Writing up some notes / suggestions on my recent run. Finished in ~90 hours with space age planets etc available. I've played most of the space age planet mods and a few of the space age-centric overhauls but not the original warptorio mods so this was new to me. Driving around looking for nests and getting jumpscared by worms bursting out of the ground is one of the coolest things that's happened in a mod. Fighting off biters during the last few seconds before a warp was an element of suspense that I never thought Factorio would have, and opening up a cavern only to have a flood of biters pour out was also great. Figuring out how to crack the nut to get to the win screen was also interesting.
This mod seems pretty well-established so I don't expect any big changes from my notes, but I know player impressions are worth a lot to modders so thought I'd give a bit back :)
Exploring for warponium was neat but getting my first few hundred was a bit confusing. It took a while to put the dots together and realize I should use warp pipes for water and the power towers. A trigger tech might help new players realize the two are related - I was a bit frustrated trying to get an offshore pump and power set up during the early game when even finding a cave took most of my time on the planet.
The barreled warponium fuel requirement for rockets was offputting in the midgame since it's not automatable. Maybe if I picked a home planet with caves this would be easier. Maybe the silo could cost a lot of warponium up front so the player can do it once instead of occasionally having to go hunting for caves? If warponium isn't supposed to be scarce (unlikely given you can't use production modules in the ore to plate recipe) maybe allowing plates to be made in foundries would offset this.
The space black markets were interesting. I got a lot of mileage from them (mainly science and crude oil) in the early game but didn't use them very much in the mid-late game. I ended up running around frantically to handcraft stuff fairly often which felt like a bit of a chore, but I could have just not bought things instead.
Possible bugs / polish opportunities:
- Some mod settings (enemy modifiers, science cost etc) seem to only be changeable at the start of a run. It'd be helpful to have a tooltip or other note indicating that - I jumped right in and only went back to tweak settings later, and ended up having to scrap my first run entirely.
- I picked a pretty bad home planet and wanted to change it. Recent changelog notes mention being able to change it in one of the menus. I went through everything and couldn't find it - "planet crew log panel" sounds multiplayer related, is it not available in single player? Assuming I'm not missing something obvious it might be helpful to move the button from wherever it is.
- The pirate ship probe seems to only work from the home planet. From the research / item description it's not immediately obvious how it should work, so I launched 3 from Vulcanus before experimenting a bit via save scumming.
- The concrete requirement to build on home planet / space age planets seemed odd. Is it to have a cost associated with unlimited building room? By the time you get to space age planets concrete cost is trivial. I spent a lot of time in the late game annoyed by having to remember to place it and ended up just carpeting every planet. Maybe a research to remove the requirement eventually?
- Buildings can hang half off the platform and will stay when warping, kind of odd. Might be punishing to destroy them on warp but I think that would make more sense.
- Placed resource suckers can't be pipetted
- I had some captured biter nests on the top floor of my spaceship. The bioflux inserters froze on Aquilo and the nests spoiled. When I warped away the now spoiled nests disappeared. Makes sense but maybe an edge case to look at.
- Ship tiles removed on Fulgora turn into regular floor. This could be used to bridge between islands depending on map generation. Very minor but I think they should turn into oil ocean instead.
- The ship tile tool reach wasn't extended by far reach. This is pretty minor and given this is intended to be a tough mod I could understand not addressing it.
- Mech armour can't fly over rocks underground (I assume intended). If I select rocks with a deconstruction planner and bots start to mine them they can be flown over while being mined. Also very minor.
A few typos as well:
- Wrap ensured research - automated recalled with the ship warps > automatically recalled
Home planet research - allows to pick a knwon planet > known planet, click que planet info > click queue planet info
Overall this mod was a lot of fun. I hadn't played any of the previous warp mods and the amount of new tools and ways of thinking were really cool. I can tell a ton of work went into this and it absolutely paid off.
