Difficulty setting to scale science costs/alter mid-game tedium

[Honktown]

Around blue science I lose a good deal of interest in my games. Don't get me wrong, I spent at least 400 hours doing vanilla games, but when you start doing blue science, resource requirements and logistics explode for a lot of research. Some are cheap, which isn't bad (50-100), but others skyrocket (200-500 for blue, up to 1500 when you hit purple). This causes a massive gap in how much is needed to make progress, versus all the time spent making the numbers bigger and twiddling your fingers while enemies keep evolving and nesting closer and closer and nothing else is going on. On top of it, the time for blue science is double that of green (six seconds vs twelve), and purple/yellow take seven seconds. If you have the already sluggish red chip and engine machines to back it up.

I'm suggesting a difficulty setting to scale science costs, and perhaps a flat normalization of all science but red to 6 seconds production. A 20-25% drop in science costs over 200 or even 300 would make the game flow a lot more smoothly. Certain things like nuclear reactors would be accessible more early instead of needing to spend hours waiting for them to come AND dealing with their costs once they're available. A balance adjustment in that respect could be the neighbor bonus is a separate research (so you could use a little bit of nuclear early, but full potential is locked and it's clearer how nuclear reactors work for newbies).

The reward for a rocket and the infinite costs could be adjusted, so you don't run into a random gap of 600-800 cost science then 1000-1500. Or left as-is, cause by that time, you've finished the content and are screwing around.

The difficulty setting could also tweak evolution, since you'd be advancing faster. The time-based component of evolution could go a little faster, and maybe pollution too, since fewer buildings are needed to accomplish the same research. Going from "beginner" difficulty to "normal" (what we have now) would be focusing the game more on scaling management, making space, making the numbers bigger, and feeding that hungry hungry lab. Now where it's all pretty lumped together you run into jarring transitions (bullets being craptastic, jumps in costs and time needed, etc).

[Mylon]

I had taken a break and I I'm pretty deep in my first playthrough in a while. Of course it's modded and it adds a few things, but they're mostly late game so up until gold science the experience is still mostly vanilla. I didn't touch resource spawning settings or biter settings so it's all vanilla world generation except for the research queue.

In this particular playthrough I hit a horrible wall at gold science. I'm no speedrunner but I'm also no newbie and if I wasn't such a diehard fan I bet I might have given up. The biters were extremely oppressive and I was struggling to feed my base even with regular 1x2 trains arriving to deliver stone/copper/coal/iron. Maybe going solar is a big reason why progress was so slow, but I've played long enough on this base that it's paid for itself so maybe not. A couple of lone spitters found the way past my many mines to just chill out and poke my unloading station, leaving me to wonder where specifically they slipped and why they ignored the very mines feeding those unloading stations. These distractions have slowed down progress even more.

To ramp up production, I've identified some more mines I need to build but claiming them from the biters is going to take some work and I'll have to hope I can defend it. My pollution cloud is so massive that I imagine it would take me several hours to enclose all of it, assuming I could pick up infinite supplies at my base and I didn't have to build more solar to feed the idle train of the turrets.

Spitters and worms are especially bothersome and I've died a few too many times after the battle was over while I was picking up the turrets used to kill them as that acid puddle persists for far too long. I think I've gotten enough of my biter fix now and I might disable them entirely in further playthroughs.

[Frightning]

@OP: The resource costs of research are supposed to grow exponentially. Your base is supposed to also grow exponentially to match it. Build bigger. If 1-2 trains feeding a single smelter isn't cutting it, start making multiple smelters, upgrade the belts and extend them, etc. Start using bots if you have them, modules and beacons to squeeze more out of your setup(s). Long trains to reduce train overhead, etc. Make and use more blueprints (I chronically under-use this feature).

Treat your woes as new problems to find solutions for.

[Honktown]

I had taken a break and I I'm pretty deep in my first playthrough in a while. Of course it's modded and it adds a few things, but they're mostly late game so up until gold science the experience is still mostly vanilla. I didn't touch resource spawning settings or biter settings so it's all vanilla world generation except for the research queue.

