[MOD 0.11.x] Ore processing

[albatrosv13]

New version of the mod here. - viewtopic.php?f=93&t=22383
This thread is (50%) obsolete.

So, i deleted all the text in the first post and rewrote that stuff again. *Edited again - balancing*
This mod adds 4 machines, which give ore bonuses(like productivity modules on machines). It also gives a fifth machine, but about that later. All those machines give bonuses only for iron, copper and stone.
The first technology(advanced material processing 3) unlocks 2 machines - Pulverizer and ore washing plant.
Pulverizer - Throw in ore, get 9 chunks.
a) throw in 8 chunks to any smelter and there is already a gain of 12.5%.
b) go further with ...
Ore washing plant - Throw in 8 chunks and water, get 9 clean chunks.
a) throw in 8 clean chunks to any smelter and there is 12.5% more gain.
b) go further with ...
The second technology(advanced material processing 4) unlocks another 2 machines - Centrifuge and crystallizer.
Centrifuge - Has 2 options.
1) Throw in 9 clean chunks, get 9 dusts + 1 dust of another material. That means if 9 clean iron chunks are input, then output is 9 iron dusts and 1 copper dust. And vice-versa. The gain is in another material, about 11.1%.
2) Throw in 20 clean iron chunks, 20 clean copper chunks and 1 coal, get 25 iron dusts and 25 copper dusts. The gain is 25%, but uses coal.
a) Dusts can be smelted in any smelter, relation is 8 to 1, as always.
b) go further with ...
Crystallizer - Throw in 18 dusts and 1 sulfur, get 21 crystallized dusts.
a) throw in 8 dusts in any smelter and there is another gain of 16.67%.
b) go further with ...
Third technology(matter compilation) unlocks 1 machine.
Matter compilator - Throw in 12(0.6.0) crystallized dusts and get 1 ore. The loop continues, with gain. Productivity modules recommended.
Pulverizer, ore washing plant and centrifuge have 1 module slot. Crystallizer have 2 module slots. Matter compilator has 3 module slots.
The machines at the end are slower. Crystallizer produces a lot pollution(in lore, it uses some kind of material in the air on this planet, which isn't on the earth). Matter compilator uses more energy than usual.

Now there are 2 problems, which i havent yet fixed - 1) Graphics. The machines are still loaned from the base game(except pulverizer, which is just slightly colorized electric furnace).
2) The module limitation function - Update 0.5.2: fixed
There is a semi-problem with cluttering recipes.
Balancing is still an issue, as always.

P.S. Bugs are welcome - I need to learn how to squash them

FishSandwich made a spotlight video of this mod, so here it is - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXAtGI5_UF0
There are very minor miscalculations in this video, but totally forgivable

Update 0.5.2. Machines are very slightly easier to maintain(electricity +speed) and very minor graphics modifications. Modules are now not redefined and base ones used instead - better mod compatibility with other mods.
Update 0.5.3 Machines are again very slightly easier to maintain + crystallized dust to ore conversion rate went from 15 - 1 to 14 - 1.
Update 0.5.5 Made things easier - Machines take a little bit less energy(10-15%). Recipes are faster(20-30%). Multiplication rate has gone from 11.1% to 12.5%. (thanks chlue)
Update 0.6.0 Added stone as a processing material. Stone is one step shorter(but every step increases by 14.28%) - pulverizer, centrifuge, crystallizer(needs heavy oil), then matter compilator. Also made base ores(iron and copper) compilation easier, since the last update(0.5.5) made the compilation less efficient - Dropped from 14-1 to 12-1. So in overall, made things even easier. This update needs probably a new game(or at least before any mod-related research), cause those recipes didn't appear automatically when the researches(stone related) on those technologies were already researched.
Update 0.6.1 Totally forgot that in base game bricks need 2 stone instead of 1. Fixed recipe balancing(the 0.6.0 made stone bricks more than 2 times easier). +fixed recipe cluttering at the start

[Scoutter]

Sounds neat and a bit like the way a Pulverizer works in Minecraft. Even in Minecraft it multiplies the ores by 2 or 3 instead of just 11 %

[albatrosv13]

Sounds neat and a bit like the way a Pulverizer works in Minecraft. Even in Minecraft it multiplies the ores by 2 or 3 instead of just 11 %

The ore multiplication in minecraft started from x2 with first industrial mods(industrialcraft, thermal expansion and so on). Those machines made vanilla recipes very cheap(iron armor was a joke after that) and thus expansive material collection was needed only for industrial mods and their stuff. It was kinda weird that after huge ore multiplication of x2(which wasnt so hard to get), you had to collect pretty much stuff to gain 2.4x and even more to gain 2.5x(industrialcraft as example).
Ore multiplication of x3 was only achievable in factorization and mekanism, as far as i remember. With factorization, it was very, very slow, while mekanism made things even more unbalanced - but not unbalanced to its own stuff. So you can see how this works.
Anyways, i left 1 module slot on this machine, so that the ore gain can be raised to 21%(with tier 3 productivity module). Yes, it is more slower process now.
The balance of this was to gain as much as electric furnace with 2 tier 2 productivity modules, which gives 12% bonus.
Of course, if more people will complain, then yes, will change the bonus.
I do plan to add more machines, which add more bonuses, but they wont be easy to build though.


