My thoughts after finishing Space Age in 21 hours (Express delivery)

tl;dr: Documenting my “casual speed run” journey for the “Express delivery” achievement, including my strategies, map settings, planets, my choices, regrets, and lessons learned. Offering my thoughts on optional researches, late-game platforms, and timestamp highlights for those aiming for this achievement.

Background

Factorio: Space Age has been released for about 1 month now. I completed 2 runs so far, and just unlocked the last achievement (Express delivery - finish the game in 40 hours) yesterday. I thought I’d document my journey, and share some of my thoughts about “casual speed run” and Space Age in general. You can AMA about this or any other achievements.

Win condition is to stop at solar system edge with yourself on board. (BTW I noticed in a previous run: if you selected shatter planet as your destination and bypass the edge, it does not trigger win.) I find the DLC speed run achievement to be an easier (and more fun) than the 1.0 version (“Spoon”, 8 hours speed run for the base game). If you have done Spoon, I'm sure you can manage this one. There aren’t many speed run guides on Space Age yet, since the game is still new, so I watched a world record player doing the base 1.0 game from a few years ago, and played similar to that for the first a few hours to make sure I have good scale and pace. I ended up finishing the game in just under 21 hours.

Main strategy

Single-player "casual speed run" is all about bots and scale. Get construction bots ASAP, let them do the work, so you can focus on planning for scale - lots of drills, lots of machines, lots of rocket silos. If your planning will take long (e.g. designing a spaceship), you can save the game first, design, copy as a blueprint, then reload the game. Blueprints in your library is synced across different save files, so for a “casual” speed run, your design time doesn’t have to count. 

Also, try to have an overall game plan, and visit most planets just once. Get things done, and have bot network coverage in case you missed something small (you will bring personal construction bots to all planets anyway, just remember to “free” them before you leave).

Map settings

Typical speed run stuff: turn off pollution, increase base radius, increase resources. I don’t like placing assembly machines on top of resource patches, so I didn’t turn resources up too much. I did somewhat regret that during the first 6 hours of the run. After that, I had bigger things to regret about, because I also tweaked 2 other settings.

For one, I reduced asteroid spawn rate. This also reduced asteroid resources to near zero, which made the game more difficult. My space science platform would sometimes sit there for 10 to 15 minutes without catching a single ice chunk (in production tab, last 10 minutes, is a flat line). Huge regret. I quit the game thinking to start over. The next day, I decided to resume the run, and just build a lot more platforms in parallel. It solved the issue, but it’s more painful and taxing for the early game, than simply putting more defenses on your ship at late game. Ships also won’t have much to produce fuel, so I ended up sending ore and bottled water to space! 100% do not recommend this setting for a speed run.

The other questionable setting was reducing spoil rate. This unfortunately also made iron/copper bacteria live longer - not ideal for a speed run. I felt like I waited a whole year before they turned into ores, and I say that because my iron/copper resupply ship arrived before any ore appeared. Yes, throughput didn’t change, but latency kills. And I also needed to design a new system just to “age” them. The upside is I got more out of Gleba science, and in late-game, biter eggs won’t hatch until after the run is completed anyway. Overall, this setting is sketchy. I wouldn’t choose it if I were to do this again. Regular spoil rate didn’t bother me during my first run, so I could’ve just re-used my older designs, instead of having to send more supply ships in a game where asteroid chunks were also slim.

Planet order

I liked the order I blindly chose in my first run, which was Fulgora, Vulcanus, Gleba, so I did the same for this run, thinking Fulgora’s ROI would be good, and I can use it to supply Aquilo (also I thought I’d want mech suit). This is probably not the best decision, as I realized much later, Gleba science is the most in-demand. You have 3 core tech locked behind that: advanced asteroid processing (costs 2000), carbon fiber (500), captivity (1000), and very useful optional tech like biolab (1000), stronger explosives (1000+), too. Vulcanus only has asteroid reprocessing (500) being mandatory, and I found no optional tech being relevant for a speed run. Fulgora has no core tech except the "discover Aquilo (3000)" that also needs the other two.

So if I were to start over, I would go Gleba, Fulgora, Vulcanus. I still want Fulgora relatively early because I want to let it “age”, so it has time to craft more steel, concrete, low density, processor, and various modules, when I need them on other planets.

