Observium (Alpha)

Experimental alpha — back up your saves. This is a planet foundation for exploration and extraction, not a complete production progression. Expect bugs, unfinished balancing and future changes. Graphical appearance, the purple pulse and actual player travel/landing have not yet been client-tested.

A familiar, darker resource world

Discover Observium independently at the Vulcanus research tier and reach it directly from Nauvis. Its land uses a modestly darker Nauvis-like palette, with naturally generated iron, copper, Palladium and Observium ore.

Small separate lakes provide:

• Crude oil
• Sulfuric acid
• Ugly Suppliment, a new purple fluid with an authored native animated lake effect

Use ordinary electric mining drills for ores and ordinary offshore pumps on lake shores. All lake fluids use standard pipes, pumps and storage tanks. There are no custom extraction machines or required third-party planet libraries.

Bring supplies

Observium has no natural water, coal, stone, resource-bearing rocks or enemies. Imported supplies remain usable. Bring construction materials, power, water and everything needed for your return journey.

Palladium and Observium are currently mineable ore items only: there are no new smelting recipes, plates, science packs, processing chains or production buildings. Ugly Suppliment has no processing or barreling recipes yet. Existing vanilla production options remain unchanged.

Discovery and compatibility

Space Age is required. Research Observium discovery after Space platform thruster, using automation, logistic, chemical and space science. Its requirements preserve the running engine's vanilla Vulcanus discovery baseline. You do not need to research or visit Vulcanus first.

Use a fueled and defended space platform on the Nauvis–Observium route. Its distance and initial asteroid difficulty follow the vanilla Nauvis–Vulcanus connection. Native cargo-pod travel and return-trip requirements apply.

Two alpha packages share the same gameplay implementation:

• 0.1.0 for Factorio 2.0.77 or later in the 2.0 line
• 0.1.1 for Factorio 2.1.21 or later in the 2.1 line

The complete packaged headless suite passed on 2.0.77 and 2.1.21 with matching Space Age data, including generation, real ore mining and fluid extraction, discovery unlocks, separate-process save/reload, and vanilla regression checks. That evidence does not establish graphical presentation or actual player travel. Please test the alpha in a disposable save and report issues individually.

Save safety

Back up your existing save and mod configuration before installation. For rollback, restore that pre-mod save and prior mod set. Removing this mod from a save containing its planet or materials is not guaranteed to preserve data.

Artwork and license

Bundled artwork is original deterministic procedural artwork. Native terrain, ore sheets, shore masks and sounds reference Factorio's own assets rather than redistributing them. Licensed under MIT.