P.S. I played minecraft mods very extensively.

[SHiRKiT]

While I totally understand this, I think that gaining extra plates from the same ore is not fun in Fatorio, unless it adds extra complexity. In this case it does that, so it's a nice idea. Maybe more complex process can be added with more machines and liquids (like what Bob did) to increase even further. Even taking a look at real life methods =]

[Scoutter]

While I totally understand this, I think that gaining extra plates from the same ore is not fun in Fatorio, unless it adds extra complexity. In this case it does that, so it's a nice idea. Maybe more complex process can be added with more machines and liquids (like what Bob did) to increase even further. Even taking a look at real life methods =]

I may suggest that refining the ores may make them more productive. Like, a "raw" ore is one, a washed ore is 2 and a "filtered" ore is 3 then in plate-value. At least that would quite resemble in some kind the real factor. Or it could be you need 4 raw ores for a plate but only 2 washed or one washed and filtered one for a plate, making the use of raw ore very expensive till filtering technology get done.

[albatrosv13]

I may suggest that refining the ores may make them more productive. Like, a "raw" ore is one, a washed ore is 2 and a "filtered" ore is 3 then in plate-value. At least that would quite resemble in some kind the real factor. Or it could be you need 4 raw ores for a plate but only 2 washed or one washed and filtered one for a plate, making the use of raw ore very expensive till filtering technology get done.

I'm not planning to do x2 with single machines(except the last one, which can give theoretically... well, i won't spoil it yet). When comparing with minecraft, the vanilla recipes didn't have a solid foundation for industrialization, factorio does. x2 with a single machine(or x3 or x4) would make factorio vanilla recipes so cheap the modmaker would have to make more expensive machines just to justify such gains - as happened in industrial mods in minecraft. Of course, it's much easier to make x2, x3 and so on, mathematically. After finishing the base mod(i plan to add at least 2 more machines after that), i could make a semi-cheat version too(i know people love cheats). Not that hard. My mods are very simplistic in structural way(its intentional).
And yes, every refinement gives a further bonus.
Anyways, no hard feelings.

[SHiRKiT]

You sure that the gain is not 23.21% instead of 22.2%?

[albatrosv13]

deleted

[hoho]

When comparing with minecraft, the vanilla recipes didn't have a solid foundation for industrialization, factorio does. x2 with a single machine(or x3 or x4) would make factorio vanilla recipes so cheap the modmaker would have to make more expensive machines just to justify such gains - as happened in industrial mods in minecraft.

One way to "fix" the problem is to introduce some other resource to the game that one has to use for the ore processing. That resource should be rare enough that players can't just forget about it and use it for all their resources but they should prioritize and use it only for the most rare and hard-to-get stuff.

If you don't want to add a completely new ore then something like sulfuric acid could be one thing that can be used for it. It's not exactly rare but it's generally not something there is too much of, at least not in my games

[albatrosv13]

One way to "fix" the problem is to introduce some other resource to the game that one has to use for the ore processing. That resource should be rare enough that players can't just forget about it and use it for all their resources but they should prioritize and use it only for the most rare and hard-to-get stuff.

If you don't want to add a completely new ore then something like sulfuric acid could be one thing that can be used for it. It's not exactly rare but it's generally not something there is too much of, at least not in my games

While sulfuric acid is more rare, i went for sulfur, cause sulfuric acid uses ores themselves. Sulfur uses only 'infinite' resources.
I didn't go into new resource realm, cause that would change the vanilla game. I'm pretty much against that, cause that raises mod incompatibility.
Anyways, base of my mod is now complete, i only need to sharpen it here and there.

[Nagshell]

As I was looking at whole mod from almost start I see that idea is much more clear and better now. Good job!
I have one question tho, as I saw that you are doing something with modules... would it be compatible with 8 tiers of modules in DyTech?

[albatrosv13]

As I was looking at whole mod from almost start I see that idea is much more clear and better now. Good job!
I have one question tho, as I saw that you are doing something with modules... would it be compatible with 8 tiers of modules in DyTech?

I don't know, really. I haven't played dytech except for 5 minutes or so until i understood that mod changes a lot vanilla recipes. Since you seem to play that mod, you could just test it on some old save and tell me

[StoneLegion]

Thanks for taking the time to make this mod. I will have to for sure check it out in the future. You seem to have put a lot of effort and work into it and I think it will do well in the long term.

