Bob mods for 0.12 General Topic.

[bobingabout]

Bob, your mod package is simply awesome. I don't know how many hundreds of hours you put into this but from my end I can say it was well worth it! You managed to make an already awesome game into an awesomely awesome game! Hats off to you, Sir. I actually only registered here to thank you. ( I know I am not the first one to do that.)
...
Keep up the excellent work!

You're welcome

- Smart Express Inserters? Anyone?

This is actually fairly often asked for. it's not on my to do list yet, but I should look into it again.

- Some useful sink for Sodium Hydroxide? Maybe add it in Crude Oil Production?

The latest version of MCI does half the production of the material, again, so it gives a quarter as originally intended, but then the demand of the chlorine has gone up since then too. It definitely does need looking into.

- Any plans on an Oil Refinery Upgrade?

Yes, but I'm not sure which mod I should add them to. MCI would be the obvious choice because I add higher levels of chemical plants, as well as other machines in the mod, but I've been thinking it might be a good idea to move them out into the assembly mod.

- Upgraded version of lamps (for bigger light radius)? Don't know if that's hard coded.

I've honestly not looked into this one, I don't really use lights at all personally, I either just suffer through the darkness, or use a night vision MK3. (Which is in the warfare mod, as although it isn't warfare related itself, is a module for the modular armor, which is warfare related.)

[Arch666Angel]

I did integerate the overflow of sodium hydroxide in my processing mod in one of the wooden board recipes.

[steinio]

Hello bob,

did you get an early preview of 0.13 to test your mods against it or must we wait until 0.13 is out and you had a chance to test your mods?

Can't think about factorio without it anymore.

Greetings steinio

[Hannu]

I've honestly not looked into this one, I don't really use lights at all personally, I either just suffer through the darkness, or use a night vision MK3. (Which is in the warfare mod, as although it isn't warfare related itself, is a module for the modular armor, which is warfare related.)

You should consider is basic electronic board really needed in lamp recipe instead of basic circuit board. I like lamps and would like to use them immediately after electricity. It takes many annoying nights before electronic production can begin and after that there are many other needs for valuable electronic circuits too. Incandescent lamps are very simple and old technology in real life too. For example compared to even most simple automatic inserter or assembling machine.

Simplest lamps could have dimmer light, shorter range and much larger energy consumption compared to stock lamps to balance them. Mk2 could be stock lamps. Mk3 could be an advanced gas discharge lamps in high towers to illuminate large manufacturing cells in late game factories. They should have much larger range for example 40 units) and significantly lower energy consumption per lumen. They would need a medium electric pole, couple of plates aluminium, 5-10 white circuits, glass and maybe some fluid chemical (for example hydrogen chloride). They could act as an medium electric pole too.

What is difference between marks of night vision?

[bobingabout]

Hello bob,

did you get an early preview of 0.13 to test your mods against it or must we wait until 0.13 is out and you had a chance to test your mods?

Can't think about factorio without it anymore.

Greetings steinio

I don't get a preview, no, however, I could use this page here to get a headstart, but wouldn't be able to test anything viewtopic.php?f=34&t=25270
However, due to my clumsy programming nature (where I often rely too heavily on the game giving me error messages to know when I did something wrong), I'm more inclined to actually wait for the release of 0.13 before I Start working on it.

At least the page gives me an idea of what will break (surprisingly, quite a lot of it, there's going to be small changes all over the place)

You should consider is basic electronic board really needed in lamp recipe instead of basic circuit board. I like lamps and would like to use them immediately after electricity. It takes many annoying nights before electronic production can begin and after that there are many other needs for valuable electronic circuits too. Incandescent lamps are very simple and old technology in real life too. For example compared to even most simple automatic inserter or assembling machine.

Actually, old style bulbs use a tungsten filament, which is hard to mine
Though you're right, they probably should use the easier to make electronics board.

What is difference between marks of night vision?

MK1 has a green overlay, MK2 is yellow, MK3 is white. (you can tell it's on because everything is slightly washed out, but otherwise there's no real colour change in anything)

[bobingabout]

I've been working on these for weeks.


