[MOD 1.1] Xander Mod v3.6.1

[ironchefpython]

Is it intended that there are two recipes for brushed motor and standard inserter, and one is simply far more resource intensive than the other?

(Only annoying because factorio always seems to want to handcraft the harder recipe)

[orzelek]

Is it intended that there are two recipes for brushed motor and standard inserter, and one is simply far more resource intensive than the other?

(Only annoying because factorio always seems to want to handcraft the harder recipe)

I just encountered this one as well and it seems strange.
Handcrafting is the usual issue with base game - it sticks to one recipe even if you have mats for other path.

Can you maybe remove the other recipe?
It really makes no sense to use it at any point I think - steel is much more costly. And electronics even worse - just making production for it.

[Ratzap]

I think he covered this one a few pages back. One recipe becomes much cheaper later with proper steel making and can be automated, the other cannot and is intended only for the early game.

[Moffmaster]

I just failed for the third time and thought I would give a bit of a review.

First time was clean install and default settings -> immediately overrun by biters due to smelting pollution
Second time, I hid my initial base in a dense forest -> got overrun by medium biters after a couple of hours.
Third time was with some convenience mods and halved evolution for both time and pollution -> got overrun by medium spitters.

I'd say if I try again, I will use the heavy gunturret mod or similar, for some improved, ammo-conserving defence (as making bullets is rather hard), and halving time evolution sounds about right. But smelting produces so much pollution that I think I will need to set it to 1/4th of default pollution evolution. And probably turn off biter expansion, like you recommended. I generally like the design choice of making mining relatively clean, and smelting very dirty, though, because it allows to mine outlying mineral deposits but forces you to transport it 'home' to smelt, away from the nests.

Some notes:
-Any start without a big forest seems doomed. With the upgraded handmining speed, it's okay to chop down a few hundred trees. But if you start in the desert, there just won't be enough for your industrial needs. I also needed the forest to conceal early-game polution.
-Also, as it takes a long time to get to ammunition and turrets, could you start us out with a few hundred magazines and a handful of turrets to survive the early game?
-Repair packs and lamps feel strongly overpriced, could use a serious cost reduction (or the recipe could produce 5 istead of 1).
-It's not always clear what is made in a lathe, and what in an assembler and why. Like, why is stone brick made on a lathe? Sounds more like a job for the mineral sleuthe.
-In my game, I just made it up to electric furnaces, but didn't have any recipes. The same for the upgraded mineral processor. I feel that unlocking the machine should also unlock one commonly used recipe, or it should be allowed to use the old recipes as well.

[ironchefpython]

More feedback:

I think the icon for the Automatic Feed Lathe Mill is incorrect, I think it was meant to be shaded yellow like the Assembling Machine 1 and have a gear icon like the Recondensing Steam-Powered Machine Tool.

It seems like Iron Machine Recycling isn't a very good deal. Unless others have significantly more burner inserters than I do, crafting the science packs to break down old machinery is a net loss. Perhaps 50 red + 50 green?

"Logistics I 2", "Logistics I 3" and "Logistics I 4" could be renamed "Logistics II", "Logistics III" and "Logistics IV"

Ah, that makes sense as to why I see Github everywhere. I'm not sure if/how to make one of my own, would it be worth it for this project?

Very much so. Putting your project on github is an invitation for people to provide feedback, fix bugs, and use your code to learn to create their own mods.

[Ratzap]

I just failed for the third time and thought I would give a bit of a review.

First time was clean install and default settings -> immediately overrun by biters due to smelting pollution
Second time, I hid my initial base in a dense forest -> got overrun by medium biters after a couple of hours.
Third time was with some convenience mods and halved evolution for both time and pollution -> got overrun by medium spitters.

I see a pattern here - try switching the biters off or way down :shrug:

[orzelek]

I need to agree that this mod seems to be made more for peaceful play.

I've been playing around 13h now and just started electronics. I did use 5x science modifier so everything is much slower but my defence still uses only natural evolution dart turrets and it's getting difficult around 20% evolution.
And it seems that making first electronics will be pretty complex.

