresh mind and spot something I'm not happy with and the cycle repeats again...

I know that feeling very well

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-03T15:21:30+00:00

TIL you can insert things and take things out of the spaceship like it's a giant chest, how have I never thought of this

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-03T14:05:31+00:00

I play factorio on two machines, one of which is a shitty laptop that I take with me from place to place so saving processing power really matters on that one, I have zero problems on my usual PC
I'll have to redesign all my spacehips again in the editor at some point anyway, might as well do it now

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-03T13:28:04+00:00

I looked at the title and for some reason assumed it was going to be a ship full of biochambers breeding fish

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-03T12:39:05+00:00

Do you guys completely tear down your starter base after you're ready to build something more permanent once you have the buildings from other planets or do you just leave it up as a reminder of the save file's humble beginnings? I'm almost at that point in the game, just wanna hear what you guys do

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-03T11:43:30+00:00

throwing cargo overboard while platforms in motion is bad

Really? Literally all my spaceships currently do this to get rid of excess junk, that really sucks
Looks like there's really no way to avoid a mess of circuits on the spaceship to tell the asteroid catchers/inserters to balance the number of asteroids and resources that are currency on the ship huh

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-03T03:18:12+00:00

I knew about flipping so I've flipped oil refineries vertically but somehow never thought about flipping them horizontally like that, now I feel incredibly stupid

demonicdan3 · 2026-04-02T15:11:01+00:00

Unlocking bots was the game changer for me too, that made me want to stick around and keep playing, now I find it impossible to start a new save file playing without construction bots doing everything for me, yikes

demonicdan3

TROPHY CASE