Factorio Space Age Guide to All Planets and Progression Order

Factorio 2.0 + Space Age introduces four new planets, and your visitation order significantly impacts factory growth. This guide walks you through 'which planet to visit first,' 'what to bring, what to produce locally, and what to export' from a design perspective.

From my experience, Vulcanus tends to be the most stable first destination (though this is empirically based, not an official rule). However, Factorio's developers don't mandate visit order—the optimal sequence changes based on your factory's bottlenecks. It's crucial to keep this flexibility in mind.

During my first space platform attempt, insufficient supplies left me stranded in orbit, requiring a second resupply mission before reaching stability. This taught me to establish minimum viable configurations per planet and structure progression to preemptively eliminate common chokepoints, rather than getting caught up in storyline considerations.

【Factorio Space Age】Complete Planet Overhaul and Recommended Progression Order

Target Version and DLC Scope

This guide covers Factorio 2.0 + the "Space Age" DLC. As documented in the Space Age|official wiki, the expansion adds four new planets—Vulcanus, Fulgora, Gleba, and Aquilo—alongside space platforms and a redesigned tech tree. Crucially, this isn't an isolated planetside expansion like earlier DLCs. You're managing a multi-planet factory system where each world contributes specialised equipment. This shift in design philosophy is essential to understand.

The official release date was 21 October 2024, and this guide's methodology aligns with that stable version. When discussing progression, don't just ask "which planet is easiest"—instead frame it as "which planet's unique production bonus, if claimed first, would compress your entire factory operation the most?" This framing cuts through confusion.

I approach this DLC as a game about sequentially unlocking planetary bonuses to remove factory bottlenecks, not as separate planetary conquest challenges. For example, Vulcanus's foundry|Foundry grants +50% base productivity (per official wiki). Fulgora's electromagnetic plant also grants +50% base productivity, primarily benefiting electronics and modules. Aquilo, by contrast, isn't a production-boosting planet—it's a high-difficulty, cold-environment research hub with severe spatial constraints. Each planet fills a different role, so progression order directly mirrors your factory's priority sequence.

Space Age

wiki.factorio.com

Recommended Progression (Summary) and Decision Criteria

Based on hands-on experience, Nauvis prep → Vulcanus → Fulgora → Gleba → Aquilo tends to be the most robust route. That said, this is situational guidance—adjust flexibly based on your factory's actual constraints.

The reasoning is straightforward. After completing Nauvis and launching your first rocket, you establish a space platform as a transit hub. Then visiting Vulcanus first gives you the foundry's productivity bonus early, dramatically improving plate production (iron, copper, steel). The +50% base productivity is powerful on paper, but in-game, the same ore throughput yields noticeably thicker output belts. After stabilising plate supply, later factory expansion becomes much smoother. The foundry alone makes downstream assembly line design dramatically easier.

Placing Gleba next—not because it's weak, but because it has high learning overhead—makes sense. Gleba's agricultural chains operate on completely different principles than ore processing. First-timers often design assuming familiar linear production, then watch the entire system collapse when decay and inventory buildup interact. I personally redesigned Gleba mid-playthrough after my linear-bus approach failed spectacularly. Waiting until your resource and electronics base is solid before tackling agricultural complexity absorbs design iteration costs much more gracefully.

Aquilo caps the sequence for clear reasons. Per the official wiki, heating is mandatory, and buildable terrain is scarce. Plus, it's your source of low-temperature science packs for endgame research. The planet demands robust logistics, power infrastructure, and ship design expertise from earlier stages. Attempting Aquilo with an immature infrastructure foundation nearly guarantees cascading failures.

Compress these three points into a decision framework:

1. Does this planet's unique equipment propagate across your entire factory?
2. Is the learning curve for local production manageable?
3. Does early access to this planet reduce logistics load for later planets?

From these lenses, Vulcanus's first-mover advantage is clear. While Factorio's developers don't mandate order, the question "which planet's production bonus makes the next 10 hours easiest?" consistently points toward stable choices.

Alternative Routes and Branching Conditions

However, this isn't dogma. The developers don't mandate visit order, and what I'm describing is the standard solution from a design perspective. In practice, bottlenecks vary—optimality shifts based on where your factory currently chokes.

