Development and Discussion

[evandy]

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!

...

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.

Copying data from your cross-post on reddit... I am definitely against removing the wood --> boards recipe (at least in angels). If Trainwreck did it for seablock I could see it, but the idea that you can't get wooden boards from ... wood ... just doesn't compute. If you want a reason to run paper, I think you said it right here at the bottom of your post:

Paper --> Sulphuric Waste Water --> Blue Algae --> Oil

[KiwiHawk]

The boards can still be made from wood, just with extra steps ... Wood -> Fibre -> Pulp -> Paper -> Board
Would it help the computation if Wooden Board was renamed to Paste Board?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pasteboard

I've mocked up my suggestions in a little mod. I'll post it (and some new Helmod screenshots) tomorrow.

[Arch666Angel]

I don't know what the team is planning in this regard, but replacing the wood to boards recipe with paper was always the plan and the new Grey circuit is already based on this

[evandy]

I don't know what the team is planning in this regard, but replacing the wood to boards recipe with paper was always the plan and the new Grey circuit is already based on this

Interesting. It will be what it will be. As long as it gets balanced well so there is a reasonable path to high throughput production it will work. I do like the rename suggestion when that happens though, not really a wooden board at that point.

[timboo07up]

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)?

This one is fixed for the next release. We separated the rocket fuel and nuclear fuel. Nuclear fuel is a single research after kovarex.

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.

For the puffer sounds, i have no answer. But the alien spores did have an incorrect void recipe. This is fixed in the next release.

And furthermore: about all the assembler/component stuff. These are being worked on a lot. And should mostly be fixed. Might be some weird issues but hey its quite newly developed.

[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)?

This one is fixed for the next release. We separated the rocket fuel and nuclear fuel. Nuclear fuel is a single research after kovarex.

Awesome. You have been hitting the github a lot lately. Do you have any idea when the next release will be yet? Or at least a milestone chart of what is planned to be in it?

[lovely_santa]

I propose to add higher tiers of Electric Boiler. Steam is in high demand in petrochem, all buldings has tiers and accept speed modules, but boilers remain the same. Adding module slots to boiler also would be nice.

I am not so sure how this will work in factorio, that would just result in a boiler consuming more power to have more steam production... I don't see that the steam production footprint is that big versus the rest of the petrochem setup? In the worse case you can always set up a nuclear reactor to create steam, which produces 103 steam/s for every heat exchanger.

If you are running Bob's, you can also use a heat source (either solid fuel, or liquid-fuel fired) to drive a heat exchanger, so you can use fuel oil, coal, or whatever to do this instead of electric if you want.

Let me explain im more details what is the problem.

Petrochem consumes steam of any temperature, but steam above 165C has no benefits - recipes consumes same volume, so extra energy used to create steam is just wasted

Electric Boiler produce 165C steam - perfect. Same as mk 1 boiler. All other boiler/heat exchangers produce steam with higher temperature.

So my ask is to create mk2 mk3 electric boilers that produce stream at 165C but has higher output, like 60 and 80 per second

My only concern is UPS impact. Higher tier building improves UPS because you need less of them

I finally came by to implementing the deuterium processing as I mentioned a while ago. A sneak peak for the recipe chain (without ratios, just 1 building/recipe) is shown in the picture below:

deuterium.png (2.79 MiB) Viewed 7336 times

deuterium-2.png (271.85 KiB) Viewed 7333 times

It is quite a power hungry chain (just like IRL), making deuterium quite valuable. You'll also notice that the boiler (on the right) has multiple outputs. I have altered the boiler internally to be some sort of assembling machine, so you can now even add modules and beacon your boilers in order to increase the speed, or make them less power hungry. This also means that now we can easily add in different tiers of boilers to speed it up more, which is on the todo list.

Note: The boiler shows 2 inputs, but they are in/outputs just like the regular boiler is, they work as in/output. It's only the arrow that is bugged. It is an issue in the base game that the factorio devs are aware of and it will be fixed in a future update.

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!

Let's first look at how the balancing behaves, if the general feedback stays that it is too complex, we can always change it, or add a setting to disable them.

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?

The issue was that the recipe had too many ingredients that no assembler could craft it. The different assembling machines are removed for the next update. We might bring them back in a future update when we have them decently integrated. They're just a hassle at this point.

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.

The higher resolution icons also have bigger and higher resolution molecules, so these should also help you find the correct recipe. Also recipes are grouped together depending on their process, so that can give a general idea where they are located (basic carbon fluids versus advanced ones are in different groups, like ethane versus ethylene. You have to know some basic chemistry to see the deeper groupings, but even without knowledge it's decent. I'm not saying it's as good as other sections of the mods... There are just that many fluids..

...

