Change Rocket fuel to have it's own research step

[Red]

In light of the upcoming 1.17 with a "Final balancing" update mention, I propose that the Rocket fuel item be in the research tree as a lone item, prior to the Rocket silo.

Here are some justifications:

• The Rocket fuel item is rather end game and giving the player access earlier will entice the player to construct their building pipeline to include it.
• Figuring out the proper Crude oil production ratios, specially for beginners such as me, to not have an overabundance takes quite a bit of time; my reaction is to store the excess into Solid fuel; it would thus give players something else to do with their excess Solid fuel that is stacking up.
• It would give the player another enticement to research Nuclear power to get Nuclear fuel before reaching end game conditions.

Here are other opportunities rising from it:

• Force Rocket silo research to require Rocket fuel research (obviously; though I realize this would increase end-game research reaching time; though this could be mitigated by dispatching the used research packs between the Rocket fuel research branch and the Reactor silo research).
• Put the Rocket fuel research perhaps after Rocket speed 3, thus requiring Military pack, ensuring that the player doesn't get it too quickly.
• Make Explosive rocketry research require it (Not sure that's an amazing idea, but it's interesting; you could also force Explosive rockets to require Rocket fuel, though I don't like that idea much either...)
• Alternatively, we could insert Rocket fuel research in the Rocket speed research; another idea I don't like a whole lot.

[bobucles]

It's not a bad idea. Some of the higher tech recipes do unlock maybe too many things at once. For example Nuclear Power unlocks the centrifuge and the entire uranium processing path. However you need those long before building a reactor, or you want uranium for somewhere else.

I would like to get rocket fuel researched a bit faster for the purpose of cars and trains. It also would open it up as an intermediate for more recipes.

[QGamer]

Interesting idea.
However, I think that the research for Rocket Fuel should be optional, i.e. Rocket Fuel is also unlocked at the same time as the silo, low-density structure, etc.
There's nothing wrong with being able to unlock Rocket Fuel 2 different ways (also, storage chests/roboport are unlocked by both logistic robots research & the construction research)
This way, I can either unlock it early using the dedicated research OR I could wait until later and unlock it the normal way.

[bobingabout]

In my bobrevamp mod, I split the oil processing and rocket silo technologies up a bit. one of the things I did for the Rocket silo was to split rocket fuel out into it's own research that comes before the Silo. I also completely re-wrote rocket fuel, but that's beside the point for this conversation.

[Hiladdar]

That is not a bad idea.

I would put somewhere prior to researching the silo, since you need to know the properties of your rocket fuel before you can build a rocket silo.

Hiladdar

[adam_bise]

Yes please!