Development and Discussion

[Frost]

Okay, I have a few small questions regarding various parts of the mods:

• What is the petrochem locomotive good for? It only has more fuel consumption and more HP while having a smaller equipment grid than normal locomotives. And with bobs the normal locomotives have 3 Tiers, making the even better in comparison to the petrochem locomotive
• The petrochem wagons: why are there two ("oil" and "gas") different wagons with the exact same stats. They also seem to be equal to the vanilla fluid tank wagon, which, again, has upgrades with bobs
• When using bobs mods there are two types of electrolysers: bobs and angels. They are used for the same recipes but angels ones have always a better crafting speed. Is there any point in using bobs electrolysers?
• What is the point with all the different silos? One for each kind of raw ore seems kind of useless, why not one for each kind of sorted ore? I imagine that could be at least used in a pre filter inserter 0.15 ore sorting setup (in 0.16 splitters can sort, so no need to wait for filter inserters)
• All of the petrochem tanks seem like power creep to vanilla / bobs tanks. All of them provide more storage per tile than vanilla options and the recipes for the gas and fluid tank seem to be swapped, as the smaller fluid tank almost costs double the resources that the much bigger gas tank costs.
• There are chemical plants and chemical plants in the petrochem section. Two facilities with the same name, same size, same layout and they even use the same recipes. One of them has a higher crafting speed and is therefor objectively better. Is this another bobs vs angels issue?

From reading through some of the replies it appears Angel wants to 'phase out' Bobs. This would explain why there are multiple Chem Plants, Tanks, etc. As for why there are fluid tanks and gas tanks, I think it might be just fluff. Factorio logic cannot differentiate between gas and fluid and it is up to you. In my opinion, the base game tanks are just ridiculously small when using a mod as complex as Petrochem. I only use JAX tanks and inline tanks...
As someone has already pointed out a few pages back (and I could not agree more), there are way too many tiers of things. Are you really gonna go through and replace tier 2 tanks with tier 3 in the whole sprawling base? Some trimming of the fat is in order.

[mrvn]

Okay, I have a few small questions regarding various parts of the mods:

• What is the petrochem locomotive good for? It only has more fuel consumption and more HP while having a smaller equipment grid than normal locomotives. And with bobs the normal locomotives have 3 Tiers, making the even better in comparison to the petrochem locomotive
• The petrochem wagons: why are there two ("oil" and "gas") different wagons with the exact same stats. They also seem to be equal to the vanilla fluid tank wagon, which, again, has upgrades with bobs
• When using bobs mods there are two types of electrolysers: bobs and angels. They are used for the same recipes but angels ones have always a better crafting speed. Is there any point in using bobs electrolysers?
• What is the point with all the different silos? One for each kind of raw ore seems kind of useless, why not one for each kind of sorted ore? I imagine that could be at least used in a pre filter inserter 0.15 ore sorting setup (in 0.16 splitters can sort, so no need to wait for filter inserters)
• All of the petrochem tanks seem like power creep to vanilla / bobs tanks. All of them provide more storage per tile than vanilla options and the recipes for the gas and fluid tank seem to be swapped, as the smaller fluid tank almost costs double the resources that the much bigger gas tank costs.
• There are chemical plants and chemical plants in the petrochem section. Two facilities with the same name, same size, same layout and they even use the same recipes. One of them has a higher crafting speed and is therefor objectively better. Is this another bobs vs angels issue?

From reading through some of the replies it appears Angel wants to 'phase out' Bobs. This would explain why there are multiple Chem Plants, Tanks, etc. As for why there are fluid tanks and gas tanks, I think it might be just fluff. Factorio logic cannot differentiate between gas and fluid and it is up to you. In my opinion, the base game tanks are just ridiculously small when using a mod as complex as Petrochem. I only use JAX tanks and inline tanks...
As someone has already pointed out a few pages back (and I could not agree more), there are way too many tiers of things. Are you really gonna go through and replace tier 2 tanks with tier 3 in the whole sprawling base? Some trimming of the fat is in order.

