[MOD 1.1] Xander Mod v3.6.1

[Repofme1]

Thanks for the quick replies!

I'm glad you like it, jodukus, but I agree with all that it's not very clear. I'll probably write a more explanatory guide in the near future, based on a test playthrough.

Oh! I didn't realize that about the science multiplier, but good to know.

The belts and automation have been quite the problem for everyone, myself included. There's no easy fix because I have to make things easy enough to access early on, but still have severe enough disadvantages to keep the shit tier of things from persisting through the entire game. That being said, I've put in a lot of cost reductions for 1.1.0, and the update is almost ready to publish. I aim to do that tonight, hopefully it will work. Last time it took a couple frustrating hours because the slow Internet kept cancelling the upload And the nature of things might be that I need even deeper restructuring, but I'd like to see how the current latest version turns out first.

Yeah, about chemical fuel again, coke is also in that category and can be made from coal after one no-prereq research. You only lose 1/8 the energy content if making coke in a stone furnace, but 1/4 if a brick furnace due to the chemical fuel needed for the latter. However coal energy has been doubled in the latest version, reducing it ton1/16 and 1/8 loss respectively. This is definitely going in the clear explanation, since it's been such a point of confusion.

[jodokus31]

I fear, that I'm not the most representative type of player.

Regarding upload problems on the mod platform (which seems to be really problematic sometimes)
The mod is really big due to the graphics. Maybe it can be splitted, because I would assume, that the graphics don't change very often.
I dont know, if its capable...just an idea

[Repofme1]

I fear, that I'm not the most representative type of player.

Regarding upload problems on the mod platform (which seems to be really problematic sometimes)
The mod is really big due to the graphics. Maybe it can be splitted, because I would assume, that the graphics don't change very often.
I dont know, if its capable...just an idea

I had figured out that the graphics were almost all of the file size, but I had not thought of splitting it. I guess because the code depends on the graphics, and it would be annoying to have to switch between two mods all the time when I'm working. I've also found that I do update the graphics fairly frequently, in between working on other parts, so I would probably have to upload a graphics-only mod as often as a code-only mod

In other news the 1.1.0 update is finally out! It's not perfect, of course, but it was getting pretty substantial and I didn't want to sit on it any longer. Regarding the trouble with the circuit and assembling machine level 1, I decided to currently go with making electronics easier to research, rather than adding a crude stepping-stone recipe for circuit 1. The latter was causing too many problems with future progression.

The following broad features should be currently functional, also updated in the OP:
- Up to circuit 1 and assembler 1, but not circuit or assembler 2
- Up to machine tool 1, maybe up to machine tool 2 but not sure
- Basic logistic automation: belts, underground belts, splittters, inserters, pipes
- Up to blast furnace (base steel furnace), but not electric furnace quite yet

[orzelek]

Tbh I'm mostly concerned about scenarios with science multiplier at 4-5 or more.
Thats my personal preference mostly but if someone selects marathon preset they'll end up with multiplier 4.
And my count of science packs to be made by hand was about 500 in that case or near it. That's a bit harsh for start for sure.

If you are rebalancing science costs then multipliers might not be needed - would need to place it in description so that people won't select marathon if they like it.
In worst case scenario we can always cheat a bit and make hand crafting faster if needed so it's not a very big problem.

I'm not really sure why would you like to make belts much further away from start. It's most time consuming "feature" because without belts you can't automate even simple things like coal delivery to smelters. Normally you would get out of this stage of game in half an hour or shorter.. but here it might be few hours at least and that might keep people that don't like manual crafting away from mod.

In the end it's your decision

[Ratzap]

One thing I've noticed just now is you're being hit by the 'multiple recipe for the same item' feature.

I'm researching steel parts and anything using standard belt/shaft/gear mechanism will no longer autocraft because the steel recipe is taking presidence?

[jodokus31]

I tested a bit with the new version.
I started another time from beginning, because I added RSO. I dont know, if the current config is ok, but the generated map looked good to me.
For me, it feels another step smoother. The science costs are reduced. The handcrafting of f.e. belts is faster. I'm 1,5 h in, and have already researched steel which can be smelted now.
One thing I discovered, that coke can be indeed smelted to graphite powder. I think, that is really dangerous, because, once you run out of the item you want to smelt and the furnace has nothing in the output slot, the furnace switches to graphite powder smelting...

[Ratzap]

I let it run and plugged away at the research. I'm now 7 hours in with organics researching now (basically almost all the red tech). I've not tried to build any circuits or assemblers as you've said they're still problematic. The solder recipes all have missing keys by the way.

Even once it's safe to use the assemblers, automating is not going to be quick and easy with so many intermediates/products. Plus the furnaces switching to gobble coke if they run dry will be a problem. Circuit networks would be ideal to fix a lot of it but they're green tech right?

