I am enjoying this mod, but my frozen bowl of spaghetti is taking a long time to finish, and it would be nice to take a break from Cerys without actually "finishing it" and then coming back later. It's actually kind of a long journey, and I am feeling like I am playing "The Martian", trapped on this place and I just want to get off. Eventually, I am starting to enjoy it less just because I'd prefer to do some 'normal' Factorio for a bit, but I can't.

My suggestion is that there be a [Cerysian Science Pack] only or other early science that can get you just off back to a local space platform, without the ability to take or send cargo. Alternatively, this could be a frozen structure on the moon. As to what it is in the fiction, maybe it's like a rapid burning Ammonia-Based fuel for jetpack (a quick google says you can make fuel by mixing hydrogen or even methane), alternatively, some kind of structure that when repaired, is like a catapult or broken skyhook.

This could increase enjoyment by not trapping players on the moon, without altering the difficulty level of the puzzles. Thanks for your consideration, and I really appreciate the hard work that went into these puzzles and this mod.

Thanks for the kind words!

I saw this post a few hours ago and decided to make a solution. Here you go: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Planet-Hopper

Wow, I feel honored! Thank you!

This mod does solve the problem, definitely, but I just wanted to give one parting word, which is that I think that it might be an easy win to actually include this ability as a reward for Cerys, either in this form or another (if another, it should involve Cerys' custom features, like plutonium, methane, nitric acid, or ammonia). I think it would fit inline with the small but meaningful reward structure that you already took as your style.

Your feedback is welcome anytime. We did consider this. Although it might seem an easy win, it would be tricky later down the line when there are many planet mods one could start on, but only Cerys unlocks the tech.

If you started on Cerys, you'd have access to the tech. If you didn't start on Cerys, you wouldn't have the tech, but that is the status quo already. So far Cerys is the only planet where this is "necessary", but presumably other planet mods that had a long ramp to "escape" could also create the personal launch capsule (or whatever) but with an alternate recipe; for instance isntead of using a Cerysian fuel like methane, that planet's mod could add a personal launch capsule that produced it with the local material. They could also use this approach to gate the planet early exit at a point they found appropriate, based on whatever the fuel required for that world.

I don’t imagine everyone will want to implement the nontrivial code for this mod separately. Instead they would add this mod or PlanetsLib as a dependency, then add code to make any exceptions for their own planet.

The question becomes whether modded planets opt-out (hoppers can be built if your planet is the player's first trip with no extra configuration), or opt-in (hoppers can't be built on your planet unless you add them to your tech tree or the player goes somewhere else first.)

The former seems preferable because it requires less co-ordination for a coherent system. If a modpack wants to coordinate to make it available through multiple tech trees of modded planets in a way that makes sense, they can do that.