A Factorio mod for building in hexagons instead of a huge open world.

Core Features Summary

World Generation

Each planet in Space Age is composed of thousands of hexagons ("hexes"), each initially separated by the planet's main fluid tile.

Hex Cores

Each hex contains one entity at its center called the "Hex Core", which the player can open to see a custom GUI to the right of its inventory.
The custom hex core GUI contains information about resources in the tile, who claimed it, and numerous control buttons for managing the hex core.
Hex cores have eight loaders -- two per side -- built into them for rapid item loading/unloading.

Hex Claiming

All hexes start as unclaimed. The player spends coins to claim hexes.
Once a hex is claimed, its trades become available to use.
The player starts with enough coins to immediately claim two hexes on game start.

Trades

Each hex core contains multiple "trades" -- randomly generated but constant exchange rates of items to other items.
For example, a trade can be 1x coal -> 2x iron-plate, where coal is exchanged for iron plates.
Each hex core processes all trades as quickly as possible by consuming items in its inventory and dropping off items in the same inventory. Some limits exist based on available inventory space and other more obscure state data.

Quality of items is preserved in trading, but all items in a trade must be the same quality for it to commence.
Coin amounts in a trade are scaled appropriately to compensate for them being fixed at normal quality.

Trade Productivity

This is a percentage that affects trades in the exact same way as recipe productivity in machines:

• A purple bar fills up over time.
• The trade behaves normally while the bar is filling up.
• When full, an extra batch of the trade's outputs is given for free.

For example, when trade productivity is +50%, the trade consuming two output batches will result in it returning three output batches.
Since trades are processed in entire batches at a time, the bar does not fill up continuously/smoothly; it instead jumps forward by large steps at a time depending on how much productivity the trade has.

Trade productivity is able to become negative under some circumstances. When this happens:

• A red bar fills up over time.
• The trade does not output any items while the bar is filling up.
• When full, only then a batch of the trade's outputs is given.

Where a positive productivity of pos_prod causes the purple bar to jump forward by pos_prod of the complete bar at a time,
a negative productivity neg_prod causes the red bar to jump forward by 1 / (1 - neg_prod).

This is a mathematically and logically consistent negation of the "recipe productivity" concept in the base game.
The numbers work out nicely when negative productivity is handled like this. For example:

• Suppose a trade of iron-ore -> copper-ore has +100% prod, meaning the copper ore output is perfectly doubled.
• Then suppose a different trade of copper-ore -> iron-ore has -100% prod, meaning its iron ore output is perfectly halved (use the formula).
• Feeding the inputs and outputs of these trades into each other (iron ore -> copper ore -> iron ore -> ...) creates an equillibrium of no item growth or decay, and non-coincidentally, +100% and -100% are additive inverses. They cancel each other out.

This gives the players a quick way to tell whether combining a positive trade productivity with a negative one nets growth or decay.

Base Trade Efficiency

The most important setting in this mod, Base Trade Efficiency (BTE) controls how much of the input value that a randomly generated trade "tries" to preserve in output value.
For example, a BTE of 1.0 makes the randomly generated trades generally preserve the value of items from input to output, assuming no productivity.
And a BTE of 0.1 means that randomly generated trades tend to return only 10% of the input value when producing its outputs.
Why this setting is important:

• Setting BTE too close to or above 1.0 will result in making the game very easy, achieving victory almost effortlessly, because infinite item loops are possible early on.
• Keeping BTE low enough (at or below 0.4) generally keeps productivity from introducing the potential for infinite item loops, forcing the player to build infrastructure to maintain a net positive coin income.

Your preference as a player of this mod tells you which type you are: Do you prefer the trading game, or do you prefer the trade-assisted factory game?

Coins

There are multiple tiers of coins, each one holding the same value as 100,000x the previous tier.
Internally handled as normal items in Factorio, they have extended functionality: When taken from or added to in a compatible inventory, tiers automatically normalize.
For example, a stack of 105,000 coins immediately turns into 5000 of the same-tiered coin plus one of the next tier.