Awesome. You have been hitting the github a lot lately. Do you have any idea when the next release will be yet? Or at least a milestone chart of what is planned to be in it?

Usualy the projects give a decent indication. We had a lot of issues/PR's that have been opened, so the main goal is to get those finished up in the next release, which is planned on saturday, just in time for Nilaus starting a new playtrough on sunday with it.

[evandy]

I finally came by to implementing the deuterium processing as I mentioned a while ago. A sneak peak for the recipe chain (without ratios, just 1 building/recipe) is shown in the picture below:

deuterium.png
deuterium-2.png

It is quite a power hungry chain (just like IRL), making deuterium quite valuable. You'll also notice that the boiler (on the right) has multiple outputs. I have altered the boiler internally to be some sort of assembling machine, so you can now even add modules and beacon your boilers in order to increase the speed, or make them less power hungry. This also means that now we can easily add in different tiers of boilers to speed it up more, which is on the todo list.

...

Usualy the projects give a decent indication. We had a lot of issues/PR's that have been opened, so the main goal is to get those finished up in the next release, which is planned on saturday, just in time for Nilaus starting a new playtrough on sunday with it.

Angels' Dev team (including Angel himsmelf) - I am really loving what you're doing. I can't decide if I'm more excited to get my hands on these changes myself, or see Nilaus start a new run with all the changes. Rain9441 is theoretically starting a new seablock soon too, I hope trainwreck gets these integrated into seablock for that run.

I was starting to think about playing with the deuterium chain implementation, and you've already got it well in hand. I am thrilled to see the cooling towers in there; always nice to see some machines get used in more recipes. I see the new chloric processing is in there too, I am actually looking forward to updating my base with the new outputs from chloric and nitric processing.

The dev notes say you added a void for sodium hydroxide? Now that we can liquify it I guess it makes sense, but it was stuck in my head as "the 1 darned thing you can't void and have to deal with." It's a shame to lose it, but I'm sure there will be something else to fill that gap.

Only question I have right now is - is the other half of deuterium (the fuel cell reprocessing stuff) scheduled for the next release? That's going to be really fun to play with, especially in combination with the sneak peak at the 1st half. If not, then that'll be something to look forward to down the road; this next release is going to be a doozy.

Seriously, keep up the great work.

[lovely_santa]

The dev notes say you added a void for sodium hydroxide? Now that we can liquify it I guess it makes sense, but it was stuck in my head as "the 1 darned thing you can't void and have to deal with." It's a shame to lose it, but I'm sure there will be something else to fill that gap.

Some just want more complex recipe changes without having to deal with byproducts, that's why the void recipes are there. I personally never vent, just store it, you'll use it eventually... I was even thinking of adding a setting to not allow voiding at all (ofc default would be to allow voiding). It's up to the player to choose if they void stuff or not, it consumes power and is a waste of products anyway..

Only question I have right now is - is the other half of deuterium (the fuel cell reprocessing stuff) scheduled for the next release? That's going to be really fun to play with, especially in combination with the sneak peak at the 1st half. If not, then that'll be something to look forward to down the road; this next release is going to be a doozy.

I want to have the components working because it contains a lot of bug fixes on that end. If I have time, I plan on also adding the deuterium fuel chain, but components just have priority right now.

[evandy]

The dev notes say you added a void for sodium hydroxide? Now that we can liquify it I guess it makes sense, but it was stuck in my head as "the 1 darned thing you can't void and have to deal with." It's a shame to lose it, but I'm sure there will be something else to fill that gap.

Some just want more complex recipe changes without having to deal with byproducts, that's why the void recipes are there. I personally never vent, just store it, you'll use it eventually... I was even thinking of adding a setting to not allow voiding at all (ofc default would be to allow voiding). It's up to the player to choose if they void stuff or not, it consumes power and is a waste of products anyway..

Only question I have right now is - is the other half of deuterium (the fuel cell reprocessing stuff) scheduled for the next release? That's going to be really fun to play with, especially in combination with the sneak peak at the 1st half. If not, then that'll be something to look forward to down the road; this next release is going to be a doozy.

I want to have the components working because it contains a lot of bug fixes on that end. If I have time, I plan on also adding the deuterium fuel chain, but components just have priority right now.

Makes sense; I had figured that was about done when you moved over to bio. If not, then totally understand finishing that up

Oh, and regarding the tiers of electric boilers for volume... rather than introducing confusion by having two different tiering systems for boilers (volume for electric, temp for fueled) why not have cooling towers plus purified water convert high temp steam to a higher volume of low temp steam? Then all boilers are tiered by temperature, and you can use any type to get volume via cooling.

[danyax]

Oh, and regarding the tiers of electric boilers for volume... rather than introducing confusion by having two different tiering systems for boilers (volume for electric, temp for fueled) why not have cooling towers plus purified water convert high temp steam to a higher volume of low temp steam? Then all boilers are tiered by temperature, and you can use any type to get volume via cooling.

