Factorio Forums

This is a thread for documenting my progress through a Bob's Angels modpack that I've put together. I've quite recently got into modded Factorio. I've spent a few days playing with Bob's mods and Angel's mods, and I've gotten very familiar with how they affect the game. However, there are definitely a few things which the two of those mods do not add, so I've added a lot of extra mods too. I wasn't sure where to put this thread. I figured this was the best subforum for it because I'll use it to showcase my various designs, but if it should be elsewhere then I would guess that a moderator will move it.

The long-term goal of this playthrough is to create a very optimized factory that can be easily modified to deal with just about any resource demand. After the early-game phase I'll be using a spreadsheet of my own design to assist with planning and resource management. The idea is that I will have a series of different machine arrays dedicated to producing certain intermediate products and/or end products. Each array will be as optimized as possible for dealing with either an input or an output that is an exact multiple of yellow belts (or half a yellow belt for early rare-resource production), or different numbers if it's a fluid-based array. Such arrays will be kept as blueprints for ease of replication, and they will essentially contribute to a fully modular factory design. The spreadsheet I'm using includes a resource manifest of all overall inputs, intermediate products, and end products, so whenever I add a new consumer it is easy to see what resources are being affected, which new machine arrays I need, and how much extra input the whole factory needs to compensate.

Here's the starting area, and my initial power generation and early mining setup:
I will post updates at significant milestones.

After several hours of play time and far too much manual crafting, I have created a very basic ore processing system and a temporary main bus for producing the technologies I will need in order to upgrade my factory.
The next update will probably occur once I have a refining setup including hydro refining, and the most efficient smelting setup for the numerous metals I can acquire before obtaining blue science packs. Blue science packs, like most things with Bob's and Angel's mods, are notoriously difficult to acquire. The increase in difficulty of obtaining blue science compared to green is even greater than it is in the base game, with batteries requiring plastic and a lot of complex chemistry.

I have made some progress. I currently have iron and copper being produced by precision sorting from crushed ore, and I have enough of a backlog of lead and tin to maintain my production until I finish my second-level ore processing. All machines being used are still Mk1 machines.

I still consider this point of the game to be the early-game despite having spent 34 hours playing, as I lack plastic and oil products and I still only have the first tier of Bob's four tiers of circuits. That being said, future progress is likely to occur much quicker.

Without further ado, here's what I've been working on:
My next update will occur once I have completed ore chunk processing, basic oil and natural gas refining, and a new temporary main bus (for production with the products of the aforementioned processes).

hi jane, keep up the good work, you can do it
(one thing i noticed in my game of angels and bobs, was that it turned out to be extremely beneficial to have stored every last drop of mineral sludge, waste water, and any gasses or liquids... especially when i ran out of gold and tin and could not gather as much due to lots of rather nasty biters)

foodfactorio wrote:hi jane, keep up the good work, you can do it
(one thing i noticed in my game of angels and bobs, was that it turned out to be extremely beneficial to have stored every last drop of mineral sludge, waste water, and any gasses or liquids... especially when i ran out of gold and tin and could not gather as much due to lots of rather nasty biters)

The world of this playthrough is actually gone now. Because of the major changes to Angel's mods in 0.15, I've restarted recently with some changes to my mod set. So things will look different when I come back. And in any case, I'm actually now playing without biters at all, so my only issue will be expansion and finding new resource patches.

I'm glad you like what I'd been doing here though, thanks. And thanks for the suggestion; as I'm learning how to use these mods better I'm getting a better understanding of how everything fits together, and I have a much better idea of how to manage resources. Fluid trains will certainly help. I'll only void things in the early game unless I really can't deal with a backlog, and I'll prioritize creation of processing facilities for basic fluids and gases soon after my basic ore processing (which will also be done differently to how it was in 0.14).

I probably won't come back to this for a little longer, because I'm still getting back to where I was with the old playthrough (early main bus and hydro refining for ores). I also want to make some more of my new guides to Angel's mods (found here: viewtopic.php?f=185&t=50446) before I get beyond the very early-game in my new playthrough, because making those has already really helped me to refine my ideas of how I'm going to play in future.

ah yes, i'm still running things in version 0.14 with all these mods (plus a few more)
viewtopic.php?f=95&t=40288&start=20#p290313

i will most probbaly need to use your guides on newer versions of angels mods, especially the smelting and castings you did, but am still trying to complete the game on 0.14 with a coop friend, before moving to 0.15

foodfactorio wrote:i will most probbaly need to use your guides on newer versions of angels mods, especially the smelting and castings you did

You'll be pleased to know that now that I've finished the smelting & casting guides I've started work on making similar guides for Petrochem. I'll probably cover just about every machine process in Angel's mods eventually (though it'll take me a few weeks to a month, or maybe more depending on how often I can actually work on the guides). After Petrochem I'll cover all water-related processes, then go over all of the chemistry that doesn't really fall under Petrochem, and then finally I'll cover Refining and any other processes I've missed by that point.

cool (dont forget to have a large bag of snacks nearby, to keep you going)