[jodokus31]

One word about the waste water or waste treatment in general:
I just researched the standard mineral concentrator and thought, I can use the recipes for bauxite -> clay or stone -> limestone.
But there are only the recipes for using it with water and they produce waste water. (btw: Calcium Processing requires the electric refining furnace research, which seems not necessary...)
OK, I tried to search, what I can do with waste water. And the recipes are:
- iron ore+limestone+waste water -> sludge
- soda + magnesium chloride + waste water -> sludge + water
Both can be made only with "standard chemical reactor", which requires monel and nickel, which requires garnierite, which requires trains (the recipe also requires crude chemical reactor, which requires crude parts like iron gear mechanism. i would think, thats not intended.)
And what should I do with sludge: there are solid waste recipes like: 2 gravel + sludge -> 1 gravel.

So, the recipes are only there to eliminate waste water or solids, i assume.

But, in factorio, there is an easier way to rid of unwanted fluids: just pick up a full tank or pipe, and the fluids are gone. Its kind of semi-automatic, but you can make a big enough storage to have many hours without bothering. And for solids, you can fill chest/warehouse and shoot it.

I would recommend, to give the waste products more kind of benefit to process them. Otherwise, its more reasonable to use factorio's way to get rid of stuff

[jodokus31]

Is it intended that there are two recipes for brushed motor and standard inserter, and one is simply far more resource intensive than the other?

(Only annoying because factorio always seems to want to handcraft the harder recipe)

I just encountered this one as well and it seems strange.
Handcrafting is the usual issue with base game - it sticks to one recipe even if you have mats for other path.

Can you maybe remove the other recipe?
It really makes no sense to use it at any point I think - steel is much more costly. And electronics even worse - just making production for it.

I also think, that it needs some polishing. The only benefit is crafting time.
I decided for myself, that i want to stick to the steel recipe, because thats the designed way, but its not very reasonable regarding costs.

[ironchefpython]

I would recommend, to give the waste products more kind of benefit to process them. Otherwise, its more reasonable to use factorio's way to get rid of stuff

What might work is if the removal of waste products could only be done in a special assembler, that when operating removed pollution.

That way, you can think of those waste products as having polluted the world by existing; if you "disappear" them by picking up a liquid tank, the pollution is still there. But if you are cleaning/recycling/eliminating those wastes, it removes pollution from the world.

[jodokus31]

I would recommend, to give the waste products more kind of benefit to process them. Otherwise, its more reasonable to use factorio's way to get rid of stuff

What might work is if the removal of waste products could only be done in a special assembler, that when operating removed pollution.

That way, you can think of those waste products as having polluted the world by existing; if you "disappear" them by picking up a liquid tank, the pollution is still there. But if you are cleaning/recycling/eliminating those wastes, it removes pollution from the world.

Does picking up the liquid tank produces pollution? Or if you destroy solids in a chests, does it emit the amount of pollution, which reflects the contents of the chest? That would be interesting. Or maybe, change the tanks, that they dont loose liquids if pickuped (IIRC theres a mod, which does this) (Then, you start creating large arrays of pipes, which contains waste fluids, and pick them up.... )

Anyway, I play without biters and really dont bother much with pollution atm. That could change, if I ever decide to play with biters in Xander. I think, there is also a mod, which lets pollution hurts the player, if its too high. Maybe an interesting addition, to force bothering with pollution...

But honestly, I think, the best would be, that you get some benefit from waste processing, which can be done in a crude chem reactor, too. I really dont know, what can be realistic. Angels mods have the slag processing chain and the sulfur/flourite extraction

Another solution is to simply accept it, and try to play according the rules

Ah, that makes sense as to why I see Github everywhere. I'm not sure if/how to make one of my own, would it be worth it for this project?

Very much so. Putting your project on github is an invitation for people to provide feedback, fix bugs, and use your code to learn to create their own mods.

If you use some kind of version management, is much easier to work on different things simultaneously. F.e. Creating a new feature, while someone finds a severe bugs. You can interupt your work on the new feature and fix only the bug and then continue. Its also nice for a change history. Not to mention, that others could help developing more easily, if you want.
This project is not small and its surely worth.

[ironchefpython]

Sorry I didn't explain it well enough the first time, let me try to rephrase.

