Factorio Aquilo Guide: How to Stop the Ground Melting — Foundation Math, Ammonia Chains, and Promethium Science

Verified on Factorio Space Age patch 2.0.x. Values may change with future updates.

Aquilo is the fourth and final Space Age planet, and it punishes the habits that worked on every other world. On Nauvis you place a building, connect power, start production. On Aquilo that sequence breaks the moment you land. Every building on snow terrain or an ice platform needs a concrete floor before placement registers. And the heat infrastructure that keeps your factory from freezing will stall your expansion if you route it wrong.

This guide covers the exact tile-coverage formula for heat infrastructure, the complete ammonia–fluorine–lithium chain, the cryogenic plant recipe table, and the Promethium science loop — which is crafted on a space platform in transit, not on Aquilo itself. If you haven’t completed all three prior planets, start with our Factorio Space Age Planet Order guide — Aquilo’s unlock requires tech from Vulcanus, Fulgora, and Gleba.

Aquilo Quick Start: 8 Steps Before You Place Your First Building

1. Unlock Aquilo: complete rocket turrets, advanced asteroid processing, heating towers (Gleba), asteroid reprocessing (Vulcanus), and electromagnetic science pack (Fulgora).
2. Pack your cargo ship before launch — 20+ heating towers, 500+ concrete tiles, assembling machines 2+, chemical plants, heat pipes, nuclear reactor parts, 500 barrelled crude oil.
3. Land on existing snow or ice terrain, not on the ammonia ocean.
4. First build: offshore pump → chemical plant (ammoniacal separation) → solid fuel → heating towers → heat exchangers → turbines.
5. Lay concrete across every tile before placing any production building.
6. Route heat pipe trunks in straight lines — one trunk per production zone.
7. Build ice platform production (400 ammonia + 50 ice per tile) for ocean expansion.
8. Research cryogenic plant → build railgun defence → complete the Promethium science loop in space.

Which Section Is for You

The Heat-Melt Interaction: Why Aquilo Is Different From Every Other Planet

The first thing that confuses new Aquilo visitors is the placement restriction. Buildings on ice platforms or snowy terrain show a red indicator until you lay concrete or refined concrete beneath them. Stone bricks don’t count — they are not accepted as a building floor on Aquilo. Concrete only.

Once a building is placed on concrete and connected to a heat network, it needs at least 30°C to remain active. Below that threshold, it freezes and stops entirely. Heat travels through heat pipes and spreads to adjacent entities, but every entity also consumes heat from the network. The draw per entity type varies significantly:

• Transport belts: 10 kW each
• Underground belts: 50–200 kW depending on tier
• Assembling machines and chemical plants: 100 kW each
• Beacons: 400 kW each — the highest single drain in a standard build

As a planning estimate, the average entity draw runs around 40 kW per tile of occupied production space. One 40 MW heating tower therefore covers approximately 1,000 tiles of entity footprint. In practice, use a more conservative figure: budget one tower per 30 MW of calculated entity draw and keep a spare tower in reserve for load spikes.

The concrete rule is structural, not thermal. Concrete doesn’t insulate your buildings against cold — it provides the rigid substrate that ice platforms can’t supply on their own. Think of it as the buildable surface, not a heat shield. The developers removed the original mechanic where tiles physically melted into ocean. What remains is the placement restriction: no concrete, no building.

Safe zone practice: run heat pipe trunks through your zones first, then lay concrete extending at least two tiles beyond every heated entity. When you push onto new ocean via ice platforms, concrete the area before you route heat pipes into it.

Decision tree for the most common Aquilo production problem:

• Building stopped working → is it adjacent to a heat pipe above 30°C? → No: extend heat pipe network. Yes: check power supply.
• Heat pipes cold → is the heating tower above 500°C? → No: check fuel inserter condition. Yes: check pipe distance from source.

Heat adjacency before power is the correct diagnostic order on Aquilo. Most production stalls have the same root cause: a heat pipe that didn’t reach the building that froze.

