Fixing NPE - Full Burner Start

[featherwinglove]

It seems to me like there are a lot of people interested in extending the early game in a way somewhat more in line with Factorio than Minecraft, and I actually thought about that quite a bit. I discussed it in the thread for the Stone Age mod, and decided to reduce the quote there to a generic one 'cus I don't want to wreck his thread - I've had a lot of issues with threads getting off topic when I mention something relevant from FFF#266 and everything that's not relevant seems to follow, even if I don't want it to. Perhaps I'm being paranoid in that people might follow a link back there, but I'll err in that direction. I've removed a reference to my poor rescue goldfish, and put strike through on stuff very specific to the extant Stone Age mod. I also added a link to the No Hand Crafting mod I'm referring to in the post, which I made before I became aware of the s2upid one.

A while ago, I thought of how I might do a mod similar to this one, and I had this kind of progression in mind:

- The only hand craftable item is the chopping block, made from raw wood. For the fuel box, I was thinking just now to give fish a fuel value and make that the only valid item for the fuel box; this would emulate food energy expended by the player character(s). This could be a good idea for the reservoir, mixing pit, and anvil.

- After making the chopping block, it could make wood (plank) and sticks, which would be used to make the larger and more capable crafting bench. My idea wasn't to disable vanilla hand mining without tools, which means raw ores and stone would be accessible, although I'd probably disable tool-less mining of iron and copper. Stone and sticks would go into a stone axe which would be able to mine iron and copper. I like the "new" progression a bit better up to this point.

- Pre-vanilla research lab would be made from a generous amount of stone brick (probably 20), raw wood, iron ore, and copper ore; it would be a burner lab using 150kW. Research Pack Zero would consist of a wooden plank and copper cable. Pre-vanilla research projects would be Primitive Tools (copper axe), Primitive Logistics (wooden inserter, which is slower but less fuel energy per transfer than a burner inserter, the vanilla burner inserter, and a wooden conveyor half as fast as the vanilla first tier - there's a mod for that in 0.14.) Primitive Mining would unlock a primitive mining drill, which would be a 3x3 machine mining a 1x1 area in the middle of it and be powered by a built-in wind turbine; it would be made from wood planks and bronze gears - the latter would be made from only copper plate in vanilla, and bronze plate in Bob's. Bob's Alloy Smelting (with the five brick metal mixing furnace whose recipe must be set) would be backed up into the primitive era and use SP0 instead of SP1; this is necessary to make bronze available. Primitive Automation would unlock a burner assembler similar to that in No Hand Crafting and the 0.12-era Mojo Resource Processing, use bronze gears instead of iron, and take any fuel, not just fish. This is enough to get a zero tier automated research setup running except that the player would still need to put wood into a wooden plank machine.

- Vanilla capabilities would begin with Basic Smelting for iron ore, Basic Tools for the iron axe (and a new bronze axe if Bob's; it would be as strong as, but less durable than, the iron axe.) Basic Logistics would unlock first tier conveyor and electric inserter. Basic Electronics would unlock the vanilla green circuit (basic circuit board if Bob's), Steam Power would unlock the boiler, steam engine, offshore pump, small power pole, and, if KS-Power, the burner generator and wind turbine. Basic Drilling would unlock the vanilla burner drill, and Basic Mining (requiring Basic Electronics) would unlock the vanilla electric mining drill. Basic Science would unlock the vanilla lab, SP1 and SP2, and mark the transition to the vanilla early game.

The combination of Bob's alloy furnace being pulled back into the primitive era allows construction of a pre-vanilla fully automated Hard Crafting back end because the alloy furnace sets a recipe, and that sets filters on any inserters leading to it. It would be painfully slow automation, but that might be preferable to fast manual work in a lot of circumstances.

[Rythe]

It seems to me like there are a lot of people interested in extending the early game in a way somewhat more in line with Factorio than Minecraft, and I actually thought about that quite a bit.

There's certainly enough bumps in the beginning game to want something done about it one way or another, like complete removal or extension in usefulness, as seems to be the theme between competing player types. :p Your suggestions are very stone age! Probably a bit more extensive than people want to deal with re:vanilla Factorio, but would fill in the connection between 'start with nothing' and Factorio normal in a more believable way.

[featherwinglove]

I've noticed there are a lot of early start acceleration mods and they do seem to be rather popular. I don't like them because it seems like I'm going off the deep end in most of them, usually with most or all of SL1 researched already and a stack of machines that I'm usually not able to make until well into oil. The SeaBlock pack seemed rather out of character vs. its inspiration, the SkyBlock of Minecraft, because of the huge starter kit. On the other hand, the starter kit is about right for landing on a strange new world with hardly any land when your landers work better than Columba's