Cooperative 1 RPM base with Bob's and Angels!
Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2017 6:09 pm
I recently participated in a very hard Factorio playthrough with a
good friend and fellow engineer which included Bob's mods, Angel's
mods, and more. We created a megabase which launches one rocket per
minute which was our goal! This writeup is to describe the base,
issues we encountered, and to provide feedback on the mods.
You can view our base here:
http://demosthenes.org/tmp/BobAngelOneRPM/
Screenshot of 1 RPM by satellite creation:
http://demosthenes.org/tmp/BobAngelOneRPM/OneRPM.jpg
Mod list & review
Note that we have annotated the mod list with comments about the mod. Code tags used for brevity.
Angel's Mods
Bob's Mods
Natural Evolution Mods
Required helper mods
Quality of life mods
Late game rocket mods
Misc mods
Base overview
We created our base to rely on train stations for input. Then we
expanded east for refining and automation.
The trains unloaded to the Angel's refining area where we crushed,
cleaned, and purified ores. We did have warehouses for ores when we
were still belt oriented.
Angel's smelting was next to the east and good for early game ore
multiplication bonuses. It was also one of the coolest new method for
processing ore! Unfortunately in the late game Bob's furnaces with
modules completely outproduce the smelting.
Once we had plates and usable refined materials, they fed east into
our main belt area. We did use a belt based main belt for all
routinely constructed items, limiting bots to only limited use items
(ie: buildings, armor, etc). Belts were very important to automation
until the very late game.
We were water bound for processing, and created a water plant south of
the main belt area. Here we made purified water, processed the
byproducts from refining, and managed most of the liquids in the
game. Later this expanded to rocket fuel and plastic, which grew out
to consume significant area.
Angel's Refining and Smelting provided an interesting challenge. The
only weird issue we ran into was the lack of fluorite to make
hydrofluoric acid. The only way to get hydrofluoric acid was to wash
jivolite and throw it away. The Nuclear power fluorite was not
compatible for this process.
We did conquer the local bugs, and built strong walls to defend the
base. These were required because the NEE bugs would attack if we cut
a single tree, and attack in huge waves if we cut them in any quantity
to clear land.
For the main belt we eventually migrated to a central "bot belt",
where the bots only delivered in a small slice of the base and then
automation still used belts for supplies and finished products. This
was great for flexibility and for monitoring which items were
bottlenecked! We had input and output pins which worked great.
Issues Encountered
Pipe throughput
We found Bob's pipes to be basically useless. Vanilla iron pipes were
the only reliable pipes with consistent behavior, though the tunsten
underground pipes were good for links. No matter what piping we used,
we could not create high throughput or long distance pipe networks. We
ended up using belts of barrels, and later bots distributing barrels
for almost all liquids. This was very very frustrating. Attempts to
use vanilla and the extremely fast pumps from UraniumPower failed to
meet demand.
Late game belt throughput
We did reach stages where even the fastest modded purple belts could
not move items fast enough for processing. Only then did we use bots
to replace belts in critical high volume processing. Bots trade power
for infinite bandwidth, but also feel cheaty if used too much.
UPS lag due to bugs
The NEE hives would spawn so many bugs, and on occasion they would
become aggressive and decide to attack en masse. Each time the bugs
became active, our UPS would tank. By late game we had to slow the
server to 30% of normal to handle combat situations. We did not have
the Swarm mod, but I would expect that would make it unplayable.
I think much of this is used by pathfinding, but despite the high
values in Entity Updates in the debug screen we could not find a way
to break down the figure further.
I would value finding ways to make the game harder without making it
unplayable.
Angel's cobalt processing
We initially setup our systems to create cobalt plates using Angel's
Smelting. Unfortunately most of the recipes required cobalt oxide, and
we discovered you could not grind the plates to oxide. I think adding
a chemical factory recipe for cobalt plates + oxygen to create cobalt
oxide would have been a great idea. That or maybe the cobalt ingots or
pellets. I hope that Angel fixes this soon.
