Updating to Space Exploration v0.6.x

Migrating a 0.5 save file to 0.6

Before you update to 0.6

If you are updating a save and you are past chemical science, update to a version of 0.5.x that is 0.5.115 or later. This version of 0.5 has some code to save your technology unlock progress. If you do not do this then you may lose some levels of multi-level technologies.

What you will need to rebuild after migrating

• Utility, production, and rocket science
• New space science pack
• Core miners
• Module production
• Specialist resource processing (vulcanite, cryonite, beryllium, iridium, holmium, vitamelange, naquium)
• Regular resource smelting with vulcanite (Anything that used the "vulcanite + ore" industrial furnace recipe)
• Stone bricks, if you were using industrial furnaces for that (stone, steel, and electric furnaces can still make bricks)
• Some space mall recipes
• Any recipe that used vitalic acid (it is now a fluid)
• These recipes which now have different ingredients: Rocket control units, satellites, aeroframe poles, aeroframe scaffolds, heavy girders, heavy bearings, bioscrubbers, vitalic reageants, self sealing gels, dynamic emitters, naquium cubes, rocket fuel from vulcanite

Complete list of 0.6 changes

Major features and changes

Space elevator

Space elevator

Space Elevators connect a planet or moon surface with its orbit. There’s both a rail connection and a wire connection. The wire lets the planet or moon surface benefit from solar panels in space. The rail connection lets trains go up and down, a convenient way to move items and fluids. It's a nice combination with ion drive spaceships that don't have a way to directly interact with solid ground.

Space Elevators are not designed to be built everywhere. They have an upkeep cost that makes them cheaper than rockets on high traffic surface-orbit connections, but not resource efficient if you build one for an inactive outpost world.

Early space science redesign

Science tree in 0.6

Version 0.6 has some substantial changes to the early-mid tech tree. The area between mid chemical science and just before the specialist sciences has been overhauled with a couple of main objectives:

• Get players into space sooner, so they have a basic space station and a couple of outposts before trying to scale up.
• Smooth out the difficult spikes, have a more gradual progression of satellite rockets, basic space station, and basic outposts before needing to deal with specialist data-driven science.

These changes don't make things strictly easier but they do make progressing more straight forward.

Capsule navigation

Capsule navigation GUI

Sometimes in the early space stage you want to get your character into space but you don’t want to send a mostly empty cargo rocket to do it. You could wait around for the rocket to fill, but that’s no fun.

Version 0.6 has a new technology, “Space capsule navigation”. It lets you add cargo rocket sections and solid rocket fuel to a space capsule. With these extra items, the space capsule can launch you up into orbit from the planet or moon surface. The catch is that you can’t really take cargo with you. Most of your items will need to be left behind (there’s enough room for lifesupport canisters and a few essentials). Not taking items is not so bad though, if you wanted to take items up to orbit then that’s what the cargo rocket is for.

The space capsule navigation system also lets you “hop” between connected space zones, such as from a planet orbit to moon orbits up the gravity well, then the outer moons of other planets or asteroid fields. If you look at the system map, the white lines show the steps you can take. You can even discover new locations this way, but crossing undiscovered areas is more risky because an unexpected gravity well could fling you to a random location.

Lastly there is always an “emergency burn” option which takes you back to your starting planet (instead of the current system of going to the nearest planet). Doing an emergency burn damages the capsule and depletes its emergency reserves. It’s not destroyed but needs refurbishing which isn’t cheap, but it’s the most cost effective option if you have no other options.

Core mining redesign with Core seams

A core seam

Core mining has changed so that core miners can only be placed on Core Seams. These are large holes in the ground that act like resource nodes, but unlike other resources their placement is much more carefully controlled than the normal noise-based resource placement.

Planets have a limited size so each planet has a limited number of seams. Core miners still have diminishing returns for building multiple miners but power consumption is reduced by 50%.

Core mining products have been rebalanced, in general yield is increased by roughly 4x. The main resource mining hardness now partially affects the core fragments too, meaning iridium core mining is slower than holmium.

In addition, the Pyroflux you get from Nauvis core fragments can be used to make steam and offset the power cost. Depending on your planet size, the first core miner generates more energy in products than it uses.

Core seams, being large holes, can’t be built on by things other than core miners. You can seal the seam with a grenade or cliff explosive so you can build other structures on it. You can open a sealed seam again by building a core miner over it.

When you update, core seams will be generated for all solid surfaces, even for already explored chunks. Existing core miners will be turned into items and drop to the ground. You can make robots collect them and rebuild them over the new core seams.

Specialist resource processing redesign

Many new and varied steps for resource processing

All 7 specialist resources (vulcanite, cryonite, beryllium, iridium, holmium, vitamelange, naquium) have had their processing chain from mineable ore to final product completed overhauled.

Each resource now comes with different challenges, making them more unique and flavorful.

Vulcanite involves a kovarex-style loop. Cryonite involves creating crystals using steam. Beryllium and holmium can be melted into ingots with coal, or vulcanite for more efficiency. Iridium is very dense and cannot be melted. Vitamelange has you grow flowers, and filter out wood and stone byproducts.

As the final resource challenge, naquium has become more complex and now needs every single other specialist resource as part of its processing chain.

Vulcanite smelting changed

Iron smelting with pyroflux

The old "vulcanite + ore" recipes of the industrial furnace have now been replaced with a slightly more involved chain which requires melting and casting the ore into ingots.

Melting the ores requires Pyroflux, a new fluid which is a product of core mining, but can also be produced from vulcanite.

The casting is done in a new casting machine (currently with placeholder graphics). The casting machine passes fluids like boilers, so they can be chained.

Ingots must be processed into plates before being usable, but stack very well and thus are a very dense option to transport your resources.