Does picking up the liquid tank produces pollution?

No, but running the process that created the liquid waste in the first place produces pollution. If you disappear the liquid by picking up the tank, that pollution still exists in the world. However reprocessing that waste could provide negative pollution, offsetting some of the original pollution created with the waste liquid was first created.

[jodokus31]

Sorry I didn't explain it well enough the first time, let me try to rephrase.

Does picking up the liquid tank produces pollution?

No, but running the process that created the liquid waste in the first place produces pollution. If you disappear the liquid by picking up the tank, that pollution still exists in the world. However reprocessing that waste could provide negative pollution, offsetting some of the original pollution created with the waste liquid was first created.

Ok, i'm sorry too, i understood it correctly, but started to think further that it would be cool and realistic, if picking up tanks or shooting chests would produce pollution according to its contents. Your proposal is a good idea, better than producing more pollution.
I still think, that the waste processing should give more value than to get rid of stuff. Its maybe me or an implicit paradigm in factorio, that everything has a value. What about landfill or some kind of paving?

-Repair packs and lamps feel strongly overpriced, could use a serious cost reduction (or the recipe could produce 5 istead of 1).
-In my game, I just made it up to electric furnaces, but didn't have any recipes. The same for the upgraded mineral processor. I feel that unlocking the machine should also unlock one commonly used recipe, or it should be allowed to use the old recipes as well.

I agree to that.
Lights should be affordable, because most players are often temped to omit them and that would reduce gameplay fun.
I also think, that the old recipes should be useable in higher tier machines unless it doesnt make sense at all. I'm thinking of the simple processes to get clay/sand or limestone. And the advanced recipes should be more efficient (or simple recipes should be less), so that its reasonable to switch to them, if the time allows it. By now, im tempted to stay on the old recipes with crude machines and even scale them up, because waste water is a headache.

[jodokus31]

Explored further and found some more problems:

- Vulcanized Rubber and Raw Natural Latex can only be crafted in a "Standard Chemical Reactor", but "Standard Chemical Reactor" requires Nickel and Monel Plate, which comes from Garnierite, which requires Mine Blasting, which require Blasting Fluid, which is made in a "Standard Chemical Reactor".
- The rubber is also needed for engines to get trains running to Garnierite field or for Electrolyzers.
-> I think, the standard chem plant should either not require the nickel or monel, or the rubber could be crafted in crude chem plant. But there are also other recipes, which require the standard chem plant, which should be available earlier, like waste water treatment

- The Electric Refining Furnace and Electric Foundry Forge are unlocked a second time in "Refractory Brick 2" research. I think, they are the same items, but require different ingredients.

- Soda generation to support copper smelting from salt is quite slow. The slowest part is sodium sulfate, which is only craftable in crude chem plant. To fill a yellow belt of copper, i need ~26 crude chem plants. and the same amount for sulfuric acid.

- There is an advanced coke smelting recipe 20 coal -> 68 coke, but it takes 400 sec. Seems a bit long?

Seems to be fair, that i also say, what actually works so far in my factory:
- Iron smelting with limestone and Steel Smelting with clay in Blast furnaces
- Tier 1 electric assemblers and electric mining drills.
- Landfill.
- Standard Circuit Board automation
- Red and green science automation.
- Yellow belts.
- Electric Refining Furnace.
- Radars
- Logging Camp.
- etc.

[GeekinaCave]

hi there is any GitHub repo of this mod or some sorts, i like to offer some correction in cosmetic details what i notice playing with this mod.
PD: now i feel I'm really stranded in an alien planet trying to get my ass back home, Thanks.

[Airat9000]

Hello! How can I increase the area of extraction? I just have a lot of resources and I do not know how to extract not enough field of extraction .. and I do not want to demolish. do at least 10 on 10 .. purely for myself to check I want ..

Привет! Как можно увеличить область добычи?? просто у меня много ресурсов и не знаю как добывать не хватает области добычи..а сносить не хочу. сделать хотя бы 10на10.. чисто для себя проверить хочу..

