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Here I am, 8 hours into my first Bob's+Angel's game. I've got a small bus with iron and copper and wood, so I feel like I'm at the right level of the tech tree to automate green science. Suddenly I find myself shaving this yak:

automating green science requires automating inserters
automating inserters require a single blue assembler
blue assembler requires basic electronic board
basic electronic board requires solder
solder requires solder plates and a metal mixing furnace
solder plates require lead and tin plates
lead and tin plates require mining and smelting bobmonium and rubyte
basic electronic board requires basic electronic components
basic electronic components require carbon
carbon requires carbon dioxide
carbon dioxide requires liquifiers

I find myself building multiple whole new sections of my factory just to get a single stack of various items (because I'm not at all ready to build all the infrastructure to handle those things consistently) just to make *one item* that stands between me and automating inserters.

Did I miss something? If not, am I off base in saying that this is a bit of a balance problem?

Inserters should require only basic circuit board which is wooden board and copper wire.

I'm not talking about the ingredients in the recipe for the inserter. I'm talking about making the blue assembler to make the inserters with.

You are right. But you can build a lot by hand and dump the ingrediences into the liquifier or furnace by hand for the steps you can't do. Easy enough to get enough for a blue assembler.

I usualy setup a small factory that uses chests of copper plate, iron plate, lead plate, wood and stone and just hands each item from assembler to assembler till it dumps an electronics board into a chest. One fill of the chests is plenty of material to bootstrap your real factory.

The problem is that I haven't played this mod combination before, so I don't have the tech tree memorized. There shouldn't be that many new resources / buildings / processes to figure out to make what should be a small jump from automating red science to automating green science.

Switching the green science recipe from inserter to something like repair pack would keep the cost somewhat the same, but remove the dependency on a blue assembler.

Also, it's not just building some items by hand to dump into the liquifier. Making green science doesn't require any lead or tin. You can make green science with just iron and copper and wood, which is a small step up from just iron for red science, which makes sense. But to get that one assembler, you also have to go build two whole new mines, and that's where it really gets out of hand.

sparr wrote: Did I miss something? If not, am I off base in saying that this is a bit of a balance problem?

If you are frustrated by this rather than liking it - I think Angels may not be for you.

Petrochem is significantly more complicated.

Sorry but that's the Intention of Angel's and Bob's to make things harder to reach.

You can remove Angel's mods and it will get easier.

sparr wrote:Making green science doesn't require any lead or tin. You can make green science with just iron and copper and wood, which is a small step up from just iron for red science, which makes sense. But to get that one assembler, you also have to go build two whole new mines, and that's where it really gets out of hand.

Hate to break it to you, but you should be mining rubyte and bobmonium from the start anyway. Tin and lead is something you'll need in vast amounts the moment your green science is up and running, as you'll be needing basic electronic boards in pretty much everything from then onward. It doesn't have to be a full tin/lead setup mind you, but you should be at least mining it for that eventuality. This is why it's seen as a non-issue.

fiery_salmon wrote:
If you are frustrated by this rather than liking it - I think Angels may not be for you.

Petrochem is significantly more complicated.

This.

I've recently doubled down on my masochism - adding Pyanodon (touched by an Angel) to the mix. When my wife hears me swearing at the game, she keeps asking me "are you sure you're enjoying this?"

Light wrote:Hate to break it to you, but you should be mining rubyte and bobmonium from the start anyway.

I think this is where I disagree. In the base game and Bob's and Angel's and *most* of Bob's+Angel's you can start out mining just a few resources, then slowly add new ones. It seems pretty obvious that *most* of the design decisions around this concept were implemented with a specific progression in mind. I haven't worked it all out yet, but it seems to start with something like Wood, Stone, Iron, Copper, Tin, Lead, Liquids, Quartz, Nickel, Gases, then more complicated stuff that I haven't gotten to yet.

Not being able to automate wood at the beginning has always been a small annoyance with Bob's. Needing to mine some Quartz "early" to get a greenhouse is a small example of the concern I raise in this post, but not so big of a deal since a small amount of manual wood gathering can get the player pretty far into the game if they don't start in the desert. However, needing to get that one blue assembler throws things far out of order.

Light wrote:Tin and lead is something you'll need in vast amounts the moment your green science is up and running, as you'll be needing basic electronic boards in pretty much everything from then onward.

Things I plan to do with green science before I need to start mining tin or lead, roughly in order:
Toolbelt
Electric energy distribution
Steel furnaces
Concrete
Inserter capacity bonus
Gun turret damage
Reinforced concrete walls
and that's just the stuff I already know about from the base game; there are probably other bob's and/or angel's things in this category as well

I know that most people in this subforum have the tech tree memorized, and know exactly the right build/research order to get to the mid/late game quickly. I don't, and neither do most other people playing with this mod combination for the first time, or even fifth time. There are some pretty solid game design principles in use in the base game, in Bob's, and in Bob's+Angel's, with a series of tech/infrastructure steps each leading to a plateau where new things can be done. The list I gave above shows that there is a reasonably wide (2+ hours at my current research rate) plateau after automating green science and before mining tin or lead, if not for the one-time exceptions to get a small amount of quartz, tin, and lead just to *set up* the automation.

fiery_salmon wrote:If you are frustrated by this rather than liking it - I think Angels may not be for you.