[Repofme1]

Hi all -

Good news is, I've put together a hopefully better plain-text description, that guides some of the early game and explains some of the problems I'm running into. It's in the Long Description section of the OP.

Bad news is I see these same problems as before are still as nasty as ever, based on your feedback. I haven't missed, forgotten, or disregarded it, I just need some time to figure things out. I guess the main problem that I am facing is how to make early advancement possible, in order to reach the proper level of stuff, but to then essentially require doing things the good and proper way *once you develop it*. Not to absolutely enforce doing things this way, but to make it so that the early crude methods become very impractical. I tried to clear things up in the new plain description, see if it helps you understand what's going on.

The root source of all these issues seems to be actually just my really perfectionist mind, that requires an incredibly detailed and realistic experience to believe things. I just know way too much about science & technology, chemistry and materials in particular. And to be honest I have some doubts that this is worth doing, given how different my preferences seem to be. But that's something I almost always feel in life.

In other news, I also spent a few hours perfecting the RSO config, although I suspect it will suffer from the same difficulty problems as I mentioned above. I also think that the original one was pretty okay, so I'll leave it as the main distribution one with RSO (orzelek: save yourself some work and no need to change anything). When I have time I'll upload my custom one to the main post for people, if they want a more interesting ore distribution. The main feature that I developed was making ores of the same type more clustered together, so you would have f.e. one area with a lot of coal and iron, and another with a lot of bauxite and garnierite, and another with a lot of open space for building, and another with sulfidic ore and natural gas, et cetera.

[houkime]

The main problem is that Factorio vanilla does not really make sense from the physical standpoint. ))
You actually need to reinvent everything in Factorio in order for physics and logic to help you instead of messing with "smooth enjoyable gameplay".
Once you achieve it, you will automatically solve the problem with natural progression.

Main illustration of this is the magic non-energy-consuming, no-engine-needed belt.

I can propose two solutions for it.
Here's the simplest scenario.

1. Burner engine with or without water that produces Mechanical Force. You know it from Yuoki Industries.
2. Early Hydraulical Belt that consumes MF for fuel and simultaneusly acts as a pipe for it.

Other variant

1. Crude offshore pump is a burner offshore pump
2. Offshore pump produces Water
3. Hydraulical Belt consumes water (IMPORTANT) when it HITS CAP and acts as a pipe for it.

And later on you can have electric belts that are faster but require electricity (and maybe conduct it), do not require anything else, and consist of rubber, 2 gears on 1 shaft, two cylinders of choice and an electric engine which is entirely realistical.

[jodokus31]

I don't think its possible to solve everything so, that everyone will like it.
So I would propose, that you do it, how you wanted it to do and whats feels right for you. Some people will like it and some will dislike it, but in the end, everybody knows, if he/she wants to mess with it or not. And I'm sure, that many people will take the challenge, because it is a real interesting concept, if its based on real-life processes.
And I'm not talking about problems or bugs, which are only disturbing, but making no real sense. (Maybe also difficult to differ, if you dont have so much knowledge about the processes (f.e. Me: Sometimes, I don't have any glue, whats happening in the recipes ))

I let it run and plugged away at the research. I'm now 7 hours in with organics researching now (basically almost all the red tech). I've not tried to build any circuits or assemblers as you've said they're still problematic. The solder recipes all have missing keys by the way.

Even once it's safe to use the assemblers, automating is not going to be quick and easy with so many intermediates/products. Plus the furnaces switching to gobble coke if they run dry will be a problem. Circuit networks would be ideal to fix a lot of it but they're green tech right?

I can imagine, that the automation is not going to be easy Will see, how I will mess with it.
Regarding the "accidently smelting coke" problem. Maybe it works ok-ish, if you ensure, that you always have too much input for those processes. Gonna be really tough to realize it.

[betalos]

I just accidently clicked in the wrong spot and stumbled upon the following "hack":

1.) Place a stone brick furnace
2.) Fill with coal as fuel
3.) Replace it with a clay brick furnace
Et voilà! Now you can use the coal as fuel in the clay brick furnace.

But I think it's a bug in factorio itself.

[orzelek]

RSO config: if you are sure it's good I will update it soon-ish and release new one.

As for early automation:
You can try to look at AAI Industries for a bit of inspiration on how it does early game stuff. Seems quite practical but might not be realistic enough. Overall I see lack of belts automation to be quite a big obstacle in early game. And there is no nice way to get belts to be close to realistic here without some tricks and scripting.

@betalos
Thats certainly a Factorio bug. Might not get fixed soon since we are on stable - might need to wait till 0.16 release.