The most common fork is Fulgora-first. If your Nauvis base already supports red/green/blue/purple/yellow research and electronics (circuits, modules) are saturating before plate materials, Fulgora's value jumps ahead of Vulcanus. The electromagnetic plant's +50% productivity doesn't just make one machine stronger—it compresses entire electronics lines, densifying output without relying on beacons or logistic robots yet.

Gleba-first doesn't suit stable early runs, but has valid niche cases—if you want to front-load agricultural chain mastery or centre your design around crop-based tech trees. The downside: Gleba's initial design shapes your expansion ceiling. Poor ratio choices early on force full rebuild later. Players comfortable with production ratios actually struggle here most, transplanting ore-mining instincts into a system where ratios depend on decay timing and spoilage management. Tackling Gleba with resource abundance is far less risky.

Aquilo-first-ish routes only make sense if you're rushing endgame research. Even then, the planet bundles heating, terrain scarcity, and power constraints together—breaking the "if something's short, just expand locally" design philosophy that works everywhere else. Aquilo demands jam-free supply designs and sophisticated overflow handling. You're managing operational perfection, not just production volume.

Here's a decision table:

My baseline: pick the bottleneck-solver, not the bottleneck. By that lens, Vulcanus becomes the default because material scarcity cascades—once plates flow abundantly, circuit shortages and module demands become much easier to address elsewhere. Fulgora's value skyrockets the moment you're electronics-starved. Gleba and Aquilo are "fully-featured planets" once prerequisites mature, not "start-here" destinations.

Pre-Launch Nauvis Preparation

Rocket and Space Platform Basics

This guide assumes you've reached rocket launch and begun the space platform phase. In Space Age, the platform becomes a transit hub, not a permanent habitat. Think of it as a small orbital logistics node rather than an extension of planetary factory logic.

The critical first step: separate what you send upstairs from what you produce locally. Community consensus confirms that rocket payload has hard limits, while on-planet flexibility is generous. Your first supply run should contain just the functional toolkit for immediate independence, not "everything you might need."

I initially struggled because I packed materials haggardly—plates, machines, tools mixed together. When orbit and ground both ran out of key parts simultaneously, everything halted. After switching to curated functional loadouts, uptime improved dramatically.

Space platforms also follow design principles. Community practice favours tall, narrow layouts over sprawling wide designs. Why? Threats approach from the front, so concentrating firepower forward is efficient. Narrow layouts simplify ammo distribution and repair logistics—defenders stay grouped, resupply lines shorten. Wide ships scatter defences and cargo flow, creating supply imbalances that degrade under fire.

Mining strategy matters pre-departure too. large mining drills halve their energy consumption per resource extracted. This isn't just "one machine stronger"—it reduces outpost resupply frequency, a massive advantage when supply lines are thin. Early-planet resource extraction benefits enormously from this efficiency improvement.

Initial Supply Template

Success hinges on modular loadouts, not item-by-item memorisation. After my second run became stable, I defined reusable supply modules: construction module, defence module, power module, logistics module. This prevented playthrough-to-playthrough variation and made restocking predictable.

You need five functional tiers: power, construction, defence, logistics, environmental mitigation. Power covers solar and accumulators for startup. Construction bundles assemblers, plates, steel, concrete. Defence covers turrets, ammo, walls. Logistics spans belts, inserters, chests. Environmental varies by planet (heating for Aquilo, decay-handling for Gleba, etc.).

Quantity targets per tier, not fixed numbers (no official optimal figures published):

Often overlooked: steel and rails. My first run failed partly because I underestimated these. Mining sites and bases separated by even modest distance require rail transport. Running short meant handcart shuffling and belt-stitching instead of systematic logistics—massive time sink. The real bottleneck isn't what you produce on-planet; it's how you reach production sites. Stock foundational materials heavily.

Frequently Undersupplied Base Materials and Workarounds

Off-world projects fail from foundational material depletion, not exotic shortages. Commonly depleted items: steel, rails, belts, inserters, chests, ammo, walls, electric poles, concrete. Individually unspectacular, but simultaneous depletion across five systems creates cascading halts.

Steel shortage cripples defence, logistics, and expansion. Rail depletion prevents distance coverage. Belt/inserter shortfalls leave resources visible but lineless—a Space Age nightmare. Early-planet progression expects "figure out local production," but that assumption breaks when initial smelting infrastructure itself is understaffed. Current-generation transport struggles compound slower than early-game handcart inefficiency, but the bottleneck is real.

