For the record, I wasn't pissed "at" anyone who responded here. That said, frustration can be a powerful motivator. I had a massive breakthrough.
It bears mentioning that I have a type of learning disability (I'm autistic) so when faced with new material, I can ALWAYS absorb it quickly and effortlessly if it's organized in some logical fashion; likewise, if it's presented to be as a tangled dog's breakfast, I'll NEVER absorb it no matter how simple it might be. This is why I was asking the questions I was asking earlier in this thread -- and it's also why the legitimate, well-meaning answers that I found here and elsewhere, for me, would NEVER have helped. This is why I abandoned the mods not once, not twice, but several times in the past.
I made some progress, and the wall I kept hitting over and over was biter-related and not specifically angelbob related. Over the course of several restarts and map rolls, I happened to roll into a very nice peninsula map (by recording mapseeds and using map reveal commands to test them.) On the one that I liked best so far, there were four major offshoot landmass tendrils that would all require clearing, but the mainland only connected to the east and northeast -- very wide gaps to fortify, but doable.
The problem is that the evolution factors made low-tier ammo and weapons and turrets decreasingly effective over time. (Hilarity: by far the most effective ammo required 1:1 raw wood plus copper plate, in a mod where raw wood is already at an insane premium to begin with.) Some decent resources are there, outside of starter area but within the complete peninsula. Ultimately, if completely cleared off, the peninsula offers a decent saphirite patch to the southwest (would benefit heavily from landfill-bridging over a water gap instead of snaking around the natural land corridors, since I am VERY far away from unlocking trains) and a "maybe" saphirite patch near the mainland death-gate, depending on how far deep I push into the mainland to establish my first perimeter. I've played most but not all of the biter-aggression mods before (approximately 80% I think) and even on my previous experiences, the first nearby quick-trip rail outposts are only possible to set up and construct with a fully loaded tank in multiple trips until the walls and turrets are set up and belt-supplied with ammo. By the time those quick-trip bases are exhausted, setting out without full nukes is a waste of time, since the newly-revealed map terrain is essentially a sea of uninterrupted red on the minimap due to exponential spawner expansions. All the other resources, including a very small patch (maybe 5 miners) of jovalite, but saphirite is most definitely the limiting ingredient. I never bothered with ore sorting and metallurgy, but when I intend to restart the same mapseed, I think that with the saphirite shortage, metallurgy asap will be essential so as to convert some stiratite into iron.
Wood for ammo? Metal for tech to new higher-tier ammo? More copper for circuits for repair packs on a more-aggressive turret creep? Stone for walls? Coal for power, or smelting, or both? Blind-stabbing at the tech tree just cost time and coal for electricity, until finally I started running out. I fell short of securing one of the two internal coal fields, and a third coal field was uncontested on a nearby island but I'd dumped so much stone into walls for turret-creeping that I think I ended up with two or three stacks of landfill and that's it.
Thus, I name this settlement: New Gettysburg.
To prove, in good fun, that the naysayers were just that (naysayers) in telling me that I was jumping in too deep too quick, I'd care to report that when googling to identify the shortest possible tech-route to renewable wood (doesn't exist before I type it here) I did misclick on a result that spoke of cheat-commands and spawning trees onto the map manually. I narrowed by eyebrows at this. I didn't give a shit about spawning in more trees to chop, CHOPPING trees sucks!
But "cheat commands," you say...?
- 1.) I rerolled the same mapseed, and saved it just after spawning in. I set that new save aside as a backup, pre-cheat-commands. I chopped 100 raw wood from trees first off, saved a working copy under a new savefile name. Set THAT second savefile aside as a backup.