2017-10-12_23-23-26.png (228.05 KiB) Viewed 9520 times

[Gragorath]

Hello! How can I increase the area of extraction? I just have a lot of resources and I do not know how to extract not enough field of extraction .. and I do not want to demolish. do at least 10 on 10 .. purely for myself to check I want ..

Привет! Как можно увеличить область добычи?? просто у меня много ресурсов и не знаю как добывать не хватает области добычи..а сносить не хочу. сделать хотя бы 10на10.. чисто для себя проверить хочу..

Hi.
You'll need to extract the mod zip-file and modify a file, then zip the whole folder again and place the new zip-file in the mods directory. Make sure there's only 1 Xander mod zip-file by either overwriting the original one or moving it to another folder.

Area of extraction is determined by the "resource_searching_radius"-parameter of the entity. For Xander Mod you can find these in __MODDIR__\prototypes\entity\production\miner.lua.
To get a 10x10 extraction area on the Bucket Wheel Excavator, change this value:
line 2045: resource_searching_radius = 2.49 --> resource_searching_radius = 4.99
Alternatively, replace the file with this one. This changes the mining area of the 3 electric mining drills to 10x10.

miner.lua

(74.08 KiB) Downloaded 150 times

[Repofme1]

Hi all -

Just an update so far.

About waste:
I decided to reduce the pollution ratios of all machines by a factor of 5, and things looks a lot better in my test world. That should help a lot with problems. I haven't had time to examine early waste processing in detail yet, but I can explain my intent with the later versions. I meant for the various waste products to be annoying because they are not very useful, reflecting my interpretation of the real-life situation. I also used the few generic waste materials in XM to account for many different types of substances, which occur in small amounts as leftovers or losses from the processes. This is why it's hard for me to re-process waste into useful materials. I do this where I can, however. For examples: "waste water" is water mixed with all manner of unpleasant stuff, like metal hydroxides, suspended ash particles, and more metal salts, so the only thing that can be done with it is remove all the nasty stuff as solids. These solids are the "sludge" item, which can only be (automatically) disposed of by burying it. Until that is researched the stuff just accumulates. Since there are so many recipes that make waste water, the actual composition of the nasty stuff is different from each process, but it would be too complex to make each one give a different type of waste with a different recycling method. The waste material "slag" is a bit less of a wild card, I mentally model it as calcium silicate with a lot of other mixed impurities. Slag is only produced by smelting operations, which use flux, which can make the calcium silicate slag, so I can justify the refining process to recover some of the silica and calcium. It can't be 100% efficient, of course, so one slag can only make the silica or calcium, not both (correct me if I'm wrong, I might have changed this). But "slag" also contains a lot of leftover traces of metals and other stuff from smelting, which is why it makes "sludge" in processing.

That was just a description of the current state of waste processing. Writing it, I see that it's not that good, as people have recognized, so changes are in the works. I have the early beginnings of some more detailed waste division, where there are light and heavy versions so not everything is equally difficult to process. Also, all of these plans refer to the final upgraded version of things, which leaves the same early step-up problems as we've had before. So that's something I want to focus on for the next update. More notes on things I;ve already completed coming soon(TM).

[Repofme1]

More specific work so far -

This mainly covers the issue of things with two different recipes, like simple coils, basic electric motors, and regular inserters. After looking at these, I came up with some improvements to hopefully simplify them, like removing circuits from the motor recipe, and increasing the yield of the steel inserter recipe. Now the steel versions of coils, motors, and inserters are slightly cheaper than the iron versions, *after* the best tech (ratio 1 iron -> 1 steel) is unlocked. Since that is not until you have electric furnaces, which takes a while, the steel versions are the same cost as the iron ones *even* in the end of the early burner era (when the Bessemer tech gives 2 iron -> 1 steel). I also switched the order of the "Electricity" and "Induction 1" technologies, so that the parts came before the machines, not putting the metaphorical cart before the horse.

