[MOD 0.17.x] Modular Armor Revamp

[Ranakastrasz]

Awesome. I love feedback.

Comments on balance:

Now that I've had a chance to try all of the generators (tier 1 and 2 anyway), I feel I have enough experience to comment on the balance of the generators.

Reasonable enough. Admittedly the Fission reactor is kinda important, but ok.

Firstly, I feel that the solar panels are too powerful compared to the others. With the fairly large storage that batteries have, unless the player had a mod that made nights very long, the brief time that the solar panels don't work would not strongly affect their overall efficacy. I am currently playing with 60x day length, so the dark period is almost three hours, with the full dark of night lasting nearly an hour. With no other generators installed, I can run my batteries out at night but they last for a pretty substantial fraction of it as long as I'm not in combat getting my shields charged. Actuators don't drain the batteries that much if I have a good actuator to battery ratio and am not running back and forth all the time.

Yea. Its hard to balance different Modes of power generation. Look at the arguments between Solar and Steam engines.
The thing I find I really don't like is having to "Hot-swap" modules. Swap out solar panels at night, or conduits between base and fighting. There isn't really any workaround for that though.

I play with 3-4x longer nights, but 60x sounds... Interesting.... Would have interesting effects on Solar panel vs Steam for sure.

The burner generator is very lackluster considering how late it is unlocked, and how expensive it is to make. It generates the same power per space as the solar panels. If I were doing a lot of combat at night I might want it, but in practice I'll do my hunting in the day and stay in base where my lights are at night, meaning I'll be using conduits instead. Even if I did want to do combat at night, I'd want to rely on something more powerful than this generator. If it were the only source of power I had, I'd probably sit in base charging my batteries, then swap the generators for shields before going into combat. That would work better than relying on that pitiful output to charge my shields. I also felt the efficiency is in practice too low. I agree it should be lower than the burner generator structure (25%), but while using Realistic Power (which has reduced fuel values), I had 3 stacks of solid fuel go out in just a few minutes, and it didn't even charge my batteries halfway. So I might increase the efficiency as well.

Hmm. You are probably right with that. The inefficiency was because I didn't want you to refuel once, and then never again. Might have gone too far admittedly.

The conduit is a little weak, but really only in comparison to the solar panels. I think it is in a good spot and the solar panels actually need to be nerfed. Once I finally got the conduit working, I quickly found it was nice to slip into any leftover gaps in my equipment, and even just 2-3 of them could charge my batteries faster than they got depleted while running around working on my base. They're pretty good for a starter generator.

Yea, Thats why they (and a bunch of others) are tiny. Always hated that only the T1 solar panels in vanillla were 1x1, and they were almost completely worthless.

That said, given their restriction of in-base only, I had to prevent them from being effective in combat, so added the shield restriction. Mainly because as they were, I tended to just drag a line of power poles behind me.

The tier 2 solar panel isn't enough of an upgrade to justify its larger size. That monster is difficult to fit into earlier ranks of armor, so I often find myself fully capable of producing them yet I simply prefer the tier 1 variant. I like that it's a small bonus because that's more realistic for solar panels, but maybe it could be increased a bit, or the size made easier to use. Perhaps a 2x4 would be nice, instead of 3x5. Or maybe make the 1x3 the tier 2 and make tier 1 a 1x1. I feel like solar panels would be a great thing to stick into extra gaps you have, and it's frustrating having gaps that I have nothing good to put into.

True. It is comparable to the burner generator, and stronger during the day. I wish I could have made it produce power at night as well.
I actually think making them 1x5 instead might work. Keep the flatness for easier placement.

The tier 2 conduit looks strong yet very large. I haven't unlocked it yet but I'm skeptical I'd actually want to use it. It has an excellent power rating per square, but I don't need that much power in my base and it's not going to work very well in combat, not only because it's a conduit but also because of how much space it takes up. But I might be able to make it work for turret creeping as an early version of the fission generator. Or maybe I'd plug it in to charge the batteries really fast and then remove it. I wouldn't say it's a bad module, just perhaps a bit redundant and likely to not get used much. I wouldn't mind using the tier 1 conduit up into the end game.

Hmm. True enough. It was a compromise because I kept nerfing/buffing conduits.

The fission generator is brilliant! I haven't unlocked it yet but I think it'll definitely see use in my upper ranks of power armor. I can't yet comment on its power or fuel efficiency, so maybe I'll make another comment after I have started playing with it. I suspect I might disagree with the efficiency--low is definitely good, but 5% might be too low.

Well, if you haven't tested it, Whoknows. XD

Vanilla Nuclear power is kinda rediculous once you get the korinov process (or whatever it was called) going. This used to use Alien artifacts instead, which made like 3 fuel cubes and lasted around 3 minutes each. Or something, Can't recall.

