[MOD 0.15] Portal Research (Asteroid Mining) 0.7.5

[buggy123]

I can't test it at the moment - will this work properly with angel's infinite ores, if i add them via the interface? I'm not sure how angels handles having ore patches with 2 different ore types in it (non-infinite with a small core of infinite), and depending on how you do it it might not work by default.

[doc]

I can't test it at the moment - will this work properly with angel's infinite ores, if i add them via the interface? I'm not sure how angels handles having ore patches with 2 different ore types in it (non-infinite with a small core of infinite), and depending on how you do it it might not work by default.

This won't work very well as-is. Angel's does this mixed ore through RSO, whereas the resource generation for asteroids is its own system. And I do have some "mixed" asteroids but the mixture is even, rather than having a central pool of a different ore. But what could happen is you might get something like infinite copper mixed with non-infinite iron ... or an infinite ore mixed with a different infinite ore ... it's completely random.

To be honest though, I just wouldn't recommend using infinite ores with this mod. As you research better tech (e.g. the Space Telescope) you'll start hitting asteroids with 100M+ resource patches. It's also a bit easier to set up the outposts when you don't have to run rails out there. My philosophy with this mod was to provide a technology-based way to solve resource problems without completely breaking the game ... I think this is simply at odds with infinite resource patches.

[doc]

Seriously? FORCING us to go nuclear? Come on man at least add a cheap heat generator for those of us who don't want nuclear.

I've got more than enough solar power for a base 10x my size, but now I have to build a nuclear reactor cause you decided to add a heat requirement to the plastic forming plant? Seriously?

A fair point ... this was a bit of an experiment, I wanted to play with the heat mechanics to try and make the builds a bit unique! But I didn't fully consider that players might simply not have nuclear set up by this point in the game. Later on I was going to be introducing something else that created heat, the idea is that you can use the excess heat from that for melting plastic. But yes for now it does seem rather silly (from a realism point of view) to have to build a reactor just to melt some plastic

Anyway; this will be fixed next release, I would like to implement an electric heater but unless it's going to be used for more than one thing I am more tempted to just revert to an electric source. The heat source is kinda non-obvious, someone else in the thread thought the machine wasn't working because they hadn't noticed the heat input.

[doc]

Hi! I keep getting this really weird error related to your plastic plant

Hi,

This error isn't caused by my mod, my best guess is this is cause by ModuleInserter (it is looking for "mi-icon-plastic-forming-plant", I think "mi" is probably ModuleInserter...)

What I guess is happening here is ModuleInserter is looking for any machines that accept modules (which Plastic Forming Plant is one), however I didn't yet make an icon for it - it's a tinted version of the chemical plant. ModuleInserter is incorrectly handling this.

So - disable ModuleInserter and see if that fixes the problem, if so then please send a report to that author, I am happy to provide them more detail if needed to fix the problem. This bug could certainly cause incompatibility with other mods not just mine.

[qwerter96]

How is resource generation on asteroids done, I'd like to use this mod with omnimatter but the asteroids don't generate omnium, giving vanilla ores instead...

[doc]

How is resource generation on asteroids done, I'd like to use this mod with omnimatter but the asteroids don't generate omnium, giving vanilla ores instead...

The resource generation is entirely custom, but I provide a script interface to register new ores, there is a small issue for Omnimatter but it's certainly fixable:

Code: Select all

  remote.call("portal_research", "add_offworld_resource", "my-ore-name", weight, richness_multiplier)

This adds the resource "my-ore-name" to the allowable list to be found offworld. Do at least consider realism if doing this! By default oil and coal are omitted because they're derived from organic matter so it wouldn't seem right to find them on an asteroid.

weight is an integer which weights the probability of this resource being found relative to others. It does not affect the total chance of finding a resource.

richness_multiplier is a float which affects the quantity of the resource found per tile. This will additionally by affected by game settings (when I implement this!) so don't feel you need to
adjust this yourself. If not sure, just use 1, for similar richness patches to iron/copper.