Effective mitigation: modularise payloads by function. Construction module: assembler + belt + inserter + pole + chest in one parcel. Defence module: turret + ammo + wall bundle. Power module: generators + accumulators. Each subsequent trip reuses the same modules, minimizing forgetfulness and making shortfalls obvious.

Vulcanus's foundry grants +50% base productivity (per official wiki). Community convenience sometimes expresses this as "roughly 2.25x equivalent," but that's secondary interpretation. Stick to official metrics (+50%), treating community conversions as supplementary.

One-liner synthesis: thicken your foundational material bundle before upgrading any individual specialised tool. Space Age's exotic equipment is visually prominent, but stable off-world foothold hinges on boring materials—steel, belts, poles, walls. Securing these first lets everything else snap together cleanly.

Vulcanus Strategy: Why It Works as the Prime Candidate

Early Visit Rationale

Vulcanus excels as a first destination not because new resources exist, but because the foundry directly crushes your biggest factory bottleneck: plate and steel scarcity. Every factory eventually hits a wall where iron/copper output can't feed downstream machinery fast enough. The foundry's +50% base productivity solves this at a planetary scale.

The foundry is the anchor. As noted earlier, official specs state +50% base productivity, and practical play shows plate supply visibly thickens. Community sometimes frames this as "roughly 2.25x," but the official statement (+50%) is the primary reference point.

The sensation is unmistakable. After deploying a foundry-fed line, same-area-ratio belts fill faster, output jams pleasantly, and your downstream supply dynamic inverts—suddenly you're managing where to route abundant plates, not scrounging for more. Nauvis typically starves for plates while mining caps out; Vulcanus flips this, making distribution the puzzle. This reversal is enormous, transforming the first off-world expedition's return-on-investment from abstract to immediately tangible.

The goal isn't self-sufficiency; it's establishing an industrial metallurgy hub. Vulcanus is your "heavy materials compression plant," exporting high-density intermediates back home to reduce Nauvis workload. Electronics and fine construction materials still flow from Nauvis—complement, don't replace.

Local Resources (Coal, Limestone, Tungsten) and Foundry Line Design

Target coal, limestone, tungsten ore. These three unlock Vulcanus's full potential. Coal fuels metallurgy and power. Limestone enables advanced processing (especially relevant for lava cooling in smelting). Tungsten ore represents Vulcanus-unique value—don't treat the planet as a plate factory and leave.

Design here pivots to casting-centric compression before moving forward. I prioritise iron and copper plates first, then steel. Why? High consumption and transport density. Refining these on-site before rocketing back maximises payload value. Tungsten similarly: intermediate forms (plates, rods) outvalue raw ore in terms of rocket space.

Vulcanus shines as a refinement factory, not a raw-extraction centre. Deploy foundries across ore patches, densifying output in situ, then export compressed intermediates. Expanding mining shifts less efficiently than expanding smelting. Cutting ore extraction in favour of foundry multiplication yields better line density and export value.

Initial production strategy summary:

Key principle: funnel foundry-optimised materials exclusively. Avoid expanding electronics mid-Vulcanus; you'll dilute the planet's unique advantage. Specialise ruthlessly—plates and metallurgical intermediates, period. This keeps lines short and exports manageable.

Export Port Design

Vulcanus's strength depends less on mining/smelting and more on how you export. Abundant local production means nothing if port logistics are vague—you'll have "inventory overflow yet nothing leaving" syndrome.

Export priority is clear: plates and steel first, then tungsten intermediates. Both enjoy high utility across planets and strong foundry value. Import candidates: electronics and construction materials. Metallurgy is Vulcanus's forte; other functions suit supplemental roles. Separating throughputs organises port chaos.

Avoid granular port complexity. Cap Vulcanus to three export berths: plates, steel, tungsten intermediates. At a glance, choked belts and overflow chests signal bottlenecks by location. Transport ports aren't warehouses—they're production capacity visualisation tools. Simplicity reveals problems fast.