Also its at least somewhat a legacy of my 50x power values in armor. Will proably revisit that stuff again. I just don't like the whole, Refuel once, never again.

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Here I will suggest new values for the generators:

Burner Generator tier 1 - unlocked earlier, with the other modules
2x2, 100kW, 15% efficiency

Yea. Will certainly make that earlier.

Burner Generator tier 2 - unlock and price up where yours is currently
2x3, 240kW, 15% efficiency - need more tall shapes, too many wide shapes

One of the serious restrictions I work under is that I don't HAVE tall models to use. The batteries, as they were before, were themselves a huge stretch, and I am not an artist at all.
But yes, a tier might be sensible.

Semi-Conducting Conduit tier 2 - possible side-grade to the super-conducting conduit
1x2, 120kW

Seems reasonable,

Super-Conducting Conduit - change to maintain 25% rate in combat, gives it a combat purpose to justify its large size
At 25% rate in combat, it's still worse per square than the tier 1 burner generator while you're in combat, but it has the advantage that it doesn't burn fuel at low efficiency, and can be useful in a situation where you are frequently going between power grid and combat, such as when trying to build defenses at the fringe of a biter base, or if you are getting a lot of attacks and don't have all your turrets set up yet.

Yea. That might be reasonable. Would have to split the two up in code, but can probably do that.

Idea 1 for solar panels - original size
Solar Panel tier 1
3x1, 45kW (15kW/sq)

One thing about solar panels is that I find 3x as powerful is good for vanilla, to make them useful. Dropping that to 1.5x as powerful hurts. Still, I agree they are somewhat more powerful than they ought to be. Probably drop it from 75 to 60kW at least.

Solar Panel tier 2
5x3, 330kW (22kW/sq)

5x1 instead, 110kW maybe. More efficient, and only somewhat less convinient.

Idea 2 for solar panels - smaller panels
Solar Panel tier 1
1x1, 12kW

Solar Panel tier 2
2x2, 64kW (16kW/sq)

Solar Panel tier 3?
4x2, 160kW (20kW/sq)

1x1 solar panels aren't as much fun Still, maybe. I tried to not make too many modules however. Shields were especially bad in my initial planning stage.
And squarile solar panels just feel wrong to me now. I love the flat varients I made.
Will certainly consider at least.

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As for the other modules, I haven't used a lot of them, but the shields, exoskeletons, and night vision visor all seem well balanced. The tier 1 shields at first look too weak to be worth using until you realize that what they provide is regeneration rate. Tier 2 shields are great for getting more shield hit points, but due to their lower efficiency there is some purpose for using tier 1 shields. I'm generally happy to use tier 2, however. The tiny actuators are great for slipping into early modular armor, but I managed to squeeze two exoskeletons into my power armor mk 1 and still have room for shields, batteries, conduits, night vision, and the large solar panel. It doesn't have much shield strength but it's not really for combat.

Yea. Those T1 shields are there mainly so you can not turret creep, and be able to take the unavoidable hits from spitters/worms early on. Not really combat rated, just there for a bit of extra health. Its more a transition stage.
Added a lower tier exoskeletons because can't fit them in basic armor, or rather can, but certainly can't POWER them. 25-8 = 17, 17*10 = 170, costs 200/sec, so even with nothing but solar panels, can't power them. Urgh.
Never touched nightvision, don't really plan to.

I do feel that the grid size increases too much over the course of time. The 5x5 modular armor is so small it really makes you have to choose what's important to you. The upgrade to 7x7 gives me a lot more freedom. I know it won't be much with bigger high-tier modules, but it's pretty comfortable already at the low end. Modular armor mk 2's 10x10 grid seems larger than anything should have. Here's the grid sizes I would suggest: 5x5, 7x7, 8x8, 9x9, 10x10. This actually shrinks Mk II grid size, which is good because it was really too large. 8x8 easily fits a fission generator or two plus enough shields and personal defense modules to become a walking tank. Can't fit your exoskeletons and roboports in there at the same time? That's the point of making choices.

True that. I suppose I was running under the idea that vanilla knew what it was doing. Notable, vanilla doubled in size per tier. I followed that, except only went up by 25% for T3 and T4 (roughly).
Smoothing that out might be sensible, and T2 vanilla was kinda endgame, so it was excessive. Hmm. Will consider that.

I'd like to end on two module suggestions, though I don't know if either one is possible to make.

Tier 2 Night Vision Visor
The idea would be to make the tier 1 version only partially light the night, while tier 2 is higher tech, larger, and costs more power but gives full-luminosity night vision. Perhaps it is also less de-saturated, so you can see colors more easily with night vision. Some players might want the more expensive module, others might feel satisfied with the tier 1. My main purpose for suggesting this is that the night vision visor seems too easy for how strong it is.