2.) Using cheat commands, I set to peaceful mode.Code: Select all
/c game.player.surface.peaceful_mode=true
3.) Killed all spawners / biters / any entity set to "enemy," which was everything since this is singleplayer. (This command includes multiple carriage returns, but pasting it into the command line all at once in a single paste will cause it to function correctly.)Code: Select all
/c local surface=game.player.surface
for key, entity in pairs(surface.find_entities_filtered({force="enemy"})) do
entity.destroy()
end
4.) I squeegeed and cleansed the entire map of ALL trees (after double-checking that I'd chopped 100 raw wood first).Code: Select all
/c local surface = game.player.surface
for c in surface.get_chunks() do
for key, entity in pairs(surface.find_entities_filtered({area={{c.x * 32, c.y * 32}, {c.x * 32 + 32, c.y * 32 + 32}}, type= "tree"})) do
entity.destroy()
end
end
5.) To verify that the map was as I recalled from previous attempts, and to also verify successful eradication of the Starship Troopers Bug Menace, I used the reveal map string that I'd bookmarked before all of this, but hadn't made the connection to what I was attempting to accomplish this time around. Running it at this point, prior to tinkering and looking up research prerequisites and costs, is a good idea, since the reveal command conducts procedural chunk-by-chunk revelations in an outwardly spiral, which takes time to complete.Code: Select all
/c game.forces.player.chart(game.player.surface, {lefttop = {x = -2048, y = -2048}, rightbottom = {x = 2048, y = 2048}})
6.) Just in case someone reads this years from now and they forget to chop the wood FIRST, before wiping all trees from the map, this manually spawns a 5x5 tile section of trees centered on the player's position. Note that this WILL TRAP YOU and you'll have to either chop your way out or revert to an earlier save. This yields exactly 100 raw wood.Code: Select all
/c for y=-2,2 do for x=-2,2 do game.surfaces.nauvis.create_entity({ name="tree-01", amount=1, position={game.player.position.x+x,game.player.position.y+y} }) end end
7.) Finally, I decided to "speed-bootstrap" up to the point in the tech tree that I kept encountering my invisible wall. Important to note that it's important to turn this OFF at key points by re-entering it with the final value set to "false." The "key points" at which to turn creative mode off would vary by a player's application and intent. For me, it was necessary to turn off creative mode once the tech was unlocked and the initial resource and smelting lines were active, so that I could properly verify that a certain setup WAS technically-sufficient to craft the solder and the second-tier electronic circuits (the ones colored blue in the ShinyBob packet, the equivalent to vanilla-red circuits -- someone kept referring to both the basic and the second-tier circuits as tier 1 circuits.jcranmer wrote:[*] Get a limited amount of tier 1 circuits so I can build some filter inserters for greenhouses
[*] Immediately get circuit network so I can properly guarantee that the greenhouses won't drain itself
8.) Made slightly easier by ResearchQueue, I discovered / established the quickest tech researches to unlocking Bob's Greenhouses on my heavily modded AngelBob setup. I specify "heavily modded," because I cannot be sure if this teach route would be valid for someone else with a different list of mods outside of AngelBob, or if Angel's or Bob's ever changes. I do note, for example, that some of my ratios are definitely different than those I've read or YouTube videos I've seen, including recent ones (for example, Xterminator's AngelBob playlist begun in November 2017 and ended so far on ep.19 in early December -- I haven't watched past ep.4, I think.)
9.) First, the researches, in recommended order
Then, the on-screen tasks to perform, in recommended order, addressing any biter distractions along the way
- 10a.) Mine saphirite direct-dump into burner crusher, manual feed stone furnaces
10b.) Mine coal direct-dump into wooden boxes, manual filter diamond ore
10c.) Mine stiratite direct-dump into burner crusher, manual feed stone furnaces
10d.) Begin handcrafting exactly 60 Red science
10e.) Exactly 4 burner-miners each on bobmonium and rubyte, all direct-dump feeding into a shared wooden chest -- leave for later
10f.) Basic steam electricity, with exactly 2 extra Offshore Water Pumps for later
10g.) Basic single-lab inserter-fed from wooden chest -- manually feed all 60 Red science directly into lab, not into wooden chest
10h.) Research AUTOMATION, LOGISTICS, MECHANICAL REFINING, in that order
10i.) Handcraft some assemblers
10j.) Set up the standard 2 assemblers for Red science fed from manually-restocked wooden chest, inserter-outputting to the lab's wooden chest
10k.) Spin up yellow belt / UG / splitter production (my creative mode test used ~600 yellow belt, ~30 UG, ~12 splitters, across entire base and miners
10l.) Belt-feed coal to steam engines, using filter-split for diamond ore, store diamond ore in wooden box
10m.) AMMO!!!
