Hello,
3 days to go!
With a new Expansion of course comes a new trailer. After many weeks of work, fine-tuning, and polishing, Albert (with help from Vaclav, and the script written by Earendel) has finished the launch trailer for the Space Age expansion:
The result speaks for itself, and there are some details you might notice. For instance the rockets now have fixtures carrying the cargo pods, and we have animations for cargo pods landing on a planets and at landing pads.
Or perhaps you noticed the player running around with some of the new late game technologies...
From the very first prototype of Space Age, we had a new tier of armor in it. The only difference was a 20% larger equipment grid over Power armor Mk2, but along with quality this felt well above adequate already.
As Earendel and Albert were developing the concept, the design settled on the idea that the player is locking themselves in a metal sarcophagus, transcending humanity to become the perfect Factorio machine.
We have been thinking what kind of special features could the new piece of armor have and the most obvious and convenient one seemed to be the ability to fly, especially as the Jetpack from Space Exploration is quite convenient, though we'd want to do it a bit differently...
Some ideas would be:
Therefore, the flying would just happen automatically whenever you would be about to hit any obstacle.
This raises some immediate questions, like do we have separate speeds for walking and flying and with it exoskeleton equipment and jetpack equipment? We decided against adding jetpack equipment, have just one movement speed value, and have exoskeleton equipment effectively make you fly faster. Which may sound strange, but as the flying happens automatically, it would be very annoying to have one of the speeds slower.
Being part of the armor also means that we can show the flying capability in the armor graphics.
Graphics by Jerzy
As you can see, you not only take flight if you were to hit an obstacle, but also when an obstacle is about to hit you.
The mech armor went from a minor upgrade to a game-changer. Being able to move freely makes basic navigation in the game feel incredible, and as a secondary effect it means you feel much better about stacking many legendary exoskeletons in your armor because it doesn't make you run into obstacles all the time.
It doesn't require fuel, or electricity from your equipment grid, it just works whenever it would be useful... almost. The combat abilities were in fact so powerful that we had to give the Demolishers a smoke cloud which prevents you from flying, as otherwise fighting them felt like a joke.
If you ever feel like missing construction robots when starting a new game, this feeling just got a lot worse. The mech armor also makes you forget to fear walking over rails, which can be a hazardous habit.
From the perspective of visuals and concept, we wanted the mech armor to be the player becoming one with the machine and in part one of the stronger symbols of Space Age, and now the mechanics match that.
Line art version of the concept by Earendel.
Factorio: Space Age has been almost 4 years in development, and now the finish line is just ahead of us. We look forward to seeing you all enjoying Space Age on Monday, and don't forget to put shield equipment in your mech suit, trains aren't the only enemy!
Let us know if you are ready to become one with the machine at the usual places.