Bobs mod did something similar I recall. Went from green tint to shallow yellow tint (I think) to no tint.

All-Terrain Actuator
Like the exoskeleton, however instead of increasing your speed by a percentage of its net value, this module would increase it by a percentage of its base value. The result is that it's less effective on fast terrain and more effective on slow terrain. Players who spend a lot of time in their paved base or who build roads between bases would prefer the exoskeleton. Players like myself who are playing on rail world and finding themselves constantly bogged down by sand or snow would prefer the ATA.

That, I have no idea how to do at all. Same with some other ideas I had but couldn't implement.

Will certainly consider all of that. Does seem like well thought out feedback and all.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Glad to help!

I should clarify: the large solar panels are not bad at all, just hard to fit into small grids. It would be nice to have at least one small panel. Larger equipment at high tiers is nice so you don't have to manually place so many modules. I like the idea behind the shapes you're going for with the panels, and it's nice to just have a lot of variety in shapes overall. I take it back that we need more tall shapes; I recall now that both batteries and exoskeletons are tall.

Howabout a 2x1 for tier 1 panel? Then tier 2 can be 5x1, and tier 3 if you make it can be big like 7x3 or something. Or maybe just a tier 2 at 5x2.

I think it's good to not have too many tiers of modules. Not everything should have three tiers. But sometimes different modules have some overlap to better cover the tiers already. The fission generator is like a tier 3 burner generator, for example. I feel tier 3 solar panel can be reasonable, but another way to do it perhaps is to set the second panel at roughly tier 2.5 in difficulty to justify its improved power production margin which it needs already to justify its larger and more difficult shape.


I don't see hot-swapping modules as a problem. I feel that it's a choice the player makes. If you really want to keep swapping modules and get tired of constantly rearranging them, you can just make a second armor suit and swap those. What I wouldn't recommend is allowing the player to include a competent amount of all modules at once in their armor, unless it is a very high tier armor. No matter what you do, people will min-max their module setup, and so probably the best thing is to balance around the assumption that they will.


I would reduce the crafting time of suit modules. With most things in the game, long crafting time is there to entice you to automate its production. But I don't feel much drive to automate production of an item I'll use in very limited quantities. Even if I'm making a few tier 3 versions, I'm still just going to plop down some assemblers around a storehouse and make one batch. Making them craft faster enables the player to hand-craft modules in the field which they might do on the fly when they discover they want to test a new setup they just thought up.

- - -
unimportant drivel:

Realistic Power mod sets solar panels at 5.4kW output (18% of vanilla after correcting for the power demand cut in half), and I'm pretty much exclusively using solar panels to generate power. I have plenty of coal at my disposal, but I'm actually using solid fuel in burner generators for backup power. I also have a mod that forces me to mine for water, but I have enough water to use steam engines for power. I simply also have enough solid fuel that I use burner generators out of laziness because I don't feel like setting up water transportation to every power site. As for solar panels being my main production, I do that as a choice. It does take a large number of panels to accomplish, but the reduced cost of making them means it's mostly just taking up space. But I don't feel that the amount of power I get from solar panels is so high as to make other methods inferior, contrary to vanilla. The only issue I'm left with at this point, in terms of power production, is the way modules work. As if it wasn't bad enough in vanilla, with my limited energy production I find the efficiency modules far and away the superior choice. The very high energy costs of other modules seems reasonable when your energy production is so ridiculously overpowered you couldn't manage to spend it all without upping your energy costs. Fix vanilla energy and you reveal the imbalance in modules. I have my ideas for how to fix modules but I think once they are fixed, everything will begin to fall into place and 5.4kW (10.8kW with vanilla power draw) will remain an excellent value for solar panel output without stepping on the toes of steam and burner power.

I mention this to comment on power generation within the equipment grid. I feel that the vanilla solar panel is plenty effective enough, in fact I like that it's weak. It's a lazy module. Every other power generator has some important drawback (except the vanilla fusion generator), so when I use them to get more power in my suit, I feel like I'm doing something to earn it. And I'll still use solar panels when I'm not drawing a lot of power. One neat combination for early game is night vision, solar panels, and batteries. Night vision costs very little so one (vanilla) panel is plenty to charge your batteries in the day, and the rest of the space can be packed with batteries if you have a long night. That's why I feel that weak solar panels is fine. The worst part about weak solar panels in vanilla was that you didn't have any other power generation options until the fusion generator. Now that you have added the conduit and burner generator (and especially if you bring burner generator to tier 1 level), weak solar panels would be fine. If they fall short for your high power needs (shields), that just means you need to find a solution using the other generators. But even solar panels can work fine for shields, you just have to not go into combat very often. The only real problem arises when your actuators are draining all the power from the panels and not letting your batteries gradually charge. But I would have been a lot more willing to take the actuators out if I'd been working on dirt or grass, all this snow I'm stuck in is making it hard to move. Also I use an equipment grid mod, so I'll let the batteries charge in the car or tank while my own suit doesn't even have shields in it. It's like switching armors for different module setups, except I don't have to take my armor off to do it.

