Chemical science pack suggestion

[Paulusss]

Good day to you all

Since 0.17 something has been bugging me a little bit, i think the recipe for the chemical science pack (blue science) is too demanding on advanced circuits (red chips).
Now that we have some changes to the way we use oil i think it would be a way better fit if the cost is not reduced but a little different.

The cost now is.
1 sulfur
3 advanced circuits
2 engine units

A little change would in my opinion make chemical science pack easier to produce.

2 sulfur
2 advanced circuits
2 engine units

Since we are talking about entry level difficulty for new players, advanced circuits are quite difficult to make, and you need quite alot of it right of the bat. Why not spread it abit more?
Sulfur is ment to be made in bulk and is easier to make, the change to sulfur does not really impact the production, but it does to advanced circuits quite allot.

What are your thoughts?

[PanTobi]

In my opinion Red CPU is much easier than sulfur xD

how about my idea for Chemical Science Pack?
Production cost:
- 20 Acid
- 3 Red CPU
- 3 Explosives
- 6 Plastic

Acid -> Because many ppl have problems with good Acid Production
i saw many times factories with lack of Acid for Batteries

Red CPU -> Pretty hard but not hardest item to create

Explosives -> This item is useless at this moment, who is using Tanks?
Fine, Artilery is nice weapon... but srsl... only one good item is using Explosives?...

Plastic -> this same as Explosives, plastic is used only for Light Structures and Red CPU



idk why you want to make game easier
its already fking easy and not require to think about setup...

and expansive mode... WOW let's increase AMOUNT of items needed to craft item #MakeGameHarder

like in old games where difficult level mean only more HP and DMG for Enemies...
in RTS games free resources for Computer Players =_=...



Game should have something like "Realistic Mode" for example Electric Furnance Recipe:
- 4 Bricks
- 2 Steel
- 2 Green CPU
- 2 Red CPU
- 6 Concrete
- 6 Hazard Concrete
- 4 Refined Concrete
- 4 Steel Furnance
- 5 Iron Plate
- 3 Copper Plate

And now its Logistic Hardcore !...
how to connect 10 Products and make it mass production ?

and btw. you can insert up to 40 different product to ONE Assembling machine
but it will require Long Hand Inserters all around ASM

[Honktown]

Technically, once you hit yellow science (production) the cost is very very much improved for red chips. It used to cost chip-wise three blue chips and a speed module for 2 bottles (11 red chips total and 65 green). Now it costs substantially less than it used to. Used to take 84.25 copper and 44 iron per bottle. Now it costs 33 iron and 50 copper.

I think the devs took notice of how many red chips you had to use to get anywhere (they didn't like how large-scale bases had huge areas devoted just to red chips aka beacon forests). Red chips used to be in near-everything, and their production speed is just slow enough to not keep blue chip machines running.

Literally any science pack that had the recipe changed had both iron and copper costs reduced, excepting a moderate amount of copper for space science, and two plates for blue. Checking over a spreadsheet I noticed a bad mistake. I can tell you now if you had productivity 3 modules in anything that could accept them, you needed more than twice the iron to do sciences, even worse if you were doing a military research. Without productivity 3 modules, it seems the cost was about 208 copper to 252 iron, and the difference with productivity is because so many copper/chip recipes can use them, while not many of the iron ones can (electric drills and electric furnaces being the worst offenders in blue and purple).

[Pandrosos]

The science pack recipe requiring *different* numbers of ingredients matters I think, because it adds complexity to larger setups. You can't just get optimal ratios out of have one belt of each input, you have to think a bit more. A 2:2:2 ratio would take that away.

[Mecejide]

I think it should be 1 advanced circuit+2 engine unit+3 sulfur→2 chemical science pack. The lower complexity of sulfur should be compensated for with a higher amount

[theorderofthings]

I feel like a better solution than making blue science easier is to make grey science more useful on its own. This would mean removing the blue science pack requirement for some of the higher-level technologies. I think blue science should still be difficult - if science pack automation is the factorio equivalent of a boss fight, then blue science is the mid-game boss at the end of the second act. Making blue science work well is difficult, but also incredibly rewarding once you 're able to work it out - moreover your reward for doing so its to get into the next "act" of the game.

To continue the metaphor, grey science is sort of like an optional boss-fight, something you can do at any time if you need it. Making grey science more powerful will help the difficulty of blue science, because if you have trouble with the production or oil extraction of blue science, you can instead spend some time working on grey science and get some nice technologies out of it. Currently there really isn't much of a benefit to getting grey before blue: blue science gets you some of the most useful techs in the game that make your life much easier, whereas grey science on its own just gets you some more damage. If this were to change, then blue science by proxy would be an easier challenge to surmount without actually ever getting less difficult.

Part of the issue here is that grey science is solely military equipment, which makes sense since it's a military science pack, but most powerful military equipment is locked behind grey and blue, and most players aren't going to need more military than what they already have when choosing between grey or blue science. What might be more interesting is if grey science was instead something like "defence science" which also unlocked exoskeletons (replacing blue science), power armor 1 (replacing blue science), better battries, and maybe a weaker version of the fusion reactor. (recipes may have to be changed for this) This way the player could make a choice about whether they want bots and better logistsics with blue science, or if they want to move and construct faster with grey science.