In this particular playthrough I hit a horrible wall at gold science. I'm no speedrunner but I'm also no newbie and if I wasn't such a diehard fan I bet I might have given up. The biters were extremely oppressive and I was struggling to feed my base even with regular 1x2 trains arriving to deliver stone/copper/coal/iron. Maybe going solar is a big reason why progress was so slow, but I've played long enough on this base that it's paid for itself so maybe not. A couple of lone spitters found the way past my many mines to just chill out and poke my unloading station, leaving me to wonder where specifically they slipped and why they ignored the very mines feeding those unloading stations. These distractions have slowed down progress even more.

To ramp up production, I've identified some more mines I need to build but claiming them from the biters is going to take some work and I'll have to hope I can defend it. My pollution cloud is so massive that I imagine it would take me several hours to enclose all of it, assuming I could pick up infinite supplies at my base and I didn't have to build more solar to feed the idle train of the turrets.

Spitters and worms are especially bothersome and I've died a few too many times after the battle was over while I was picking up the turrets used to kill them as that acid puddle persists for far too long. I think I've gotten enough of my biter fix now and I might disable them entirely in further playthroughs.

I've found efficiency I modules to be extremely useful. Someone suggested them because in actuality, they're a lot cheaper than making new solar panels and accumulators, AND reduce pollution.

@OP: The resource costs of research are supposed to grow exponentially. Your base is supposed to also grow exponentially to match it. Build bigger. If 1-2 trains feeding a single smelter isn't cutting it, start making multiple smelters, upgrade the belts and extend them, etc. Start using bots if you have them, modules and beacons to squeeze more out of your setup(s). Long trains to reduce train overhead, etc. Make and use more blueprints (I chronically under-use this feature).

Treat your woes as new problems to find solutions for.

Yeah... I don't get excited over needing to grow my base 4-10x in all respects just so I can do the next tier of research.

[Mylon]

Maybe I've misjudged the power of efficiency modules. They're great for mines as those are on the forefront.

[Honktown]

@mylon

If you go by power gen, if a machine consumes more than around 98kW, it's cheaper using an efficiency module than just the solar panel. Not accounting the cost of an accumulator. Accumulators are relatively cheap but take a bit of work to make in quantity. Green chips and red chips are always needed in abundance.

(wish I could reply without bumping a thread)

[Cribbit]

IMO 90kw is the cutoff for power efficiency.

Miners get all slots filled for sake of pollution.

Eff1 is magical. Especially if you get a bad desert seed.

[Frightning]

~snip~

@OP: The resource costs of research are supposed to grow exponentially. Your base is supposed to also grow exponentially to match it. Build bigger. If 1-2 trains feeding a single smelter isn't cutting it, start making multiple smelters, upgrade the belts and extend them, etc. Start using bots if you have them, modules and beacons to squeeze more out of your setup(s). Long trains to reduce train overhead, etc. Make and use more blueprints (I chronically under-use this feature).

Treat your woes as new problems to find solutions for.

Yeah... I don't get excited over needing to grow my base 4-10x in all respects just so I can do the next tier of research.

I feel like this has to do with how you're playing the early-mid game and not at all the games fault. Also, this is why blueprints exist, so that you can start automating the expansion of your base. I'm actually still working on a nicer way to transition out of my early spaghetti into something that will last me at least until late game if not beginning of endgame (because I hate tearing up and rebuilding my setups, so I only wanna do it once or twice over the course of the game).

If you're zooming through the low tier science techs and then wondering why you can't do the others fast, your issue is that you're not planning for the future. Instead of throwing all your materials into science, build up your infrastructure for what's coming next while science chugs along at a more modest pace.

[Honktown]

I feel like this has to do with how you're playing the early-mid game and not at all the games fault. Also, this is why blueprints exist, so that you can start automating the expansion of your base. I'm actually still working on a nicer way to transition out of my early spaghetti into something that will last me at least until late game if not beginning of endgame (because I hate tearing up and rebuilding my setups, so I only wanna do it once or twice over the course of the game).

If you're zooming through the low tier science techs and then wondering why you can't do the others fast, your issue is that you're not planning for the future. Instead of throwing all your materials into science, build up your infrastructure for what's coming next while science chugs along at a more modest pace.