The chlorine bottleneck and overwhelming purified water
For rocket fuel we needed so much chlorine! Unfortunately the only
method to obtain it is to electrolyze saline water, and that's only
available as a byproduct (2 for 10!!!) when purifying water.
As a result we had massive amounts of purified water to dispose of. At
one point our logistics system had 65k barrels of purified water in
it. We eventually made chlorine factories which split the purified
water into oxygen and hydrogen and vented them because it was faster
than clarifiers. We also considered outputting purified water barrels
into trash landfills despite the pollution it would cause.
Bob's originally had a method to use a chemical furnace to create salt
from water, and then you could make salt water. I think this should be
re-introduced as Angel's removes the salt recipe.
Frequent desyncs for bots modifying inserters
We couldn't isolate the problem, but it appeared that Bob's inserters
frequently caused desyncs when removed or placed by bots. It was a
common frustration.
Balance concerns
Angel's Smelting vs Bob's furnaces
Late game Bob's furnaces with modules completely out performs all of
Angel's smelting. We replaced large and complicated smelting setups
with one or two Bob's buildings and increased our output.
Allowing modules in Angel's smelting could have helped it continue to
scale.
Infinite ores
We discovered that the high end Bob's drills with modules in
combination with Angle's infinite ores made it trivial to obtain
resources, even in high volume. We essentially conquered one resource
patch of each kind, and then had infinite high quantity output.
As a result we should either significantly reduce the viability of
infinite ores (1/10th the amount), or cap the high end drills. For our
next game I'm likely to look at whether they can be configured.
Increase enemy difficulty without UPS issues making combat unplayable
I do love how NEE makes the bugs respond to their environment (ie:
trees and desert), but the overwhelming numbers made the game nearly
unplayable.
I'd love to see the updated AI work with a mod that made fewer much
larger and harder bugs. 10x less bugs, but a 10x larger enemy would work!
Bob's greenhouses and wood replacing oil processing for plastic and rocket fuel
One unique feature is that our base relied on making massive
quantities of raw wood to create plastic and rocket fuel. We created
3.8 MILLION wood per hour, or 65k wood per minute. For plastics we
reduced the wood to cellulose in Angel's Algae tech tree, and from
there we made methanol. It was a short step to unlimited
plastic. Methanol was also a key ingredient for rocket fuel, and
supplied by wood. Bob's greenhouses with beacons, speed modules, and
fertilizer were completely overpowered.
This may have not been the intention, and I'm not convinced its bad. I
just think it's not what the mod designers originally intended.
Uranium Power
Eventually, we went completely nuclear. It was way too easy to make
enriched uranium. We had two warehouses filled with uranite early in
the game from slag processing. I believe this has been nerfed in a
later version. Later, when we could do mixed ore combining to get
uranite, it still seemed too easy. At the end of the game, we have
three warehouses filled with nuclear fuel rods. A lot of this was due
to the need for depleted uranium for military uses. The process of
getting uranium should be harder, perhaps removing mixed ore combining
and nerfing uranium through slag processing to something small like 1%.
Also, make the consumption of fuel rods much quicker. At end game, we
have only 150 used fuel rods. There was never the need to do fuel
reprocessing.
good friend and fellow engineer which included Bob's mods, Angel's
mods, and more. We created a megabase which launches one rocket per
minute which was our goal! This writeup is to describe the base,
issues we encountered, and to provide feedback on the mods.
You can view our base here:
http://demosthenes.org/tmp/BobAngelOneRPM/
Screenshot of 1 RPM by satellite creation:
http://demosthenes.org/tmp/BobAngelOneRPM/OneRPM.jpg
Mod list & review
Note that we have annotated the mod list with comments about the mod. Code tags used for brevity.
Angel's Mods
Code: Select all
- Angel's mods are a total rework which add significant new
complexity to the game.