Operationally, Vulcanus "exports compressed materials" while Nauvis "exports supplements." This division clicks cleanly: main factory gains headroom for electronics and final assembly; Vulcanus handles resource density. Interplanetary specialisation directly improves overall compression.

Fulgora Strategy: Electromagnet Plant for Electronics Strengthening

Electromagnetic Plant Value and Target Applications

Fulgora's strength lies not in raw resources but in electromagnetic plants boosting electronics density catastrophically. +50% base productivity translates directly to green circuits, red circuits, module substrates. Where Vulcanus's foundry transforms material scarcity, Fulgora's electromagnetic plant shortens electronics lines themselves. Same footprint, dramatically higher output.

Gleba breaks most players because ore-mining intuition fails here. Crop cultivation, fertile soil, agricultural tech—biological time-based production rather than instantaneous smelting. Thinking in ore ratios collapses immediately; decay and spoilage introduce time axes that traditional factory design doesn't handle.

Aquilo's defining characteristic: factories freeze without heating. Most entities stop functioning without adjacent heat pipes. Add in ammonia seas, ice floes, scattered buildable terrain, and you're geometrically constrained in ways earlier planets aren't. "Empty space available—add horizontally" design philosophy collapses immediately.

Immediate beneficiaries: green circuits, red circuits, module materials—consumption sinks with wide cascading demand. Improve tier-one production, and downstream chokes (modules, research, high-density assembly) evaporate. My experience: moving green circuits under an electromagnetic plant shrunk perceived line length while maintaining output, creating visceral relief when circuits stop strangling research labs.

Fulgora doesn't need to self-contain everything. Unlike Vulcanus's metallurgical bent, Fulgora specialises in lightweight, high-value electronics. Expanding plates or heavy construction materials here wastes its niche. Design philosophy: "material compression planet" versus "electronics densification planet."

Electronics-Centric Export Architecture

Fulgora's logistics operate under export lightweight, high-value items. Current production axis: green circuits, red circuits, module substrates, electronics intermediates. These feed other planets' research, module manufacture, and dense assembly—portable and universal.

Initial imports: plates, construction materials, foundational parts. Fulgora's electromagnetic plant drives electronics production; substrate that strength, don't build sideways. Role separation: Nauvis handles heavy materials; Fulgora concentrates thin, premium outputs.

Role distribution becomes:

Locking onto circuits-and-modules keeps factory focus crisp. Electronics cascade through downstream operations—improving tier-one density automatically smooths research and module bottlenecks.

Visitation Timing Sweet Spot

Fulgora clicks once Vulcanus's metallurgical base solidifies and you're mid-to-late game. Plate/steel supply flowing? Perfect. Now ask: does expanding circuits repeatedly before advancing research? That's your signal. When circuit and module growth consistently precedes all other upgrades, Fulgora's value singlehandedly surpasses Vulcanus.

Decision hinge: does your factory demand green circuit and module expansion before anything else? If yes, electronics are your chokepoint. Fulgora demolishes this bottleneck. Research and modular assembly accelerate dramatically—electromagnetic plants absorb prior underperformance.

The progression sequence reflects this: metallurgical foundation first, then electronics densification. Early Vulcanus, mid-game Fulgora. Alternatively, if your Nauvis already runs electronics short, skip Vulcanus—Fulgora-first becomes the optimal anomaly.

Gleba Strategy: Agricultural Chains Without Catastrophic Collapse

Agricultural/Decay Chain Minimum Viable Configuration and Mental Model

Gleba breaks most players because ore-mining intuition fails here. The wiki emphasises crop cultivation, fertile soil, agricultural tech—biological time-based production rather than instantaneous smelting. Thinking in ore ratios collapses immediately; decay and spoilage introduce time axes that traditional factory design doesn't handle.

The critical ratio isn't input/output—it's resident time. Fresh biomatter deteriorates; long waits guarantee loss. I initially replicated Nauvis linear-bus thinking, feed-all-throughput-here design. Result: spectacular failure. Intermediate inventory inflated, processing choked at bottlenecks, decay accelerated collapse.

Gleba's minimum viability: separate growth area, harvest collection point, immediate processing zone, and spoilage overflow. Four distinct functional regions. Don't chase one-line perfection; establish small closed loops first. Community threads confirm this universal struggle—"initial design didn't scale" dominates early Gleba feedback. But that's design-unit miscalculation, not inherent complexity.