You don't get robots until later. Whether or not you're blueprinting, you still have to manually place everything. Unless it changed from 17.69, inserters don't orient when placed on blueprints. I don't know if belts do. Assemblers assign recipes.

Let's look at some sciences:
All the first-tier modules take 75 red/green. You can get a fair amount of starting military tech with red/green/military. You can get solar panels (a little expensive at 250, but alright). You can get accumulators, a little cheaper at 150.

Then you get to blue. It crafts in twice the time per bottle (6s, 6s, 12s).

Let's look at the raw costs: red science, two iron plates, one copper plate. Total time from plates: 1/2s for one gear, a single gear machine can keep up to twelve red science machines running.

Green science: 5.5 iron plates, 1.5 copper plates, craft time is still minimal. Some half seconds for gears, two belts per half second, half second for inserter. That's at least 6 logistic science assemblers running from one gear machine, one inserter machine, and one transport-belt machine.

Chemical science: Let's look at ingredients. 3 coal, 24 iron (18 from 2x engines, 6 from red chips), and 15 copper plates for two bottles. Per bottle, 1.5 coal, 12 iron, and 7.5 copper. If you have the coal to plastic bars, the bars to chips, the double-feeding wire machines (because one wire machine isn't enough to keep even one green machine running), etc, you're looking at twelve seconds per bottle. Note, red chips take 6s per craft, so one is 1 1/3rd machines worth of chemical science, if fed at full speed. A cable machine running at 2 cables per second can have it's output split, because in total the red chip machine needs 4 cables fed into green chips, and four cables fed into itself. The engines need steel, which is likely going to be among the first steel sink, next to piercing rounds and electric poles, depending on the game. Engines aren't nearly as bad as the other two, obviously. 24 iron take 1.6s/craft in a speed 2 furnace, or 38.4 seconds of furnace-time, for two bottles worth of blue science.

Chemical science is 12 iron plates vs 7 iron plates, combining automation and logistic. 1.5 more coal since the others have none. 7.5 vs 1.5 copper plates. 21 raw ores vs 8.5. More than double the cost per bottle in raw ores, for half the bottles per time, not counting the crafting rate of any intermediates. If you want to accomplish the same unit of research per time, congratulations, you need more than four times the raw resources per unit time. In terms of infrastructure, you go from around one assembler and 6 science machines and a handful of furnaces for red to be producing at 1 bottle of science per second, three assemblers feeding up to six green with a similar amount of furnaces, to closer to six assemblers, another ore route, a semi-balanced steel furnace line, multiple nearly completely occupied furnaces, and two chemical plants in competition or two separate oil refineries and many oil wells (need 100/six seconds), just to get average one bottle per six seconds. I forgot to do the petroleum gas calculations. It takes 75 petroleum gas for two bottles, or 37.5 per bottle. An oil refinery produces 45 every 5 seconds, or 9 per second, if it can get 100 oil in five seconds (averaging 20/s). Since an average oil well near the base produces between 4-10, seldomly much more than 10, you'd need possibly 1-4 oil wells running full-time, an oil refinery running nearly full-time, all that petroleum balanced between the sulfur and plastic bar plant (let's not forget the water needed for sulfur shall we) just to get one bottle every six seconds. On top of all of it, blue science starts around 75 science, and can easily reach 250 for anything half-decent (100 for lasers, and then another 150 laser turrets, which are actually really terrible starting out). You could go for modular armor (7x7, no fusion reactor). It'll only cost you 200 blue science, 20 electric engines, 40 processing units, which that itself will take 800 green chips, 40 red chips, and an additional 200 blue science of research. Not counting the additional research needed for equipment (which can thankfully be red/green and cheap for the basic stuff).

You want to make one module per minute? Congrats, you just siphoned off 5 red chips, downing 1 2/3rds bottles of blue science a minute, from the 10 you were producing, if you had all your infrastructure more than quadrupled already, for a rate of science that was already 1/3rd to 1/4 the science you were going through before, not accounting for the difference in cost or seconds needed.