I basically never use tanks in the first place. The gas (or recently jax for fun) tanks are so much larger. Only place I use tanks is for steam engines because the 3x3 size aligns with the steam engines. And there really isn't any incentive to change them later.

I guess if you want a super fast fluid train station then you want to use 3 pumps per wagon. And then 3 tanks makes sense. And when (if) you update to fluid wagon 2 I guess it makes sense to update the tanks too.

[arbarbonif]

Is 1 to N sorting any good?

Short answer: no! Not for high demand ores. For low demand ones it is probably good, or at least easy to set up as a temporary setup that will last you to end game and then you tear it up and be done with 1 to N forever.

My solution to the iron bias is mainly stretching the iron ore, for example if you're using the 2:1 Iron:Copper sorting recipe then you can just not put the copper through ore processing, once you get minecarts this quickly turns it into something more like 3:1.

That by itself isn't enough to solve the iron bias, which is where I bring in manganese. In past versions this involved large batteries of nodule processing to match iron ore with manganese, now it just requires bringing in jivolite from outside the starting area to perform the ferric ore sorting. 1 basic belt of jivolite when combined with the 2 other ores should be enough to produce 4 basic belts of iron plates so it's hardly an ordeal to just belt in the ore rather than bothering with a train.

I realized that I was looking at it backwards. 1-N sorting isn't really useful for getting more iron from the iron production, it is for getting iron from the copper production. In my last factory I setup the sorting for the stirite and had the iron that produced go into steel smelting. I kept on straight saphirite smelting until I had a source of jivolite online that I brought in to do the ferric smelting. I just kind of limped along with the limited iron production until I had the second iron smelting researched to use the manganese. Most of the real limiting was because I refused to upgrade it with furnaces I wasn't going to use afterwards.

I think the 1-N sorting is all about getting useful byproducts, when they become useful. The ferric sorting give pure iron, the cuporic sorting gives tinned wire. Granted I have no idea what a pre-yellow science base is doing with 4 red iron belts... I top out at 1-1.5 in mine, I just don't have the time to use the products for that amount as is.

The issue I'm seeing now is with steel. It is almost 3X as expensive when made from plates and crashes with the ratios from ferric sorting since it overuses iron. It would be nice if the steel was made from oxygen and liquid iron (instead of ingots), then it wouldn't be a problem. I may mod in a recipe for the strand caster that does that, to make steel rolls.

[Frost]

Is 1 to N sorting any good?

Short answer: no! Not for high demand ores. For low demand ones it is probably good, or at least easy to set up as a temporary setup that will last you to end game and then you tear it up and be done with 1 to N forever.

....

I am in the same boat, I really do not know what to do with 4 red belts? Perhaps if you have pre-designed the entire base and just work with blueprints? I have 4 times the tech costs and can not design and build the base quick enough to really use the tech. But perhaps I am just a perfectionist when laying out my robot base grid....

[Rue99]

Good morning all.

I understand Angel is busy, but do we have any kind of ETA for the next release of his industry mod? Cheers.

[Zyrconia]

Is 1 to N sorting any good?

Short answer: no! Not for high demand ores. For low demand ones it is probably good, or at least easy to set up as a temporary setup that will last you to end game and then you tear it up and be done with 1 to N forever.

....

I am in the same boat, I really do not know what to do with 4 red belts? Perhaps if you have pre-designed the entire base and just work with blueprints? I have 4 times the tech costs and can not design and build the base quick enough to really use the tech. But perhaps I am just a perfectionist when laying out my robot base grid....

Red underground belts are capable of eating up 4 belts on their own . Add to that normal belts, red, green and gray science, the build everything, ammo and a bit of steel...

So 4 red belts is easy to consume.

[mrvn]

Is 1 to N sorting any good?

Short answer: no! Not for high demand ores. For low demand ones it is probably good, or at least easy to set up as a temporary setup that will last you to end game and then you tear it up and be done with 1 to N forever.

