DSP has a special place in my brain. It’s hard to properly describe how friggin’ cool it is to build an actual Dyson Sphere! All factory games make numbers go up, but the actual end goal is a relatively downer. Factorio gives a ‘game complete’ screen when you fly to a planet, something you’ve done 5 times before – even in the vanilla days it was about sending a rocket. An actual meaningful goal that isn’t found elsewhere is impressive.

The end goal is amazing, but is the journey there still fun? That’s the question.

A bit more than a year ago, Dark Fog launched, which brought PvE combat to the game. The planet-based combat is decent enough, though I still question the amount of ‘trash loot’ that results from it all. The inability to destroy things in game is still an annoyance to me. Space PvE combat is still quite bad, and long-term space-faring objectives suffer from it. I opted to start over without Dark Fog, and that means that around 1/4 of the research in the game is useless. It also removes a lot of the early game friction.

The lack of PvE and amount of game experience means that the game itself has some rather serious pacing issues. It takes about an hour to build a main bus, with the main gap related to getting foundations to fill in water holes. Once you have that running, it’s a very small step to move into red/yellow research using oil. That opens up around 80% of all research in game, nearly up to the point of actually building the Dyson Sphere proper. You’re effectively rate limited on research based on oil extraction math, and then rate limited based on green engines which open up interplanetary logistics.

What’s interesting about DSP is that each planet is the same size, and the layouts differ based on latitude (less room on the poles). You’re never placed into a position where space is a challenge (building vertically is damn cool), only throughput. Where Factorio allows you to effectively brute force base material production to fill a bus, DSP’s bus is actually made of intermediary materials which can be much more complicated to make en-masse. Making something in bulk in Factorio usually isn’t terribly painful, as you can make a dedicated factory for it. DSP not so much, if you need end-item bulk items, it has thousands of base material requirements which is much more like a pyramid of production than distinct chains. A late game factory planet will have 200 iron plate factories – that never exists in Factorio.

By not having Dark Fog at all, I will not be able to unlock the Mk4 Assembler (100% boost on Mk3) or Mk3 Foundry (50% boost on Mk2). I have completed this game nearly 10 times now, and not once was this ever an issue. Throughput and power are. It is a much more difficult thing getting enough iron to a factory planet than it is to have enough machines to smelt it. It is possible, and honestly a terrible idea for 99% of the game, to terraform an entire planet and dedicate it to only base foundries (iron, copper, glass, stone, coal). More on that in a future post.

Which brings me to blueprints and more specifically, force builds. Blueprints are all but needed in Factorio as the small factories can be terribly complex. DSP is more about scale, repeating the same pattern dozens and dozens of times. Factorio implemented ‘force build’, which means that it will remove whatever is there and place the new blueprint. DSP does not have this – if there’s a conflict, the blueprint won’t work. That means that DSP blueprints are either very small (1 building and connectors) or very large (a full factory on a blank canvas that has been paved), and you’ll need to make connections to the rest of the plant. Reminds me a bit of Satisfactory’s blueprint limitations – where scaling is in the middle of DSP + Factorio.

Side note: Satisfactory’s main bus is ridiculously large because you can’t pre-fab buildings. Factorio’s main bus is extra long to support multiple mini factories. DSP’s main bus has about 15 things on it because you can in fact pre-fab buildings, but on the other hand, there are nearly 60 buildings you can construct and need to store. With Dark Fog, the main bus can wrap half of a planet.

A reminder that DSP follows some rather straightforward phases:

• Initial Landing + automation
• Main bus + blue science
• Red science (oil)
• Yellow science (titanium + silicone)
• Planet factory + logistics
• Purple + Green science
• Dyson Sphere construction
• Photons + end game

Right now, I’ve completed the yellow science phase. I’ve got research queued for a while, and trying to set up my Deuterium ring on the lava planet. Next up is a battery charging station on the lava planet, which will allow the ice planet to slowly transform into the main production hub. Power is always a challenge on that ice planet… there is a massive gap between the later phases and therefore essential to scale growth over time. It will be interesting to see how I can make blueprints work in my favor this pass.