[Honktown]

P.s. extra gears from red science can be used for things. Extra gears, chips, inserters, transport belts from green can be used for things. Blue science is absolutely consumptive, and you need more work to turn many red chips and sulfur into anything half useful. Since they nerfed basic oil processing, you can't even make fuel blocks from spare heavy or light oil.

[Mylon]

Solar panels are crazy expensive. The payoff for solar is about 4 hours if you were to mine the coal instead of the iron/copper. To say nothing of the processing required to make the steel and circuits and batteries. For a vanilla game just trying to get a rocket, I'd recommend skipping them. Yes, a run might take more than 4 hours, but this number is the long-term opportunity cost of building another coal mine. So maybe in a 100 hour game it's the difference between a second coal mine and a third coal mine. Unless you went nuclear. So even the 4 hour estimate comes with a heavy asterisk. Efficiency modules have a similarly long payoff. They can be useful to make mines less polluting and thus easier to defend, but the power reduction isn't a stellar benefit.

[jodokus31]

The question is, what you expect from a game like this (...and what kind of mods could help to make it fit for your personal taste.)
Would an anti-marathon mode help? Or allow science multipliers of 0.5?
I think, the balancing in vanilla default is quite good. Blue science was a lot more demanding before 0.17, but now it fits better. I usually tend to play marathon-style settings in vanilla, because research is a bit too fast for my taste and i cant keep up with building, because IMO this game is about research and scaling.
I think, what some see as tedium is the essential part of the game for others.

[Frightning]

I feel like this has to do with how you're playing the early-mid game and not at all the games fault. Also, this is why blueprints exist, so that you can start automating the expansion of your base. I'm actually still working on a nicer way to transition out of my early spaghetti into something that will last me at least until late game if not beginning of endgame (because I hate tearing up and rebuilding my setups, so I only wanna do it once or twice over the course of the game).

If you're zooming through the low tier science techs and then wondering why you can't do the others fast, your issue is that you're not planning for the future. Instead of throwing all your materials into science, build up your infrastructure for what's coming next while science chugs along at a more modest pace.

You don't get robots until later. Whether or not you're blueprinting, you still have to manually place everything. Unless it changed from 17.69, inserters don't orient when placed on blueprints. I don't know if belts do. Assemblers assign recipes.

Let's look at some sciences:
All the first-tier modules take 75 red/green. You can get a fair amount of starting military tech with red/green/military. You can get solar panels (a little expensive at 250, but alright). You can get accumulators, a little cheaper at 150.

Then you get to blue. It crafts in twice the time per bottle (6s, 6s, 12s).

Let's look at the raw costs: red science, two iron plates, one copper plate. Total time from plates: 1/2s for one gear, a single gear machine can keep up to twelve red science machines running.

Green science: 5.5 iron plates, 1.5 copper plates, craft time is still minimal. Some half seconds for gears, two belts per half second, half second for inserter. That's at least 6 logistic science assemblers running from one gear machine, one inserter machine, and one transport-belt machine.

Chemical science: Let's look at ingredients. 3 coal, 24 iron (18 from 2x engines, 6 from red chips), and 15 copper plates for two bottles. Per bottle, 1.5 coal, 12 iron, and 7.5 copper. If you have the coal to plastic bars, the bars to chips, the double-feeding wire machines (because one wire machine isn't enough to keep even one green machine running), etc, you're looking at twelve seconds per bottle. Note, red chips take 6s per craft, so one is 1 1/3rd machines worth of chemical science, if fed at full speed. A cable machine running at 2 cables per second can have it's output split, because in total the red chip machine needs 4 cables fed into green chips, and four cables fed into itself. The engines need steel, which is likely going to be among the first steel sink, next to piercing rounds and electric poles, depending on the game. Engines aren't nearly as bad as the other two, obviously. 24 iron take 1.6s/craft in a speed 2 furnace, or 38.4 seconds of furnace-time, for two bottles worth of blue science.

