Development and Discussion

[shuzen]

Santa, would it be possible to add a mod setting for BioProcessing that enables/disables the changes it makes in regards to modules? I like the arboretums, and I might want to look into other Bio chains (like plastic) later, but the Bio chains for crystals (modules) are pretty involved. It would be nice if that part could be optional and would just fallback to the module recipes with gems from washing instead. I could also remove BP and use Bobs greenhouses instead, but I thought it can't hurt to ask.

In any case: thanks for your work!

[mathturtle]

1) The advanced seeds are a bit like kovarex, you just have to set it up and leave it running for a while. You don't have to start from 1, as you can get 5 seeds at once (with a chance) from the gardens, so maybe you won't get it right from the start, but you can increase the amount of gardens late game even, then you should for sure have an infinite supply.

2) Leaves are used for Rancid Puffing, which is used a lot to create raw gas from ammonia gas (blue algae). It really depends on your play style. I could maybe add fiber from leaves recipe using the bio press... I would have to look at ratios to make sure it's slightly beter than green algae, which will be difficult I believe...


As mentioned in my posts above, the farms are boosed quite a bit. I'll leave it for now, maybe re-check if it is still as bad in the next release... It takes 30 seconds to craft the recipe now, with the upgraded farms a crafting speed of 2, resulting in effective time 15 seconds. On average, every 1 in 20 recipes you'll have 1 extra seed, which requires x5 for a new full set, so 1 in 100 recipes in total, which is 1500 seconds, or equal to 25 minutes.

So every farm will create every half an hour a new set of seeds for another farm. No ones says you have to start with only 1 set, if you find more gardens (or get lucky) you can already start with 2 sets. If you look at tier 3 seeds you have 40% chance, so there you can maybe get 3 or 4? It realy depends how many gardens you obtain, and which tier you want to farm. This is for sure a huge increase then what it was before.

Half an hour is a much more reasonable time to get another farm worth of seeds. So you've already fixed it Thank you!

I've never really messed with puffers because the numbers for machines and power were so bad... so I didn't realize they needed leaves. I looked around in helmod the other day and with the change to green algae from water to produce a bit of brown you just have to beat green algae from mineral water. Given that mineral water is expensive in terms of power to produce (unless you're getting it as a byproduct), beating green algae is not *that* hard. According to helmod tianaton farming actually already wins in terms of power if the min water is from dirt water electrolysis. Green algae with min water from geodes might still be better, but that's a complicated helmod setup. Farming doesn't have to be better in every way, just better enough in some ways to make interesting trade-offs and decisions.

[Termak]

Not a fan of forced biostuff, i hope it gets better and maybe becomes optional.

Also why you counting costs in making mineral water, you literally need liquifier and waterpump to make as much of it as you want from your crushing...

[evandy]

Not a fan of forced biostuff, i hope it gets better and maybe becomes optional.

Also why you counting costs in making mineral water, you literally need liquifier and waterpump to make as much of it as you want from your crushing...

Probably thinking seablock where you get everything from either electrolyzed water to slag, or filtered mud to geodes. The power cost of getting the crushed stone can be high, especially early on

[mathturtle]

Not a fan of forced biostuff, i hope it gets better and maybe becomes optional.

Also why you counting costs in making mineral water, you literally need liquifier and waterpump to make as much of it as you want from your crushing...

As evandy pointed out I'm coming out of a seablock playthrough. Electrolyzers are one of the more expensive buildings to run early on at 300kW each. Yes mineral water needs no input, but making enough of it for a large green algae plant is not free... The last time I played bobs + angels without seablock I remember a power crunch when I had tapped the initial coal patch fully but hadn't gotten to trains yet. This was after I could research and use green algae (except I didn't because it would have taken a good chunk of my power to make the mineral water).

Edit: thought of a simpler argument:

Farming recipes (at least the basic crops that don't need fertilizer) also only require water and power to produce things. Sure you have mud water and its products, but that's just as infinite as water. So the only meaningful numbers when talking about making cellulose fiber are the complexity of the chain (how many machines to set up) and how much power it draws overall. So when comparing it to green algae it makes sense to consider the power required to make the mineralized water, just like you would consider the power needed to make the mud/sand/soil etc for farming.

[danyax]

Can somebody help me to modify Seafloor Pump to allow placement anywhere on the map, not just close to water.

Some time ago following code worked well (data update stage):

-- pump.fluid_box_tile_collision_test = nil
-- pump.adjacent_tile_collision_test = nil
-- pump.adjacent_tile_collision_mask = nil
-- pump.adjacent_tile_collision_box = nil

But it looks that something changed and above code no longer helps

[evandy]

Can somebody help me to modify Seafloor Pump to allow placement anywhere on the map, not just close to water.

