These games all have very long tails, and Factorio is entirely bound to the legendary farm. In the goal of ‘making numbers go up’, the long optimization requires the productivity bonus of legendary material.

Let’s math it out:

Normal: A Cryogenic Plant has base base speed of 2, productivity modules (x8) of 4% and -5% speed, beacon of 1.5, and speed modules (x2) of 20%. Works out to 2.2 speed x 1.32 items = 2.904

Legendary: A Cryogenic Plant has base base speed of 5, productivity modules (x8) of 10% and -5% speed, beacon of 2.5, and speed modules (x2) of 50%. Works out to 4.25 speed x 1.8 items = 7.65

Factorio is often (outside of Nauvis) about building in confined spaces, so having 2.5x the productivity for the same footprint is amazing. Getting all the material required to reach that productivity is it’s own challenge, and one that’s been optimized by more invested people (with blueprints!)

I am not interested in reaching 10kSPM (currently at around 3k), as it would require a near complete retro-fit of my entire production line. Getting to the Shattered Planet in one piece, and then returning to Aquilo is ‘complete’ enough for me. That can certainly be done with normal items, and in fact should be normal weapons. Upgrades to Rail Gun speed/damage to the 100k ranks is ample.

Closing Thoughts

The experiment here was two fold. First, build more compactly on Nauvis. Second, only use normal items.

Compact on Nauvis is a cool puzzle set and relatively less challenging than I would have thought. The largest impact is on science production, and then not a whole lot. Coming in knowing that I didn’t need massive oil production chains saved a ton of space. It also made my roboports much more effective as the distance was a fraction of what the last playthrough was. Until the game allows multiple landing pads per planet, Nauvis really should stay small.

All the other planets were already 50×50 builds due to space limitations, so not much changed in that regard. Having existing blueprints, or at least advanced knowledge of the puzzles dramatically sped up my playthrough – Fulgora a bit, Gleba by a factor of 10, and Aquilo was simple enough this time.

Playing without legendary items is a more pleasant experience, in nearly every regard. Fulgora benefits from uncommon/rare batteries, but that’s truly the only super useful instance. Aquilo was completed with normal stuff, and then I opted to try to optimize prior legendary builds. I could have (and did for personal reasons) built a normal-quality space ship. It goes slower and needs to be a bit bigger to effectively buffer/process all the things, but it works. A legendary version is useful for the crushers, foundries, assemblers, and chemical plants. Legendary weapons are bad in this game, as it increases the range and wastes ammo (laser weapons would be the only exception).

Overall, I really do like the puzzle aspect of Factorio. Making the numbers go up while your investments is rewarding. Each planet brings a new set of variables to adjust and there are optimal solutions for each. I still think Aquilo’s bar for entry is too high as you can’t fail-forward. I think that the legendary ‘farm’ is a red herring for many players, and one that could have been implemented differently or behind a later research gate. There are only two meaningful quality types – normal and legendary. Everything else is simply fodder along the chain.

Factorio remains the gold standard, if only because of the QoL and detail applied to every single step. Moving from here to any other logistics game feels like time travelling backwards. It’s frankly astounding the level of depth present, and I remain convinced that it should be required in any engineering program. If you can’t solve Aquilo, then I don’t want you solving anything that matters.