Angel+bob mod packs: making advanced features more compelling

[wheezil]

Hi all,

I've played the "angel+bob" mod packs several times, and I really love them. It's been challenging coming up with a solid strategy for early/mid/late game, and I've developed a nice collection of blueprints that I use. At this point, I have a few observations about the game play, and would like to hear your thoughts and/or tell me what I've missed.

The parts of the gameplay that I *really* love are those inflection points in the game where you have to make a technology or strategy shift to avoid starvation or getting overrun by enemies. For example:
-- Crawler robotics
-- Expand steel production lines
-- Bring in railroad feeds
-- Manganese steel
-- Trade out crawler bots for gen 3/4 bots
-- Synthetic ores
-- Coal -> benzene -> plastic

However, I've found that some features, while a lot of fun, just aren't compelling -- you ultimately don't need them to launch a rocket or defeat enemies. And they are a big part of the mods, so it would be nice if they were more essential:
-- Modules: It takes so long to collect gardens, raise fish, puffers, biters, etc that it doesn't pay off. Faster just to scale out normally. I'd like it if the rocket launch were much more expensive, like 10x or 40x more, so that it forces me to go down this path.
-- Nuclear power: Without speed modules, you don't need it.
-- Alien tech: Cool but... why? Better exoskeleton and armor isn't enough. Why not make it a pre-req for rocket, like a "life support module"?

Of course, one can always make up new goals, like "launch 100 satellites" or whatever, but that's more like the MEGAbase ideas.

Anyway, just some ideas. Any feedback appreciated

I haven't kept up with news on the "official" expansion pack, but I look forward to it. Is it based on Angel/Bob at all?

Thanks
john

[Tesseractcubed]

A couple notes:

From skimming the GitHub repository, the Angel's team is making a few continuing changes. Alien Artifacts are being reworked, and they are also putting in more effort to the Tech and Component overhauls from Angel's Industries.

If you want to force Nuclear Power and Alien Life to become relevant to launching a rocket, the Component overhaul requires modules and advanced nuclear fuel cells to launch a satellite.