Some time ago following code worked well (data update stage):

-- pump.fluid_box_tile_collision_test = nil
-- pump.adjacent_tile_collision_test = nil
-- pump.adjacent_tile_collision_mask = nil
-- pump.adjacent_tile_collision_box = nil

But it looks that something changed and above code no longer helps

Probably easier to just install waterfill or explosive excavation to put water where you want it?

[lovely_santa]

Can somebody help me to modify Seafloor Pump to allow placement anywhere on the map, not just close to water.

Some time ago following code worked well (data update stage):

-- pump.fluid_box_tile_collision_test = nil
-- pump.adjacent_tile_collision_test = nil
-- pump.adjacent_tile_collision_mask = nil
-- pump.adjacent_tile_collision_box = nil

But it looks that something changed and above code no longer helps

This is due to the base game updating the logic for the pumps. I didn't test it myself, but it should be something like

Code: Select all

  pump.fluid_box_tile_collision_test = {}

  pump.adjacent_tile_collision_box = nil
  pump.adjacent_tile_collision_mask = nil
  pump.adjacent_tile_collision_test = {}

at least that's what I'm thinking, don't take my word for it, I didn't look deep into this

[Coffee Daemon]

Is it normal that you have to hand craft all the Production Block 1's until you're well into Green science? It seems a bit crazy considering how many you need.

[lovely_santa]

Is it normal that you have to hand craft all the Production Block 1's until you're well into Green science? It seems a bit crazy considering how many you need.

They should be craftable in assembling machines, which (by mistake) require red electronics, so that's red science (instead of gray), but for sure not green. What exactly are you missing for that? Then I'll double check that it is fixed for the next release...

On another note;

I finished all HQ fluid icons (still have to do all the recipes). The viscous liquid icons look a bit 'new', but that's due to how complex those icons are to make... The gas and regular liquid look the same, just less beter, including high res molecules to more easily distinguish them from each other. Here a sneak preview:

watertreatment.PNG (86.45 KiB) Viewed 7560 times

petrochem.PNG (362.43 KiB) Viewed 7560 times

[Molay]

The seafloor pump water results in 5 waters with varying degrees of mud in it, right?

Could there be a little icon, perhaps in the top left of the icon, to more easily recognize which of the water it is? Like say a brown circle for step one, a 4/5th brown 1/5th blue circle for step 2, etc? Or some other easy identifier?

I've never properly guessed by the icon alone so far. Minor thing though, but it's the only icon that's a bit hard to read, dare I say muddy?

[evandy]

Is there a reason that we can not directly make charcoal from wood, but have to go through cellulose fiber to get there? Or is that a seablock decision and I need to go ask Trainwreck?

[Xeorm]

Is there a reason that we can not directly make charcoal from wood, but have to go through cellulose fiber to get there? Or is that a seablock decision and I need to go ask Trainwreck?

Seablock

[Coffee Daemon]

Is it normal that you have to hand craft all the Production Block 1's until you're well into Green science? It seems a bit crazy considering how many you need.

They should be craftable in assembling machines, which (by mistake) require red electronics, so that's red science (instead of gray), but for sure not green. What exactly are you missing for that? Then I'll double check that it is fixed for the next release...

They are craftable by tier 2 assemblers. Even the big 4x4 version of tier 1 cannot craft them, meaning until I get to green and research automation 2 I cant automate any buildings.

My guess is that the large 4x4 tier 1 assembler was meant to be able to craft them?

[evandy]

I finished all HQ fluid icons (still have to do all the recipes). The viscous liquid icons look a bit 'new', but that's due to how complex those icons are to make... The gas and regular liquid look the same, just less beter, including high res molecules to more easily distinguish them from each other. Here a sneak preview:

New icons are great! I've always loved Angel's Fluid and Gas icon set, and those look nice and crisp. Only (minor) comment - All the black & white gasses are still rather samey-same. Might want to see if we can do something with the black/white/white to help differentiate them. The only one that's easy to pick out is the polyethelene.

[brysamo]

So I'm working on my crystal processing zone and just got my puffer stuff up and running...For the love of god is there anyway to change/disable the puffer refugiume sounds?

Also is there anyway to actually get rid of polluted artificial fish water? Neither the flare stack nor clarifier wake care of it or the alien spores it produces.

[Xeorm]

So I'm working on my crystal processing zone and just got my puffer stuff up and running...For the love of god is there anyway to change/disable the puffer refugiume sounds?

Also is there anyway to actually get rid of polluted artificial fish water? Neither the flare stack nor clarifier wake care of it or the alien spores it produces.