....

I am in the same boat, I really do not know what to do with 4 red belts? Perhaps if you have pre-designed the entire base and just work with blueprints? I have 4 times the tech costs and can not design and build the base quick enough to really use the tech. But perhaps I am just a perfectionist when laying out my robot base grid....

Red underground belts are capable of eating up 4 belts on their own . Add to that normal belts, red, green and gray science, the build everything, ammo and a bit of steel...

So 4 red belts is easy to consume.

In marathon mode 4 red belts of iron give you one red belt of iron gears. Or one yellow belt of iron gears and 4 yellow belts of iron plates.
I can certainly use that up.

[Zyrconia]

Angel's is already all the marathon mode you need .

[BlakeMW]

The issue I'm seeing now is with steel. It is almost 3X as expensive when made from plates and crashes with the ratios from ferric sorting since it overuses iron. It would be nice if the steel was made from oxygen and liquid iron (instead of ingots), then it wouldn't be a problem. I may mod in a recipe for the strand caster that does that, to make steel rolls.

Yeah I can see the steel production being an issue. I just overflow all iron which can't be matched with manganese into steel.

In my current game which is progressing slowly, I'm producing Iron and Copper from crushed saphirite and stiratite sorting, and from hydro refining of crotinium and jivolite (to get the ores to make green catalyst). Stiratite sorting gets turned off if too much copper ore is building up.

I have a separate line producing iron and manganese ore, but the iron is turned into mine carts and the manganese is not so it actually produce 50% more iron than manganese.

The iron ingots are matched with manganese ingots to produce iron plates. The remaining iron ingots overflow into steel production. In principle cobalt can be used at green tech to stretch steel: though cobalt is quite hard to get at green tech and always comes coupled with tin.

This setup is producing redonculous quantities of slag so if I want to start using any of the simple combining recipes it won't be a problem.

[mrvn]

The issue I'm seeing now is with steel. It is almost 3X as expensive when made from plates and crashes with the ratios from ferric sorting since it overuses iron. It would be nice if the steel was made from oxygen and liquid iron (instead of ingots), then it wouldn't be a problem. I may mod in a recipe for the strand caster that does that, to make steel rolls.

Yeah I can see the steel production being an issue. I just overflow all iron which can't be matched with manganese into steel.

In my current game which is progressing slowly, I'm producing Iron and Copper from crushed saphirite and stiratite sorting, and from hydro refining of crotinium and jivolite (to get the ores to make green catalyst). Stiratite sorting gets turned off if too much copper ore is building up.

I have a separate line producing iron and manganese ore, but the iron is turned into mine carts and the manganese is not so it actually produce 50% more iron than manganese.

The iron ingots are matched with manganese ingots to produce iron plates. The remaining iron ingots overflow into steel production. In principle cobalt can be used at green tech to stretch steel: though cobalt is quite hard to get at green tech and always comes coupled with tin.

This setup is producing redonculous quantities of slag so if I want to start using any of the simple combining recipes it won't be a problem.

If you setup a factory to produec processed manganese you can fine tune the ratios anywhere from 1:2 to 2:1 depending of how much processed iron or manganese you use. If you need even more steel you need to use the other sorting recipes to supplement your iron ore. Saphirite sorting gives you iron and copper in 2:1, Stiratite in 1:2 ratios. You do need some copper so that is a good source for extra iron.

[Sauerkraut]

Thanks for all your answers.

[*] The different valves. The check valve seems fine, but ignores the fact that we can hook up normal pipes to the network. The non-return valve does the same as bobs valve. The overflow valve seems fine and the converter valve looks like its only of use if angels petrochem is used with an otherwise mod free vanilla mod setup. However, what does the underflow valve even do? It's the only one lacking a description and from some quick testing it behaved just like a normal piece of pipe.

