Factorio Forums

License
Anyone can use, copy, distribute or publish any part of this mod or the mod as a whole, if the reason for doing so is a non-commercial one. When reusing it partially or as a whole in other projects or when distributing or publishing it, you have to give credit to the author and link to the associated webpage on the factorio forum
or the associated webpage on the factorio mod portal

That's it.
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Long description
This mod broadens the possibilities of electronic circuit (green circuits) production. It adds recipes and one technology, which allow to create the plates for electronic circuits from all of the natural resources except uranium. The production of electronic circuits still needs the same ammount of copper cable.

The following production lines are added or changed (not mentioning copper cable as ingredient from here on):
iron plate >> electronic circuit
copper plate >> electronic circuit
plastic bar >> electronic circuit
wood >> high quality wooden board >> electronic circuit
stone >> metallosilicon >> silicon boule >> wafer >> electronic circuit



The production of electronic circuits with wafer as ingredient is locked behind a red+green tech.



Each of these production lines can be enabled or disabled via the mods startup options individually. As a special feature the base mod's electronic circuit recipe, which uses iron plates as ingredient, can be disabled (non exitent in the game after that).



Another feature is the option to enable blank circuit boards as optional intermediate product. When enabled, iron and copper plates, plastic bars, hq wooden boards and wafers can be converted to blank circuit boards first. Blank circuit boards can then be used as plates for electronic circuits. This feature allows for the recipes in the ec-producing assemblers to stay the same, regardless of which base resource is used for plate production.

When blank circuit boards are enabled, the production lines look like this:
iron plate >> blank circuit board >> electronic circuit
copper plate >> blank circuit board >> electronic circuit
plastic bar >> blank circuit board >> electronic circuit
wood >> high quality wooden board >> blank circuit board >> electronic circuit
stone >> metallosilicon >> silicon boule >> wafer >> blank circuit board >> electronic circuit



As a final feature the conversion of all plate substitutes to blank circuit boards can be made mandatory via a startup option. This increases the difficulty in the early game, as this additional production step has to be included right from the start.

That's it!

The idea for this mod came to me when I was playing with the mod dangOreus ( https://mods.factorio.com/mod/dangOreus ) and I was drowning in stone and had by far too little iron. At some point I thought: "Why can't I use these piling up copper plates to produce electronic circuits? I mean, however this works with an iron plate, it also should work with a copper plate. This guy is stranded on an alien planet and tries to manufacture and invent his way off from it, but he says to me: 'No! These simple and basic electronic circuits will only be made with iron plates, strictly not with copper plates!' "
"Screw it!" I thought, "I will do it still!"



I hope that none of the added production lines are too overpowered. My thoughts on them were these:

Plastic is locked behind an early/mid-game tech per se and it uses oil and/or coal as base resources. When changing the plate production to a plastic base these resources might start dwindling. To give an incentive and to compensate for the usage of oil and/or coal, 2 electronic circuits can be made from one plastic bar.



Wood can be available en mass in the early game, but when basing ec production on it, it is gone in no time and mostly there will be no reliable and steady supply. Therefor this line is just for the very early game or a way to use excess wood. But beware - it is not a way to get rid of excess wood, because as a side effect, the production of high quality wooden boards yields 3 scrap wood per board, which only can be used as fuel.



Imo the most interesting part is the possibility to use stone as base resource for electronic circuits. Stone, in most cases, is available on the map in huge quantities, compared to how much is needed. To make it not so easy, I made this production line the most complex one and it is locked behind a red+green tech, so it can not be used right from the start.



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Pictures
List of recipes


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Version history
0.1.0 (2018-03-03): First beta release
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Known Issues
Unfavorable automatic ingredient and recipe selection
When handcrafting electronic circuits, it seems the engine selects for ingredients the items and recipes which are first in alphabetical order. So it makes the circuits out of _B_lank circuit boards and these from _H_igh quality wooden boards. (At least this is my assumption). This is not favorable. I hope this can be solved. If my assumption is right, then at least it should be solvable by changing the internal names.
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Feedback required
I very much would like to read your feedback.

If you are using it, maybe you can give me your feedback on these topics in particular:

• Are there any issues, when you save the game, switch the mods startup options and then reload the game? (With focus on dis- and reenabling the base mod's iron plate >> electronic circuit recipe)
• Shall I change the icon for the blank circuit board to another color (something like the brownish one seen here https://www.google.at/search?q=blank+circuit+board ), so it can be better distinguished from the electronic circuits?
• The wafer production tech currently is an island. It has no dependencies and nothing depends on it. Maybe you have an idea how to nicely blend it into the vanilla tech tree?

Thank you!
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