Q: At what point in a playthrough should I visit Aegis & Bellicos?
- Feel free to try and explore the Aegis's outer edge right after building your first self-sufficient factory ships, after leaving Nauvis's surface. Make sure your ships can handle berylline asteroids!
- Progressing deeper towards Bellicos can only be done after automating sciences for Vulcanus, Fulgora and Gleba. If your ships can handle travelling to Aquilo regularly, they should be fit for it.
Q: How did you pick the names for Bellicos, the Aegis, etc?
- Bellicos, the pulsar - Derived from latin "Bellicus" meaning "warrior". Refers to the erratic behavior of pulsars and the violence of their astrophysical jets.
- The Aegis asteroid belt - In greek mythology, "the Aegis" is a legendary shield/armor carried by Athena and Zeus. Refers to the belt's protective effect against Bellicos's pulses.
- Calidus, Nauvis's star - Latin for "warm/hot". Based on established naming conventions from Space Exploration and Metal and Stars.
- Point Warden - A point of interest inside of the Aegis. A huge asteroid nearby hides Bellicos entirely, acting like its "warden". Based on any named PoI.
Q: How do I make power? (Especially at point warden)
Solar panels, obviously. If you're looking to explore further, consider using nuclear or fusion reactors, including the mod's new fusion reactor.
The mod also add RTGs as a powersource similar to solar panels, which are not affected at all by solar efficiency.
Q: How do I get started?
You have to build actual factories in space, not just transit shuttles. Your ships need to be able to handle tougher asteroids, and until the Factorio 2.1 compatibility patch, they need to be able to extract and use the new resources provided by the Aegis/Bellicos.
Q: What items should I bring?
At first, anything to maintain your spaceships:
- Repair packs
- Space platforms
- Asteroid grabbers
- Crushers
- Assemblers
- Chemical plants
- Cargo bays
- Gun turrets
- Copper plates, if you want beryllium copper plates without advanced asteroid processing
Then later, you'll need more advanced crafting processes:
- Refineries, for coal liquefaction
- Centrifuges, to process uranium from ionized asteroids
- Fluid tanks to hoard tritium/helium/steam
- Rocket turrets, for bigger asteroids
- Laser turrets, for ionized asteroids
- Electric motors for pulsar science, if you don't want to bother with coal liquefaction in space
Q: What items should I not bring?
Remember: you are not going to settle on a surface. Don't bother bringing the following:
- Cargo landing pad
- Cargo unloading bays
- Chests
- Trains & rails
- Robots & roboports
- Mines, pumpjacks, offshore pumps
- Agricultural towers
- Biochambers
- Electric poles, substations
Q: What rewards are in the Bellicos system?
- Unlocked with Lightweight science from the Aegis
- Faster belts restricted to space platforms
- Faster inserters with no capacity bonuses
- Longer underground pipes restricted to space platforms
- Bigger, more energy efficient solar panels
- Alternative ammunitions (magazines, rockets, tank shells) with different damage types
- Alternative low density structure recipe without plastic
- Infinite tech that gives a productivity bonus on asteroid crushing (if enabled to be moved from Gleba's tech tree)
- Infinite tech that gives a productivity bonus for crafting space platform foundation
- Unlocked with Pulsar science from Bellicos
- A new fusion power cell
- A new set of fusion reactor and generators, with its mechanics
- An even stronger nuclear bomb to launch on biters
- Constant, but weak energy generators which are unaffected by environmental conditions
- More productive ways to craft circuits using helium (basic circuits/advanced circuits/processors/quantum processors)
- New, more powerful thrusters fueled with tritium/helium
- Infinite tech that gives a productivity bonus for making tritium/helium based thruster fuel
- Infinite tech that gives a productivity bonus for extracting tritium and uranium-235
Q: How do stargates work?
Stargates are specific space locations with extremely short space routes between them, almost devoid of asteroid chunks.
Do note that they may have very low power between them, so be carefully about parking your space platforms there.
Q: How does the Bellicos near orbit work? Should I try to reach it?
The near orbit location near Bellicos works in a similar way to the shattered planet: you want to send a collector/factory ship towards it, collect and process ionized asteroid chunks, then bring the ship back with its cargo.
The asteroid composition is mostly ionized asteroids, which require laser turrets to destroy.
Do note that the ionized asteroid density comes in increasing waves: it will go down and up as you approach, reaching higher peaks as you get closer.
Meanwhile, the berylline asteroid density will fade out the closer you get. There are more efficient space routes to take if you want to collect those.
It is not advised to try and actually reach Bellicos's near orbit, as not only do the asteroid density becomes more hazardous and unpredictable as you get close, the space location itself has a strong pull.
Q: What is the point of Point Warden?
Point Warden is a challenging, optional space location meant to provide plenty of beryllium, if you can design a ship to survive there. Send your ships to travel between it and the Aegis's edges to collect berylline asteroid chunks in droves.
Very little solar energy is available at Point Warden. If you want to leave a station there, it's advised to use nuclear/fusion reactors and RTGs.
Q: How do I set up a "basic fusion reactor"? Why would I want to use it?
See the graph below. You might want to use it for electric power or to power the mod's new thrusters.
Q: Can I use tritium fuel cells in Space Age's fusion reactor?
Yes. Tritium fuel cells pack more power than regular fusion fuel cells.
Regular fusion reactors won't output depleted tritium cells however, so you'll miss out on some helium.
Known bugs:
The basic fusion reactor's description panels displays wrong values. No idea how to fix it while keeping the current way the reactor works.