I play with sounds turned off myself. Factorio makes for a good game to do while watching/listening to other stuff in the background. There is not. Oddly enough there is a recipe for alien spores to get voided, but it can't be made as no building has the recipe. Looks like a bug to me!

[Coffee Daemon]

Is it normal that you have to hand craft all the Production Block 1's until you're well into Green science? It seems a bit crazy considering how many you need.

They should be craftable in assembling machines, which (by mistake) require red electronics, so that's red science (instead of gray), but for sure not green. What exactly are you missing for that? Then I'll double check that it is fixed for the next release...

They are craftable by tier 2 assemblers. Even the big 4x4 version of tier 1 cannot craft them, meaning until I get to green and research automation 2 I cant automate any buildings.

My guess is that the large 4x4 tier 1 assembler was meant to be able to craft them?

Okay, so the 4x4 big assembler 1 can make recipies of up to 4 items, and the production block 1 is 5. That's all it is, but making them by hand till green is a pain. Might just remove the pipe requirement for now, it's the least impactful one of the lot. That'll get it into a big assembler at least. Making hundreds of them just to get a bootstrap base to start proper smelting seems kinda crazy to me.

[evandy]

Why is Kovarex locked behind Rocket Fuel processing? Kovarex is purple science, and Rocket Fuel is gold. This isn't a huge deal in base angels, but with Science Cost Tweaker, gold science needs Tungsten, so this is a major leap forward. Deuterium reprocessing requires Gold science directly, and it seems odd that Kovarex is at the same level.

Basic Nuclear --> Blue Science
Kovarex --> Purple Science (but requires gold tech)
Thorium --> Purple Science
Deuterium --> Gold & Purple Science

Can we remove the rocket fuel as a precursor to Kovarex? (or make rocket fuel and it's own predecessors purple science)?

[KiwiHawk]

Thanks for your work on these mods Santa! They're great!

Are there plans to balance the paper making chains? I'm not actually sure that it would be possible to make them attractive without removing the Wood => Boards recipe. At least the Naptha => Boards recipe has already gone!

Here's an album of Helmod screenshot of my take on each tier. There doesn't feel like there's any benefit of going to the higher tiers. It's additional complexity with no benefit. I like the complexity! They all need much better output though; and each tier needs to feel like an upgrade from the previous.

https://imgur.com/a/3VLir5t

I know that these paper chain have been designed based on real world equivalents but game play reasons are even more important.

I've come from Seablock but all screenshots are taken without it as I know it needs to be balanced first. Then if any specific balance changes are required, we can ask Trainwreck.

T2 Paper

T2 paper gives Sodium Sulfate but there is no way to process it until Blue Science. Everything else in the T2 chain is Green Science. Suggested fix:

• Rename tech Sodium Processing to Sodium Processing 2
• Add a new tech Sodium Processing 1
• Add Basic Chemistry 2 as a prerequisite Sodium Processing 1?
• Add Sodium Processing 1 as a prerequisite for Paper Making 2
• Move recipe {Sodium Sulfate => Sodium + Sulfur} unlock to Sodium Processing 1
• Move recipe {Sodium + Purified Water => Sodium Hydroxide} unlock to Sodium Processing 1
• (Optionally) Add Sodium Processing 1 as a requirement for Sodium Processing 2

Alternatively, swap T2 to give Sulfuric Waste Water as an output instead (ties into Ammonia point below) and T3 to give Sodium Sulfate.

T2 paper also gives Sodium Hypochlorite. Can this just be removed from the recipe? There is already another way to produce it and a use for it - both unlocked by Nitrogen Processing 3 (Blue Science).

The T2 paper loop is Sulfur positive. It would be nice if it was Sulfur neutral?

T3 Paper

T3 paper gives Sodium Carbonate. Can this be removed please?

Brown Algae

In my Helmod examples I've made the cellulose fibres from Green Algae. Tier 1 has Algenic Acid as a sink for the Brown Algae.
Depending on which recipe I pick for T2 & T3, I ether need to create Carbon Dioxide from something or I'll have extra Brown Algae to dispose of somehow.

Maybe T2 could have Sodium Carbonate added as an ingredient? For Tier 3 paper, the Green Algae can come from the T2 Green Algae recipe. The Mineralized Water requirement isn't an issue - it's just the Carbon Dioxide. Can this be removed from the recipe? Or some way of getting the Carbon Dioxide be added to the loop.

Ammonia

Ammonia is required for T2 paper. The "simple" way to make it is with catalysts. This doesn't feel ideal and would put me off using T2 chain. If some of the waste products are shuffled around, the Ammonia could come from Blue Algae. Integrating this into the paper chain would be great! Blue Algae requires Sulfuric Waste Water which is currently created in excess by T3 paper.