[0.12.x]Cartmen's Mods Information

[cartmen180]

Cartmen's Complete Overhaul

Introduction
This mod started out as an addition to Bob’s mods, but as it turned out I had more free time than anticipated. So I decided to make a major mod that focuses more on realism, yet keep a decent balance so that it doesn’t become a burden to finish a game.

It all began with a change to the copper and iron production chains. Something more realistic was needed than just stuffing ores in a furnace. So I did my research on the internet and after a few hours I had something playable. Since then this mod has seen two major overhauls, one of which is going on as we speak.
In this second overhaul I am building the mod back up from the start, making sure that mods I feel make an addition to this mod, like the Treefarm Mod and Russian Logistics Mod, are compatible from the start. I do however change most, if not all, of the recipes and tech that these mods add, aswell as when you acquire the new items and machines in the game.
For example when you start a game, you will begin in the “stone age”. You can only craft with stone and wood and have some very basic machinery available to start the automation of your factory. These machines are powered by burning coal or wood. This is where Treefarm comes into action and you can research the field to automate wood production. As it is the start of the game you have to do many actions yourself. Since you don’t have a miner you will have to use your stone axe to get those first batches of stone out of the ground. You have to plant the trees on the field. Etc, etc.

One of the major changes is how you progress through the tech tree. Your first technologies are simple to research, but as you progress to a next age you will need new research facilities, and they are expensive and time consuming to produce. The more technologically advanced you become the more expensive the next tiers of research labs are. Technology itself also becomes more expensive and requires new production lines with every step. At the end you should have a huge factory with many train stations, supplying it with resources.

Another major change is the amount of different parts. There will be many more than there were before, and they will need intricate setups to keep the production going.

All in all you can spend many hours playing CCO.

As some of you already know I am cruising the Caribbean so updates may or may not take a while.

Experimental Version(it works, but is not even basic feature complete, nor balanced. You will hit a concrete wall at some point!)

Screenshots

[cartmen180]

Roadmap

0.2.0

• tin and lead processing
• steel processing
• trains & cars
• basic oil processing

0.2.1

• advanced oil processing
• natural gas processing
• advanced electronics

0.2.2

• low grade ore processing
• induction smelting

0.2.3

• improved mining
• faster belts
• fast inserters

0.3.0

• weapons & ammo
• turrets
• walls

[cartmen180]

Quickstart Manual

The first lab doesn't require electric energy but coal to be powered.

IT'S ON THE TODO LIST!

Enjoy!

[cartmen180]

v0.3.5 has been released
I have added a config where you can disable the new ammunition types and mk2 gun turret.

[cartmen180]

v0.3.6 is out now

[cartmen180]

v0.4.0 is out now

[Degraine]

I'm having trouble using this mod - when I generate a new world, there's nothing but stone fields, stone as far as the eye can see. Every ore square is labelled Unknown key:"entity-name.stone2" and when I try to cook any of it in a furnace using wood from trees, all I get is stone bricks.

I'm running on 10.12, disabled everything else I've downloaded except Vanilla Expansion, since I figured that'd be compatible.

[Boogieman14]

I'm having trouble using this mod - when I generate a new world, there's nothing but stone fields, stone as far as the eye can see. Every ore square is labelled Unknown key:"entity-name.stone2" and when I try to cook any of it in a furnace using wood from trees, all I get is stone bricks.

Apart from the entity name, it looks like that's how it's supposed to work. There's research that will allow you to split iron, copper and coal from this Unknown Mineral. You probably need to build a simple lab to research that (just figured that out myself, waiting on stuff to build it now )

[cartmen180]

ah yes, that is a name i missed until now. entity-name.stone2 should be Unkown Mineral in 0.4.1

apart from that, boogieman is right. My mod disables the default orespawn and you have to use the simple lab to research the most basic tech that i added.
The next version will also have a bit better sorting so it is easier to find the recipe you are looking for :p

vanilla expansion is indeed compatible for now, i plan to implement that fully in its own way in this mod though.