Chemical science is 12 iron plates vs 7 iron plates, combining automation and logistic. 1.5 more coal since the others have none. 7.5 vs 1.5 copper plates. 21 raw ores vs 8.5. More than double the cost per bottle in raw ores, for half the bottles per time, not counting the crafting rate of any intermediates. If you want to accomplish the same unit of research per time, congratulations, you need more than four times the raw resources per unit time. In terms of infrastructure, you go from around one assembler and 6 science machines and a handful of furnaces for red to be producing at 1 bottle of science per second, three assemblers feeding up to six green with a similar amount of furnaces, to closer to six assemblers, another ore route, a semi-balanced steel furnace line, multiple nearly completely occupied furnaces, and two chemical plants in competition or two separate oil refineries and many oil wells (need 100/six seconds), just to get average one bottle per six seconds. I forgot to do the petroleum gas calculations. It takes 75 petroleum gas for two bottles, or 37.5 per bottle. An oil refinery produces 45 every 5 seconds, or 9 per second, if it can get 100 oil in five seconds (averaging 20/s). Since an average oil well near the base produces between 4-10, seldomly much more than 10, you'd need possibly 1-4 oil wells running full-time, an oil refinery running nearly full-time, all that petroleum balanced between the sulfur and plastic bar plant (let's not forget the water needed for sulfur shall we) just to get one bottle every six seconds. On top of all of it, blue science starts around 75 science, and can easily reach 250 for anything half-decent (100 for lasers, and then another 150 laser turrets, which are actually really terrible starting out). You could go for modular armor (7x7, no fusion reactor). It'll only cost you 200 blue science, 20 electric engines, 40 processing units, which that itself will take 800 green chips, 40 red chips, and an additional 200 blue science of research. Not counting the additional research needed for equipment (which can thankfully be red/green and cheap for the basic stuff).

You want to make one module per minute? Congrats, you just siphoned off 5 red chips, downing 1 2/3rds bottles of blue science a minute, from the 10 you were producing, if you had all your infrastructure more than quadrupled already, for a rate of science that was already 1/3rd to 1/4 the science you were going through before, not accounting for the difference in cost or seconds needed.

Keep in mind, there are all of about a dozen techs that only take R science, but something like 40+ that take R+G and most of the R only are really cheap (10 packs or 20 or 30). You're meant to spend far more timing researching all those R+G (or at least most of them) before you get into R+G+(M or B), so that's lots of time for you to expand your infrastructure to prepare for it. Similarly, going from there to P and H science is also a major set up (less on the complexity of the setup itself and more so building up all supporting infrastructure for the ingredients for the new packs). Construction robotics is there to help once you get R+G+B up a running for a bit so you can start using blueprints to expand underlying infrastructure to support the new demands. B science is meant to be a big step up from R+G (M is kinda as well, but it's also less mandatory depending on map settings and not as complex as B). B science marks the transition from early game to mid game, it's not a small step. Even the step up in resource cost from R to G is nontrivial; +50% copper and +175% iron comparatively (also it is slightly slower at 6s instead of the 5s for R).

[Honktown]

Solar panels are crazy expensive. The payoff for solar is about 4 hours if you were to mine the coal instead of the iron/copper. To say nothing of the processing required to make the steel and circuits and batteries. For a vanilla game just trying to get a rocket, I'd recommend skipping them. Yes, a run might take more than 4 hours, but this number is the long-term opportunity cost of building another coal mine. So maybe in a 100 hour game it's the difference between a second coal mine and a third coal mine. Unless you went nuclear. So even the 4 hour estimate comes with a heavy asterisk. Efficiency modules have a similarly long payoff. They can be useful to make mines less polluting and thus easier to defend, but the power reduction isn't a stellar benefit.

Ironically I find the most annoying part of solar panels is space. They are expensive to start, and expensive to run, but if they can save you a single piercing rounds mag, they just saved you 9 iron/5 copper. Adds up. Additionally, despite being expensive, they don't need oil. Available sooner than modules, and with little additional infrastructure.

The question is, what you expect from a game like this (...and what kind of mods could help to make it fit for your personal taste.)
Would an anti-marathon mode help? Or allow science multipliers of 0.5?
I think, the balancing in vanilla default is quite good. Blue science was a lot more demanding before 0.17, but now it fits better. I usually tend to play marathon-style settings in vanilla, because research is a bit too fast for my taste and i cant keep up with building, because IMO this game is about research and scaling.
I think, what some see as tedium is the essential part of the game for others.