Petrochem is significantly more complicated.

I am not frustrated by it being complicated. I am frustrated by anomalies in the complexity curve. The progression here (Wood, Stone, Iron, Copper, Tin, Lead, Liquids, Quartz, Nickel, Gases) seems to follow a nice learning / complexity / difficulty curve, except that there are a few quirks where a single recipe throws the progression off.

sparr wrote:

Light wrote:Hate to break it to you, but you should be mining rubyte and bobmonium from the start anyway.

I think this is where I disagree. In the base game and Bob's and Angel's and *most* of Bob's+Angel's you can start out mining just a few resources, then slowly add new ones. It seems pretty obvious that *most* of the design decisions around this concept were implemented with a specific progression in mind. I haven't worked it all out yet, but it seems to start with something like Wood, Stone, Iron, Copper, Tin, Lead, Liquids, Quartz, Nickel, Gases, then more complicated stuff that I haven't gotten to yet.

I know that most people in this subforum have the tech tree memorized, and know exactly the right build/research order to get to the mid/late game quickly. I don't, and neither do most other people playing with this mod combination for the first time, or even fifth time.

As someone who is new, you shouldn't strawman right off the bat.

You assume that people here are masters of the mod and have played it constantly to know everything about it, which I know for myself is the furthest from the truth. I've done two maps with these mods and I'm attentive of the technologies and recipes enough to get the ball rolling quickly enough for my tastes, but even experienced players may learn something new regardless of number of maps created. The point is that as a newcomer looking for help, you should at least listen to the suggestions of those who are slightly more familiar with the mod and then form your own opinion after the fact, not form the opinions of others for them and use it in your disagreements when you don't even know if you're right.

I was going to write up a summary of how to improve your early game to be less of an issue, but I don't think I'll waste the time. It's starting to sound like the mod simply isn't for you if you're going to be that nitpicky and dismissive.

Light wrote:

sparr wrote:

Light wrote:Hate to break it to you, but you should be mining rubyte and bobmonium from the start anyway.

I think this is where I disagree. In the base game and Bob's and Angel's and *most* of Bob's+Angel's you can start out mining just a few resources, then slowly add new ones. It seems pretty obvious that *most* of the design decisions around this concept were implemented with a specific progression in mind. I haven't worked it all out yet, but it seems to start with something like Wood, Stone, Iron, Copper, Tin, Lead, Liquids, Quartz, Nickel, Gases, then more complicated stuff that I haven't gotten to yet.

I know that most people in this subforum have the tech tree memorized, and know exactly the right build/research order to get to the mid/late game quickly. I don't, and neither do most other people playing with this mod combination for the first time, or even fifth time.

As someone who is new, you shouldn't strawman right off the bat.

You assume that people here are masters of the mod and have played it constantly to know everything about it, which I know for myself is the furthest from the truth. I've done two maps with these mods and I'm attentive of the technologies and recipes enough to get the ball rolling quickly enough for my tastes, but even experienced players may learn something new regardless of number of maps created. The point is that as a newcomer looking for help, you should at least listen to the suggestions of those who are slightly more familiar with the mod and then form your own opinion after the fact, not form the opinions of others for them and use it in your disagreements when you don't even know if you're right.

I was going to write up a summary of how to improve your early game to be less of an issue, but I don't think I'll waste the time. It's starting to sound like the mod simply isn't for you if you're going to be that nitpicky and dismissive.

This!
I was gonna say let's help him and write what to do, but the guys here are right. It may not be the right mod for you. And rest assured we are not saying this in the snotty dwarf fortress type of way. And if you dislike this step already, wait for the circuit boards that come after - that is when shit gets out of control.

I *like* complexity. I *want* complexity. That's why I tried Bob's in the first place, and why I've added Angel's now.

What I also want is a gradual increase in complexity. There's a whole realm of discovery waiting for me after green science, and a lot of that does use lead and/or tin (I look forward to automating yellow belts now that I have tin!). I'm not sure yet if it uses gases; maybe I don't need gases until I want to do blue/grey science. Either way, this single blip of needing solder and glass and carbon before automating green science is an anomaly; it doesn't match the rest of the progression. Every other part of the base game, Bob's, and what I've seen of Bob's+Angel's has a smooth progression of "learn one new processing tech, explore how to use the new resource, repeat, and eventually you have enough tech to automate the next level of science". That's awesome! Having more steps on that progression is why I came here. But then we get to this one specific scenario and it's all "nope, you need to go set up production of four new resources, mine two new minerals, learn a whole new production chain, just to automate this thing you're already far past being able to make, and none of the things you pass along the way are relevant to that task".

