eradicator wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 9:48 am
That is very reassuring. In my last attempt (~2 month ago) i instantly hit the "no loaders" wallblock, and while loaders technically aren't required i know from my first (and longest) attempt in 1.5.x that i don't want to even try without loaders. Also from a rough look at the tech tree it appeared at that time that cliffsplosives weren't possible either, but i can't update right now to confirm if that impression still holds.
Last I checked cliff explosives are both researchable and craftable with red/green science.
eradicator wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 9:48 am
I'm sorry i can't give you anything more specific on that. Mostly because Xanders requires so much time investment to even get to the starting line (electricity/robots). I guess i'm just not really in the target audience anymore D:.
I absolutely agree that the early game grind with XM is tedious. My thought is to incorporate an (optional) quick start. Now that axes are gone, the starting titanium forgings are simply useless, but I like the idea of the player starting with some minimal amount of high technology items from their crashed spacecraft. So the player would start with a self-powered placeable roboport and a stack of "salvaged construction drones."
eradicator wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 9:48 am
I have to admit though *cough* that i always preferred the 1x2 sized "standard" loaders as they feel less like a direct replacement for inserters. Or maybe just because they're a different size in a world otherwise full of 1x1 and 3x3 :p.
I feel like inserters still have a definite place since you don't usually want to force a belt of material into a single machine. One possibility I've considered to address the problem of throughput of some early recipes is to make an earlier, more expensive recipe for fast inserters. But I think it's more consistent to use loaders to e.g. dump coke out of a blast furnace.
I will also look into fixing recipes for Loaders Redux and/or Vanilla Loaders HD.
eradicator wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 9:48 am
"Flare stack" does have an MIT license ;p. Personalyl i'd prefer a less immersion breaking solution than a glorified void-pipe. As far as i remember from 1.5.x @Repofme1 did include "waste management" recipes for most of the stuff, they were just way too slow and annoying to use :/.
It would still be a void-pipe, but limited to gases and probably highly polluting. Historically things like HCl emissions from the LeBlanc process were significant contributors to poor air quality in Britain, for example. The hard part is figuring out a cost to pollution, because currently there's no reason to not emit everything.
Most liquid wastes are recyclable and it's quite possible to run them as closed cycle processes producing small amounts of solid wastes from the water reclamation recipes. The recipe speeds may need tweaking, but in my playtime it hasn't felt particularly burdensome.
I have greatly simplified solid waste management by changing research requirements and using true void recipes for most items. Usually a line of ore processors handling a yellow belt of ore outputs a quantity of solid waste easily handled by a single machine.
eradicator wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 9:48 am
Oh? Can inserters grab faster than 60i/s now

?
Yes they can!
eradicator wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 9:48 am
Therax wrote: ↑Sat Jun 29, 2019 8:02 pm
I'm definitely intending to do a pass over what science packs are needed to avoid these sorts of inversions.
I'm still kinda against this as it makes maintaining and reading the tech tree much more difficult (in case recipes change in the future) and also has a risk of blocking recipes for no reason. I.e. what if Military also unlocked a recipe that *doesn't* require brass? Imho the tech tree should *only* represent the *tech* requirements and not the *recipe ingredient* requirements... But vanilla has also made a move towards the latter which give new players wrong expectations imho. The tech tree in vanilla has never been a complete representation of recipe requirements... but "bug" reports about it never stop.
To be clear, the "inversions" I'm referring to are (for example) a tech requiring R/G science having a dependency on a tech requiring R/G/B science.
I would not introduce a dependency on a tech if it's possible to craft some of the tech's recipe without the dependency. That situation might be a case where the tech should be split into two to better capture the dependency relationship, or simply left as is and it's up the player to figure out how to acquire the required ingredients through FNEI or similar.
Irsmert wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 4:11 pm
One thing I would like to see for Xanders which incidentally put a pause to my playthrough was the lack of complexity/progression of available power options. See Pymods for reference... Lots of new methods to burn coal and other subsidiary products to keep up with the power requirements. Even Bob's has different marks of steam generators, I think it would add a lot - perhaps built in integration with Amator's power mods would be sufficient?
I would like to see this as well. Having giant fields of reciprocating steam generators is silly. The first upgrade isn't until purple science, which is far too long to wait. I'd like to introduce a primitive steam turbine at red/green science that runs only on prepared and treated feedwater, with a closed loop including re-condensation of the low-pressure steam.