The most important advice I want to leave you with is that it is too easy to feel something is underpowered when you're used to using a more powerful version. When the game starts you with an overpowered item, you feel a sense of loss having it taken away. But this can be misleading, and being stuck without it can often make the game more fun. But also take my advice with a grain of salt. I am really good at some parts of gameplay and not so good at others. It is possible that the logistics of power generation in Factorio is easier for me than it is for other players.

[Ranakastrasz]

Glad to help!

I should clarify: the large solar panels are not bad at all, just hard to fit into small grids. It would be nice to have at least one small panel. Larger equipment at high tiers is nice so you don't have to manually place so many modules. I like the idea behind the shapes you're going for with the panels, and it's nice to just have a lot of variety in shapes overall. I take it back that we need more tall shapes; I recall now that both batteries and exoskeletons are tall.

There are still more long than tall shapes I think. But yea, that is why I made batteries tall.

Howabout a 2x1 for tier 1 panel? Then tier 2 can be 5x1, and tier 3 if you make it can be big like 7x3 or something. Or maybe just a tier 2 at 5x2.

That could work.

I think it's good to not have too many tiers of modules. Not everything should have three tiers. But sometimes different modules have some overlap to better cover the tiers already. The fission generator is like a tier 3 burner generator, for example. I feel tier 3 solar panel can be reasonable, but another way to do it perhaps is to set the second panel at roughly tier 2.5 in difficulty to justify its improved power production margin which it needs already to justify its larger and more difficult shape.

Yea. That was sort of how I thought of it. I added more tiers to a bunch of things, but ONLY when something felt like it was missing.

I don't see hot-swapping modules as a problem. I feel that it's a choice the player makes. If you really want to keep swapping modules and get tired of constantly rearranging them, you can just make a second armor suit and swap those. What I wouldn't recommend is allowing the player to include a competent amount of all modules at once in their armor, unless it is a very high tier armor. No matter what you do, people will min-max their module setup, and so probably the best thing is to balance around the assumption that they will.

True enough. And I suppose if people hotswap, it means both things are viable.
And yea, tradeoffs.

I would reduce the crafting time of suit modules. With most things in the game, long crafting time is there to entice you to automate its production. But I don't feel much drive to automate production of an item I'll use in very limited quantities. Even if I'm making a few tier 3 versions, I'm still just going to plop down some assemblers around a storehouse and make one batch. Making them craft faster enables the player to hand-craft modules in the field which they might do on the fly when they discover they want to test a new setup they just thought up.

Yea, I should probably do that. Vanilla has the same exact values, 10 seconds per module, in all cases, so I kinda just extrapolated. Which was silly. While yes, you need, like, 200 T0 shields to make a fusion reactor, it still isn't mass production since it is a one or two time cost, unlike most things you want to automate.

- - -
unimportant drivel:

Realistic Power mod sets solar panels at 5.4kW output (18% of vanilla after correcting for the power demand cut in half), and I'm pretty much exclusively using solar panels to generate power. I have plenty of coal at my disposal, but I'm actually using solid fuel in burner generators for backup power. I also have a mod that forces me to mine for water, but I have enough water to use steam engines for power. I simply also have enough solid fuel that I use burner generators out of laziness because I don't feel like setting up water transportation to every power site. As for solar panels being my main production, I do that as a choice. It does take a large number of panels to accomplish, but the reduced cost of making them means it's mostly just taking up space. But I don't feel that the amount of power I get from solar panels is so high as to make other methods inferior, contrary to vanilla. The only issue I'm left with at this point, in terms of power production, is the way modules work. As if it wasn't bad enough in vanilla, with my limited energy production I find the efficiency modules far and away the superior choice. The very high energy costs of other modules seems reasonable when your energy production is so ridiculously overpowered you couldn't manage to spend it all without upping your energy costs. Fix vanilla energy and you reveal the imbalance in modules. I have my ideas for how to fix modules but I think once they are fixed, everything will begin to fall into place and 5.4kW (10.8kW with vanilla power draw) will remain an excellent value for solar panel output without stepping on the toes of steam and burner power.

I haven't played with those difficulty mods before, so I wouldn't know. I mainly went by the assumption that vanilla did things right (more or less) and filled in the gaps. And yes, from other mod setups, balance is going to be quite different. The whole, 3 hour night thing for example.

