The Space Age Planets

Vulcanus, Fulgora, Gleba, and Aquilo, plus the space platforms that carry you between them. What each planet gives you and the challenge each one sets.

Space Age extends Factorio far past the first rocket. After reaching orbit you build a space platform and fly to four new planets, each with unique resources, a signature building, and one science pack you can make nowhere else. The commonly recommended first-playthrough order is Vulcanus, then Fulgora, then Gleba, then Aquilo, and the reasoning is practical: Vulcanus first because its Foundry cheapens iron and copper everywhere, Aquilo last because it demands the most prior infrastructure and gates the endgame. Each planet also overturns some habit you formed on Nauvis, which is the real difficulty of the expansion. None of them is a boss fight, but every one of them is a new logistics problem.

Space platforms

Space platforms are player-built stations that orbit a planet or fly between them. You build outward from a starting hub using foundation, made of steel and copper, that also acts as the power grid, so no power poles are needed. Items reach a platform by rocket from a Rocket silo on the surface below. A platform with thrusters can voyage between locations; the thrusters burn fuel and oxidizer made from mined asteroids. While stationary in Nauvis orbit only small asteroid chunks appear, which makes it a safe place to build. Once a platform departs, larger asteroids appear and it needs defensive turrets or it will be damaged and eventually destroyed. Space science packs are made on platforms from mined asteroid materials.

Vulcanus

A volcanic world of lava rivers and ash plains. Tungsten ore and lava are exclusive to it, and it is the only place with mineable calcite patches. Its signature building, the Foundry, casts metal from free lava and is far more productive than ordinary smelting, which is why guides call Vulcanus the centerpiece of cheap iron and copper and the reason to visit first. The Big mining drill is also Vulcanus tech. The native threat is the Demolisher, a giant centipede-like creature with a well-defined territory: build inside one and it makes a beeline for your buildings. Demolishers act as large, area-denying threats rather than a scripted fight, and several guides treat killing them as a gating step to claim resource-rich chunks.

Fulgora

The ruins of a lost civilization, a planet of plateaus and oil sands with almost no raw ore. The primary resource is scrap, which the Recycler converts into a mix of useful components; the wiki example is recycling a blue circuit into green circuits. Holmium and heavy oil are the other notable resources. Violent lightning storms strike at night and damage an unprotected base, but they are also the power source: lightning rods and collectors turn the storms into electricity, because solar is poor here. The Electromagnetic plant is Fulgora’s building and the only place to make electromagnetic science.

Gleba

A lush, fungal, swampy planet of biological resources, and the one most guides call the hardest. Its defining mechanic is spoilage: bioflux, pentapod eggs, and other organic products rot over time if not consumed, which breaks the standard Factorio habit of building infrastructure and letting it run untouched. The Biochamber processes biological materials. Native pentapods, spider-like enemies that the development blog described in stomper and strafer behaviors, defend the planet.

Do not treat Gleba like a build-and-forget planet. Spoilage means an idle line is a rotting line, so the whole base has to be designed around constant throughput rather than buffered stockpiles.

Aquilo and the endgame

A bleak, freezing ammonia-ocean planet far from the sun. Lithium brine, ammoniacal solution, and fluorine are exclusive to it. The central design problem is heat: most buildings freeze and stop unless heat pipes run adjacent, so heating must be built into the layout from the start. The Cryogenic plant, a 5x5 building, is the only producer of fluoroketone cold, fusion power cells, railguns, and cryogenic science. Aquilo is the staging ground for the endgame. The Space Age victory condition is reaching the solar system edge, a long voyage of roughly 100,000 km on a well-defended platform, on the way to which larger asteroids appear that require railguns. Beyond the edge, flying toward the shattered planet, promethium asteroids supply the Promethium science pack for the deepest infinite research.