glass smelting recipe bug?

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Tekky
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glass smelting recipe bug?

Post by Tekky »

I am currently testing Angel's Mods for the first time and I believe I may have found a recipe bug:

At the start of the game, I can use a simple stone furnace to get 3 glass per 4 silicon ore.

However, after researching "Advanced Glass Smelting 1" and using the Powder Mixer, Induction Furnace and Casting Machine for converting silicon ore to glass, I instead only get 2 glass per 4 silicon ore. In other words, this new "advanced" technology is significantly worse than the simple one.

This seems to be a bug to me. I would have expected that "Advanced Glass Melting 1" would give me a significant improvement, as is the case with "Advanced Iron Smelting 1": At the start of the game, I get 3 iron plates per 4 iron ore, but with "Advanced Iron Smelting 1", I instead get 4 iron plates per 4 iron ore, which is a 33% improvement.

Am I correct that this is a bug? Or am I doing something wrong?

I am using Bob's Mods and Angel's Mods.

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Re: glass smelting recipe bug?

Post by eformo »

I think the simple recipe (silicon ore into furnace 4 -> 3) is from Bob's mods.

The glass smelting chain you're talking about is from Angel's. The two have different balance, so there is a significant discrepancy in some places, but that's a balance issue between the two mods. Both are functioning as their respective authors intended.

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Re: glass smelting recipe bug?

Post by Tekky »

Thanks for your reply.
eformo wrote:I think the simple recipe (silicon ore into furnace 4 -> 3) is from Bob's mods.
As far as I can tell, that is not correct. When I start a new game with Bod's Mods without Angel's Mods, the recipe for smelting glass is

Code: Select all

1 silicon ore -> 1 glass
Therefore, the recipe

Code: Select all

4 silicon ore -> 3 glass
must have been modified by Angel's mods and is therefore not the vanilla Bob's Mods recipe.

For this reason, I believe that this issue is indeed a bug in Angel's Mods, since it was not intended for the advanced recipe to be worse than the simple recipe.

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Re: glass smelting recipe bug?

Post by eformo »

Tekky wrote:Thanks for your reply.
eformo wrote:I think the simple recipe (silicon ore into furnace 4 -> 3) is from Bob's mods.
As far as I can tell, that is not correct. When I start a new game with Bod's Mods without Angel's Mods, the recipe for smelting glass is

Code: Select all

1 silicon ore -> 1 glass
Therefore, the recipe

Code: Select all

4 silicon ore -> 3 glass
must have been modified by Angel's mods and is therefore not the vanilla Bob's Mods recipe.

For this reason, I believe that this issue is indeed a bug in Angel's Mods, since it was not intended for the advanced recipe to be worse than the simple recipe.
Good catch - you've got me then. I haven't played without both in such a long time, I didn't remember that 1:1 ratio. I think the intent is to drive you to other recipies that mix in other ingredients, though I sort of despise those recipies too for costing a lot in terms of other items. Many of the smelting options generate more ingots per metal ore, but they consume non-trivial amounts of other ingredients, which doesn't necessarily make them a blessing.

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Re: glass smelting recipe bug?

Post by Light »

You can often tell if it's an Angel's recipe by the simple fact that the most basic method has a loss to it and then later tech is 1:1 with a net gain over a curve. Bob's recipes are pretty much always 1:1 since he doesn't seem to like the idea of losing resources or making the early game harder on people in that way, there is pretty much no curve involved which is simple for many.

This philosophy still seems to be present if you look at glass making from its melted glass point of view, as it's 1:1 by melting with tin ingots using just silicon alone. Then it's 1:2 if your mixtures include lime or even greater with alumina which is also easy to procure. There is a graceful curve involved with the many glass making combinations you can do to slowly have it go upward.

You can eliminate silicon entirely from glass making with the fourth mixture recipe using nothing but natural ingredients. It's a far superior method that makes it worth the journey, exactly how the mod is usually designed to be. However, that also explains the 'bug' as being a balancing reason.

If you calculate the change then you'd find that the furnace smelting would require a nerf to better fit the curve and not that metallurgy needs a fix. Changing the metallurgy method would throw off the balance curve of the other recipes by making them quite powerful beyond what's typically done.

Sorry if I get a little technical here, but that's what's so appealing about the mod. If you decided you liked to use silicon despite the fourth mixture not requiring it, then you can still use the silicon + lime recipe to supplement the chain for a nice modest boost to glass production or even use furnaces if you so wish. It's flexibly beautiful in that respect.

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Re: glass smelting recipe bug?

Post by Tekky »

Thanks for your detailed explanation.
Light wrote:If you calculate the change then you'd find that the furnace smelting would require a nerf to better fit the curve and not that metallurgy needs a fix.
Yes, I agree that the best solution would be to nerf the simple furnace smelting recipe, so that researching "Advanced Glass Smelting 1" provides a bonus instead of a penalty.

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Re: glass smelting recipe bug?

Post by credomane »

I've brought this up several times since the Factorio 0.14.X days. Haven't doubled checked in a while but initially it was better to always direct smelt glass until you got advanced glass smelting three. Yeah, the third research. Before that you would actually lose a lot of glass compared to just direct smelting. With the 3rd glass smelting you would finally break even with direct smelting and it was only worth it to switch to if you had the production modules to outfit the smelting chain. While all the other smelting methods for other ores would have you breaking even by the 2nd advanced research and get ahead with the third one. Now I think the first research keeps you even or might even put you ahead but the glass one is still messed up.

Seeing as someone else is bringing this up now it sounds like glass smelting chain is still askew. I blame the molten glass to glass recipe. Of all the other Molten to non-molten recipes the glass one takes a lot more molten product to produce the final product.

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