I mention this to comment on power generation within the equipment grid. I feel that the vanilla solar panel is plenty effective enough, in fact I like that it's weak. It's a lazy module. Every other power generator has some important drawback (except the vanilla fusion generator), so when I use them to get more power in my suit, I feel like I'm doing something to earn it. And I'll still use solar panels when I'm not drawing a lot of power. One neat combination for early game is night vision, solar panels, and batteries. Night vision costs very little so one (vanilla) panel is plenty to charge your batteries in the day, and the rest of the space can be packed with batteries if you have a long night. That's why I feel that weak solar panels is fine. The worst part about weak solar panels in vanilla was that you didn't have any other power generation options until the fusion generator. Now that you have added the conduit and burner generator (and especially if you bring burner generator to tier 1 level), weak solar panels would be fine. If they fall short for your high power needs (shields), that just means you need to find a solution using the other generators. But even solar panels can work fine for shields, you just have to not go into combat very often. The only real problem arises when your actuators are draining all the power from the panels and not letting your batteries gradually charge. But I would have been a lot more willing to take the actuators out if I'd been working on dirt or grass, all this snow I'm stuck in is making it hard to move. Also I use an equipment grid mod, so I'll let the batteries charge in the car or tank while my own suit doesn't even have shields in it. It's like switching armors for different module setups, except I don't have to take my armor off to do it.

Yea. I agree. The solar panels are too strong now. It is too weak in vanilla, BUT only because you have no alternatives. With alternatives of conduits and burner generators, they could go to 15/tile and be reasonable.

The most important advice I want to leave you with is that it is too easy to feel something is underpowered when you're used to using a more powerful version. When the game starts you with an overpowered item, you feel a sense of loss having it taken away. But this can be misleading, and being stuck without it can often make the game more fun. But also take my advice with a grain of salt. I am really good at some parts of gameplay and not so good at others. It is possible that the logistics of power generation in Factorio is easier for me than it is for other players.

The actual power generation logistics in factory are pretty simple and streamlined. Most of the time, the space it takes up doesn't even matter.
Its them competing more directly for equipment slots in your armor that causes issues.

-----
I suppose this is as good a reason as any for me to try and update the mod. Been busy with work, and haven't had much enthusiasm for a while. Having a proper discussion should help XD

[thereaverofdarkness]

The actual power generation logistics in factory are pretty simple and streamlined. Most of the time, the space it takes up doesn't even matter.
Its them competing more directly for equipment slots in your armor that causes issues.

Very true! That's partly why I dislike vanilla solar panel structures: with a few accumulators they have no drawbacks. In nerfing their output while also lowering their build cost, they have one drawback: the space they use. Solar panels in armor need to be less weak because of the severely limited space. I think 15kW is a good starting point. Even if it's a bit low, it just means you have more excuse to make the tier 2 have a bigger margin.


I would like to point out that the Actuator tier 2 in your mod is called "Exoskeleton Equipment" in-game. I prefer the Actuator name for both tiers.

[Ranakastrasz]

Code: Select all

               Tier ,  Gen    , Size, Gen/size
    Conduit :  1    , 40kW    ,  1x1, 40  kw  *0.05 = 2 
    Conduit2:  3    ,720kW    ,  3x3, 80  kw  *0.05 = 4              
    Solar 1 :  1    , 75kW    ,  1x3, 25  kw  *0.7  = 17.5 kW      
    Solar 2 :  2    ,300kW    ,  2x5, 30  kw  *0.7  = 21   kW      
    Burner  :  2    ,100kW    ,  2x2, 25  kw  (10% efficiency) (8 sec/coal, 25 sec/solid)                  
    Fusion  :  3    ,800kW    ,  4x4, 50  kw  (5% efficiency) (6.7 min/Fuel)  
                                              
    
               Tier ,  Gen     , Size, Gen/size
    Conduit  : 1    ,  30kW    ,  1x1, 30  kw  *0.25 = 7.5
    Conduit 2: 2    , 240kW    ,  4x1, 60  kw  *0.25 = 15
    Solar 1  : 1    ,  30kW    ,  1x2, 15  kw  *0.7  =10.5 kW      
    Solar 2  : 2    , 100kW    ,  1x5, 20  kw  *0.7  =14   kW
    Burner 1 : 1    , 100kW    ,  2x2, 25  kw  (25% efficiency) (20   sec/coal, 62.5 sec/solid)
    Burner 2 : 2    , 360kW    ,  3x3, 40  kw  (30% efficiency) ( 6.7 sec/coal, 20.8 sec/solid)
    Fusion   : 3    ,1000kW    ,  4x4, 62.5kw  (10% efficiency) (13.3 min/Fuel)

This is what I am currently looking at.

Conduits are nerfed less in combat. Still mostly inferior to alternatives, but less so than before.
More importantly, T2 conduit is tall and thin, so it should be more interesting to fit (instead of massive and bulky)
The conduits are also weaker.

