Factorio Forums

Hey there!

I'm relatively new to Factorio (50 hours), and very intrigued in trying your mods! I just have one concern:

I don't know which mods to choose!! I'm afraid of choosing the wrong set of mods, and finding out hundreds of hours later that I've been shooting myself at the foot (Or stepping on my own nuts, sorry I'm kinda old) for either not picking the correct dependencies or for choosing very hard mods making the game too hard to stomach. And the thought is actually quite scary to be honest! I imagine that a good number of relatively new-comers to Factorio would probably be feeling the same!

Soooo, I really like to know more! To show you how serious I am, here's me "Taking Initiative" and trying to map your mods into a more sensible overview. Take a look! :

Full size: http://i.imgur.com/tzAA3f8.png (Edit: Now working)



FYI I'm planning to play Bob's mods with family and some friends.

If you don't mind, I'd like some "Before you play Bob's mods" tips specific to the areas below:
Lastly. I'm really admiring the dedication and effort put into this whole thing. It's crazy!! Thank you so much for making our lives more fun and engaging, one mod at a time.
I'm also admiring your modesty and commitment to the forums and community. I wish more major-mod developers from other games would learn to be like that. (I've been stalking for some time, sorry)

Sorry if I'm asking silly questions and thanks in advance!

PS

If you like the diagram, I'll be more than happy to improve it or to share the source files.

To start with I'd just go for all of Bob's Mods (though you can ignore the Research Saver, it's included in vanilla anyway and is automatically disabled in current version).

Actually, no, scratch that. To start with I recommend at least getting into triple digit play hours. I mean 50 hours is, what, one casual playthrough? Two if you get a good pace and know what you're doing? I was about 250 hours into vanilla (Steam reported 300 but there was a lot of pause and menu time) when I installed Bob's Mods and omg I was unprepared. It maybe triples the complexity of recipes, which increases the complexity of playing it by about a factor of twenty. That nice neat bus you've got going on? Good luck maintaining that with 12 different ores (some of which have multiple products, such as Quartz becoming either Glass or Silicon Plate), five types of circuits, several new liquids and gasses, two new batteries, etc.

Here is what I recommend doing. Keep playing vanilla until you reach a point where you're basically building the same factory as you built last time because you can't think of any way to improve it. THEN install Bob's Mods, all of them (also I recommend Loot Chest and Void Chest). Once you've completed that you can consider installing Angel's Ores too.

Library obviously you need.

Ores is needed by Metals, Chemicals and Intermediates.
Locale is only needed if you want a language other than English. This isn't my mod.
Tweaks is Athmagar's mod, CMHmod is CMH's mod.

If you're just getting into things, and want a little more complexity, but not all out, then you might not want Electronics, it makes the starting game a lot slower. Other than that, I'd suggest you install everything.

Hmm, yeah leaving Electronics out of it should make things considerably more manageable. Most base recipes will then be the same and you can ease into the new stuff a bit slower.

Just don't panic when you can't find Sulfur, there's a type of Oil Processing that gives it to you then later on you get it from Advanced Lead Processing and smelting Nickel Ore.

Thanks for the responses!!

Just for argument's sake, will the mods work if I DON'T load below:

• Bob's Ores
• Bob's Enemies
• Bob's Metals Chemicals and Intermediates

I'm guessing the answer is "Yes, but then the game will be too easy. It will feel like cheating".

And lastly, what about RSO? Would that make the game easier to manage because of its improved resource placement? OR would that make the game a lot harder because of the extra variety of ores and how RSO makes ores further apart than normal?

(I have a lot more to chat about, but I'd like to get the above out of the way first )

It will work if you don't include them, however... if you don't have my ores and metals mods, there's just so much missing from the structure of my mod it becomes... boring. you basically have improved factories on top of the base game, that cost the same materials over and over.

As for enemies, although you don't need this, you then lack the new types of artifacts, which puts a hole in some of the research and recipe things. The enemies mod actually fills the gap between big biter and behemoth, so you don't suddenly end up with huge enemies you can't handle, as is possible in the base game. you'll notice as the enemies slowly get harder, and are forced to upgrade your defences accordingly.