Power 0.12.7:
* Added config options for boiler and steam engine power values. (use config mod to change them)

Logistics 0.12.8:
* Added mined sound to cargo wagons and locos.
* Added optional recipe update for Roboport.
* Roboport is removed from logistic and construction robot technologies if the recipe update is enabled.
* Added option to use flying robot frames or not.
* Added seperate robotics T2 to T4 research for researching the flying robot frames.
* Added the Robotics prerequisite Advanced electronics 2 -> Advanced electronics change from MCI
* Added config option to overide robots with reballanced stats (use config mod to change them)
* Added logistic chests MK2.
* Added one way valve (temp)
* Added Logistic/Construction robot brain/tool T1 to T4 intermediates for robot recipes
* Added Small Pump MK2 to MK4
* Updated Train resistances

Config: 0.12.3
* Added power mod options
* Added roboport recipe overide option
* Added flying robot frames option
* Added Robot stat update options.
* Added robot part items option
* Added option for previous tier on robots

Library 0.12.4:
* Added abillity to specify autoplace control seperate for ore creation.
* fixed abillity to set infinite
* Fixed an issue with add_technology_prerequisite function
* Added table_merge function
* Added add_recipe_result function
* Added result_check function, used by add_recipe_result and add_item_to_resource to change a result item into a results item.
* Added remove_recipe_result and remove_item_from_resource
* Added add_item, add_new_item and remove_item to be used by the recipe item, recipe result, and resource item functions that perform this action.
* Added combine_items to perform some better amount/amount_min/amount_max/probability calculations on add_item functions.
* bobmods.lib.replace_recipe_item_crude will change type if needed.

Assembly 0.12.8:
* Change Electronics machine recipe to use basic circuit board, remove electronics research requirement.
* Re-aligned Electronics machine offsets.

[TheSAguy]

These look like some great changes!
Thanks for the work!


Now just need Factorio 0.13...

[noliVe]

bob,

i want to thank you for your work on this mod, its great work.
Ive written you an BOARD-message to thank you with some Pizza and Energydrinks to work on bugfixing

Im only a German player not a programmer. YOU DID A GOOOD JOB to create all these items work flow, everything.
The game feels like it never will finish!!! THANKS


Thats what you are working for! Thankfull players!
Bye Jens

[madtulip]

Hey bob.

my multiplayer group had great fun with your mod (200h+). Thank you very much for the time you did and are investing!

In order to increase contrast/differentiation/lievelyness/funkyness i edited/replaced some pngs in your mode. I post a dropbox link as soon as the forum lets me. I would be happy if you include them or some of them and im able to give something back.

pngs:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/83gu46ksh53l2 ... s.rar?dl=0

- I added numbers to the icons for extractors, pumps, solar pannels and so on to differentiate theire tiers. else its a hassle to pick the right one in inventory - they should probably have colored tiers like most other things do - was just a quick fix for us.

- i increased the contrast of the synthetic woods as its a crucial component for the electronics and its color just drowned in all the shades of brown imo.

- i went back to the vanilla pngs for the electronic boards because of the livelyness of theire colors. It just looks great if you zoom out of a large base and see all the red and green boards flowing. Give it a try in a savegame with a large base to see the difference.

- with carbon and wavers i think the olds pngs didnt contrast well against other items? cant quite remember but changed them as well.

so if you would like to increase those for your 0.13 patch maybe ? - looking forwad to that! - you can gladly have them - no copyright.

thanks for your work sir. have a nice day!

[bobingabout]

I've been thinking about some technology restructuring recently, something that changes both the base game and my mods, making them a little more intertwined... So let me run a few ideas past you.

Firstly, the main 3 new technology tree branches originally added to the plates mod were Electrolysis, Chemical processing, and Alloy processing, the later tiers of these technologies mostly just being added to add extra machines. Since you don't actually need any of the machines beyond the first chemical plant, the first electrolyser, the electric chemical furnace, and the electric alloying furnace, all further tiers could effectively be removed from the plates mod, and moved into what is currently the Assembling Machines mod, which could possibly be renamed to Machines. Additional oil processing plants could be added here too.

So after moving those, lets look at what technologies I'm thinking of shuffling.

For starters, Oil processing. When you compare the oil processing researches to some of the things in my mod, well, it can take quite a bit of effort to be able to research how to make the equivelent of the base game electronic circuit, then oil gives you everything you need to get started with oil in 1 research, so... I was thinking of splitting it up.

