After Action Report: Dyson Sphere Program

Build the most efficient intergalactic factory, that’s the tagline Dyson Sphere Program (“DSP”) (Steam) throws at you before dumping you in a giant Mecha (“giant” as compared to the planets you’ll encounter) and throwing you into an admittedly beautiful universe. A somewhat helpful assistant will tell you that you are now in the “actual” universe, as opposed to the simulated one that humanity has apparently retired to after… well, ascension, or something.

Your job, funny enough, is NOT to build a Dyson Sphere (at least as of game version “Early Acces 0.9.27.15466”) but to reach the end of the research tree. You could do that with a teeny tiny Dyson Swarm if you wanted to, but building a giant Dyson Sphere will help tremendously.

The Good

First off, yes, this is Factorio on a multiple-solar-system scale, with beautiful, shiny planets and colourful buildings and - as of yet - no hostiles at all, yet those are planned and already teased at on the games YouTube channel:

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But more importantly: The game is really really FUN to relax at, build a few things, watch them, just as you would in the admittedly more desolate world of Factorio. You get up to 64 solar systems with up to 5 planets each, so that’s several HUNDRED planets to extract ressources off of and build factories on. On a normal playthrough, you’ll need maybe 5-8 planets only, but I imagine that when playing with “mimimal ressources” set, you’ll end up devouring entire solar systems whole.

The Bad

For myself, there’s very little “Bad” to say about this game. If I had to put some negative thing down, it’d be the research tree. There are 6 different research “tiers”, indicated by coloured cubes (blue, red, yellow, purple, green and white) and to me, it always felt that whenever I unlocked a new research tier I could just wait for the rest of the current tech level to be unlocked before progressing any further. That may have to do with me building giant factories that churn out resources by the dozen every second, though.

The Unexpected

There IS meta-progression in this game! You can use “Meta”-Research in successive playthroughs to unlock research nodes early on. This may be extremely useful if you do a playthrough with minimal resources later on, although I haven’t unlocked enough of it to matter yet.