I do plan to make a short manual but it isn't on the high priority list right now. But if you guys and girls would prefer i work on that then please let me know!

[cartmen180]

0.4.1 is out now. It should be savegame compatible

[Boogieman14]

I do plan to make a short manual but it isn't on the high priority list right now. But if you guys and girls would prefer i work on that then please let me know!

A brief 'Getting started' would probably be very helpful. Basically just mention that you need to build a simple lab to get research going. Anyone with some Factorio experience should be able to pick it up from there, but that very first step isn't all too obvious (or wasn't to me, anyway)

[cartmen180]

I do plan to make a short manual but it isn't on the high priority list right now. But if you guys and girls would prefer i work on that then please let me know!

A brief 'Getting started' would probably be very helpful. Basically just mention that you need to build a simple lab to get research going. Anyone with some Factorio experience should be able to pick it up from there, but that very first step isn't all too obvious (or wasn't to me, anyway)

My friend who playtested last night made the same observation. Perhaps i could add a message like in the campaign. When you open the techlist you get a popup explaining what you need to do first. I will look into this :p

I have updated the screenshot library, should give a little taste of what is to come after many hours of play :p
I am over 12 hours in the game and have just started automation of sciencepack 3.

Would you be so kind to tell me what you think of the research times and material costs for the researches in the new lab. Does it feel right or does it take a bit too long (or short).

[Gaest]

Your mod looks very promising, to say the least. I just want to give a humble suggestion: please consider to replace one "unknown mineral" with several identically looking "unknown ores", each will suite for different reaction chains. That way you can prevent immediate ore identification and at the same time remove "smelt everything from one ore field" side effect.

[Degraine]

Ah, okay, I missed the simple lab in the ores tab. That makes it actually possible to do things!

EDIT: So on the subject of balancing, I decided to crunch some numbers on liquid casting and right now, assuming my math is correct...liquid iron casting is much less efficient than smelting iron plates in the blast furnace. Even for steel, the 5 iron plates recipe uses less 'Unknown Mineral' than liquid casting - though it's useless for making the new steel components of course, since those can only be cast, not crafted. Nonetheless, using iron gears and pipes as a point of reference, it's much more efficient to make plates and craft with those. My suggestion would be to increase the yield for liquid iron by at least 7 (which comes out slightly ahead of crushed ore smelting), or you could reduce the cost of liquid iron recipes, or both. I haven't done copper or other liquid metals yet since I haven't researched those.

From 1 Mineral, separated into Iron Ore (average production is about 1.2 iron per mineral), then placed directly into a smelter:

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1 Iron Ore = 0.833 Mineral
1 Iron Plate = 1 Iron Ore = 0.833 Mineral

After crushing and smelting in the blast furnace:

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1 Crushed Iron Ore = 0.5 Iron Ore
1 Iron Plate = 0.66 Crushed Iron Ore = 0.33 Iron Ore = 0.28 Mineral

1 iron gear costs 2 iron plates, so it has a mineral value of 0.56 if you use the blast furnace to make iron plates. And an iron pipe costs 1, so has a value of 0.28.

Liquid Iron, used to make the currently available recipes:

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20 Liquid Iron = 2 Crushed Iron Ore + 1 Mineral = 1.833 Mineral
1 Liquid Iron = 0.092 Mineral

1 Iron Gear = 15 Liquid Iron = 1.37 Mineral
1 Iron Pipe = 10 Liquid Iron = 0.92 Mineral
1 Inserter Base/Arm = 8 Liquid Iron = 0.73 Mineral

40 Liquid Steel = 50 Liquid Iron = 4.58 Mineral

That last one (not counting the additional mineral cost of coal and nickel) compares rather unfavourably to the five iron plate recipe, which has a mineral value of 1.4.

This went on a lot longer than I expected it to...oops. Still, I hope it's helpful.