What to Ship Before You Land: The Aquilo Cargo Manifest

Aquilo has no native ore patches, no coal seams, and no buildable terrain that doesn’t require preparation. The offshore pumps give you ammoniacal solution. Everything else comes from your rocket or your cargo ship.

Holmium plates and superconductors are required to craft the cryogenic plant. Don’t arrive without them — you cannot produce either on Aquilo. The tungsten comes from Vulcanus and feeds railgun production later. If you’re still building out those planet chains, our Factorio Gleba Guide covers the bio-science tech path that unlocks heating towers.

Day 1 Power: Bootstrapping Without Solar

Solar panels on Aquilo output approximately 0.6 kW at peak — 1% of Nauvis levels. A solar farm powers three inserters. Ignore solar as a primary source entirely and build around heating towers from the first minute.

The power bootstrap chain:

1. Offshore pump → ammoniacal solution into chemical plant
2. Chemical plant separates solution into ice and ammonia gas
3. Mix ammonia with barrelled crude oil in a second chemical plant → solid fuel or rocket fuel
4. Feed rocket fuel to heating towers via inserter
5. Heating towers → heat exchangers → steam turbines → electric grid

The 500°C threshold: heat exchangers cannot boil water until the heating tower feeding them exceeds 500°C. Until that point, you get zero electric output despite the tower burning fuel. Watch the temperature indicator after lighting your first tower — it typically takes a few minutes to climb past 500°C.

Once it does, add a circuit condition to the fuel inserter: stop inserting when temperature exceeds 550°C. Without this condition, the tower climbs toward 1000°C and wastes fuel you’re paying rockets to import. Two fully-moduled chemical plants producing rocket fuel sustain four heating towers at continuous operation — a 160 MW heat output that covers a functional early-game base.

Building the Platform: Ice, Concrete, and Heat Trunks in Order

Ocean expansion on Aquilo uses ice platforms instead of landfill. The recipe:

Ice platform: 400 ammonia + 50 ice → 1 platform tile (30 seconds, Assembling machine 2 or 3)

A counterintuitive property: crafting ice platforms uses the same inputs that ammoniacal solution separation produces, but in a different ratio — the result is a net surplus of ammonia from the production loop. Building more platforms doesn’t deplete your ammonia supply; it generates more free ammonia as a byproduct. Route that surplus to your fuel chain rather than voiding it.

After placing ice platforms, you still cannot build on them. The three-layer floor system is non-negotiable:

1. Place ice platform on ocean tiles
2. Lay concrete or refined concrete across every tile you intend to build on
3. Route heat pipe trunks, then place production buildings

Run trunks as straight lines from heating towers outward. Corners and branches increase heat dissipation; straight runs preserve temperature over longer distances. Plan your trunk routes before you start filling ocean — rerouting trunks later means pulling up concrete and rebuilding your floor.

The Ammonia–Fluorine–Lithium Chain: Every Recipe in Order

Three resources form Aquilo’s production backbone:

• Ammonia: extracted from the ocean via offshore pump as ammoniacal solution, then separated in a chemical plant
• Fluorine: harvested from gas vents at surface deposits; it cannot be barrelled for off-world transport — all fluorine-dependent recipes stay on Aquilo
• Lithium: pumped as lithium brine via pumpjack, then refined to lithium plates

The full production chain from raw resource to cryogenic science pack:

Step 5 produces a fluoroketone hot byproduct. Feed those 3 units back into the step 4 conversion rather than discarding them — it partially offsets your cold fluoroketone demand and improves overall chain efficiency. Crude oil is the one input Aquilo cannot produce locally; maintain a steady import route from Nauvis until interplanetary logistics are automated.

The Cryogenic Plant: Aquilo’s Keystone Building

The cryogenic plant is the only building that produces fluoroketone cold, fusion power cells, railguns, and cryogenic science packs. It can only be crafted on Aquilo — you cannot import one pre-built from another planet.