10n.) Go bug-hunting periodically, never return with less than 1000 raw wood, be strategic about where you chop trees
10o.) Crusher columns for saphirite, stiratite, and coal, in that order -- plan ahead on placement, leave plenty of room
10p.) Basic temporary furnace column off to the side for iron, MAYBE a similar temporary column for copper -- this requires splitting off coal belts for furnace fuel, leave plenty of room for future column placements that won't require belt-spaghetti or tight maneuvering or mapview confusion
10q.) Assembler column for crushed stone consumption, output to 2-3 stone furnaces for brick, bleed some into assembler for landfill
10r.) Small bank of furnaces for crushed coal to coke -- note that ingredient can also be fuel, may be inserter-wonky, prepare to manually feed
10s.) Ore sorter columns for saphirite, then stiratite, with clear and very large buffer spaces for belt-split spaghetti
10t.) Run slag back to a separate stone-crusher column, join its output with stone from previous crushers
10u.) Join iron ore with iron ore, copper ore with copper ore -- complete metallurgy smelting for each
10v.) Build exactly 7 Washing Plants, a Seafloor Pump, and one of the 2 spare Offshore Water Pumps (from step 10-f) NOT shared with steam power
10w.) Build exactly 1 extra Ore Sorter for Bobmonium (stockpiled from step 10-e) to filter for Silicon Ore
10x.) Use Washing Plants and Water to generate Sand, Clay, and Limestone
10y.) Build exactly 1 liquefier for Carbon Dioxide
10z.) Build exactly 1 extra Blast Furnace for Lime
10aa.) Build exactly 2 extra metallurgy lines, 1 for Solder / tier-2 circuits, and the other for Glass Mixture / Glass
10bb.) Build exactly 1 Powder Mixer to make Glass Mixture
10cc.) Craft first Greenhouse -- very slow, works best with water supply not shared with Seafloor or steam power operations (second spare water pump from steps 10-f / 10v)
10dd.) "Emergency bootstrap phase" complete -- you can bridge to anywhere, begin research and research expansion in earnest, establish a hard-safe perimeter, tech to trains, and venture out to the untamed wilds beyond
In conclusion...
THIS INFO is not "handing" the player anything, and in my view, would do nothing to spoil any surprises. This is peculiarly so in my current scenario with extremely high biter aggression to work against. However, even in peaceful mode, the allure of AngelBob playthroughs is the extensive expansion to the rest of the game. THIS gets past the tedious grind of having to stop progress just to chop wood for the materials (as opposed to chopping wood to clear building space.)
I specifically haven't engaged in blueprinting anything or in keying workable ratios. First of all, all of that meta is essentially brand new with the fancy-splitters removing almost all of the early-game pressure to fast-tech to filter-inserters. I imagine based on the belt spaghettification even at these low tiers that filter-inserters will still have their uses especially in late game, but refusing or at least deemphasizing their usage seems entirely viable to me especially with bots.
Also important here is that even if meticulous ratios were a design goal, the throughput-limitation right now is the yellow belts themselves only being able to carry ~13 items / sec. In my current mod arrangement, most crafting recipes are way more expensive than in vanilla. For example, vanilla 1 copper plate gives 2 copper coil -- here, 2 copper plate yields 1 copper coil. Therefore, I suspect that there will be examples where on-site manufacturing might not always be the best bet, since with this example I can fit twice as many copper coils on a belt as I can fit copper plates. I'll have to fiddle with stack sizes to ascertain how rail transport would affect these numbers, on top of the already-assumed ratio-tweaks that would come from unlocking more advanced building versions, beacons and beacon versions, modules and module versions, etc.
NOW I can play and have fun! I look eagerly forward to when I have single smelteries large enough to entirely occupy the minimap with long trains servicing outposts so far away that just the trip outbound consumes more than half its onboard fuel capacity.