Factorio Hardcore – No Respawn / Perma Death
One life. No second chances.
This mod turns Factorio into a true permadeath experience. The moment your engineer dies, a nuclear explosion obliterates the death site — and you become a permanent spectator. Your factory lives on. You don't.
What the mod does
- On death, a nuclear explosion is triggered at the exact position where you died.
- You are immediately moved into spectator mode and can fly around freely to watch your base — or your teammates' despair.
- The respawn timer is removed. There is no countdown, no second life.
Mod settings
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Nuclear explosion on death | ✅ On | Triggers a nuclear explosion at the death position. Can be turned off if you want the permadeath mechanic without the boom. |
Settings can be changed at any time in Settings → Mod settings → Map without restarting.
Important notes
Death screen
For technical reasons the vanilla death screen will still appear briefly after you die. You can click Respawn — but instead of coming back to life you will find yourself in spectator mode. This is intentional.
Cheating (it's your choice)
This mod is entirely voluntary. It does not lock anything down aggressively:
- You can load an old save at any time — but then you are only cheating yourself.
- The autosave interval can be turned off completely: go to Settings → Other and drag the autosave interval slider all the way to the right until it reads Never. That way there is no recent save to fall back on if you want to play it truly hardcore.
- Console commands, editor mode, and other escape hatches are not blocked.
Multiplayer
The mod is multiplayer compatible in design — each player's death is tracked individually. However, multiplayer has not been tested yet. Use at your own risk and please report any issues you encounter.
Compatibility
- Requires Factorio 2.0 or newer.
- Works with Space Age.
- Can be added to an existing save — only deaths that occur after the mod is active are tracked.
- If another mod removes or replaces the atomic bomb explosion, the visual effect is silently skipped. Everything else still works.
Credits
Mod concept & design by Morlot.
Implementation developed with the help of Claude (AI assistant by Anthropic).