Some trades require coins as input or produce coins as output.
Coins are primarily earned through selling items using trades.

Other than through trading, they are acquired through some other features of the mod, and they are spent in various ways:

• Claiming hexes
• Unlocking or enhancing item buffs
• Activating the effects of some upgrades/features

The mod does not handle coins of a quality higher than normal (although quality coins can be cheated in anyway).
Each quality tier increases an item's coin value by 9x, where normal quality is 1x value.

Item Value Solver

All items in the game (including those from other mods) are assigned coin values automatically.
This is done by propagating values of each planet's raw resources throughout the planet's respective usable, unlockable recipes.
Several factors are considered:

• stack sizes
• item spoil rates
• recipe crafting time
• number of unique items and fluids in recipes
• food (like bioflux) for captive biter spawners
• rocket part costs (and thus interplanetary import costs)
• distances between planets (when production requires interplanetary imports)
• planet-specific overall multipliers to each stepping from ingredients to products

This results in finished products tending toward larger values than the sums of their ingredients, which is intended to reward setting up automated production as opposed to relying solely on trading to "produce" items.

A full description of how the item value solver works is documented at the top of its module.

Item Tradability Solver

To preserve gameplay balance, items that are producible on a planet but are only unlocked from later planets must not be tradable.
For example, productivty-module-3 is producible on Nauvis, but it is unlocked on Gleba, so that item should not be tradable on Nauvis.

This is to prevent players from buying such items before they're unlocked through Space Age's intended progression path.
This is also to prevent players from buying items like holmium-plate on Aquilo to skip the otherwise necessary interplanetary logistics.
The item tradability solver targets that issue.

It primarily relies on the tech tree and detecting where and when recipes get unlocked for each planet.
It works perfectly well with vanilla Space Age, although as more recipes get added by other mods, gameplay balance becomes less stable even with this solver.

This is handled as a fully separate system from item coin value calculation due to certain edge cases that can emerge.
An example of one such edge case in vanilla Space Age:

• biter-egg is unlocked on Gleba, but is only producible on Nauvis.
• biter-egg must not be tradable on Nauvis due to the tech tree's implied progression path.
• biter-egg must not be tradable on Gleba due to the restriction that it is only producible on Nauvis.
• biter-egg must be given an item value, while not being flagged as tradable on any planet, in order to determine a value for productivity-module-3 so that it can be tradable on Gleba.

Item tradability implies associated coin values, but associated coin values do not imply item tradability.

A full description of how the item tradability solver works is documented at the top of its module.

Questing System

In the quest book GUI, there are quests which can be completed by performing a diverse set of actions.
Some serve as guides like a tutorial. Others serve as relatively difficult challenges.

Quests are organized in order of progression. Easy quests are shown to the player first, and they reveal more challenging quests once completed.
Quests are designed to prioritize uniqueness and distinctiveness over abundance. That is to say, the goals are typically about performing a more difficult action a small number of times rather than an easier action a large number of times, to reduce the "grindiness" and encourage varied gameplay tasks.

Almost all quests give rewards. Some rewards unlock entire features of the mod, others simply give valuable items like coins.

Unlockable Features

Features unlocked from quests are the following exhaustive list:

• Trade Configuration - modify how trades are processed, unlocked at the very start to reduce information overload for new players
• Trade Overview - easily view and search for specific trades based on items, distance, etc.
• Catalog - for each planet, see all items discovered in trades, their coin values, their ranks, and more
• Hex Rank - a scoring system for how much has been accomplished in the playthrough (currently purely aesthetic), providing end goals for each measured statistic
• Resource Conversion - turn all ore entities into the most abundant one
• Resource Supercharging - turn ores or wells infinite
• Hex Core Deletion - permanently remove hex core entities
• Locomotive Trading - toggleable ability to allow trains to make trades using their cargo wagons as working inventories
• Piggy Bank - separat