- angelsaddons-oresilos_0.2.2.zip
- angelsaddons-pressuretanks_0.1.1.zip
- angelsaddons-warehouses_0.1.3.zip
- angelsbioprocessing_0.1.1.zip
- angelsinfiniteores_0.4.5.zip
- angelspetrochem_0.2.1.zip
- angelsprocessing_0.2.0.zip
- angelssmelting_0.1.2.zip
- angelsrefining_0.4.5.zip
Code: Select all
- Bob's is another overhaul mod which dramatically increases the
complexity of the game over vanilla.
- bobassembly_0.14.0.zip
- bobconfig_0.14.0.zip
- bobelectronics_0.14.0.zip
- bobenemies_0.14.0.zip
- bobgreenhouse_0.14.0.zip
- bobinserters_0.14.3.zip
- boblibrary_0.14.3.zip
- boblogistics_0.14.5.zip
- bobmining_0.14.0.zip
- bobmodules_0.14.1.zip
- bobores_0.14.0.zip
- bobplates_0.14.0.zip
- bobpower_0.14.0.zip
- bobrevamp_0.14.1.zip
- bobtech_0.14.0.zip
- bobtechsave_0.14.2.zip
- bobvehicleequipment_0.14.2.zip
- bobwarfare_0.14.2.zip
Code: Select all
- Natural Evolution adds a smarter and deadly AI for bugs, as
well as new units and buildings.
- Natural_Evolution_Buildings_6.4.0.zip
- Natural_Evolution_Enemies_6.4.0.zip
- Natural_Evolution_Expansion_6.4.0.zip
Code: Select all
- Omnibarrels_1.1.3.zip
- Angel's and Bob's are nearly unplayable without
Omnibarrels. Barrels were critical for throughput.
- ZCS-Trash-Landfill_1.1.3.zip
- Angel's and Bob's will overwhelm you with byproducts.
This landfill has a finite capacity and bandwidth, plus it
emits pollution so it was very fair and balanced for a trash
can mod.
- usefulbyproducts_0.1.3.zip
- Never used it. We thought it would be useful, but instead of
making fuel cells we vented hydrogen. The sodium hydroxide
options for oil processing we never tried. Had fuel cells not
required plastic, we might have tried using them instead of
wood brick as a fuel source.
- what-is-it-used-for_1.1.5.zip
- Absolutely critical for tracing recipes and fluids! Like Not
Enough Items (NEI) for modded Minecraft!
Code: Select all
- Concrete_Lamppost_0.1.2.zip
- I like using these for lights on a pole. They are a bit
expensive, but work well for keeping a lit base. I would
prefer they either came in tiers (scaling brightness +
distance) or cost less.
- Map Ping_0.1.0.zip
- Great new multiplayer tool. Lets us point to things! Combined
with voice chat it was a great tool. I was annoyed I couldn't
make the admin menu go away and only open it when needed. It
would be better if it added a command interface (ie: /mapping
allow player, /mapping forbid player).
- SpaceBook_1.0.23.zip
- Mandatory for managing a multiplayer game.
- Teleportation_0.14.9.zip
- This was a huge success. Very expensive but worth it to save
walking across such a large base.
- advanced-logistics-system_0.4.0.zip
- Good for troubleshooting resource issues and checking for
items in the network. We did have issues with zooming into
locations and it was a bit buggy.
- autofill_1.4.5.zip
- Automatically loads fuel or ammo into buildings your
character places. It made turret rushing significantly
easier, however I may remove it because it made turret rushes
too easy. I might consider a logistics turret as an alternative.
- blueprint-string_4.0.0.zip
- Great for saving blueprints as I'd often wander off with my
blueprint book and die.
- player-combinator_0.0.2.zip
- Useful on a multiplayer map to power down your base when you
aren't logged in. Wasn't needed here as this was a team
effort with one base.