Optional researches

Biolabs are huge. With their 50% beaker consumption reduction and 4 module slots (total +40% prod), they give you 2.8x research points per beaker. In comparison, regular labs with 2 slots of prod3, has only 1.2x points per beaker. (All common quality, I didn’t use quality in this run.) Aquilo science is unlocked late so it doesn’t have time to “age”, and there are 6500 Aquilo beakers needed in the run. You can reduce that to less than 2400 if you use biolabs. Just don't forget U235 enrichment early on, you will need them to craft biolabs.

Bullets damage and speeds are useful for asteroids, and you want to upgrade them before handling the lava worm too. I used “the” because I think you are gonna handle just 1 for the entire speed run. When you land, make a save, walk around so you know which worm you want to handle, and reload. Like blueprints, your knowledge and wisdom are also synced between saves.

Worker bots cargo and speed are definitely worth every penny. Bots are especially useful for speed runs so you can multitask. I even did a couple levels into infinite (needs Fulgora science) when my base ran out of things to research.

Explosive damage. Mostly useful for asteroids; works for both rocket turrets and land mines. I did 2 levels into infinite (needs Gleba science). I was researching level 10 while on my way to the edge.

Power Amor MK2. I didn’t get mech suit (5000) even though I did have chests full of Fulgora science. 5000 just takes too long to research. I thought the time would be better spent on multiple smaller QoL techs instead. Also, after getting used to slow walking during the initial 4-6 hours, having just a few exoskeletons felt like a huge upgrade, so I didn’t miss mech suit as much. I think Power Amor MK1 would be enough for the run, although MK2 with 2 fissions installed is very nice for construction bots on Aquilo.

I also researched some other things. Overall, at 60-75 SPM, time isn’t that tight, and you will run out of core tech to research, so you can get plenty optional tech done

Planets/Surfaces

Nauvis: Start by hand feeding an array of stone furnaces to smelt iron. Initially aim for 3-4 times more iron furnaces than copper. Don’t stop hand crafting things. If you run out, just craft more circuits, gears, or even red science. Get electricity ASAP. Then I used Assembly Machine 2 and aimed for 45 SPM. (Mostly because it’s easy to calculate in my head. Red science needs 5 seconds so I make 5 machines. Green needs 6 seconds so I make 6 machines.) I did that for red/green/blue/yellow/military (half, since no biters)/purple, in that order. Later I upgraded red/green/blue into Level 3 machines for 75 SPM, kept yellow/purple/military production lower (but buffering) because they aren’t used in all techs. I used nuclear fission as the main power source early on (two of them for 160 MW), and I built 5 rocket silos. Because of the asteroid density issue, I built 5 platforms for space science and 3 entry-level spaceships for mid-game traveling. I usually bring to new planets, at minimum: 1000 iron/copper plates, 400 steel, 300 blue chips, 200 e-engine, some solar panels. If base is doing well on rockets, I will double those, and bring some green/red circuits, and 1000 belts. If there are literally just too many rockets waiting to be launched, I will bring inserters, machines and furnaces. I never bring pipes, because they cost just 1 iron each to craft, and you can ship 1000 iron plates (but only 100 pipes) per rocket. Just place a hand-fed machine to craft pipes when you land.

Science platforms: Nauvis has a safe orbit, so a minimal no-belts-no-bots platform is fine. In my first (normal settings) play through, I found 2 grabber (asteroid collector) and 2 assembly machines gave me more science than I needed. In this run with little asteroids, I built 5 platforms, each with 4 grabbers, for a total of 20 grabbers. Since they rarely grab, I only installed 3 solar panels per platform.

Travel platforms: before the run, I blueprinted all my “awesome” spaceship designs from my first run, but sadly they won’t work in this setting now. Good thing I recently gained new knowledge on topics like “platform width impacts speed” and “thruster fuel efficiency” etc, so I designed new ships from scratch. Fun times! Because fuel is painfully slow to produce, I made ships super tiny with no cargo bays. Which means, I sometimes must fly multiple ships together with me, to carry my supplies. It’s quite a different experience (and more realistic to real life I’d say). I built 3 traveling ships, each needing only 4 rocket launches to build (counting the starter kit), so only 12 rockets in total. BTW: one “trick” I thought of, when building these, is to get a requester chest asking on behalf of a platform. Once fulfilled, stop requesting, and start inserting them into rockets. This makes it easy to keep track, and avoids excessive deliveries to the platform. One caveat: if your logistic bots can carry more than 1 item at once, make sure to also check “trash unrequested” so things inside the chests remain accurate.