[Repofme1]

Hi all -

Quick note regarding the brick furnace, the coke->graphite was the last straw between me and the current brick furnace. I decided that a little graphics were not worth the trouble for a furnace-type machine. I also wanted to see if my initial qualms were even valid anymore, and it turns out theyre not! I re-wrote the brick furnace as an assembling machine (took only 20 minutes), and it made light when working just fine! So now we'll have a fix not only for the coke issue, but also for the inelegant kludge of all these charge-smelting recipes. That's easy enough, and I might have a few other small bug fixes, so these will be going into a patch in the next fee days.

Further development, fixing excessive starting difficulty -
I'verified been feeling discouraged these past two days because we keep fixing the same problems and hitting them again. It seems to be all caused by the issue with crude vs. regular ways to do stuff, which itself comes from the conflict between my mind demanding high-quality stuff, but practicality mandating a game that's possible to play.

But then, a wild idea appeared! However it might be totally stupid so first I wanted to see what you all think. It's basically digging myself even deeper by making a complete, simpler, distinct, starting era:
- Complete set of machine & automation capabilities (really only burner assembler & cheap tier transport belt)
- Vastly decreased costs & complexity of all burner-era stuff
- Better, more complete use of recipe categoris to split off burner-era cheapness from electric-era improvements
- Burner machines and automation are capable of starting mass-production of adequate quality parts for the electric era

I think that this would work, but it would take a fair bit of effort. Nothing I can't handle after the months spent building most of the mod, but I'll save myself the trouble if it has some glaring flaw that I don't notice.

And you know what the irony of all this is? The physics-less transport belts don't bother me! It's more like the idea of direct burner smelting and plain iron plates still being relevant in the late game that upsets me. Very strange, since they're quite similar issues. Also, since I know a trace of object-oriented programming but none of the Factorio specific stuff, I'm hesitant to get into scripting and the like.

Thanks to all for the suggestions, ideas, and other starting mods to look at, and thank you jodokus31 for the encouragement

[Repofme1]

RSO config: if you are sure it's good I will update it soon-ish and release new one.

I'm actually not certain of it yet, still needs more testing to make sure you won't get stuck with an impossibly difficult world. I'll let you know when it's done.

[Ratzap]

Well that's good news. Both that you have solved the furnace problem and are feeling less discouraged.

The belts and machines proposal would probably be for the best. Currently you added the basic tier because you think starting off with the stock tech levels is unrealistic right? Then again, doing everything by hand and living out of boxes is somewhat unrealistic as well. One person stuck in that sort of situation would be forced to find some sort of automation simply as a time multiplier. It may not be fast or robust but it would clank along while you took care of something else. The difficultly will be balancing the transition from crude to better. Crude has to be cheap and easy enough to actually use but crappy enough to make the transition essential once it's unlocked. But that's where testing comes in.

Personally the 7 hours I've played to get mostly red done it's the slowest start. Engineer versus Environment and Seablock were/are far longer to get going. Anonymods I think took around 10h to get green going. Basically I think make the game you want and don't worry about anyone wanting it quicker, easier, harder, longer whatever or you'll be forever flipflopping around trying to hit an impossible goal. Make what you want and then after it's working to your satisfaction think about options for people who want it slightly different.

[jodokus31]

Furnaces with recipe selection and more than 1 input items are a great decision. This was my biggest concern

Regarding your plans. I must agree, that this complexity and crafting times on the first stage of the game is an obstacle, which is really tough in a game about automation. And once you got some automation tool, its hard to get it going.
On one side it points out the gap between hardly get anything done and the blessing of automation later. EDIT: And i think it has already been soften up from 1.0.0 quite a lot.
On the other side, I would assume, that the later content of your mod will get really intense and provides enough interesting challenges, so you may want to skip the slow start challenge.

If you do it, you should consider, that the gap between burner and electric era is not too big.

Well that's good news. Both that you have solved the furnace problem and are feeling less discouraged.

The belts and machines proposal would probably be for the best. Currently you added the basic tier because you think starting off with the stock tech levels is unrealistic right? Then again, doing everything by hand and living out of boxes is somewhat unrealistic as well. One person stuck in that sort of situation would be forced to find some sort of automation simply as a time multiplier. It may not be fast or robust but it would clank along while you took care of something else. The difficultly will be balancing the transition from crude to better. Crude has to be cheap and easy enough to actually use but crappy enough to make the transition essential once it's unlocked. But that's where testing comes in.

Personally the 7 hours I've played to get mostly red done it's the slowest start. Engineer versus Environment and Seablock were/are far longer to get going. Anonymods I think took around 10h to get green going. Basically I think make the game you want and don't worry about anyone wanting it quicker, easier, harder, longer whatever or you'll be forever flipflopping around trying to hit an impossible goal. Make what you want and then after it's working to your satisfaction think about options for people who want it slightly different.