Step 1, remove the pumpjack, and move it to pumpjacks research. (further pumpjack tiers in the mining mod would require this technology) This will be the first step on your oil processing chain, you can mine for oil. Icon would be oil processing icon (its a pumpjack)
Step 2, Oil processing. the icon would be changed to match the current advanced oil processing(it's an oil refinery), and would only unlock the oil refinery, and the starter recipe.
Step 3, well, next you'd need the chemical plant, this is already covered by my chemical processing 2. So, probably add Lubricant to chemical processing 2. However, due to also being part of my other chemistry stuff, wouldn't directly need oil processing as a prerequisite, instead other technologies that require the chemical lab that currently require oil processing would be changed to either only require chemical processing 2, or both. (Sulfur processing for example would likely only need the chemical processing research, where plastics would likely need both)
Step 4, the recipes to make fuel blocks would probably be moved to their own research too.

Next we look at fluid handling. I have already added the storage tank to my electrolysis research, a better solution might just be to have storage tanks as an independant chain, since they can start out by being useful just to store water, and are useful not only for oil, but for my chemistry stuff too, hence adding it to electrolysis. I already add higher tiers of the tank in my logistics mod.
The oil barreling stuff wouldn't be needed anymore either, as the water pump tree in plates mod unlocks a new technology Barreling, which handles this stuff, which leaves a unique tree for the small pump, which I build on later anyway. There's no reason that can't be it's own tree too, I already have extra tiers in logistics mod too. To note, I keep the storage tank and small pump in the same extra tiers of fluid handling in my logistics mod, there's no real need to split them up, it just wouldnlt require oil processing as a prerequisite.

Then we look at Advanced oil processing, Like fuel blocks, cracking could become their own research too, allowing the better oil processing recipe to be on a different seperate research, in theory this would be on oil processing 2, along with the oil refinery MK2.

Okay, so far I've mentioned how some of these items exist in the logistics mod, others want to be moved into the machines mod, and the new types are in my plates/MCI mod... where would the changes actually be? tech revamp mod! Okay, for the most part, these changes can be made without too much issues, the main problem areas are things like the advanced oil processing recipe being a base game recipe, so needs to exist if you have the tech revamp mod installed, but the technology I sugested would be in the machines mod. similar issues with the chemical plant moved to only being on my chemical processing technology in Plates/MCI.
This actually isn't a problem, if you look at how my metals technology is defined in plates/MCI already, it was written in such a way that it would be compatable with the DyTech of the time using researches with the same names to unlock both his and my recipes. I would simply need to define it in this manner in both mods, and if they both exist, you'd get both unlocks on the one technology.


Now, this only details the oil processing technology restructure idea, but I'd like to hear feedback and sugestions on what I've layed out so far, from the layout, down to my proposal of what parts should be in what mods. Another area I was looking at splitting up and making more complex is the final Rocket Silo research.

[eformo]

I have one primary concern regarding messing around with the oil processing and Bob's mods/ vanilla intertwinement. That is, I think that the synthetic wood needs to remain *very* low on the tech tree.

I tried to play a game with the Bobathon mod and eventually tapped out. Not because of the biters, or because of the never-ending throughput issues, but because I spent all my time chopping more sticking trees. Either I need to be able to make construction bots and the deconstruction planner before synthetic wood (to automate gathering of raw wood), or I need to be able to get to synthetic wood while chopping down a 3-digit number (or smaller) of trees.

I don't want to tell everyone else what their game should be about, but I do think that the idea of automation is pretty important to factorio. There's a reason that the burner mining drill comes at the earliest stages of the game - the designers intended to allow players to automate gathering iron, copper, coal, and stone - that is, all the resources you need large quantities of - at the very start. This mod pack adds wood to the list of resources that you need large quantities of. I think it's a mistake (because it makes the game not-fun for me) to lock automating basic resource production behind high-level technology. Please keep fake wood production at a very low tech level so that I can play the game without going mad. This is the one part that's really important to this player - as for the rest, I've enjoyed following down the paths you've created thus far and I suspect I will continue to enjoy them.