Crafting recipe: 20 processing units + 20 superconductors + 20 lithium plates + 40 refined concrete (10 seconds)

Stats:

• Dimensions: 5×5
• Electric consumption: 1.5 MW (50 kW idle drain)
• Crafting speed: 2 (base, up to 5 at legendary quality)
• Module slots: 8

The 8 module slots are the reason the cryogenic plant is worth prioritising over further base expansion once you can build one. Fully loaded with productivity-3 modules, a single plant adds roughly 40% output before beacons. The fluoroketone cold bottleneck that limits science pack rate and fusion cell production opens up significantly with even a partial module loadout.

Full recipe table:

Fusion power milestone: once you run enough fusion power cells through your fusion reactors, the 4:28 reactor-to-generator ratio produces gigawatts of output. The loop requires approximately 16 cryogenic plants at full output to sustain and needs around 100 barrels of hot fluoroketone as a primer to initialise. Once it’s running, every power constraint you’ve managed since landing disappears permanently.

Railgun Defence: Killing Asteroids Before They Reach Your Platform

Huge asteroids in the outer solar system have 99% resistance to explosive damage. Rocket turrets do essentially nothing against them. Railguns are the only practical defence once you start flying toward the shattered planet for promethium collection.

Railgun turret stats:

• Damage per shot: 10,000 physical
• Firing rate: 0.5 shots per second
• Range: 40 tiles standard, 60 tiles at legendary quality
• Power draw: 10 MW per turret
• Arc: 72° per facing, 8 possible directions, 3×5 footprint

Level 2 railgun damage research is the practical threshold: it enables one-shot kills on all asteroid sizes. Below that level you need two shots per huge asteroid — which arrive fast enough in dense fields to outpace a single turret. Plan for level 2 damage research before your first shattered-planet run.

Minimum viable space platform defence for promethium runs: 4 railgun turrets at cardinal facings, with each turret’s 10 MW power draw accounted for in your ship’s power budget. On Aquilo’s surface, railgun turrets also protect active launch pads from incoming asteroid fragments. The railgun itself is crafted at the cryogenic plant using tungsten plates, superconductors, quantum processors, and fluoroketone cold — so your full resource chain must be running before you can manufacture them in bulk.

The Promethium Science Loop: Built in Space, Not on Aquilo

This is the most commonly misread part of Aquilo’s endgame. Promethium science packs are not produced on the planet. They are crafted exclusively on a space platform in transit.

Recipe (per 10 packs, 5 seconds): 10 biter eggs + 25 promethium asteroid chunks + 1 quantum processor → 10 Promethium science packs

Promethium asteroid chunks are found only near the shattered planet at the outer edge of the solar system. A full round trip takes approximately 60 minutes and yields around 2,200 science packs per run from a properly equipped platform. The packs are crafted during transit, not at any planetary facility.

Promethium science unlocks only one technology: Research Productivity — but it’s infinite research. Each level reduces the cost of every other technology, compounding over time. High-level Research Productivity eventually makes the entire Nauvis research tree significantly cheaper, which is why the community calls it the true endgame loop.

What Aquilo actually supplies for the Promethium loop:

• Quantum processors (produced via the cryogenic plant recipe chain)
• Railguns for platform defence during shattered-planet transit
• The cryogenic science pack research that unlocks quantum processor production

The full unlock sequence:

1. Complete Aquilo cryogenic science research → unlocks quantum processor recipe
2. Build and run quantum processor production at the cryogenic plant on Aquilo
3. Manufacture railguns and load them onto a well-armed space platform
4. Fly to shattered planet region and collect promethium asteroid chunks
5. Craft science packs on the platform during the return trip using biter eggs from Gleba
6. Deliver packs to Nauvis for continuous Research Productivity research

The biter eggs come from Gleba. If your Gleba supply chain isn’t automated yet, the Factorio Gleba Guide covers the egg farm setup. Everything from Aquilo to Promethium science depends on that chain running continuously.

Two Base Layouts: Compact Hub vs. Zonal Sprawl

Compact hub (3 heating towers, fits on existing snow terrain without major ocean expansion)

Place three heating towers in a line as your central heat spine, with heat pipes branching 15 tiles per side. Put ammonia processing at one end and the cryogenic plant row at the other. Nuclear reactors slot in adjacent to the towers once uranium imports are established. This layout reaches cryogenic science pack production without touching the ocean, which means minimal platform work and faster startup.