EDIT2: Also, you should move the x2 wire, x16 solder and the resistor/transistor/circuit board recipes to the machine crafting tab.

[cartmen180]

oh wow, i hadn't looked at it with the mineral value in mind but with the iron ore value. I am glad you brought this up

edit: okay, what i have done is increased the cost for smelting. So 3 plates now require 5 crushed ores and the liquid smelting now requires 4 crushed ores and 1 mineral for 40 liquid iron. If i have done the math correctly the casting recipes should now be slightly cheaper than using plates.

[cartmen180]

Your mod looks very promising, to say the least. I just want to give a humble suggestion: please consider to replace one "unknown mineral" with several identically looking "unknown ores", each will suite for different reaction chains. That way you can prevent immediate ore identification and at the same time remove "smelt everything from one ore field" side effect.

Hmm, you gave me an idea now. Instead of the mineral separator the drills mine random ores. With different unknown mineral fields you don't know which useful elements are actually present untill you mine them.
So you have to prospect different fields with your pickaxe before you know what is in there. What would be nice is a random colour for the different fields, but unfortunately that is not possible yet because every map uses the same seed, so math.random would give the same outcome everytime (i think, correct me if am wrong).

But besides the colours it is very doable. Expect an (experimental) version reflecting these changes soon :p

edit: just remembered why i did it like it is now. It allows me to add new ores without having to start a new game

[Airat9000]

new version in bug

[bobingabout]

That error is... what? I know it isn't your fault, but, that does not help in the slightest, silly factorio error.


Anyway, Question: I read that the entire map is covered in stone2, aka unknown mineral. How do you prevent the normal ores from spawning?

[Degraine]

Yeah, I would've worked from the iron ore value but you included mineral ore in the melting recipe so I had to work from there to be totally consistent. Why is mineral ore included in some of the melting recipes anyway? I thought the idea was to remove impurities, but here we are, tossing a bunch of raw rocks back in. Speaking of which, could we get vanilla stone as a byproduct of separation? All the detritus has to go somewhere, after all...

Okay, so the new crushed ore smelting recipe is about 0.7 mineral per plate, which is roughly a 20% increase in yield over straight ore smelting. Not bad.

And liquid iron is 40/2.67 mineral, or 1/0.067. Soooo...

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1 Iron Gear = 1~ Mineral
1 Iron Pipe = 0.67 Mineral
1 Inserter Base/Arm = 0.53 Mineral

Significant improvement for gears, and pipes are just sliiightly more efficient to cast. Fair enough. One more suggestion I'd like to make? Add a plate casting recipe so it's easier to measure the exchange value. Eg. melting down iron plates gives X amount of liquid iron, but the crushed ore melting recipe gives a bonus amount, so everything stays consistent.

Anyway, lets figure out steel's true mineral value. Lets start with the 5 iron plate recipe and the other ingredients for liquid steel.

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1 Steel Plate = 5 Iron Plates = 3.5 Mineral

1 Nickel = 2.5 Mineral
1 Coal = 1 Mineral

Not looking good. However:

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40 Liquid Steel = 50 Liquid Iron + 1 Nickel + 1 Coal = 3.35 + 2.5 + 1 = 6.85 Mineral
1 Steel Plate = 10 Liquid Steel = 1.7125 Mineral

Well! I was wrong. Okay, so that is considerably cheaper. Possibly too cheap? It works out to something like 2.5 iron to 1 steel exchange, which I like in Bob's, but I dunno if that's what you're aiming for. Up to you, of course.

[cartmen180]

Anyway, Question: I read that the entire map is covered in stone2, aka unknown mineral. How do you prevent the normal ores from spawning?

simply include this in your base-edit or data or whatever:
data.raw["autoplace-control"]["iron-ore"] = nil
data.raw["autoplace-control"]["copper-ore"] = nil
data.raw["autoplace-control"]["coal"] = nil
data.raw["autoplace-control"]["stone"] = nil