Please though consider formatting your main post a bit better maybe add some visuals and basic formatting just to make it easier on the eyes. I had a hard time following the post.

Thanks

[chlue]

Hello,

I briefly tried out the mod and found it overly expensive. After that I actually spend more time in calc to trow numbers around

So what I came up with is, that with tier1 I get 23% additional output at the cost of around 10 times the energy and 22 times the pollution. Going for tier2 results in 56% additional output, but at a whooping 31 times the energy and 249 times the pollution. Not sure what kind of balance you intent here, but given that resources are infinite (due to the infinite map) this seems to be way too much.

I played around with some numbers to try to find values I consider to be worth the additional effort and came up with a scale of around 2 for the 23% gain and something in the range of 7 for the 56% gain. Not sure how you want to balance it (energy is definite infinite here so realism is not necessary a good thing with this in mind), but maybe take a look at the numbers and trow some values around. I have attached my sheet for this.

I additionally messed around with the speed to roughly get a 1:1 machine ratio. Not sure if this dumbs down everything too much, but with the high amount of intermediate items I see only direct chaining of the machines as practical. Another way to approach this could be to change the recipes to something like 9 --> 10 conversions. This would allow to sanely put intermediate items on belts.

Another thing that would really fit nice into this mod would be a path to directly create steel out of the preprocessed items for some additional gain. I saw in another mod where iron ore dust was combined with coal dust to get steel dust.

[albatrosv13]

And you are right, chlue(mostly).
I made some test runs and even for me things were too slow and took a lot of energy. One more issue was that the belts were always full. So i made some changes - thanks for that excellent sheet you provided
The base speed of machines were all changed to 2. The recipe speeds were also modified - Overally, made things about 20-30% faster(except the first ones).
Also, machines now take about 10-15% less energy. You proposal to reduce the energy consumption of all machines by 2(or even more) was a little too much for me.
I did change the multiplication bonuses - From 11.1% to 12.5% in overall. That means about 8% more gain in the end product(crystallized ore). The cluttering of belts should be less too(a little bit, though).
I haven't had time to make some graphics for the machines yet, sorry. Too much time spent on other things like fixing bugs in open source community
Oh and yes, i will add some more recipes to get stuff like steel from lesser input and so on.

P.S. @kane - Did some basic formatting. Thanks for suggestion.

[SHiRKiT]

Nice to see such a spreadsheet. It makes things easier, since spending 3.1KW on a single piece of iron really seems overkill.

[Nagshell]

Maybe there could happend to make some stone waste from processing? Atm iron and copper are "infinite" thx to your mod, and awesome wood processing makes coal achievable. Last thing which could appear is generating stone, like from 1st step of your process. It could make a problem for players to store and use enough stone to not stop whole process, which could be good thing.
Or it could even be switchable, like two recipes: one makes stone but no ore gain, 2nd makes more ore but no stone.

[albatrosv13]

Maybe there could happend to make some stone waste from processing? Atm iron and copper are "infinite" thx to your mod, and awesome wood processing makes coal achievable. Last thing which could appear is generating stone, like from 1st step of your process. It could make a problem for players to store and use enough stone to not stop whole process, which could be good thing.
Or it could even be switchable, like two recipes: one makes stone but no ore gain, 2nd makes more ore but no stone.

The idea to add stone was on a plate, but i wasn't entirely sure before. The main problem is that the recipes are cluttering, too many of them. Maybe that's not a problem for others, i don't know. Anyways, i added stone in a simple manner, because i didn't want things to become too complicated and people thinking ''how the hell do i add this to that and anyway, what the hell is the output for?''(There were such problems in minecraft mods before - things became too complicated). I could of course add tons of material processing(such as combining different materials for different output of material efficiency), but then there would be recipe cluttering nightmare.
Anyway, the last update, 0.5.5, made matter compilation harder(by chance, not intent), cause the base chunks were reduced to 8(from 9) and crystallized ore to base material conversion was still at 14-1 - So i reduced the conversion rate even further, to 12-1. I hope things will not become too easy, but since people were complaining this mod is harder than should be then i hope it's okay.
Oh btw, the update 0.6.0 needs probably a new game to function(at least the stone part), if the research is already done.
And yeah, about that coal part. I added this as an option(not mandatory), because only some people use treefarm mod.

Nice to see such a spreadsheet. It makes things easier, since spending 3.1KW on a single piece of iron really seems overkill.

3.1kW?
But even 3.1MW wouldn't be an overkill if we go to space and there is nothing to mine, you know.

[Piranha]

Can someone post a screenshot of this mod in action?

I am playing MP with a friend using this mod and we are pretty much at the end game and still have yet to set up this mod. We have tried a few times but the ratios are hard to figure out and the result doesnt seem to give that much effect for how much you need to build.