I didn't come here looking for advice. I came to point out an inconsistency in the learning/complexity curve of the combination of mods. I feel that I've done that, so I'm done with this topic until I encounter another such situation later on in the tech tree.

I admit, my frustration was slightly exacerbated by this: viewtopic.php?f=185&t=59151

the good part, that angel mod have a better tools for making production overflow.

and hive a high touch of realism.

sparr wrote: Things I plan to do with green science before I need to start mining tin or lead, roughly in order:
Toolbelt
Electric energy distribution
Steel furnaces
Concrete
Inserter capacity bonus
Gun turret damage
Reinforced concrete walls
and that's just the stuff I already know about from the base game; there are probably other bob's and/or angel's things in this category as well

That's your problem right there - don't rush the green science. There's tons of red-only research you need far more than these tiny green things. You'll need a few bits of green science to get some useful things early on, but those are trivial to make by hand - build up gear and circuit production, and red+green science pack production, and just make those few inserters by hand. If you automate the ingredients, they take 0.5s to make a piece, well worth the small bit of handcrafting. But check out all that red science - there's a lot of it. You don't run out nearly as quickly as in vanilla or even Bob's without Angel's.

You don't really need steel furnaces much - you'll quickly (red science) get Angel's smelting, which replaces most of the uses of furnaces. This is even more so with expensive recipes enabled. They're needed for Mk-2 Boiler's, but that's worthless without at least Mk-2 steam engines anyway (Mk-2/3 boiler with Mk-1 steam engine has lower efficiency than Mk-1 boilers). You'll probably want steel for other things anyway - Angelbob's needs a lot of steel, and Angel's makes early steel a lot more expensive than Bob's. You don't need concrete until the mid-game, and it's a dis-proportionally expensive research. One early green research I recommend is Angel's steel smelting - it gives a huge boost to your steel production efficiency (note the default steel recipe needs 8 iron per piece of steel).

Finally, don't forget that BEBs are needed for huge amounts of machines anyway. It's the next step after getting the very early automation anyway. They're a large difficulty bump early on, granted, but that's how all the boards are balanced - each new level takes a lot of extra infrastructure, and the machine tiers are built around that as well.

Disclaimer: The last ~1000 hours I've played Factorio was mostly with either the Seablock pack or expensive recipes with 4-10x research costs. Both are a lot about optimising, rather than just rushing through all the science and placing hundreds of furnaces. On Marathon, you need five pieces of saphirite for each piece of iron, which makes early Angel's smelting well worth it. Without Marathon, normal furnaces will last you a while for iron and copper, but even for early tin/lead, you'll want at least ore sorting; and by the time you have ore sorting, why not use Angel's smelting? Likewise with steel - you almost triple your steel output with Angel's smelting (though it needs 50 green science to get that very valuable research).

This difficult curve is not from Bob's+Angel's, is only from Bob. Later you will see that for the electronic logic board you need first a assembling maschine 3 to make them, because your electronics assembling maschine 2 can't handle so many components and for the electronics assembling maschine 3 you need first some electronic logic boards. Its all because some of the assembling maschine can't handle enough components. So when you want that it will be changed, maybe try it in Bobs mod place.

When i remember it right, Angel will make his one electronic boards, with the new Industrie part. So maybe then it will have a better difficult curve.

Shorkan wrote:When i remember it right, Angel will make his one electronic boards, with the new Industrie part. So maybe then it will have a better difficult curve.

The following is still in development, nothing is final.

While still in development, the industries part does more than just replace a few electronic boards.





Based on playing with it a bit, the creation of Angel's buildings and Bob's buildings are split down two entirely different recipe paths (Angel's components + what we have already). But with Angel's science you MUST have tin and lead prepared to create RED science packs, but as I stated earlier you should be prepared for that regardless. You start with gray science pack creation which uses wood for a couple techs, but red takes over very quickly.

The mod isn't playable by the way, so don't ask how to turn it on since you can't do anything with it.

Ah was my fault, i know that it will be more, should have write it better. Since i read here many times so i have read all what Angel said about it. Science overhaul, his own electronic boards. That he said that he thinks to make his one material tiers and that logistic and components will be merged in industrie and maybe some points i don't remember.

I think i know how to put the incomplete parts of Industrie on, but i know that they don't work yet so i will not do it. I wait till they work and will then start a new Angel game. But nice too see some screens from it. Will be fun to play, since i get tired from the Bobs science and electronic boards. Science is not so different from Vanilla ( red, green , grey and purple the same) and the later electronic boards are almost the same recipe, only tiny things change and on more component will be added.