Plus the warfare mod gives you the tools to make upgrading your defences easier.

So, My recomendation is to go with all of my mods, minus electronics for your first run. Maybe minus all those you put in the tweaks section too, their aim is mostly to make the game harder.

Hey thanks again for responding and giving me tips

One last request: Would you mind if I make a new post here with all the general information I gathered related to "Before you start using Bob's mods" ? It'll take a while because I want to be a lot more familiar / experienced before I write anything. But I'll produce something readable and neatly formatted.

BTW, the diagram I made above was intended just so I can scope / map all the different bobs mods available. For planning purposes only. Not intended to be my list of mods to be used
Also, I seemed to have missed one mod (Bob's Vehicle Upgrades).

Deadly-Bagel wrote:To start with I recommend at least getting into triple digit play hours.

Deadly-Bagel wrote:Here is what I recommend doing. Keep playing vanilla until you reach a point where you're basically building the same factory as you built last time because you can't think of any way to improve it. THEN install Bob's Mods, all of them (also I recommend Loot Chest and Void Chest). Once you've completed that you can consider installing Angel's Ores too.

I completely agree. I gave it a small try when I was at 70 hours played and it drove me nuts. Now I'm close to 150 hours played, and it definitely helped make me comprehend Bob's mods a lot better.

I'm just doing a bit end-game tweaking to my vanilla base and finishing the remaining achievements. Except no spoon. Once that is done, I'm going to brave bob's mods.

bobingabout wrote:If you're just getting into things, and want a little more complexity, but not all out, then you might not want Electronics, it makes the starting game a lot slower. Other than that, I'd suggest you install everything.

Duly noted. However, I think I WILL use electronics. True the game will be a lot more challenging, but it will be all so much more rewarding too.

Deadly-Bagel wrote:Just don't panic when you can't find Sulfur, there's a type of Oil Processing that gives it to you then later on you get it from Advanced Lead Processing and smelting Nickel Ore.

I have a question related to this at the end of my post.

bobingabout wrote:It will work if you don't include them, however... if you don't have my ores and metals mods, there's just so much missing from the structure of my mod it becomes... boring. you basically have improved factories on top of the base game, that cost the same materials over and over.

As for enemies, although you don't need this, you then lack the new types of artifacts, which puts a hole in some of the research and recipe things. The enemies mod actually fills the gap between big biter and behemoth, so you don't suddenly end up with huge enemies you can't handle, as is possible in the base game. you'll notice as the enemies slowly get harder, and are forced to upgrade your defences accordingly.

Plus the warfare mod gives you the tools to make upgrading your defences easier.

It's nice to know that Bob's enemies doesn't actually make the game that much harder. When I was googling this topic and browsing reddit / other forums, generally people had the wrong impression that Bob's enemies would make the game harder. I remember reading one statistic on a reddit comment that showed a large number of difference between people who load Bob's mods and Bob's enemies, with the latter being almost 10 times less... (Sorry can't find that post) * EDIT: Found the post, the details is in one of the replies. Also, I was wrong as from the data shown Bob's Enemies was not even on the list. Another person ASSUMED it was highly unpopular. Maybe they forgot to include it? Who knows..... It's not that important honestly.

I have a few more simple questions if you don't mind:

• Regarding finding sulfur, or any rare material. Is loading the RSO mod a good idea or would that make finding these rare resources much more difficult?
• How about playing in peaceful mod? Is that a common / recommended for a first time playing Bob's mods or is it unnecessary?

Once more, thanks for helping and answering my noob-ish queries. It really helped !!

RSO does have a patch included to allow it to work with Bob's Ores. Although there is a sulfur ore field, and cobalt for that matter, They are both disabled by default. Cobalt can be obtained from an advanced copper processing recipe, which is unlocked in the cobalt processing research. As for sulfur, you could either obtain it via several different Oil processing recipes, either as sulfur directly from a basic oil processing recipe, or as sulfur dioxide in recipes that lack one of the main three oil products, which can either be turned into Sulfur, or Sulfuric Acid.