I'd really like to experience this mod but it just doesn't seem worth the effort right now.

[Nagshell]

Not-so-short calculations:

As of 0.6.1 perfect ratio in production chain is a as follows: all numbers are per second
Recipe 1: Small Chunk = Input 1/10 Output 9/10
Recipe 2: Small Clean Chunk = Input 2/3 Output 3/4
Recipe 3: Dust = Input 1/2 Output 5/9
Recipe 4: Crystallized Dust = Input 9/13 Output 21/26
Recipe 5: Ore = Input 3/5 Output 1/20
Simple ratios:
1->2 = 2/3 / 9/10= 20/27
2->3 = 1/2 / 3/4 = 2/3
3->4 = 9/13/ 5/9 = 81/65
4->5 = 3/5 /21/26= 26/35
So for example you'll need 20 machines working on recipe 1 to perfectly supply 27 machines working on recipe 2
Full ratio:
Recipe 1 - 80 machines
Recipe 2 - 108 machines
Recipe 3 - 162 machines
Recipe 4 - 130 machines
Recipe 5 - 175 machines
Total of 655 machines
Full ratio with productive modules 3(not worth it imo)
----------------
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---
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Full ratio with speed modules 3(maybe?)
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----
----
----
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And you need to setup it twice for copper/iron, because of mixed dust recipes. I'll try to calculate a much lower numbers with some not perfect ratios, so it's more accessable.

====================================================================================================================================

TL,DR: Above are numbers needed to make good assembly where nothing would be working at less than 100% efficiency, but I don't counted modules.

====================================================================================================================================

SUGGESTION, beware of many numbers, sorry in advance.

Recipes
So I was tinkering with numbers a lot, and I came up with something like that.
Recipe 1 : 1 ore -> 12 Chunks in 9 seconds
Recipe 2 : 8 Chunks -> 9 Clean Chunks in 12 seconds
Recipe 3 : 9 Clean Chunks -> 7 Dust + 1 Dust in 18 seconds
Recipe 4 : 20 Dust -> 24 Crystal Dust in 30 seconds
Recipe 5 : 16 Crystal Dust -> 2 Ore in 40 seconds

*Math done above is similiar so I skipped it*

Perfect ratio setup would be:
Recipe 1 - 1 machines
Recipe 2 - 2 machines
Recipe 3 - 3 machines
Recipe 4 - 2 machines
Recipe 5 - 4 machines
Total of 12 machines
To balance ore gain - productive modules should be disabled, and each machine should get same amount of module slots, best would be propably 2 slots for each.


==Comparison==

Posted version
Whole process gives ~0,007 ore per second per machine, and 80% as total amount gained
Original
Whole process gives ~0,001 ore per second per machine, and 9% as total amount gained
Orginal full of production modules
--------------
Production module itself is not increasing per second output, it's even decreasing it!

Output calculations:
Counted with perfect ratios if we would stop at certain stage.
Original:
It's always 8->1 in smelter
Recipe 1 only : Input 8 ore, Output 9 plates, 12,5% gain
Recipe 1 -> 2 : Input 8 ore, Output 10,125 plates, 26,5% gain
Recipe 1 -> 3 : Input 8 ore, Output 11,25 plates, 40,6% gain
Recipe 1 -> 4 : Input 8 ore, Output 13,125 plates, 64,0% gain
Recipe 1 -> 5 : Input 8 ore, Output 8,75 ore, 9,3% gain. (Yes, it's actually huge loss, but enables making cycle)

My proposition:
Chunks 11 -> 1 plate
Clean chunks 11 -> 1 plate
Dust 9 -> 1 plate
Crystal Dust 9 - > 1 plate
Recipe 1 only : Input 10 ore, Output 10,9 plates, 9,1% gain
Recipe 1 -> 2 : Input 10 ore, Output 12,3 plates, 22,7% gain
Recipe 1 -> 3 : Input 10 ore, Output 13,3 plates, 33,3% gain
Recipe 1 -> 4 : Input 10 ore, Output 16 plates, 60,0% gain
Recipe 1 -> 5 : Input 10 ore, Output 18 ore, 80,0% gain (Clean gain on this step leads to making much more efficient loops) - This step needed buff because it wasn't worth it to pay so much price in power for loss suffered.

This way also is making whole process more attractive, making first steps less productive and later steps much better. Also this way makes step 5 not decreasing gain, but productive modules would be overpowered in this setup.

This is a suggestion made to simplify ratios of machines, because I think everybody likes perfect ratio setups (3/2 circuts for example) and processing ore is great idea, I love this mod and all of your work, just how numbers worked out were little, bothering, at least for me.

If you survived wall of text and numbers, thank you for patience.

Edit: Little reworked post to make it less cramped.