I don't expect anything, I'm trying to have fun. I like mods that just reduce the number grind, a lot, and add more to the world, enemies, and power management. I think there are mods that are sufficiently "anti-marathon", which is why I haven't played a vanilla game since maybe my third or fourth game (I stopped playing vanilla after I reached a winning point with maxed-out enemies in .16).

It's ironic you mention blue science being "more demanding" before .17. It's about a third the cost in iron (34 iron per bottle vs 12 now), but now has ~50% more copper and more oil needed, and more coal, since you can't trade-off for fuel-blocks on a boiler line. Yellow was changed much more dramatically. It was easy enough to get more iron for what blue costed (and it was also based on gears and green chips - stuff already being produced). It's much more disruptive to switch most of that cost into oil infrastructure, which has no other usefulness when it comes. Purple traded some iron and copper for stone (not too different in total cost), but yellow's cost was reduced by around 35 copper and 10 iron per bottle. More than twice the raw ingredients difference compared to blue.

Keep in mind, there are all of about a dozen techs that only take R science, but something like 40+ that take R+G and most of the R only are really cheap (10 packs or 20 or 30). You're meant to spend far more timing researching all those R+G (or at least most of them) before you get into R+G+(M or B), so that's lots of time for you to expand your infrastructure to prepare for it. Similarly, going from there to P and H science is also a major set up (less on the complexity of the setup itself and more so building up all supporting infrastructure for the ingredients for the new packs). Construction robotics is there to help once you get R+G+B up a running for a bit so you can start using blueprints to expand underlying infrastructure to support the new demands. B science is meant to be a big step up from R+G (M is kinda as well, but it's also less mandatory depending on map settings and not as complex as B). B science marks the transition from early game to mid game, it's not a small step. Even the step up in resource cost from R to G is nontrivial; +50% copper and +175% iron comparatively (also it is slightly slower at 6s instead of the 5s for R).

Red and green are super cheap. Something like five furnaces and five drills can keep three red and three green machines (in blue assemblers) running constantly, talking 2-3 seconds per science unit. It's not a lot, and is easy to scale. Then for blue to hit one bottle per six seconds (more like eight seconds with .75 crafting speed) requires like 20 furnaces and drills, many more times the machines and logistic paths, and all the oil. Space is needed and on enemy heavy games you have jack shit for options before blue (can't even reduce pollution that much before being a bit into red/green and have red chip machines going, or batteries for accumulators and a ton of solar panels - which means space). It's more than a "big step". You were right red takes five seconds, thought it took six. Using blueprints in excess of what's immediately convenient feels like cheating. Press the button, hook up transport belts, wait to win. No thanks.

Military science cost was cut so so much. I'm really glad it was. Absolutely drained the existing infrastructure I had if I wanted to produce it at a decent pace, in .16.

[jodokus31]

I don't expect anything, I'm trying to have fun. I like mods that just reduce the number grind, a lot, and add more to the world, enemies, and power management. I think there are mods that are sufficiently "anti-marathon", which is why I haven't played a vanilla game since maybe my third or fourth game (I stopped playing vanilla after I reached a winning point with maxed-out enemies in .16).

Ok, it sounds to me, that you mainly enjoy the results from research, but not so much the progress to reach it. Totally fine. For me its mainly enjoyable to manage the progress and get a nice infrastructure. Trains are so much fun. I also don't play much vanilla anymore, because i want more complexity, byproducts and recipe loops. Just to give a counterpart, that people are different.

It's ironic you mention blue science being "more demanding" before .17. It's about a third the cost in iron (34 iron per bottle vs 12 now), but now has ~50% more copper and more oil needed, and more coal, since you can't trade-off for fuel-blocks on a boiler line. Yellow was changed much more dramatically. It was easy enough to get more iron for what blue costed (and it was also based on gears and green chips - stuff already being produced). It's much more disruptive to switch most of that cost into oil infrastructure, which has no other usefulness when it comes. Purple traded some iron and copper for stone (not too different in total cost), but yellow's cost was reduced by around 35 copper and 10 iron per bottle. More than twice the raw ingredients difference compared to blue.