Fully agree

[Repofme1]

Well that's good news. Both that you have solved the furnace problem and are feeling less discouraged.

The belts and machines proposal would probably be for the best. Currently you added the basic tier because you think starting off with the stock tech levels is unrealistic right? Then again, doing everything by hand and living out of boxes is somewhat unrealistic as well. One person stuck in that sort of situation would be forced to find some sort of automation simply as a time multiplier. It may not be fast or robust but it would clank along while you took care of something else. The difficultly will be balancing the transition from crude to better. Crude has to be cheap and easy enough to actually use but crappy enough to make the transition essential once it's unlocked. But that's where testing comes in.

Personally the 7 hours I've played to get mostly red done it's the slowest start. Engineer versus Environment and Seablock were/are far longer to get going. Anonymods I think took around 10h to get green going. Basically I think make the game you want and don't worry about anyone wanting it quicker, easier, harder, longer whatever or you'll be forever flipflopping around trying to hit an impossible goal. Make what you want and then after it's working to your satisfaction think about options for people who want it slightly different.

Many thanks for the perspective on startup times, and style advice You're correct about the first tech level, but I definitely been too hard-core on the realism without being quite aware of it. I mean, the guy who makes the YouTube channel Primitive Technology built a water hammer out of a log and some rocks, so this stuff is a lot more plausible than my mind's natural set point gives it credit for.

I haven't come up with any severe objections to the complete burner era, so I'll make that my tentative plan, and of course wait a bit longer for more feedback. In the meantime I'll probably upload a patch with some small fixes, mainly the new furnaces.

It will be a lot more testing, but I do feel happy with a 5-10 hour start, especially since I would find a few hundred hour game nicely fulfilling. I think also, that the cost contrast between early and later doesn't have to be so extreme, so I can keep the tier 0 stuff not so badly disadvantaged. Mostly because I better realized how to use recipe categories to make the burner machines and recipes become fully obsolete, so now they can be pretty much whatever! The idea is to make the early -> improved transition essential by using different part sets for the two domains, with simpler at firat and intricate later, and not so much cost contrast. But the burner stuff will only even be capable at all of making parts for electric level 1, so I don't need too much cost contrast. Such high contrast seems to very easily lead into a too expensive start, or a too cheap seconditions stage.
Hopefully I can balance it for a start that's moderately involved but not insane, and you won't realize how limited the early recipes were until the next stage.

XM is rolling again!

[Ratzap]

One thing I didn't mention that I thought was missing: using previous tier items as part of the recipe for the next.

Some mods do this and stock does to an extent and I must admit I like it. It lets you do in situ replacement upgrades without leaving you with boxes of obsolete gear and it's realistic in a way. If you built a miner running on steam, you might reuse the chassis later and drop in an electric motor. Sometimes the idea doesn't fit though as you'd think "how would you use that one as part of this?" but it's something to consider and integrating it into the burner/electric transition could explain mitigating the materials cost.

[orzelek]

RSO config: if you are sure it's good I will update it soon-ish and release new one.

I'm actually not certain of it yet, still needs more testing to make sure you won't get stuck with an impossibly difficult world. I'll let you know when it's done.

Short note: above is guaranteed to happen.. sooner or later
(Cue all bob's games where some nasty gold patch needed searching of about 2.5k tiles area from start and then fight to get to it)

Idea with something aking to era separation you wrote above is really nice. Main difference between crude/basic stuff and later electric counterparts could be in some of easy to balance areas:
1. Time of crafting
2. Efficiency (measured either by power per item or amount of final product from same amount of input ore)
Added on top of that would be the fact that higher tier stuff would need higher grade plates/materials should make the tiers distinct enough. And then make sure that science pack materials reflect the eras like now with science 0 and it should be nice to play.

PS.
If you would aim for 5-10h startup then science multiplied version would be "fun" (in Dwarf Fortress way). But I did play Dwarf Fortress and enjoy it

PPS.
My AAI Industry/hardcrafting is at around 3h and still not even green science in sight

[houkime]

Well, if you don't like lategame plates so much make IronOre -*chemistry-chemistry* ->FineIronPowder-> *3d printer machine* -> a complex irregularly shaped part for whatever or even the whole mechanism. Like, fineMetalPowder+Coils+MagnetizedIron->*3d-printer*->Electric Stepper Motor.
You also don't really need Wires for lategame circuits, they can all be done with chemical means.
You can also make 3d-printer recipes for the most parts and devices you need.
Make it like in real life - it can be kinda slow but it actually saves you partcount and materials needed. -> perfect for anything complex like engines, robots and stuff.