The underflow valve is really usefull.
F.e. if you create sulfur dioxide from lead smelting, you can feed it back to the sulfuric acid facility. But you have to make sure, it is consumed first. So you hook up the the main output for sulfur dioxide from sulfur and oxygen via the underflow valve and it fills the pipe only to 80%. So you have enough space to feed to sulfur dioxide from lead smelting, which is then consumed first.

Huh, so i guess it has its uses then. I'm just usually using pumps and circuits for that kind of things

[foodfactorio]

i've noticed a similar thing with glass.

hi credomane, as far as i can tell, the main advances in glass (from the "Glass Mixture" technologies), are that the main benefit seems to be a reduction in basic "silicon" ore as the research advances, (because some is substituted overall by other items), and more glass mixture is output as a result.

i might be wrong here, but i think the benefit comes from getting more glass mixture in this way, which still gives you more glass later in the process (especially with more ways to improve the amount of Molten Glass by other technology as well?)

[foodfactorio]

Some trimming of the fat is in order.

careful what you wish for....

we might get a petrochem chain for turning fats into oils, into gas oil and lube

[foodfactorio]

hi mrvn, sometimes a tank can help with fluid dynamics. if you see my screenshot here:
viewtopic.php?f=97&t=57113#p338706

a washer making Clay, would not work properly until i placed small tank to the left of the Hydroplant.
(the washer just to the left and above the small tank, kept taking most of the water, if not all until i did that. I also tried placing a pump, but then the water went the other way) do Fluid Splitters exist yet?

i often find tanks can also serve as a good way of buffering things, so that an entity doesnt stop producing things if the next entity it was feeding, suddenly stopped.

"quote about using tanks" [quote="mrvn"][/quote]

[arbarbonif]

Some trimming of the fat is in order.

careful what you wish for....

we might get a petrochem chain for turning fats into oils, into gas oil and lube

We already have that with the bio-processing stuff tho

[Frost]

Some trimming of the fat is in order.

careful what you wish for....

we might get a petrochem chain for turning fats into oils, into gas oil and lube

We already have that with the bio-processing stuff tho

Talking of fat. Check the last Bobs inserter update. Broke a bunch of stuff. But exactly what I meant. Too many tiers of things. And yes, the ascetic acid and anhydrite is pushing it.
Set up some smelting last night, and was again thinking: Am I ever gonna replace substations 2 with tier 3 or 4? NOPE.

[Light]

Some trimming of the fat is in order.

careful what you wish for....

we might get a petrochem chain for turning fats into oils, into gas oil and lube

We already have that with the bio-processing stuff tho

Talking of fat. Check the last Bobs inserter update. Broke a bunch of stuff. But exactly what I meant. Too many tiers of things. And yes, the ascetic acid and anhydrite is pushing it.
Set up some smelting last night, and was again thinking: Am I ever gonna replace substations 2 with tier 3 or 4? NOPE.

Substations are a different can of worms because they're useful up to tier 4.

Some things aren't worth upgrading because their function isn't really improved by doing so, such as pumps that go from 12,000/s to 30,000/s which does absolutely nothing. (Or Bob's Pumps which have no recipes at all yet still exist) While the inverse can also be true like in the case of robots where you use maybe a few Mk1 until you can jump right into the superior Mk4 because the previous ones outright suck in comparison.

My experiences with lack of use with tiers is typically a result of the former, where the cost to upgrade isn't really justified or too annoying to automate. Like the couple times I'll make Mk2 medium poles to reach slightly further in a few instances, but never its Mk3-4 because the cost is too great for what it's providing compared to just making a second Mk1 pole for cheap. Especially with large poles and their pitiful 10 reach increase each tier. Oddly enough I use Mk4 substations a great deal despite not being vastly superior, but that may have to do with how much I can power at once without having to litter the field with poles to achieve the same result.

I still advocate that having those available choices is always worthwhile despite the clutter (but could do with a buff to make more worthwhile), but for things that have no benefit whatsoever then it's clutter for the sake of clutter and should be cut.