Ok, "more demanding" was probably not the correct word. I mean, blue science before 0.17 used more resources overall. And much of the same stuff, iron, gears + circuits (I saw it as disadvantage). Now, it uses more different oil products (i see this as advantage), but oil is easier/faster to setup -> I don't like the new oil (too boring) and in theory, the fuel blocks are missing for the first 75+(?) bottles until advanced oil, but requires to build a proper oil setup. Bots are IMHO a bit too deep inside blue science for casual players.

[Honktown]

Ok, "more demanding" was probably not the correct word. I mean, blue science before 0.17 used more resources overall. And much of the same stuff, iron, gears + circuits (I saw it as disadvantage). Now, it uses more different oil products (i see this as advantage), but oil is easier/faster to setup -> I don't like the new oil (too boring) and in theory, the fuel blocks are missing for the first 75+(?) bottles until advanced oil, but requires to build a proper oil setup. Bots are IMHO a bit too deep inside blue science for casual players.

I'm willing to see how I feel about more logistics, it's just the numbers game that bothers me. Have any recommendations for a more "introductory" variant of the turbo-500-intermediates mods? In vanilla, "more" means "instead of 5 assemblers/furnaces/whatever, you need 50". It's not any more complicated, just longer lines and running into throughput problems. Never tried any of the Angel's, Bob's, Pyanodon. I can easily put in the hours.

ps.

I hate trains and just running out to get more mines. I'll use mods on my side to get around it, so don't refrain from suggesting a mod that has some numbers game to it.

[jodokus31]

Ok, "more demanding" was probably not the correct word. I mean, blue science before 0.17 used more resources overall. And much of the same stuff, iron, gears + circuits (I saw it as disadvantage). Now, it uses more different oil products (i see this as advantage), but oil is easier/faster to setup -> I don't like the new oil (too boring) and in theory, the fuel blocks are missing for the first 75+(?) bottles until advanced oil, but requires to build a proper oil setup. Bots are IMHO a bit too deep inside blue science for casual players.

I'm willing to see how I feel about more logistics, it's just the numbers game that bothers me. Have any recommendations for a more "introductory" variant of the turbo-500-intermediates mods? In vanilla, "more" means "instead of 5 assemblers/furnaces/whatever, you need 50". It's not any more complicated, just longer lines and running into throughput problems. Never tried any of the Angel's, Bob's, Pyanodon. I can easily put in the hours.

ps.

I hate trains and just running out to get more mines. I'll use mods on my side to get around it, so don't refrain from suggesting a mod that has some numbers game to it.

Yeah, vanilla has the tendency to need bulk amounts for many things, esp. after the rocket or when doing tier 3 modules.
I could imagine, you would like bobs mods only (probably without electronics mods, if possible). The crazy modules and beacons allow to have very little machines for some processes. Overall its a fair bit more complex, but by far less than angels or py. And it has lots of new stuff and tiers, which is pretty powerful.
Or what about factorio extended, its more like vanilla. Industrial Rev. is also an alternative, very pretty, but has an extended burner phase and lots of handcrafting, which might not be everyone's taste (only tried it shortly, but its on my list)

[Mylon]

Honktown is right. The complexity of blue and gold sciences increased quite a bit. The reduced iron/copper costs are a small benefit and blue probably ought to get a buff in the form of more net output. So maybe 2x cost and 3x output to match gold science.

[quyxkh]

Yes, once you've got red/green science solved, the next challenge is to skill up so it's not just solved, it's trivial. Blue and gray demand some real competence at small-scale production and pose new problems for design, then purple and gold do it again with even more new problems to solve. If you could just repeat the beginner red/green science skills throughout the rest of the game without ever having to get substantially better, there wouldn't be much point to the rest of the game. It's like the addition worksheets in grade-school math, the point isn't to make you tediously do a hundred additions, the point is to get you skilled up so it's not even tedious any more.

[jodokus31]

Honktown is right. The complexity of blue and gold sciences increased quite a bit. The reduced iron/copper costs are a small benefit and blue probably ought to get a buff in the form of more net output. So maybe 2x cost and 3x output to match gold science.

Blue science was changed in multiple aspects. Which aspect is more severe seems to be very subjective.