Module costs rework

Tier 9 productivity module cost

Modules now only take 2 of the previous tier instead of 3. But instead, each module tier takes a large amount of varied resource types.

Instead of being a massive copper cost, late-game modules are now a test of your entire factory. Each module will require a large amount of every resource, and an especially large amount of their special resource (holmium for efficiency, iridium for speed, vitamelange for productivity).

Because of the more varied resources, the production chain and the logistics involved are also more complex.

Overall, creating high-tier modules is a harder but more interesting challenge.

All 3 module types no longer cost the same amount of materials. Efficiency modules are cheaper than speed modules, which are cheaper than productivity modules.

Menu simulations

16 menu simulations to make your menu experience more aesthetic.

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Minor features

Gravimetrics facility's new model

Compact beacons

• New gravimetrics facility model
• Basic beacons can now be placed in space
• New compact beacons 1&2. Small area, lower module count, higher module effectiveness. Their overall beacon power is the same as wide area beacons, but they let you save on module costs at the expanse of a lower area of effect.
• Cargo launchpad, delivery cannon, spaceship, and energy emitter GUIs redesign
• New train station picker GUI after unlocking spaceships or space elevator, which lets you select stations from other surfaces.
• Redesigned Norbit ruin
• New Calidus belt 1 ruin
• Weapon cache will be detected on the first satellite launch
• Space capsules can now be deconstructed
• Navigation Satellite view now has a big light circle
• No-beryllium astro1 recipe removed
• Steam turbine is a tech separate from nuclear tech, unlocked after electric boiler (useful for CMEs)
• Centrifuge is a tech separate from nuclear tech
• Alternate recipes (e.g. holmium circuits) moved into their own tech for visibility
• Water ice and Methane ice processing moved into their own tech for visibility
• Item reordering, now sorted by resource type
• Warning message when a player attempts to land a ship on the ground when it only has ion boosters

Minor changes

• Cargo rockets can get up to 50% refunded if they launch with less than full cargo
• Rocket control units, satellite launch pad, and satellites no longer need processing units
• Stone bricks (and other recipes in the "kiln" category) can no longer be made in industrial furnaces, and require earlier tiers of furnaces.
• Biochemical facility unlocked earlier
• Spaceship victory tech is cheaper
• Distortion drive can activate on a 2500+ integrity ship instead of 3000+
• Some recipes from space manufactory now spread to space assembler or biochemical facility (space lab, chemical gel, thermofluid, mirror)
• Some recipes moved from growth facility to genetics facility
• Quantum processors and dynamic emitters can no longer be made in space manufactories, must be made in electromagnetics facility
• Vitalic acid is now a fluid
• Specialist intermediates are generally more expensive but less needed
• Science packs need more specialist intermediates, everything else needs fewer specialist intermediates
• Aeroframe poles now take iron sticks
• Aeroframe scaffold now take cryonite rods
• Changed recipe for lattice pressure vessel
• Heavy girder now takes vulcanite blocks
• Heavy bearing now takes heavy girders
• Bioscrubber now takes coal
• Vitalic reageant now takes glass
• Self sealing gel now takes methane gas
• Dynamic emitters now takes cryonite rods and particle stream
• Naquium cube now takes particle stream but less naquium
• Vulcanite rocket fuel recipe now takes pyroflux and coal
• Space rails now take holmium cable instead of copper cable
• New fuel refinery recipe to make processed fuel using solid fuel and methane gas
• New chemical plant recipe to make methane ice using cryonite and methane gas
• Cargo rocket parts can now be packed/unpacked by hand
• Changed recipes for some space buildings
• Asteroid belts are now wider (vertical size)
• The default map generation settings ("Space Exploration Defaults") now have lower evolution and pollution settings
• During universe creation, Calidus belt 2 is now guaranteed to be methane primary
• During universe creation, iridium and vitamelange moons will now have more biters
• A few additional patron planets

Balance

• Core fragments and raw resources stack size decrease
• Deep space belt default speed increased to 90/s
• Cheaper iridium cannon capsules
• Cheaper iridium piledriver
• Cryonite cooling buff
• Alternate recipes (holmium processing units, beryllium LDS, iridium heat shielding) buff
• Energy receiver buffer size nerf (1GJ -> 500MJ)
• Satellite rocket launch is cheaper, probe rocket launch is even cheaper
• New recipe for space belts (cheaper overall)
• New recipe for deep space belts/splitters/undergrounds (cheaper overall but now takes nanomaterial)
• Space radiator 2 is faster and uses less energy than rad 1, but is now unlocked with astro4+mat4
• Removed tesla, cryogun, railgun bonuses from laser/bullet techs levels 1-5, but increased their base damage
• Nerfed biosludge production from wood/fish/vitamelange
• Star probes and belt probes are cheaper
• Void probes are more expensive
• Insight recipes tier 2,3,4 buff
• Personal battery mk2 is now a mat2+energy1 tech

Very minor changes

• First few planet discoveries are targetted (Nav sat, Norbit, Haven moon, Belt 1, Vulcanite planet, Cryonite planet, cryonite moon
• Warnings on overly large stack sizes
• Technology prerequisites cleanup & standardizing
• AAI containers is now required
• Optimisation on riding cargo rockets, using the spectator system
• During an off-course rocket crash, cargo pod will land on the ground instead of going to the landing pad.
• Added more info/clarifications in descriptions for distortion drive (about requirements), biosludge from fish/wood (about the loop), electric boiler (about energy generation)
• Prints a hint when placing down your first cargo rocket silo
• New icon for iridium cannon capsule tech

Bugfixes

• High temp turbine now accepts 4999C steam to avoid rounding issue
• Fixed space lab animation jitter
• Removed "tile change will destroy entities" warning (no longer needed, this issue was fixed in Factorio)