Hello,

I found your mod and have given it a bit and wanted to share some thoughts if that's alright. I like where it's going so far but I do agree to a certain extent with some of the problems that others have brought up about balancing and such.

So after thinking about it for a while during my wait for some long haul science requirements for advancement I have arrived with some thoughts about possible content you might consider. Granted my knowledge of modding is basically non-existent but some wild things have been done with Factorio mods so maybe this is possible.

You have the research for boilers to be unlocked on the platform for power but I was thinking a more interesting use would be a Steam propellent engine that moves the platform, however very inefficiently towards a planet so as to boost resource gathering. The pace of the mod was decently good up until advanced oil processing. I think the cost is fine but the build up to that could be improved. You would need to juggle the researches to different planets to be sooner but still after military and turrets....or, for the brave and daring and if possible, the player becomes the turret. It could be added in a further research that you still can't go down to any of the planets but at least the pace would stay consistent if you could travel and get the next size asteroid to spawn. Circling back to the boilers and steam propulsion, it would suck and probably barely be able to escape gravity and maybe not even actually be able to make it unless you wanted to store that much steam but it's mostly about getting just far enough to get the next level of asteroids to come in to help keep pace solid and maybe even get to the point of being able to develop larger platforms.

Also I could of completely missed something obvious or maybe not so obvious and I'm being dumb with some of the others but I'm thinking I have a decent understanding of my above thoughts and considerations.

I see a lot of fun potential in this mod and am interested to see what you come up with as to your vision of what you want it to be.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to write all that out, I really appreciate the thoughtful feedback. I agree with you that Steam power on the platform feels pretty lackluster right now. The idea of using it for some kind of propulsion has actually come up before, and I’ve looked into it, but digging into the code for that type of mechanic has proven to be a bit tricky. It’s not off the table, though, and I think there’s a lot of potential there for exactly the kind of pacing improvements you mentioned.

My current plans are leaning more toward allowing players to drop down to planets. The goal would be to collect resources specific to each planet or do some planet-specific crafting, then ship everything back up to the platform, which will remain the central hub for production. That way, there’s both a sense of progression and a reason to interact with planetary environments without pulling the focus away from the platform itself.

Your suggestions fit nicely into that overall vision, and I’ll definitely be keeping them in mind as I keep refining the mod.

It may be easier to change the space science recipe. 25 ice is a lot