Also, a short word again on some of these double recipes: the trouble is that I need to make the regular recipe for things (as used in the middle and late game) of a certain minimum quality, to logically justify the durability, power, etc. of the part. In the electric motor, for example, this is a steel shaft with bronze bearings (well, bushings actually, but that's just a technical name). But the trouble is, that good enough parts are not available in the very early beginning, when you first need the things that are made with them. With the motor example, the steel shaft is not available as early as I would like, because the motor is needed earlier to make inserters. Having to wait for steel parts just to make a few electric inserters would be too much tie and effort. And the lower-quality parts (like iron shaft) would still sort of work, for the purposes of starting out, just not well enough to use through the entire game. Therefore, I have to limit their manufacture to the lower-tier machines, to force upgrading to the good version.

Oh, I also made lamps and repair packs cheaper - I had not gotten to the point of using either of those, so they still had the original too-expensive versions. That will most likely be true of the whole mod, at least for the first time that I reach it in actual play. I also don't ant to discourage aesthetic things like lamps and paving, because I like them, so I might make the lamps draw less power if I find the use too much.
The research cost for recycling tech is lower too, I felt like I had a TON of early stuff leftover but maybe it's not actually that much.

Circuits are another active topic of my focus, I agree that the current ones are way too hard to set up, and the ones after that are kind of a mess also. So I'm completely re-working the circuits, and I've got a pretty good tier 1 now. No sulfuric acid, tinned sheets, or solder wire (just the bar). Also fewer recipes for components because I lumped them all into one Basic Components Set. I would like to figure out tier 2 circuits too, since they introduce a lot of the real manufacturing techniques, but we'll see. Speaking of that, an example here also relates to the idea of part upgrades required for better automation: connecting individual wires on a circuit board is slow and tedious, while etching patterns with a mask and acid is more difficult to set up (more complexity & harder to produce materials), but much more suited to mass automation.

[jodokus31]

Hi all -

Just an update so far.

About waste:
I decided to reduce the pollution ratios of all machines by a factor of 5, and things looks a lot better in my test world. That should help a lot with problems. I haven't had time to examine early waste processing in detail yet, but I can explain my intent with the later versions. I meant for the various waste products to be annoying because they are not very useful, reflecting my interpretation of the real-life situation. I also used the few generic waste materials in XM to account for many different types of substances, which occur in small amounts as leftovers or losses from the processes. This is why it's hard for me to re-process waste into useful materials. I do this where I can, however. For examples: "waste water" is water mixed with all manner of unpleasant stuff, like metal hydroxides, suspended ash particles, and more metal salts, so the only thing that can be done with it is remove all the nasty stuff as solids. These solids are the "sludge" item, which can only be (automatically) disposed of by burying it. Until that is researched the stuff just accumulates. Since there are so many recipes that make waste water, the actual composition of the nasty stuff is different from each process, but it would be too complex to make each one give a different type of waste with a different recycling method. The waste material "slag" is a bit less of a wild card, I mentally model it as calcium silicate with a lot of other mixed impurities. Slag is only produced by smelting operations, which use flux, which can make the calcium silicate slag, so I can justify the refining process to recover some of the silica and calcium. It can't be 100% efficient, of course, so one slag can only make the silica or calcium, not both (correct me if I'm wrong, I might have changed this). But "slag" also contains a lot of leftover traces of metals and other stuff from smelting, which is why it makes "sludge" in processing.

That was just a description of the current state of waste processing. Writing it, I see that it's not that good, as people have recognized, so changes are in the works. I have the early beginnings of some more detailed waste division, where there are light and heavy versions so not everything is equally difficult to process. Also, all of these plans refer to the final upgraded version of things, which leaves the same early step-up problems as we've had before. So that's something I want to focus on for the next update. More notes on things I;ve already completed coming soon(TM).

Thanks for the explanations I must confess, that I dont have much idea about material processing, because I'm a computer science guy. But it is so fascinating
I fully agree, that it is very realistic (and realism regarding material processing is really the tenor of this mod), that processes produce waste products, which have to be disposed. The problem here is a bit, that factorio has the mechanics to be able to easily destroy unwanted things or fluids. And it seems to be more efficient to actually do it this way (because, why should i invest the stone to bury the sludge, when I could simple destroy the chest.)
In the end, the player should decide for him/herself, if he/she want to go the realistic or the "efficient" way. At a certain scale, it will be easier to do it the proper way because its automatable. From the gaming point-of-view, it was a bit disappointing for me like "oh, too bad, nothing usefull to get from it"