Pretty much downgraded and downsized the solars. Should always be easy to fit, and takes up horizontal space easily.
about 50% less energy in general.

Might add a T3 back in which is 2x5, with 250-300 KW, but not sure yet.

Adding a second tier to burner, which is 3x3 instead of the 3x2, because its easier to just scale the image.
Is more efficient, and weaker solar panels makes them better in comparison.
Instead of 10%, is 25%, and 30% for the T2. should help.

I went and just made Fusion a flat 1MW of power. I kept toggling between 800 and 960, because I hated the idea of having a fractional amount of power per tile. But It is special anyway, so yea... Also, more efficient, so 13 minutes/nuclear cell instead of 7 minutes.

Not really sure if this will be right yet. I kept adjusting things constantly while trying to type this up, so yea... I have no idea what I am doing XD

[Ranakastrasz]

The actual power generation logistics in factory are pretty simple and streamlined. Most of the time, the space it takes up doesn't even matter.
Its them competing more directly for equipment slots in your armor that causes issues.

Very true! That's partly why I dislike vanilla solar panel structures: with a few accumulators they have no drawbacks. In nerfing their output while also lowering their build cost, they have one drawback: the space they use. Solar panels in armor need to be less weak because of the severely limited space. I think 15kW is a good starting point. Even if it's a bit low, it just means you have more excuse to make the tier 2 have a bigger margin.

Huh. That is an interesting idea. Make solar panels, in effect, LARGER, without otherwise changing their Power/cost.
Does that mod also cut accumulator stats?

Also also daynight extention mods which don't touch accumulators (much) tend to have fun effects on those solar panels.

Also part of the justification for making generators so inefficient. By the time you got them, I assumed that you would easily have metric tons of coal, or solid fuel, or even frikkin nuclear cells, so low efficiency would make up for it. Good to see someone disagreeing here, because I wouldn't have given that a second thought.

Also, Return of the Also. Also the also strikes back.

I would like to point out that the Actuator tier 2 in your mod is called "Exoskeleton Equipment" in-game. I prefer the Actuator name for both tiers.

Yea, I prefer it too. I think I changed it back when Factorio removed all the "Basic" prefixes from everything. It was "Advanced Actuator" for a while before that.
Mainly did that because I could NEVER REMEMBER the name of it.

[Ranakastrasz]

V16.1.3 Fixed crash on no Avatar.

Turns out I uncommented something I really shouldn't have, so it was trying to use null as an index when trying to clean up dummies.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I don't know if you should raise the burner generator efficiency that much. The 25% efficiency of the structure in KS Power is at a really good spot. I'd go for 15%/20% personally, or 20%/25% at the highest. It's not that huge a difference though, maybe I just don't want my suit generator to be more efficient than my structure generators. At 10% efficiency I could have afforded the fuel cost just fine, it simply would have required extra inventory space because 3 slots of solid fuel lasted under 15 minutes. That is partly due to the power nerf in the solid fuel from Realistic Power (25MJ down to 6.25MJ), and also once the batteries filled up, the fuel would have stopped running out so fast.


I think the Kovarex Enrichment Process is obscenely overpowered. It's actually semi-realistic in that neutron capture can be used to literally transmute stable lanthanides into reactor-grade or weapons-grade trans-uranic metals. The real process is dirtier and produces mostly metals with a half-life outside of the ideal ranges, but more importantly it's a problem for gameplay balance because the process just reaches a tipping point where your U-235 production jumps up by about two orders of magnitude all at once, and your only limit to how much you can produce is your vastly greater quantities of U-238. So if the fission generator is OP due to how long the fuel lasts, that's more of a problem with the Kovarex Enrichment Process.

The Uranium Magazines are similarly overpowered because the damage is high enough to be competent in the end game without bullet damage upgrades. With them (and who doesn't have them?) the damage is so obscenely high that the only reason it doesn't trash all other turrets instantly is the pitiful range on gun turrets which is itself a problem I think should be corrected. As piercing magazine has 8 damage, I'd give uranium magazine only 12 (down from 24).

Does that mod also cut accumulator stats?

Kenira actually took my idea and tweaked it: the mod gives two accumulator types, high power and high capacity.
High power has max input/output 1.2mW, same as laser turret. It stores 25MJ and can be filled/drained in about 20 seconds.
High capacity has max input/output 50kW. It stores 500MJ and takes 10,000 seconds to fill or drain, that's 2 hours, 46 minutes, 40 seconds!

Mainly did that because I could NEVER REMEMBER the name of it.

Heh. I can always remember actuator but I forget exoskeleton.

