[0.15.x] Bob's Mods: General Discussion

[MimigaKing]

Is it normal that power armor MK2 science is way more expensive then MK3 to MK5?

MK2 costs 400 of each science packs while MK3 is 200, mk4 is 250 and mk5 is 300...

[Recon777]

Is anyone else missing Lithia Water on the map when running RSO?

I think something broke it because I've got a slightly older map which has it.

Lithia water should spawn, it's just quite rare (I tend to find several huge patches of gold before finding any lithia, and sometimes even tungsten appears closer to spawn). I thought it was missing a while ago too, but shortly after posting reporting the "issue" I discovered some lithia water.

How far have you explored? It might be worth going into a test world, enabling cheat mode, and running across the terrain with as many exoskeleton legs as you can fit in the highest-tier powersuit to check to get a good idea of whether lithia water actually isn't spawning.

The only worldgen substance I haven't found at all is cobalt, but considering the fact that I can get it as a byproduct of copper processing I don't think lack of the ore is much of an issue (similarly with silver, though I have found one patch of that earlier).

Cobalt is disabled by default in the settings. Did you enable it?

As for Lithia water, I did end up finding some in a test world. It took quite a bit of search-by-radar, but it was there. Not sure why it's so uncommon with RSO. Without RSO, it's everywhere.
I have a problem with this because Li batteries are so critical to advance your tech. If you are playing on heavy alien settings, you may end up finding yourself stuck with inferior tech as the evo factor continues to increase. Having to fight your way through 35 nests at that stage to get to your Lithia would be pretty crazy.


It's at the very bottom of this image.

[iamwyza]

Is it normal that power armor MK2 science is way more expensive then MK3 to MK5?

MK2 costs 400 of each science packs while MK3 is 200, mk4 is 250 and mk5 is 300...

I think this is just a result of Bob not having gotten to balancing 0.15 yet entirely. There are several areas where the cost of MK1-2/3 are far, far less than MK3-5. (even discounting the fact that they usually require some of the later tier materials.)

[Recon777]

Question about radar tiers.

I remember seeing something on one of the description pages about how Bob's radar tiers each serve a different purpose. Like some have SHORTER range but longer permanent vision. Or something.

Since the stats don't show up when hovering over the recipe, can someone break down the ACTUAL differences between the Mk1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 radars?

[Diedel]

Question about radar tiers.

I remember seeing something on one of the description pages about how Bob's radar tiers each serve a different purpose. Like some have SHORTER range but longer permanent vision. Or something.

Since the stats don't show up when hovering over the recipe, can someone break down the ACTUAL differences between the Mk1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 radars?

the first one is the vanilla one, i am not sure if there is some override in there, the rest is bobwarfare

name = "radar",
max_health = 250,
energy_per_sector = "10MJ",
max_distance_of_sector_revealed = 14,
max_distance_of_nearby_sector_revealed = 3,
energy_per_nearby_scan = "250kJ",
energy_usage = "300kW",

name = "radar-2",
max_health = 200,
energy_per_sector = "10MJ",
max_distance_of_sector_revealed = 16,
max_distance_of_nearby_sector_revealed = 5,
energy_per_nearby_scan = "240kJ",
energy_usage = "450kW",

name = "radar-3",
max_health = 250,
energy_per_sector = "10MJ",
max_distance_of_sector_revealed = 18,
max_distance_of_nearby_sector_revealed = 7,
energy_per_nearby_scan = "230kJ",
energy_usage = "600kW",

name = "radar-4",
max_health = 300,
energy_per_sector = "10MJ",
max_distance_of_sector_revealed = 20,
max_distance_of_nearby_sector_revealed = 9,
energy_per_nearby_scan = "220kJ",
energy_usage = "750kW",

name = "radar-5",
max_health = 350,
energy_per_sector = "10MJ",
max_distance_of_sector_revealed = 22,
max_distance_of_nearby_sector_revealed = 11,
energy_per_nearby_scan = "210kJ",
energy_usage = "900kW",

[Recon777]

Is the max_distance_of_nearby_sector_revealed property its vision range?

[nagapito]

Bob, a quick question, how does the count_formula in technology actually works?
I assumed the L means the research level, so level 7 on this count_formula 2^(L-6)*1000 is 2^(7-6)*1000 = 2000.

But, how the research knows it at level 7? I ask this because I am looking at the worker robots speed research (the formula is from there) and no where it says the infinite research is starting at level 6. I cant understand how is it starting the math with L=6 instead of 1...
What am I missing?