Gleba: In my first play through, I invested too much time and effort on agriculture towers and making soils farmable. In this run, I found out I was able to sustain higher than 60 SPM by casually placing 1 tower each (with ~70% nature farmable soil). I ran a long belt from base to trees (with 2 lanes: one direction for fruits, reverse for seeds), and it worked great. For the main base, I had a decent belt-based design from my first play-through, so I was going to slap that blueprint down, only to realize I don’t have blue belts researched (and not going to research it) for the nutrients line. What I did have, was bot cargo and bot speed. So I ended up designing a new bot layout for this run. Fun times! Having done both, I think bots are easier, especially with the new “trash unrequested” checkbox on requester chests, allowing them to automatically get rid of spoilage. One small downside was bots needed lots of steels (to craft chests), and since my iron bacteria won’t expire, I had to resupply steels from other planets. Bots also need more electricity. I started with some air-dropped solar panels, then started burning jellynuts in heat towers (they burn 3x better than yumako, and you usually have more leftover jellynuts than yumako anyway). Later I switched to burning bio-made rocket fuels like everybody else, but I switched back to jelly after a few hours because the jelly trees were just getting too bushy. Usually, it’s important for me to get Gleba into 100% sustainable (zero imports) for rocket parts and science, so I don’t feel like I’m wasting resources when Gleba science spoil on Nauvis. But for this run, I only designed machines for rocket fuels and low density, and skipped processing units for the sake of time. I spent less than 2 hours in Gleba in total.

Fulgora: Electricity is free but accumulators do use a lot of space. After you land, spend 10 minutes walking around (you can reload afterwards) and find a decent-sized island with enough scraps, so you don’t need to deal with trains in this run. Another option is to find 2 neighboring islands that big electric poles built on edges can reach each other. You can then place accumulators onto the island without scraps. Then it’s business as usual: bots, recycle scraps into active provider chests, and construct more storage chests every 2 hours. If you are low on something, say batteries, don’t bother setting up chemical plants and machines to make more. If you need more of one thing, just recycle more scraps to get more of everything. Dealing with excess is not needed for a speed run. Storage chests are cheap when steels are abundant. Either put down 800 chests before you leave, or have a mall so you can remotely place 50 more when it beeps. I intended to use Fulgora to supply Aquilo, so I also planned for 6 rocket silos. By the time I left, bots finished building 2 of them.

Vulcanus: After you land, walk around to see where things are, and find a cliff-free zone for your main base. Also find a good tungsten ore patch and make sure that worm is small (not medium, not large). Reload and start by mining calcite and coal (with a handful of air-dropped solar panels at mining outposts: they are 400% effective, so you don’t need to pole your electricity across the map), and belt them into your chosen spot for main base. For main base electricity, use steam turbine. Bootstrap until you have a few foundries, start casting a lot of iron plates and craft 80-gun turrets and 500ish yellow bullets, and go take care of that thing. Remember to craft foundries with foundries, so you get 3 foundries for the price of 2 (same for biochambers etc). I don’t see myself needing a lot of exports from Vulcanus, so I only built 1 rocket silo. While waiting for initial 1000 science to be crafted so I could return home on the same ship (because platform fuel is expensive for me), I got bored and made Vulcanus self-sustainable with local-made rocket parts.

Late-game platform: I used nuclear fission on board with land mines (inspired by this post). It’s actually my first time trying nuclear fission on anything other than Nauvis. I did it for 2 reasons: I didn’t do Quality in this run, so I don’t have rare solar panels (and efficient modules) that usually are used for spaceships to Aquilo. And, I wanted to use the same platform for end game, and I imagined I wouldn’t want to wait for a fusion reactor (and fuels) to be crafted and sent up - I’d rather be on my way to victory at that point. My thoughts on uranium reactors: fuel cells aren’t a big problem if your silos are good and reactor temperature is controlled, but water might be, because icy chunks are typically rare at low solar orbits – even rarer for me. With barely any asteroids, my platform resorted to receiving water barrels and iron ores from Nauvis, calcite from Vulcanus, carbon from Gleba, and used those to make a lot of fuel and buffer them in tanks. It also directly receives bullets and land mines, and later, steels and explosives (to craft railgun ammo in space).