- undecorator_1.0.3.zip
- This removes brush, weeds, bushes, etc. I play on a toaster
and it did help my FPS. I wish it would auto-clean corpses.
Code: Select all
- Satellite Uplink Station_1.0.6.zip
- Orbital Ion Cannon_1.4.5.zip
- This permanently won the bug war. Once we pushed them out and
launched 10 ion cannons, auto-targeters made our walls nearly obsolete.
- launch-control_0.2.1.zip
- Mandatory for automatically launching rockets. If only it
helped measure rockets per minute.
Code: Select all
- StickyNotes_1.0.11.zip
- These were GREAT for todo lists, documenting systems, and
creating a message board to coordinate further.
- TheFatController_1.0.1.zip
- Indispensable for train management. We didn't use trains as
much as we expected due to infinite ores.
- UraniumPower_0.6.6.zip
- This was a great and complicated nuclear power mod. We
eventually because all nuclear. The depleted ammo is
excellent too.
- YARM_0.7.107.zip
- Turned out not to be needed when Angel's infinite ores were available.
- military-extended_1.0.7.zip
- Really useful against Bob's Enemies and Natural Evolution
Enemies. The sniper rifle's range was excellent for sniping
hives and worms while sitting in a turret nest. Though the
sniper rifle lacks damage, the UraniumPower ammo gave it the
kick it needed.
- rso-mod_2.2.7.zip
- I've always enjoyed how RSO scales the resources on the
map. It did not disappoint.
We created our base to rely on train stations for input. Then we
expanded east for refining and automation.
The trains unloaded to the Angel's refining area where we crushed,
cleaned, and purified ores. We did have warehouses for ores when we
were still belt oriented.
Angel's smelting was next to the east and good for early game ore
multiplication bonuses. It was also one of the coolest new method for
processing ore! Unfortunately in the late game Bob's furnaces with
modules completely outproduce the smelting.
Once we had plates and usable refined materials, they fed east into
our main belt area. We did use a belt based main belt for all
routinely constructed items, limiting bots to only limited use items
(ie: buildings, armor, etc). Belts were very important to automation
until the very late game.
We were water bound for processing, and created a water plant south of
the main belt area. Here we made purified water, processed the
byproducts from refining, and managed most of the liquids in the
game. Later this expanded to rocket fuel and plastic, which grew out
to consume significant area.
Angel's Refining and Smelting provided an interesting challenge. The
only weird issue we ran into was the lack of fluorite to make
hydrofluoric acid. The only way to get hydrofluoric acid was to wash
jivolite and throw it away. The Nuclear power fluorite was not
compatible for this process.
We did conquer the local bugs, and built strong walls to defend the
base. These were required because the NEE bugs would attack if we cut
a single tree, and attack in huge waves if we cut them in any quantity
to clear land.
For the main belt we eventually migrated to a central "bot belt",
where the bots only delivered in a small slice of the base and then
automation still used belts for supplies and finished products. This
was great for flexibility and for monitoring which items were
bottlenecked! We had input and output pins which worked great.
Issues Encountered
Pipe throughput
We found Bob's pipes to be basically useless. Vanilla iron pipes were
the only reliable pipes with consistent behavior, though the tunsten
underground pipes were good for links. No matter what piping we used,
we could not create high throughput or long distance pipe networks. We
ended up using belts of barrels, and later bots distributing barrels
for almost all liquids. This was very very frustrating. Attempts to
use vanilla and the extremely fast pumps from UraniumPower failed to
meet demand.
Late game belt throughput
We did reach stages where even the fastest modded purple belts could
not move items fast enough for processing. Only then did we use bots
to replace belts in critical high volume processing. Bots trade power
for infinite bandwidth, but also feel cheaty if used too much.
UPS lag due to bugs
The NEE hives would spawn so many bugs, and on occasion they would
become aggressive and decide to attack en masse. Each time the bugs
became active, our UPS would tank. By late game we had to slow the
server to 30% of normal to handle combat situations. We did not have
the Swarm mod, but I would expect that would make it unplayable.