It is questionable idea as it greatly increases number of entities needed to produce steam - one would need water plant and clarifiers. Bigger footprint, loss of UPS. I would vote to have just MK2 and MK3 boilers with higher output.

The above idea would work if it does not require purified water. May be just plain water to keep realism.

[evandy]

Oh, and regarding the tiers of electric boilers for volume... rather than introducing confusion by having two different tiering systems for boilers (volume for electric, temp for fueled) why not have cooling towers plus purified water convert high temp steam to a higher volume of low temp steam? Then all boilers are tiered by temperature, and you can use any type to get volume via cooling.

It is questionable idea as it greatly increases number of entities needed to produce steam - one would need water plant and clarifiers. Bigger footprint, loss of UPS. I would vote to have just MK2 and MK3 boilers with higher output.

The above idea would work if it does not require purified water. May be just plain water to keep realism.

I could see normal water instead of purified. I think coolant takes normal water anyways.

[StormTAG]

What about literally bigger boilers? As in a larger footprint? Square/cube law and all, you could easily justify large leaps in boiler throughput. The model even looks like it could be cut and extended relatively easily to generate a longer boiler, although I am notoriously bad at design.

In any case, if someone could get permission, doing recolors and adding additional tiers as a standalone mod would be easy enough to do, I would imagine?

[lovely_santa]

The dev notes say you added a void for sodium hydroxide? Now that we can liquify it I guess it makes sense, but it was stuck in my head as "the 1 darned thing you can't void and have to deal with." It's a shame to lose it, but I'm sure there will be something else to fill that gap.

Some just want more complex recipe changes without having to deal with byproducts, that's why the void recipes are there. I personally never vent, just store it, you'll use it eventually... I was even thinking of adding a setting to not allow voiding at all (ofc default would be to allow voiding). It's up to the player to choose if they void stuff or not, it consumes power and is a waste of products anyway..

Only question I have right now is - is the other half of deuterium (the fuel cell reprocessing stuff) scheduled for the next release? That's going to be really fun to play with, especially in combination with the sneak peak at the 1st half. If not, then that'll be something to look forward to down the road; this next release is going to be a doozy.

I want to have the components working because it contains a lot of bug fixes on that end. If I have time, I plan on also adding the deuterium fuel chain, but components just have priority right now.

Makes sense; I had figured that was about done when you moved over to bio. If not, then totally understand finishing that up

Oh, and regarding the tiers of electric boilers for volume... rather than introducing confusion by having two different tiering systems for boilers (volume for electric, temp for fueled) why not have cooling towers plus purified water convert high temp steam to a higher volume of low temp steam? Then all boilers are tiered by temperature, and you can use any type to get volume via cooling.

Bobs boilers are towards higher steam output for power, angels steam production is for recipe usage, so two different kinds of things...

What about literally bigger boilers? As in a larger footprint? Square/cube law and all, you could easily justify large leaps in boiler throughput. The model even looks like it could be cut and extended relatively easily to generate a longer boiler, although I am notoriously bad at design.

The main concern is footprint with piping issues, hence why we want to add more tiers to have less buildings and have them closer together. It's a small efficiency improvement without huge impacts, so I don't see why it is bad.. It's just steam... The higher tiers would allow for efficiency modules to make it consume less power, or speed modules to further increase the throughput...

[evandy]

Oh, and regarding the tiers of electric boilers for volume... rather than introducing confusion by having two different tiering systems for boilers (volume for electric, temp for fueled) why not have cooling towers plus purified water convert high temp steam to a higher volume of low temp steam? Then all boilers are tiered by temperature, and you can use any type to get volume via cooling.

Bobs boilers are towards higher steam output for power, angels steam production is for recipe usage, so two different kinds of things...

Yep, that's my point. Soon you will have someone asking why they have to use an /electric/ boiler for steam cracking, and can't use bobs. Or people will use tier-3 bob's boilers and not even notice the issue/problem. Just seems a good idea to make the boilers consistent (high tiers = higher temp), and solve the steam volume issue with the cooling tower. If you don't like the idea, cool, just thought I'd put it out there.

