What Is the Space Age Expansion on the Factorio Mod Portal?

Space Age is the official Factorio expansion, and on mods.factorio.com it appears as an Expansion filter in the sidebar of the mod browsing pages. Selecting it narrows the mod list to mods built for or tied to Space Age. The portal describes the expansion as continuing the player's journey after launching rockets into space: you discover new worlds with unique challenges, exploit their novel resources for advanced technological gains, and manage a fleet of interplanetary space platforms. At the time of the page snapshot, the Space Age filter showed 526 mods.

Where the filter sits and what it does

The Mod Portal's "Browse recently updated mods" page groups its filters into four sidebar sections: Expansion, Categories, Tags, and Factorio version. Expansion is the first of these, which signals that it is a top-level way to slice the catalog rather than a niche tag.

• Expansion → Space Age limits results to mods associated with the expansion.
• The filter combines with the other sidebar controls, so you can stack it with a category or tag and a Factorio version.
• Checkboxes include items; the ban button excludes them. Clicking the active tab at the top resets your filters.

How it differs from Categories and Tags

These three filter types answer different questions, and mixing them up is the most common source of confusing results.

A Space Age mod can sit in any category. For instance, a Space Age mod that adds new planets would likely be tagged Planets, while one that only adjusts balance would fall under Tweaks. The Expansion filter tells you what it is for; categories and tags tell you what it does.

A practical example

Suppose you want mods that add new places to build factories in a Space Age playthrough. A workable sequence:

1. Open the Mod Portal's recently updated browse page.
2. Check Space Age under Expansion.
3. Check Planets under Tags.
4. Optionally set the Factorio version filter to match your installed game.
5. Enter a search term if you have one; wrap multi-word phrases in double quotes.

Expected result: a shorter list of recently updated mods that are both Space Age–related and planet-focused. If the list looks stale, note the portal's own warning that heavy caching means new mods and updates can take several hours to appear in search results.

Things to keep in mind

• The count is a snapshot. The 526 figure reflects the page at the time it was captured; the live number will drift as mods are published and updated.
• Search covers titles, internal names, summaries, and owner usernames — not full descriptions — so a mod whose summary doesn't mention Space Age may still be relevant but won't surface through text search alone.
• "No category" is the default for new mods (251 at snapshot), so a freshly released Space Age mod may briefly appear there before its author assigns a category.
• The expansion filter is not a compatibility guarantee. It indicates association with Space Age; check the mod's own page for the details that matter to your setup.

If your goal is simply to understand the site overall, the Expansion filter is one of four sidebar tools on a portal whose main jobs are browsing, searching, and filtering mods by category, tag, and game version.