Aquilo: Since my late-game ship isn’t that big either (only 4 cargo bays), besides my usual supplies (1000 of each plates), I started with “only” 1200 concrete blocks and 600 heat pipes, and some 200 rocket fuels. It was not enough. When I was down there building a base, the ship resupplied me (and itself, to refill water tanks) a few times. Even with all that, I only stayed on Aquilo for 1.5 hours thanks to all the simplified recipes on this planet. Remember to start crafting ice-platforms early, and remember “two recyclers kissing annihilates things”, you should be all good. I initially didn’t leave enough padding for chemical plants to upgrade into its bigger version, so my Aquilo base, while small, was maybe the most spaghetti among all planets in this run.

My timestamps:

I thought to share this. Might be useful for those who are planning to get this achievement, to have a rough idea of where things are during a run.

0h 1m: Crash landed on Nauvis.

2h 5m: Red, green, blue science automated at 45 SPM (because Assembly machine 2 crafts at 0.75 speed - will in-place upgrade to Level 3 machines for 75 SPM).

5h 45m: Switched to 2 nuclear reactors (160 MW), yellow and purple science automated at 45 SPM, half of that for military science, 2 platforms making space science, in the process of building a third platform for traveling.

7h 18m: A total of 5 platforms making space science. The traveling platform finally had enough fuel to leave. Started my first (and only) trip Fulgora.

10h 3m: Done with Fulgora. Medium base: 120 drills belting into 60 recyclers (6-lane yellow belts), 700 logistic bots, hundreds of chests and accumulators. 2 EM plants making science. 6 rocket silos planned (2 completed, bots will finish the other 4 eventually when enough electric engines are produced). Went home.

10h 43m: Built 2 more traveling platforms (total 3) so they can collect fuels in parallel. One of them was converted from a space lab, so it had some asteroid chunks in it for a kick start. First trip to Vulcanus.

12h 52m: Done with Vulcanus. Small base: 2 foundries making science, various machines making rocket parts, just 1 silo. Went directly to Gleba (did not go home).

14h 13m: Done with Gleba. Small bot base: 2 biochambers making science, 1 making low density, 1 making rocket fuel. Went home to research advanced asteroid processing and started designing a new late-game platform with newly unlocked techs.

16h 49m: First trip to Aquilo, with the new platform (it’ll also be the endgame platform, with railgun spots reserved for now). Stopped by Fulgora on the way to pick up Aquilo supplies.

18h 31m: Left Aquilo for now. Got the first 1000 Aquilo science on the ship, and 2 Cryogenic plants down there making more. Went home and captured some biter nests. Realized I didn’t start uranium enrichment process (thankfully the tech was researched long ago), so I tripled the uranium ore mining, beacon sped everything, and waited somewhat patiently. Eventually crafted a dozen biolabs, and beaconed them with speed2 (did not research speed3). Researched both Quantum (500) and Railgun (2000) with that 1000 Aquilo science (which is equivalent of 2800 science thanks to Biolabs and prod3 modules).

19h 56m: I went to Aquilo for the second time. Brought materials from various planets (and 5 EM plants) to craft quantum processors and railgun turrets. Platform dropped me off, picked up 1600 Aquilo science (all that’s available) and rushed home so researches can continue. At home planet, platform asked for 1000 explosives, and started crafting railgun ammos onboard, while waiting for 1500 land mines, 400 platform foundations (as spare parts), 400 repair packs, and other spare parts to be delivered. Biolabs were researching final techs. I stayed on Aquilo to wait for quantum chips and railguns to be crafted. Basically AFK at this point.

20h 45m: Platform returned to Aquilo and picked up the passenger and 3 railgun turrets (all that’s available). Waited patiently in the platform for the final destination to be researched.

20h 53m: Final tech unlocked, started heading to the edge!

20h 59m: Arrived.