Tradeoff: the compact hub can’t fit the 16 cryogenic plants required for the fusion power milestone. You’ll expand or rebuild when you need that throughput.

Zonal sprawl (unlimited scale, requires ocean expansion)

Divide Aquilo into four zones, each with its own heat trunk running from a shared power hub:

• Zone A (power): heating towers, heat exchangers, turbines, nuclear reactors
• Zone B (materials): ammonia processing, lithium refinery, fluorine collection
• Zone C (production): dedicated cryogenic plant arrays for all five recipe types
• Zone D (output): science pack assembly, rocket loading, quantum processor line

The rule that makes zonal layouts work: concrete and heat trunks into each zone before you place any buildings there. Concrete-first, trunk-second, machines third. Every time you violate that order, you rip out machines later.

Six Mistakes That Kill Aquilo Runs

1. Building on bare ice platforms. You will spend 20 minutes removing misplaced assemblers. Concrete first, no exceptions. Learn this rule once and it pays off every session.
2. No inserter condition on heating towers. Without a circuit condition stopping fuel input above 550°C, towers climb toward 1000°C and vent heat you paid rockets to fuel. Set the condition before the tower lights for the first time.
3. Deploying a robot network before you have fusion power. Robots on Aquilo consume five times their normal power. In early game you don’t have the power budget for it. Belts only until the fusion loop is running.
4. Treating Foundation tiles as Aquilo’s landfill. Foundation is for Vulcanus lava and Fulgora oil. On Aquilo you use ice platforms plus concrete. They are different items with different recipes — Foundation cannot be placed on Aquilo’s ammonia ocean.
5. Under-sizing asteroid defence before the shattered-planet run. One railgun turret is not enough. Build a minimum of four on the platform, reach level 2 railgun damage research, and budget 40 MW of ship power for the turrets before you fly outward.
6. Searching Aquilo for Promethium science production. There is no Promethium science recipe on the planet. The packs are crafted on your space platform in transit. Build the platform, run the route, craft in space. If you’re missing the biter egg supply, fix the Gleba chain first.

FAQ

What tech do I need to unlock Aquilo?
Rocket turrets, advanced asteroid processing, heating towers (from Gleba), asteroid reprocessing (from Vulcanus), and electromagnetic science pack (from Fulgora). All three prior planets must be visited and their science packs researched before the Aquilo discovery tech becomes available.

How many cryogenic plants do I need for a functional science rate?
One cryogenic plant at base crafting speed 2 produces 1 science pack per 20 seconds. For research that doesn’t bottleneck your labs, 8–12 plants running the science pack recipe with productivity modules is a practical mid-game target. Without modules, you’d need twice as many plants for the same output.

Do railgun turrets work on Aquilo’s surface or only in space?
Both. The railgun turret is placeable on-planet and on space platforms. On Aquilo’s surface it defends against asteroid fragments near active launch pads. In space it’s your only practical defence against huge asteroids during shattered-planet transit.

Can I skip cryogenic science and go straight to Promethium?
No. Quantum processors — required for Promethium science pack crafting — are only unlocked via the cryogenic science research path. The sequence is linear: Aquilo landing → cryogenic plant → cryogenic science research → quantum processor production → Promethium platform build.

What happens if I never lay concrete?
You can’t place buildings on ice platforms without it, full stop. You can build on native snow terrain without concrete, but snow terrain is limited in area and you’ll need ocean expansion for any significant base scale. Concrete is not optional after the first hour.

Sources

• Aquilo — Official Factorio Wiki
• Friday Facts #432 — Aquilo — Wube Software
• Cryogenic Plant — Official Factorio Wiki
• Promethium Science Pack — Official Factorio Wiki
• Railgun Turret — Official Factorio Wiki
• Ice Platform — Official Factorio Wiki
• Heat Pipe Math for Aquilo — Factorio Forums
• Aquilo Strategy Guide — Factorio Community Wiki
• Factorio Aquilo — Leo’s Life

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.