Functional responsibility separation:

Core insight: don't replace Gleba's biological chains with imports. Gleba's advantage is agricultural specialisation; use it. But factory control scaffolding (belts, inserters, circuits) benefits from external supply, accelerating biological line startup.

Modularisation and Extensibility

Gleba's strong design is crop-patch replication, not single-line scaling. Post-redesign, I modularised crop patches into self-contained units: cultivation area, harvest reception, quick processing, excess dumping, anomaly detection—all in one compact block. Expansion meant duplicating units horizontally, not rebuilding vertically.

This breaks the bottleneck mindset. Instead of "how wide should the main belt be," ask "does one patch unit operate independently?" If yes, add units. Expansion becomes horizontal scaling. Assembly-line thinking doesn't apply; distributed modular factories do.

Modularisation requires monitoring built-in. Gleba needs anomaly detection, not assumption-based tuning. Where do surpluses accumulate? Which chests grow unbounded? If a belt perennially runs full, is that healthy supply or problematic overflow? Early visibility prevents late-stage collapse.

This approach directly counters the "initial design inflexible for expansion" feedback that dominates Reddit Gleba discussions. One-line designs look elegant, break under growth. Modular designs look messy, scale gracefully. Gleba rewards messy.

Common Failure Patterns and Mitigation

Typical mistake: expand supply before processing capacity. Gleba doesn't reward higher harvest rates; it punishes them if processing lags. Excess inventory = spoilage = loss. Unlike ore stockpiling (harmless buffer), crop stockpiling = degradation.

Second pitfall: consolidate everything into one line. Looks clean initially, works briefly. One slowdown ripples everywhere; pinpointing bottlenecks becomes impossible. Gleba's distributed modular approach lets each unit fail independently, preserving system integrity while isolating repair targets.

Workaround: small closed loops first, then overflow outlets (explicit waste dumping), then monitoring (chest counts, belt saturation indicators). These three toggle Gleba from "unstable nightmare" to "predictable logistics puzzle."

Observation priorities:

Gleba's difficulty arises from design-unit miscalculation, not inherent complexity. Once you modularise, it clicks. My Gleba redesign—abandoning linear consolidation for patch-unit duplication—transformed the planet from "frustrating survival" to "predictable expansion."

Aquilo Strategy: Cold Environments and Spatial Constraints

Environmental Constraints and Heating/Power Design

Aquilo's defining characteristic: factories freeze without heating. The wiki specifies that most entities stop functioning without adjacent heat pipes. Add in ammonia seas, ice floes, scattered buildable terrain, and you're geometrically constrained in ways earlier planets aren't. "Empty space available—add horizontally" design philosophy collapses immediately.

My initial mistake: production counts seemed adequate, yet operations halted mid-shift. Diagnosis: heating infrastructure insufficient. Aquilo demands pre-calculated thermal distribution, not reactive temperature management.

The sequencing rule: heat distribution first, then machinery inside heated zones. Don't place equipment, then hope heating reaches it. Impossible terrain makes rework nightmarish. Conversely, planning heat geography first, then packing machinery densely within thermal envelopes, produces stable operation.

Power also differs fundamentally. Solar is negligible. Heating and power interconnect—power generation itself produces heat, and heat distribution consumes power. This coupled system breaks the "just add more capacity" mentality. Critical lines must thermally isolate, preventing cascade failures where one section's heating shortage spreads globally.

Aquilo

wiki.factorio.com

Compressed Layouts on Scarce Buildable Land and Terrain Expansion

Aquilo's second constraint: terrain scarcity. Ammonia seas and ice floes fragment buildable space. Expansionist "belt it horizontally" approaches fail; vertical compression dominates.

This calls for compression-first layouts: group heat source, processing, logistics, storage into tight clusters, then stack clusters vertically. Horizontal bus concepts don't apply. Terrain modification (concrete, landfill) becomes essential infrastructure, not optional polish. Concrete availability—ideally imported—directly controls layout quality. Walking speed increases +40%, dramatically smoothing patrol workflows on cramped terrain.

Pre-compressed intermediates matter enormously. Manufacturing assemblies on-site from plates wastes terrain; importing pre-assembled modules, compressed materials, and intermediate goods frees space for research production. Aquilo isn't a "make everything locally" planet—it's a "crush your output density relentlessly" planet.