[Ranakastrasz]

I don't know if you should raise the burner generator efficiency that much. The 25% efficiency of the structure in KS Power is at a really good spot. I'd go for 15%/20% personally, or 20%/25% at the highest. It's not that huge a difference though, maybe I just don't want my suit generator to be more efficient than my structure generators. At 10% efficiency I could have afforded the fuel cost just fine, it simply would have required extra inventory space because 3 slots of solid fuel lasted under 15 minutes. That is partly due to the power nerf in the solid fuel from Realistic Power (25MJ down to 6.25MJ), and also once the batteries filled up, the fuel would have stopped running out so fast.

Hmm. I might have misread it then. I was running on the 50% from vanilla boilers, but I could reduce it further. Note that those 25% burner generators you are talking about are the LEAST efficient.

Given it takes you like 5 seconds to refuel, and that is every 10-15 minutes (at full draw) It seems reasonable. So probably 10-20% overall might work instead. 10% was a bit low however.

I think the Kovarex Enrichment Process is obscenely overpowered. It's actually semi-realistic in that neutron capture can be used to literally transmute stable lanthanides into reactor-grade or weapons-grade trans-uranic metals. The real process is dirtier and produces mostly metals with a half-life outside of the ideal ranges, but more importantly it's a problem for gameplay balance because the process just reaches a tipping point where your U-235 production jumps up by about two orders of magnitude all at once, and your only limit to how much you can produce is your vastly greater quantities of U-238. So if the fission generator is OP due to how long the fuel lasts, that's more of a problem with the Kovarex Enrichment Process.

The Uranium Magazines are similarly overpowered because the damage is high enough to be competent in the end game without bullet damage upgrades. With them (and who doesn't have them?) the damage is so obscenely high that the only reason it doesn't trash all other turrets instantly is the pitiful range on gun turrets which is itself a problem I think should be corrected. As piercing magazine has 8 damage, I'd give uranium magazine only 12 (down from 24).

Very true. Those are both kinda ridiculous. The values were more... Something I understood when I used Enriched solid fuel (via artifacts) instead of uranium.

Does that mod also cut accumulator stats?

Kenira actually took my idea and tweaked it: the mod gives two accumulator types, high power and high capacity.
High power has max input/output 1.2mW, same as laser turret. It stores 25MJ and can be filled/drained in about 20 seconds.
High capacity has max input/output 50kW. It stores 500MJ and takes 10,000 seconds to fill or drain, that's 2 hours, 46 minutes, 40 seconds!

20 second accumulator? reasonable enough. Quick charge/discharge for laser turrets or other possible power fluxuations...

2 hours 45 minutes? What?
Heh. That is... Excessive. Although for a 60x duration daynight cycle, which is ~6 hours (Head math, probably wrong) compared to my own 20 minute daynight cycle... I can see why that might be desirable.

Mainly did that because I could NEVER REMEMBER the name of it.

Heh. I can always remember actuator but I forget exoskeleton.

Indeed. Actuators are easy to remember, and I can both spell and pronounce it without issue. Exoskelleton, I can never recall how many 'l's are in the word, and I generally just call them "Leggings" anyway.

[thereaverofdarkness]

2 hours 45 minutes? What?
Heh. That is... Excessive. Although for a 60x duration daynight cycle, which is ~6 hours (Head math, probably wrong) compared to my own 20 minute daynight cycle... I can see why that might be desirable.

It's designed for a default setting of 24 hour day/night cycle. Since the night is effectively ~20-30% of the cycle depending how soon your accumulators begin draining, you don't need all that long to last the night. At shorter cycle times it works fine because the 50kW charge/discharge rate isn't all that low. My cycle is 7 hours. I have only a handful of them in my base, but if I were to put down enough to generate some seriously high power all night, it still wouldn't take up a lot of space. It would just cost a lot of batteries.

Indeed. Actuators are easy to remember, and I can both spell and pronounce it without issue. Exoskelleton, I can never recall how many 'l's are in the word, and I generally just call them "Leggings" anyway.

I was making the point that in the mod it is called "Exoskeleton". I assume you meant to call it "Actuator", so I think you have a text error in the mod.

[Ranakastrasz]

Yea. The name got reverted by accident. They are both supposed to be actuators.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Are you going to release the balance update soon?

[Ranakastrasz]

Maybe. Been spending a lot of time at work/college reciently so this is low priority.

Edit:
If you couldn't tell, balancing is not something I am any good at.
Still need to confirm this is correct before I actually go and make the changes.
Spreadsheet

The main thing this will cost me is converting a power pole into a module, and having to mess with rotation for the different sized solar panels.

Also I need to entirely rewrite the game logic, mainly to use Electrical Interfaces. Because it looks like I can cut the granularity down massively given it will handle most of the smoothing for me. Should get rid of the whole, '20x as expensive as any other mod' thing.

