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The original was posted on /r/factorio by /u/Orgerix on 2026-08-09 02:02:31+00:00.

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I just left Pelagos, and this mod took me by surprise in how well it is designed (well, not really by surprise, given that I had seen that opinion multiple times, but still). I just want to share my ramblings on the mod and give some feedback on things I think could be improved.

First things first: what is Pelagos? It is a planet mod featuring a Caribbean-like archipelago. It was mainly created as the home for the mod Cargo Ships (from the same author), as a planet revolving entirely around ship logistics. Think trains, but slow and on water.

It is unlocked after Gleba and sits in the solar system between Vulcanus and Gleba, without a direct connection to Nauvis (I think; I have other mods to reorganize the solar system given how many planet mods I have).

And it plays a lot like Gleba, with coconuts being the main resource from which the basic production chain derives. Unlike Gleba, you can plant everywhere, but since you are on islands, your plantations take up space that is much needed for your production chains. You have to specialize islands and then circulate goods through cargo ships or tankers. And since they are slow, you really have to think about which items are stable enough to ship. On Gleba, you can get away with belting processed fruit or using bots. Sure, it is less efficient and produces a lot of spoilage, but you can get the job done. Here, shipping processed coconuts will likely result in a load of spoilage upon arrival.

Pollution is unique, as it is independent of whether the machine is working or not. It always emits its full amount of pollution. On top of that, anything electric produces Pelagos pollution (electromagnetic waves). So you are heavily incentivized to not use electricity at all. Thankfully, the mod comes with its full array of diesel buildings (miners, assembly machines, inserters, etc.) that take liquid fuel as an energy source, so it is possible to have a functional base without any electricity.

Of the new buildings, the calciner is probably the one with the most applications outside of Pelagos, since it has the same crafting speed and productivity as a foundry, but with the size and crafting recipes of a smelter. Productivity bonuses on bricks, stone, and lithium? Yes, please.

Coconuts produce mainly four products:

• Sealant: used in most building crafts.
• Activated carbon: refined carbon. Used in a lot of recipes to increase efficiency (like steel smelting), and most importantly, it can be used to produce stone bricks without stone.
• Coconut oil: can be used as an early fuel, but should be replaced rapidly with methane or ethanol. After that, it is just an intermediate for sealant.
• Nutrients: biochambers are the main machines used on Pelagos, and coconut meat produces a lot of nutrients to fuel everything.

On top of the coconuts, the natural resources are iron, methane, and titanium sludge. All the diesel infrastructure does not use any copper, but uses a lot of engine units, and some buildings have steep costs in concrete or stone bricks. Stone is not present on the planet, and you have to actually dig up part of an island to produce it (40 per tile). It doesn't sound like a lot (and it isn't), but with activated carbon, you don't actually need stone, except for landfill.

Titanium sludge is used for smelting titanium plates (an alternative to LDS), while methane is mainly used to craft with ethanol. Ethanol is really useful for multiple things:

• It is the best fuel for cargo ships and the most energy-dense fuel available on the planet.
• It is a substitute for rocket fuel in rocket silos.
• In conjunction with raw methane, it can substitute for oil products like plastic, explosives, or processors.

On top of the raw materials, the transformation of titanium and ethanol requires bacteria, similar to iron and copper bacteria. The loop requires raw (or processed) fish, so your plant will also require fish breeding. Thankfully, you don't need a lot of fish, so the nutrient requirement is manageable.

The science pack is a combination of everything: the main products (sealant, activated carbon, titanium), plus bacteria and engine units. This pack is the perfect illustration of what you need to automate on Pelagos.

A tiny detail I missed is that the bacteria make it really hard to get fresh science packs. You have to use the cultivation recipe because producing them from scratch is really inefficient, and you have to keep them flowing; otherwise, you lose your bacteria. With a five-minute spoil time, more often than not I produced packs that were already half-spoiled.