[danyax]

New character UI in recent Factorio update has dark background in character inventory. Quite a big visual change. To me Angel icons that looks perfectly distinguishable now blends into background. Containers still has light background. Does anyone has the same problem? Is there is way to change to old light background in UI? I have not found a game option for this

[Memoria]

Heya, I just started an Angel/Bob Playthrough (loving it so far!) and found a thing i think is kinda weird: in my crafting menu there's only one way to get grey circuit boards: wood->grey board->grey circuit board. Which is fine and everything. However if I try to craft something that is requiring grey circuit boards as an ingredient (so that the game automatically puts grey circuit boards in my handcrafting queue) the game chooses a different recipe (wood->wooden board->grey circuit board). I cant find that recipe anywhere in my crafting menu, however using FNEI I can find it. My crafting Menu also doesnt show me I can actually craft Items that require grey circuit boards if I dont have grey boards, clicking on something greyed out because of that results in it being crafted using the wooden board recipe tho. Especially the last thing is annoying me a little bit to be honest, hence my question: can i do anything about that (either about the "hidden" wooden board->grey circuit board recipe or about my crafting menu not recognizing it)?

Anyway, great Mods and thank for all the work all of you have put in there!

[yzorr]

The dev notes say you added a void for sodium hydroxide? Now that we can liquify it I guess it makes sense, but it was stuck in my head as "the 1 darned thing you can't void and have to deal with." It's a shame to lose it, but I'm sure there will be something else to fill that gap.

Some just want more complex recipe changes without having to deal with byproducts, that's why the void recipes are there. I personally never vent, just store it, you'll use it eventually... I was even thinking of adding a setting to not allow voiding at all (ofc default would be to allow voiding). It's up to the player to choose if they void stuff or not, it consumes power and is a waste of products anyway..

Only question I have right now is - is the other half of deuterium (the fuel cell reprocessing stuff) scheduled for the next release? That's going to be really fun to play with, especially in combination with the sneak peak at the 1st half. If not, then that'll be something to look forward to down the road; this next release is going to be a doozy.

I want to have the components working because it contains a lot of bug fixes on that end. If I have time, I plan on also adding the deuterium fuel chain, but components just have priority right now.

Hey Santa,

Something I've noticed as I've racked up hours on AB is that I've gone from seriously ridiculous stores of things to JIT (just-in-time) systems. So, for example, I used to think factorissimo is cheater-level mods; now, I think you need to be really good at AB to abuse it at all, much less properly, given (in/out marshalling overhead, bots do not fly into factories, ...)

But during your first playthrough or three you're going to spend tens of hours ineffectually doing something that's actually the opposite of what you want to do, and during that time, warehouses fill up. I'd advocate a little mercy.

[Blood Angel]

let's me think about crystals in modules.

clipboard_image_20a184c85b3df9.jpg (236.08 KiB) Viewed 7015 times

this is just to make one crystal for a module. creative. used beacons and speed modules just to see.
I think too much.
0.17 was better.
is it possible to have an option to disable this thing?

[Memoria]

Hello again,

so after playing a few hours and unlocking all the grey-science-pack-sciences I think I have hit a deadlock:
The only thing I can research right now is "Specialist Laboratories" which requires the grey and the red science analyzer. Crafting the grey one is not a problem, for the red science analyzer however I need Red Circuits. Those in turn require Solder which can only be crafted when having Basic Solder Smelting researched, which is locked behind Specialist Laboratories and Red Science Analyzers. Is there anything I can do about that? I'm basically playing full Angel's and full Bob's (see Mod List below), are those two not compatible anymore?

If you need anything more in order to reproduce this or if I'm just being stupid (valid possibility) please let me know.
Thanks for the mods!

Mod List

Angel's Addons - Ore Silos, v0.6.0
Angel's Addons - Petrochem Train, v0.5.1
Angel's Addons - Pressure Tanks, v0.5.0
Angel's Addons - Smelting Train, v0.3.1
Angel's Addons - Warehouses, v0.5.0
Angel's Bio Processing, v0.7.3
Angel's Industries, v0.3.1
Angel's Petro Chemical Processing, v0.9.3
Angel's Refining, v0.11.4
Angel's Smelting, v0.6.1
Base Mod, v0.18.14
Bob's Adjustable Inserters Mod, v0.18.1
Bob's Assembling machines Mod, v0.18.2
Bob's Electronics mod, v0.18.1
Bob's Functions Library mod, v0.18.0
Bob's Logistics mod v0.18.5
Bob's Metals, Chemicals and Intermediates mod, v0.18.3
Bob's Mining mod, v0.18.1
Bob's Modules mod, v0.18.2
Bob's Ores mod, v0.18.1
Bob's Personal Equipment mod, v0.18.1
Bob's Power mod, v0.18.4
Bob's Revamp mod, v0.18.1
Bob's Technology mod, v0.18.2
Bob's Vehicle Equipment mod, v0.18.1
Even Distribution, v0.3.16
Factorio Standard Library, v1.4.2
FNEI, v0.3.0
LTN - Logistic Train Network, v1.12.6
LTN Content Reader, v0.3.2
Nixie Tubes, v0.18.2
Optera's Library, v0.2.1
Resource Spawner Overhaul, v6.0.6
Squeak Through, v1.8.0
Text Plates, v0.5.2