Material staging by functional zones:

Focus terrain on low-temperature production. Avoid sprawling general factories; laser-focus on science enablement. Research productivity matters more than production machinery count.

Cryogenic Science Pack Production Pipeline

Aquilo exists for low-temperature science pack access (per wiki). So factory design inverts: plan research backbone first, build support infrastructure around it.

Core methodology: position low-temp science production centrally, wrap heat/supply lines around it, allocate remaining terrain to auxiliary functions. Don't build generalist factories that happen to produce science; build science factories first, bolster with periphery support.

Early viability means short thermally-managed paths to science output. Long conveyor lines sprawling across terrain require distributed heating, massive energy overhead, and cascade-failure risk when one section fails. Compact, central production handles heating efficiently and isolates problems to single zones.

Research-driven design cascades smoothly: lock science lines first, determine current requirements, then add production modularly. Aquilo's value is advancing endgame research, not demonstrating production scale. Infrastructure matches the mission.

Space Platforms and Interplanetary Logistics Fundamentals

Minimum Viable Platform Template and Validation Protocol

Space platform success hinges on one reusable building-block unit before scaling. This unit bundles thrust, power, defence, repair, and logistics into one cohesive module. Specific implementation: thrusters + fuel supply, solar + accumulators, frontal turrets, repair protocol, and request/provider logistics endpoints—one parcel.

Templating this unit is transformative. Whether visiting Vulcanus or Aquilo, you deploy identical foundational logic, vary only destination specifics. Expansion duplicates this unit along the craft's length.

Why? Platform disasters stem from system incompleteness, not component weakness. Thrust without ammo supply starves defences. Defence without power fails under load. Logistics without redundancy creates phantom shortages. The unit approach bundles all dependencies, ensuring failure isolation and predictable scaling.

Validation sequence: short-range test flight → examine resupply logs → confirm overflow handling. Watch for ammo saturation, asymmetric belt fullness, unexpected logistic requests. Space Age logistics reveal design flaws under operational load, not theoretical inspection.

Post-templating, repeated construction became trivial, and resupply patterns became predictable. Platform reliability improved dramatically. Reproducible templates trump individually optimised designs.

Vertical (Tall) Hull Configuration and Defence Line

Favour vertical over horizontal hull orientation. Community consensus backs this: threats approach frontally, so concentrating firepower forward minimises coverage area. Narrow ships enable dense defensive lines and short ammo distribution chains.

Layout geometry: frontal defence zone, central ammunition + maintenance circulation, rear thrust + power. Narrow fronts concentrate fire, narrow belts support it, rear logistics remain protected. Compact defences stabilise firepower; long-reach defensive spreads leak ammo and durability.

This template extends to logistics. Compact vertical hulls simplify cargo routing (front-to-back linear flow), enable quick bottleneck diagnosis, and reduce malfunction cascade risk. Transport vessels prioritise streamlined logistics over sprawling firepower.

Non-combat bonus: vertical layouts make in-orbit refitting and restocking trivial. Items move front-to-back predictably; additions follow the template naturally. Expansion stability improves.

Ammo-Free and Munition Production Strategy

Design platforms to avoid ammo dependency where feasible. Stocking ammunition consumes payload and complicates resupply schedules. Instead, treat ammo as a flowing system: either produce ammo on-platform, or on-planet with local supply lines feeding the platform during docking.

This philosophy eliminates ammo-stocking bloat from supply runs, streamlining cargo manifests. Platforms themselves become lightweight transit vessels, not ammunition depots.

Gun efficiency connects directly. Concentrating firepower (narrow fronts, synchronized turret timing) stabilises ammo consumption patterns, enabling predictable resupply intervals. Predictability shrinks logistics variance, freeing payload capacity for actual cargo.

Operational mentality: ammo as a balanced flow, not a consumable stockpile. This shift alone reduces supply complexity considerably.

Failure Patterns and Mitigations

Checklist: Initial Supply Template

Newcomers most commonly fail from arrival-phase material starvation. You can identify planet resources, yet lack the tools to extract/process them. Power exists but belts don't. Machinery exists but inserters vanish. Defences exist but ammo channels fail. These cascades are preventable via **functional-category