Definitely a day 1 purchase for me as well, no other game has the same amount of love and polish as Factorio does, both when it comes to the vanilla game and mods, and I know they will deliver a good experience with the DLC as well.

However, I am worried if it's gonna be enough to stand out among other games in the genre. It has been many years since Factorio last got a substantial content update (maybe too many) and in the meantime we've got a lot of similarly-genred games like DSP or Satisfactory that have raised the bar in areas that Factorio lacked. I hope F:SA has enough meat on its bones to substantially change the core game rather than just more of what we've already played.

I really appreciate that Earendel also got to voice some lines here. The crossover with the mod is undeniable and him being involved with the company now could have been handled differently elsewhere.

You and I both know we’re going to buy this day 1.

Oh fucking hell. There goes a year of my life

awesome news !

as expected this will be an "easier" version of space exploration, but that's not a bad thing, specially for people like me that couldn't finish space exploration, pretty cool to see that Earendel is on the team as well.

Well there goes a few more thousand hours of my life.

really glad we got to hear about a straight up comparison against space exploration. i’ll admit i was hoping they’d go a different direction (i’ve seen people mention going underwater which i think would have been a ton of fun and a guaranteed differentiator from anything currently available)

all that aside, the most interesting parts for me are the engine changes:

• improved blueprints? how? i can’t say i’ve ever had much to complain about with factorios blueprint system
• better flying robots behavior. this one could be huge, when i built a large base it was hard to properly balance logistics robots and not feel like they were just not working as well as they should

a year away tho! that’s okay, we’ll live, i just got sucked back into satisfactory (playing sf+ which is basically bobsangels for sf and it’s GLORIOUS).

i know all us diehards will pick it up sight unseeen, but unless there’s something flashy, like a graphical overhaul (which i’m not sure the diehards would be in favor of), i do wonder how it will stand out and attract the newer players that have been playing the newer automation games and might only look at factorio skin-deep and not get as excited for.

and i’m okay with all that, but i also want their work to be appreciated by as many people as possible so here’s to hoping they can nail the marketing

While painful, it makes sense to push cliff explosives into later game. Cliffs are completely irrelevant in the current game, as you get the tech to blow them up so soon that they don't manage to affect your base layout.