Factorio Forums

I've only been playing the game for about 70 hours, so take all of this with a grain of salt. I got more than enough artifacts to launch the rocket just using the tank. Driving the tank was great fun and all, but using it exclusively meant I had no reason to research any advanced military techs or invest in power armor, since I already had the thing I would be trying to get with all those fancy toys. Also, it was way easier than getting blue science automated, which is an odd step backwards in the difficulty progression. Now, if I had to get, say, twice as many artifacts to research the rocket silo, maybe I would have to take on bigger bases than the tank could handle to get the required purple flasks, so then I would need to detour into power armor, robot follower count, etc. Then again, I thought I read something about combat being revisited in the next update, so maybe this is all moot.

It's more upsetting that no further components go into purple science.

bobucles wrote:It's more upsetting that no further components go into purple science.

True story. They should be the most complex of them all... maybe at the expense of some of the complexity from blue science.

If you want to make purple science more complex, I don't see any need to make blue science simpler. There are lots of potential high-end ingredients, like blue circuits, construction robots, solar panels, etc. This all totally separate from the original issue, of course.

If it was up to me I'd create a whole new, manufactured recipe for purple science which doesnt include alien artifacts, and instead use alien artifacts only for crafting particular, high end power armor, weapons and maybe rocket parts.

Lallante wrote:If it was up to me I'd create a whole new, manufactured recipe for purple science which doesnt include alien artifacts, and instead use alien artifacts only for crafting particular, high end power armor, weapons and maybe rocket parts.

Why not have both? One recipe for purple science that doesn't include alien artefacts (but processing units, low-level modules, ...) for the players who play peaceful and don't want to have to get alien artefacts in vanilla to launch the rocket, and a second recipe like the old one, but with a lower yield like 5, 2 or only 1 science pack per alien artefact.

Using alien artefacts for rocket parts in vanilla is imho not a good idea, as they can't be automated and with that change in purple science it should be possible to finish the game without using alien artefacts.

My take on purple science can be reflected in my mod.

Most of the endgame things that use purple science, the purple science is replaced by my science pack 4, which is basically a higher tier version of science pack 3.

Alien science is then reserved for military technology, basically as a kill token.

there are exceptions to this rule though, really high tier stuff uses both science pack 4 and alien science, some high tier millitary stuff uses both too. Also some things side-step and use coloured alien science packs instead.

And this is assuming the extra science packs are installed and enabled.