[Northgate]

When does Angel's Logistics get updated to 0.16?

[Frost]

Some trimming of the fat is in order.

careful what you wish for....

we might get a petrochem chain for turning fats into oils, into gas oil and lube

We already have that with the bio-processing stuff tho

Talking of fat. Check the last Bobs inserter update. Broke a bunch of stuff. But exactly what I meant. Too many tiers of things. And yes, the ascetic acid and anhydrite is pushing it.
Set up some smelting last night, and was again thinking: Am I ever gonna replace substations 2 with tier 3 or 4? NOPE.

Substations are a different can of worms because they're useful up to tier 4.

Some things aren't worth upgrading because their function isn't really improved by doing so, such as pumps that go from 12,000/s to 30,000/s which does absolutely nothing. (Or Bob's Pumps which have no recipes at all yet still exist) While the inverse can also be true like in the case of robots where you use maybe a few Mk1 until you can jump right into the superior Mk4 because the previous ones outright suck in comparison.

My experiences with lack of use with tiers is typically a result of the former, where the cost to upgrade isn't really justified or too annoying to automate. Like the couple times I'll make Mk2 medium poles to reach slightly further in a few instances, but never its Mk3-4 because the cost is too great for what it's providing compared to just making a second Mk1 pole for cheap. Especially with large poles and their pitiful 10 reach increase each tier. Oddly enough I use Mk4 substations a great deal despite not being vastly superior, but that may have to do with how much I can power at once without having to litter the field with poles to achieve the same result.

I still advocate that having those available choices is always worthwhile despite the clutter (but could do with a buff to make more worthwhile), but for things that have no benefit whatsoever then it's clutter for the sake of clutter and should be cut.

You raise some good points and the use of things is clearly subjective. My example comes from the fact that I use a bunch of blueprints, and if they all used SS4 I would not be able to use them for ages. But small power poles are clearly an excellent example. Same with the pumps and the previously mentioned tanks.

[jodokus31]

Substations are a different can of worms because they're useful up to tier 4.

Some things aren't worth upgrading because their function isn't really improved by doing so, such as pumps that go from 12,000/s to 30,000/s which does absolutely nothing. (Or Bob's Pumps which have no recipes at all yet still exist) While the inverse can also be true like in the case of robots where you use maybe a few Mk1 until you can jump right into the superior Mk4 because the previous ones outright suck in comparison.

My experiences with lack of use with tiers is typically a result of the former, where the cost to upgrade isn't really justified or too annoying to automate. Like the couple times I'll make Mk2 medium poles to reach slightly further in a few instances, but never its Mk3-4 because the cost is too great for what it's providing compared to just making a second Mk1 pole for cheap. Especially with large poles and their pitiful 10 reach increase each tier. Oddly enough I use Mk4 substations a great deal despite not being vastly superior, but that may have to do with how much I can power at once without having to litter the field with poles to achieve the same result.

I still advocate that having those available choices is always worthwhile despite the clutter (but could do with a buff to make more worthwhile), but for things that have no benefit whatsoever then it's clutter for the sake of clutter and should be cut.

You raise some good points and the use of things is clearly subjective. My example comes from the fact that I use a bunch of blueprints, and if they all used SS4 I would not be able to use them for ages. But small power poles are clearly an excellent example. Same with the pumps and the previously mentioned tanks.

I'm also not a fan of those multiple tiers. But I try to deal with it. Would be nice, if those higher tiers are actually more necessary for advanced recipes. Like f.e. the sorter mk2 is necessary for recipes with catalysts.
I tend to omit higher tiers and even skip research, if there is no current need for it. I think, I will stay on mk1 power poles and mk2 radars all the way, but will see...
Anyway, for blueprints and finished builds, I use upgrade planner, which makes it not such a big deal to upgrade. If you stand right to the factory producing machines, it can be done from far away and then feed the old machines back to be upgraded. Not very realistic, but sometimes its getting to tedious otherwise.