I hope its not some hacking with the research name, coz if it is.... I will lose a lot of consideration in relation to some devs....

[bobingabout]

Your math seems right.
Look at the technology name, Technology has some special rules attached that if it ends with a -#, then the # is the level, and the game changes it's behaviour based on this number. In all my modding experience, the number simply appeared in game on the technology icon, but in 0.15 the formula was added, it uses the same number.

[nagapito]

Your math seems right.
Look at the technology name, Technology has some special rules attached that if it ends with a -#, then the # is the level, and the game changes it's behaviour based on this number. In all my modding experience, the number simply appeared in game on the technology icon, but in 0.15 the formula was added, it uses the same number.

:FREAKING BIG FACEPALM:

Was it that hard for them to just add a new property called starting level?!?!?!

I dont even.....


Thanks for the clarification

[orzelek]

I can take a look at frequency of lithia water in RSO.
On one hand making it hard to get is ok I think since it's an end game thing (I think?). So travelling few k tiles for it should be ok. Using radars with big range helps with this a lot.
Part of the issue might be that lithia water same as ground water is not attached to any other resource as optional co-spawn. And since there are quite a lot of ores in bob's mods it might get pretty rare. Gold is actually less rare now since I based it's rariity on ore config files and bob made it not as rare as I thought.

Any good resources with which lithia water would go nicely to act as optional co-spawn?

[HOSH]

I can take a look at frequency of lithia water in RSO.
Any good resources with which lithia water would go nicely to act as optional co-spawn?

Not really any ores locally required as such as they all need processing, if one was to create a small quantity production cell it would require water, coal, copper, and stone. Optional is Oil as you can crack coal to Petroleum Gas if researched.

Unless recipe changed in 0.15 it requires Petroleum Gas + water -> Plastic; Coal + water -> Carbon; and Oxygen + Stone + Carbon + Copper - > Cobalt Oxide

[bobingabout]

I can take a look at frequency of lithia water in RSO.
On one hand making it hard to get is ok I think since it's an end game thing (I think?). So travelling few k tiles for it should be ok. Using radars with big range helps with this a lot.
Part of the issue might be that lithia water same as ground water is not attached to any other resource as optional co-spawn. And since there are quite a lot of ores in bob's mods it might get pretty rare. Gold is actually less rare now since I based it's rariity on ore config files and bob made it not as rare as I thought.

Any good resources with which lithia water would go nicely to act as optional co-spawn?

Lithium Ion batteries are the MK2 battery, there's higher tier than that. I'd put it as a science pack 3 level item. So Lithium should be about as common as Titanium and Gold.

[bobingabout]

Ferric chloride recipe takes only Hydrogen Chloride (the gas) and ore (presumably hematite) as input. Usually the Hydrogen Chloride is used in a aqueous solution, as Hydrochloric Acid, thus maybe the recipe should take another input of water?

I looked into it.

Iron ore was considered to be an iron(ferric) oxide type.
Hydrogen Chloride obviously holds Hydrogen and chlorine

So:
Ferric Oxide + Hydrogen Chloride -> Ferric Chloride + Hydrogen Oxide(water)

Hence, ferric chloride solution, you don't need to add water to make it a solution, because it's already a by-product of making chemical concentrate.

[Recon777]

I can take a look at frequency of lithia water in RSO.
On one hand making it hard to get is ok I think since it's an end game thing (I think?). So travelling few k tiles for it should be ok. Using radars with big range helps with this a lot.
Part of the issue might be that lithia water same as ground water is not attached to any other resource as optional co-spawn. And since there are quite a lot of ores in bob's mods it might get pretty rare. Gold is actually less rare now since I based it's rariity on ore config files and bob made it not as rare as I thought.

Any good resources with which lithia water would go nicely to act as optional co-spawn?

It's worth noting that Lithium batteries are required for the high-tech science pack. So everything needing that level of science must wait until after your Lithia water processing is set up.

As Bob said, the Li batteries are Mk2 batteries. They come into play in the mid-game, not the late game. The main problem with having to search through several thousand tiles to find it is that the biters will likely have evolved beyond your ability to kill them by the time you find it. That is, if you're using really difficult alien settings. Best not make Death World physically impossible.

As for radars, I did use the radar someone made for RSO, but I'm trying not to use it at the moment because it kind of kills the need for Bob's five tiers of radar. This go around, I'm trying Big Brother, which has a plugin that allows its radar range tech to buff all five of Bob's radars.