---

As for the Burner Generator, should the T2 variant have 5-10 slots? I mean, it uses fuel around 3x faster, even with higher efficiency, sooo...
Before, 3 stacks of solid fuel were to last an hour as my benchmark (approximately), which seemed reasonable, if not excessive. Given for you that is 15 minutes, I can see the issue.
Current change boosts that to 23 minutes, approximately, which is still somewhat low, but its not THAT bad. However, the T2 correspondingly would only get 8 minutes of performance out of it. Which while that IS a lot of performance, doesn't last that long. Rocket fuel is 9x as powerful but 1/5th the stack size, so only doubles you to 16 minutes at best. So yea.

Not really sure how to handle this. Having 10 slots is probably reasonable, even if it feels ridiculous.

---

Conduits, after I did the math, are hilariously weak when you take damage. even at 25% efficiency they are pretty weak. However, I would prefer them never being better than Solar in combat (Average or during the day) so 25% is a bit too strong.
Making the T2 tall and thin makes it more feasible to place.

---

[thereaverofdarkness]

I might give the burner generator as many fuel slots as it takes up spaces on the grid, or use the ratio between the two to determine a good amount. If the Mk. 2 doesn't remain fueled for as long, that's fine because it generates power faster. Also, if the batteries ever fill up then it stops burning fuel. At night I kept putting more fuel in the generator in my tank but eventually if I wasn't in combat as much, the batteries got filled and I stopped needing to refuel it.

I might consider increasing the rate you get power from the conduit. It felt low to me, maybe I just need more of them, but since I'm providing the power from my grid, I feel like it should be kind of strong.

But I have another idea, if it's not too late to toss some on the pile:

When you research modular armor, it should immediately unlock the conduit, burner generator, actuator, electrostatic shield, and battery. This means you can immediately put the armor to use without further research. The higher tiers and things like solar panels and night vision would be unlocked through further research. Following this logic, some of these immediate unlocks can be very weak. Their higher tier counterparts can be better balanced for use in the late game. The current version's attributes for burner generator and conduit seem good for things that are immediately unlocked when you research the armor.

[Hyratel]

Bug: when you get in an Airplane (aircraft mod) and go into your base with Conduits in your armor, it does a weird something where it maxes out the drain on the power network, blacking out everything else and not actually charging your batteries. recovery is by popping one Conduit out of the armor and reinstalling it

ETA: I think it only happens after you've been in combat?

[thereaverofdarkness]

Can you update this to 0.17? I tried just changing the version number, but the mod had bugs causing it to fail to load, and I have no idea how to fix it.

[Peter34]

Please update this mod to 0.17.

[Ranakastrasz]

V17
Disabled conduits again. I doubt I will ever re-enable them, because I honestly have no idea what is going on, and I would really need to rewrite the whole thing and/or copy someone else's implemenation.

Mostly just had to rename things, but the Laser Turret dummy (which probably ought to be replaced with a power interface dummy instead, but yea) needed it's graphics to be valid.
Also had to remove the "goes to main inventory" flag because that got removed with new hotbar system.
-----

While I still play factorio, I don't use this mod anymore, and my enthusiasm for it is gone. Honestly, with the vanilla buff to the solar panel, and many other changes in general, the reason I had for making this in the first place is largely gone. Sure, a few aspects are nice, but really, it isn't something I need for my games to be enjoyable. I'll probably do the requested balance pass, but that's about it.

[Peter34]

Thanks for updating this mod!

The main reason I like it is the possibility of larger grids, 12x12 and 15x15, for endgame awesomeness, and secondly the alternative forms of power generation, and the smaller exoskeletons and differently sized shields adding more flexibiloty

I know that there are mods that adds suits with huge grids, 15x15 and maybe even 20x20, but it's my impression that these mods only add those larger suits, or else adds other things too but without any concern for game balance at all. In SP, one can try to just not use wildly unbalanced options, but that goes out the window in MP games, where one has to sit and watch other players running around with ultra-cheesed gear.

So that's why I remain a fan of this mod.

[Ranakastrasz]

I see. That much is understandable. I would point out that I haven't touched the balance here for a long time, and the game has changed, so I have no idea if it still is balanced. But yea, I understand.

----
After playing PVP Rebalance, (Which incidentally the developer just transferred control of to me since he had given up and I asked nicely) I have to say that the way he changed the modules feels more sensible.
Specifically
- Modular armor equipment grid changed to 4x6, room for 6 modules. (up from 4). Now allows pocket fusion with 2 modules.
- Power armor 1 equipment grid changed to 6x8, room for 12 modules (up from 9). Now allows pocket fusion with multiple exosuits.

Overall, would there be an objection if I gave up on the non-square shapes, and just went with squares like vanilla (mostly) used? And used sizes like this, balanced around 2x2 modules, with occational other sizes?