That said, I've REALLY enjoyed your mods Bob. I've spent more time playing them than the base game, and I'm not planning to start anew on 0.13 until I can do 0.13 Bob's. Thank you.

[steinio]

Because of this there is the new Bob's Greenhouse.
viewtopic.php?f=51&t=25910

Hope you rejoice.

[orzelek]

I have one primary concern regarding messing around with the oil processing and Bob's mods/ vanilla intertwinement. That is, I think that the synthetic wood needs to remain *very* low on the tech tree.

I tried to play a game with the Bobathon mod and eventually tapped out. Not because of the biters, or because of the never-ending throughput issues, but because I spent all my time chopping more sticking trees. Either I need to be able to make construction bots and the deconstruction planner before synthetic wood (to automate gathering of raw wood), or I need to be able to get to synthetic wood while chopping down a 3-digit number (or smaller) of trees.

I don't want to tell everyone else what their game should be about, but I do think that the idea of automation is pretty important to factorio. There's a reason that the burner mining drill comes at the earliest stages of the game - the designers intended to allow players to automate gathering iron, copper, coal, and stone - that is, all the resources you need large quantities of - at the very start. This mod pack adds wood to the list of resources that you need large quantities of. I think it's a mistake (because it makes the game not-fun for me) to lock automating basic resource production behind high-level technology. Please keep fake wood production at a very low tech level so that I can play the game without going mad. This is the one part that's really important to this player - as for the rest, I've enjoyed following down the paths you've created thus far and I suspect I will continue to enjoy them.

That said, I've REALLY enjoyed your mods Bob. I've spent more time playing them than the base game, and I'm not planning to start anew on 0.13 until I can do 0.13 Bob's. Thank you.

I rally feel for you with wood - I don't see how you could support bobathon with wood by hand and don't get annoyed etc.
I have 20+ greenhouses with modules to produce wood for circuits and resin and supplementing it with synthetic wood also.
Now there is a Bob's greenhouse so it whould be eaiser to find it and grab for wood production.

[bobingabout]

I know how you feel with the wood, it's why I normall try and start in a forest. I've tried th desert start before, it's... nasty.

But now you have greenhouse mod for that.

And yes, I you actual question, I'm not trying to push it further into the tree to make it harder to get synthetic wood, the main aim is to split up and redistribute those technologies that give you a large number of things in one go, and although the end result might be more expensive research, I will likely lower the tech cost of each, since it gives you less stuff.


I mean, look at the contrast in a few things... Oil: get everything to make oil in 1 go. Robotics? not only do you have construction and logistic on 2 seperate researches, but you have to learn flying and robotics first!

[sparr]

Is there a changelog somewhere? Or are the mods in version control anywhere? I discovered today that I was playing with a slightly outdated version of bobassembly that made the early game much harder.

[bobingabout]

Some but not all of the mod topics have a change log on the first post, but I tend to just post the change log "somewhere" when I release a new version.

[iamwyza]

Is there a single link that contains the current version of all the bob's mods? I know there is the dropbox folder, and there is individual latest links for each mod, but was hoping for a single link that gets the most current for all for simplifying updating.

[sparr]

Is there a single link that contains the current version of all the bob's mods? I know there is the dropbox folder, and there is individual latest links for each mod, but was hoping for a single link that gets the most current for all for simplifying updating.

The dropbox page has a "download [everything] as .zip" button in the top right

[bobingabout]

Unfortunately, It will download everything, including the previous versions of the mods currently still in the folder. you can delete those manually afterwards though.

[mlofinti]

And yes, I you actual question, I'm not trying to push it further into the tree to make it harder to get synthetic wood, the main aim is to split up and redistribute those technologies that give you a large number of things in one go, and although the end result might be more expensive research, I will likely lower the tech cost of each, since it gives you less stuff.

With your plan to split up oil research, maybe you could add an earlier recipe for wood. If you unlock pumpjacks before refineries I hope there will be some recipes that directly use crude oil (maybe even in a chemical furnace if you want to allow a small oil industry really early). I don't know of any realistic unrefined oil products except asphalt (or burning directly as fuel), but a recipe for getting more wood from raw lumber with the addition of oil wouldn't seem too odd as some sort of bituminous composite or crude particleboard.