Maybe we could talk Bob into buffing the radars anyway or having a tech which progressively expands their range. The Big Brother hack plugin is really dodgy because it creates dozens of radars in the menu I noticed when making a blueprint and picking an icon. It'd surely be better to have something more integrated. Also, I highly recommend making "longer ranged radars" an optional setting because for people who are NOT using RSO, they don't need such long range radars.

Lastly, it's worth noting that silver is much more of a late game item than gold for some reason. Silver is used in: Mk2 and above solar panels, Electrum, and Silver Nitrate.
Electrum is ONLY used in Mk3 solar panels. (maybe this should be expanded)
Silver NItrate is ONLY used in Silver Oxide.
Silver Oxide is ONLY used in Silver Zinc (tier 3) batteries.
Those batteries are used in many late-game lasers, robots, and accumulators.
So as a summary, I'd say Lithia water is considerably more important in the game progression than silver. The main point being that the high-tech science packs require it. And gold's priority is way higher than silver, since you need gold fairly early on as you enter the mid-game.

[bobingabout]

Trvia:
Silver zinc batteries are pretty much a technology on par with Lithium Ion. I was considering making the silver zinc battery the MK2 battery for a while, and bumping lithium ion to MK3, but the Li-Ion had already been around for a while, and the main reason I didn't bump it is because... it would be a bump, I felt it would be better to just put Silver Zinc at MK3.
If you look at all the technologies leading up to silver zinc, you could easily research it all before lithium ion batteries, but the final tech has a sudden jump in technology requirement.

[septemberWaves]

Trvia:
Silver zinc batteries are pretty much a technology on par with Lithium Ion. I was considering making the silver zinc battery the MK2 battery for a while, and bumping lithium ion to MK3, but the Li-Ion had already been around for a while, and the main reason I didn't bump it is because... it would be a bump, I felt it would be better to just put Silver Zinc at MK3.
If you look at all the technologies leading up to silver zinc, you could easily research it all before lithium ion batteries, but the final tech has a sudden jump in technology requirement.

What science packs do silver-zinc batteries use? If they're supposed to be for the late-game, perhaps they should require the yellow high-tech science packs (and previous tiers of course) if they don't already use those. That would certainly encourage players to use lithium-ion first. Since lithium-ion as a second-tier battery should be needed at about the time that the player will be beginning to expand beyond the starter area (and this works out well since it mostly uses resources and science that can be obtained from the starter area but needs some travelling to find the lithia), but silver-zinc as a final-tier battery puts it at around the sort of tech level where the player should be setting up things like high-tech science production and processing for all resources anyway.

[iamwyza]

Fuel cost goes from 3.6MJ at 0.5 efficiency and goes down to 2.25MJ with top tier boiler

Unfortunately, the efficiency actually goes down because it heats the water to a higher temperature. Although this is good for steam engines, it's wasted energy if you're just going to condense it again. The base boiler heats by 150 degrees, and each tier an extra 70 degrees so a MK2 heats it to 220 degrees. I do the maths somewhere, but needless to say 220/150 = 1.4666... or an extra 46% cost is greater than the 0.6/0.5 = 1.2 or an extra 20% fuel efficiency

There is also Mobius1 electric boiler, solar panels and all this becomes free

I did play with adding an electric powered boiler myself, but for some reason (at least in game versions up to 0.15.11) it refuses to connect to the electric grid.
.....

@bobingabout

Did 0.15.12 fix the electric boilers?

[Recon777]

Bob, did you remove the recipe for Sulfur from Petroleum Gas?

I was just setting up my battery factory and noticed my blueprint is invalid.

[British_Petroleum]

Bob can you add bottling for ammonia?

[septemberWaves]

Bob, did you remove the recipe for Sulfur from Petroleum Gas?

I was just setting up my battery factory and noticed my blueprint is invalid.

Sulfur with Bob's mods is obtained in 2 ways: through refining of crude oil, or as a byproduct of several ore refining processes.

The crude oil refining methods allow you either to get sulfur (items) as an addition to the basic oil processing recipe, or to add water and exchange a product of that recipe for sulfur dioxide. Sulfur can be transformed into sulfur dioxide, which can further be transformed into sulfuric acid by various processes.

Many ores give sulfur dioxide as a byproduct of their refining, so honestly unless you're using ridiculous amounts of sulfuric acid you can probably just get all of your sulfur dioxide from ore refining. Nickel and zinc are two which I can remember, but they're not the only ones which have sulfur dioxide as a byproduct. Start refining mid-game ores and you'll end up with plenty of it.