I think much of this is used by pathfinding, but despite the high
values in Entity Updates in the debug screen we could not find a way
to break down the figure further.
I would value finding ways to make the game harder without making it
unplayable.
Angel's cobalt processing
We initially setup our systems to create cobalt plates using Angel's
Smelting. Unfortunately most of the recipes required cobalt oxide, and
we discovered you could not grind the plates to oxide. I think adding
a chemical factory recipe for cobalt plates + oxygen to create cobalt
oxide would have been a great idea. That or maybe the cobalt ingots or
pellets. I hope that Angel fixes this soon.
The chlorine bottleneck and overwhelming purified water
For rocket fuel we needed so much chlorine! Unfortunately the only
method to obtain it is to electrolyze saline water, and that's only
available as a byproduct (2 for 10!!!) when purifying water.
As a result we had massive amounts of purified water to dispose of. At
one point our logistics system had 65k barrels of purified water in
it. We eventually made chlorine factories which split the purified
water into oxygen and hydrogen and vented them because it was faster
than clarifiers. We also considered outputting purified water barrels
into trash landfills despite the pollution it would cause.
Bob's originally had a method to use a chemical furnace to create salt
from water, and then you could make salt water. I think this should be
re-introduced as Angel's removes the salt recipe.
Frequent desyncs for bots modifying inserters
We couldn't isolate the problem, but it appeared that Bob's inserters
frequently caused desyncs when removed or placed by bots. It was a
common frustration.
Balance concerns
Angel's Smelting vs Bob's furnaces
Late game Bob's furnaces with modules completely out performs all of
Angel's smelting. We replaced large and complicated smelting setups
with one or two Bob's buildings and increased our output.
Allowing modules in Angel's smelting could have helped it continue to
scale.
Infinite ores
We discovered that the high end Bob's drills with modules in
combination with Angle's infinite ores made it trivial to obtain
resources, even in high volume. We essentially conquered one resource
patch of each kind, and then had infinite high quantity output.
As a result we should either significantly reduce the viability of
infinite ores (1/10th the amount), or cap the high end drills. For our
next game I'm likely to look at whether they can be configured.
Increase enemy difficulty without UPS issues making combat unplayable
I do love how NEE makes the bugs respond to their environment (ie:
trees and desert), but the overwhelming numbers made the game nearly
unplayable.
I'd love to see the updated AI work with a mod that made fewer much
larger and harder bugs. 10x less bugs, but a 10x larger enemy would work!
Bob's greenhouses and wood replacing oil processing for plastic and rocket fuel
One unique feature is that our base relied on making massive
quantities of raw wood to create plastic and rocket fuel. We created
3.8 MILLION wood per hour, or 65k wood per minute. For plastics we
reduced the wood to cellulose in Angel's Algae tech tree, and from
there we made methanol. It was a short step to unlimited
plastic. Methanol was also a key ingredient for rocket fuel, and
supplied by wood. Bob's greenhouses with beacons, speed modules, and
fertilizer were completely overpowered.
This may have not been the intention, and I'm not convinced its bad. I
just think it's not what the mod designers originally intended.
Uranium Power
Eventually, we went completely nuclear. It was way too easy to make
enriched uranium. We had two warehouses filled with uranite early in
the game from slag processing. I believe this has been nerfed in a
later version. Later, when we could do mixed ore combining to get
uranite, it still seemed too easy. At the end of the game, we have
three warehouses filled with nuclear fuel rods. A lot of this was due
to the need for depleted uranium for military uses. The process of
getting uranium should be harder, perhaps removing mixed ore combining
and nerfing uranium through slag processing to something small like 1%.
Also, make the consumption of fuel rods much quicker. At end game, we
have only 150 used fuel rods. There was never the need to do fuel
reprocessing.
), it didnt end well 
. Running a new Farlands map + marathon and a few of the mods you mention above.