On a side note, I initially didn't understand why there were two identical recipes for cultivation, one with raw fish and the other with fermented fish, which requires an extra step. Then I noticed the tiny line saying that the craft refreshes the freshness. So cultivation with raw fish would produce bacteria that is already spoiling, while fermented fish would always produce fresh bacteria.

Rocket launches use an alternate recipe, as I mentioned already. Titanium instead of LDS, ethanol instead of rocket fuel, but they still require processors. Those use ethanol instead of sulfuric acid, but still require chips, and ultimately copper to craft. This can be obtained by capturing nests, and smelting the eggs will produce copper plates. However, from my testing, without the ability to create nests, you only get one plate per second per nest, and those tend to be placed in inconvenient locations, so local production of chips is a bit painful. I chose to import them and be done with it.

Overall, the quality feels on par with the vanilla planets. You have complex production chains that require some thought. The limited space forces you to try to optimize your layout and keep it compact. The cargo ships are well used and actually provide some unique challenges. A port ends up taking a significant amount of space, and in some cases, you can't have a port for each product like you normally would with trains.

Completing the planet feels meaningful:

• You unlock cargo ships, tankers, and ship automation, so now you can use them on all your planets. However, because they are locked behind Pelagos, I feel like mods in the "Depth of X" series don't mesh well with it and basically force you to clear Pelagos before doing those planets. Namely, Depth of Nauvis feels really rough without signaling, forcing you to rush Pelagos and Gleba. I also ended up uninstalling Depth of Fulgora because I needed to do Fulgora first for the EM production to stabilize my chip production. However, I look forward to Depth of Arig and Depth of Aquilo.
• The calciner is really good. It is smaller than the foundry, allowing for compact designs, and gives a base productivity bonus to recipes that didn't have access to it before, like stone bricks or lithium plates. I don't really have a gauge of how easy it is to fuel outside of Pelagos, but it is something I set up for export. On top of that, it allows you to smelt stone bricks from carbon + calcite, so in space, which opens up an orbital factory for concrete. You get matching recipes to produce methane in order to fuel it.
• You get direct casting for engine units. This one feels a bit weird. You mainly want to use it on Pelagos, but the foundry requires electricity, which you are disincentivized from using.
• Modules that drop quality by a lot in exchange for a bit of speed. They seem really niche compared to speed modules.
• Long-range drones, which are basically airdrop requests. They provide a much-needed small-item alternative to cargo ships. However, they don't provide a lot of feedback on their state, and figuring out why requests are not being fulfilled is difficult.
• Infinite research for bacteria productivity, which mainly helps iron/copper production on Gleba.

Here are my thoughts after finishing the planet.

The mod is insanely front-loaded. When you land, you have to figure out at the same time how to get fuel for your machines, find an island of a proper size, and figure out how to get sealant. I got lost and missed the alternative stone brick recipe. I then moaned about the insane stone cost of the buildings I needed, then gave up and set up imports from Vulcanus. But even if I had noticed the alternative recipe, it requires a solid amount of stone to bootstrap a working crafting chain, which would cost very precious space.

I feel like the mod is showing the limits of how we can interact with freshness. I am sure there are some circuit wizards who have figured it out, but Pelagos is a place where I really want to care about freshness, and I can't afford to void everything that isn't consumed. Namely, voiding bacteria would cause so much fish to be wasted, and fish are kind of expensive to breed. I would like to be able to select a freshness threshold. But then, maybe it is the way I approach freshness as a whole that needs to be reconsidered.

Going between islands is tedious. I had my power armor from Fulgora with a decent amount of legs, but even then, going back and forth between islands took a significant amount of time.

The lack of roboports accentuated the feeling of tediousness. I had to bring supplies back by hand and waste time each time I forgot something (which happened a lot). I know I could have set them up, but after seeing the pollution created by my bootstrapping base, and since I didn't see how to properly set up a perim...

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