The default table of values is as follows:

Code: Select all

  { name="iron-ore",  weight=120,  richness=1 },
  { name="copper-ore", weight=100, richness=1.2 },
  { name="stone", weight=200, richness=0.8 },
  { name="uranium-ore", weight=1, richness=0.05 }

So the issue is I didn't provide a method to remove/alter items from that list - which you would need to do if you just want Omnimatter on every asteroid. For now a reasonable workaround would be to set the weight to some extremely high value, say around 10 million should do it; only 1 in 23000 asteroids will have anything other than omnite.

You will also need to add Factorium ore support of course but this is the same for any non-vanilla ore, details are on the Omnimatter page: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/EmperorZelos/omnimatter

I do plan eventually to have built-in support for a number of 3rd party mods but this should get you up and running for now. I will also happily accept contributions in this area, in general I think these are much better coming from people who know a particular mod better than me as they will have a better understanding of balance/value of different ores.

[nucleargen]

You will also need to add Factorium ore support of course but this is the same for any non-vanilla ore, details are on the Omnimatter page: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/EmperorZelos/omnimatter

factorium ore support already is: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/nuclearg ... arch-addon (with fix from EmprerorZelos to omnimatter)
i haven't check yet resource generation on asteroids, but will see soon and maybe implement it to addon.

[The Zero]

Hi again, maybe I'm just missing something, but launching rocket results in this:

lander-error.png (126.59 KiB) Viewed 8048 times

Probably should be

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global.landers[orbital.id] = orbital

instead of

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global.landers[lander.id] = lander

Refactoring, huh?

And my question about code repository and a place to send PRs for bugfixes is still unanswered

[doc]

Refactoring, huh?

Yeah, the problem is refactoring without actually testing everything afterwards! Fixed in 0.6.5.

And my question about code repository and a place to send PRs for bugfixes is still unanswered

Sorry about that - I made the repository public and just forgot to post a link: https://github.com/chucksellick/

[doc]

You will also need to add Factorium ore support of course but this is the same for any non-vanilla ore, details are on the Omnimatter page: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/EmperorZelos/omnimatter

factorium ore support already is: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/nuclearg ... arch-addon (with fix from EmprerorZelos to omnimatter)
i haven't check yet resource generation on asteroids, but will see soon and maybe implement it to addon.

Amazing, thanks for this! I've added a link in the README. Also in 0.6.4 I've added methods for removing resources:

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  remote.call("portal_research", "remove_offworld_resource", "my-ore-name")
  remote.call("portal_research", "clear_offworld_resources")

[doc]

I've got more than enough solar power for a base 10x my size, but now I have to build a nuclear reactor cause you decided to add a heat requirement to the plastic forming plant? Seriously?

Heat requirement has been removed as of 0.6.6.

[HorusOP]

Disabling module inserter worked! Thank you very much for that; I would never have thought of disabling that one.

[featherwinglove]

By default oil and coal are omitted because they're derived from organic matter so it wouldn't seem right to find them on an asteroid.

Just a quick heads up that most real life asteroids are made almost entirely of carbon.

[nucleargen]

i've updated portal research addon to have omnite on asteroids. Weight set to 100000, cause of this not contradicts omnimatter ideology - non-omnite ores still can be found on asteroids (very rarely)

[nucleargen]

on 0.6.6:

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Error while running event portal-research::on_rocket_launched (ID 10)
__portal-research__/modules/orbitals.lua:44: attempt to index global 'telescope' (a nil value)

[doc]

Just a quick heads up that most real life asteroids are made almost entirely of carbon.

Yes, I did actually discover this when I was doing my research. But carbon is not the same as coal, you still need organic matter and time to make coal or oil. And there has been research already into the real-life viability of asteroid mining:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/com ... ithin_the/

it is very unlikely there are significant, let alone measurable, amounts of life-derived carbon ejected from Earth within our solar system. And whatever might be there will have been profoundly altered by the pressure and temperature of the meteoric impacts which would have ejected them.

However I can find evidence that both iron and copper (and obviously "stone" which could be a wide variety of things) could be out there:

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space ... _asteroids

Closer to the Sun, at just over twice the Earth's orbital distance, the proportion of C-type asteroids is only about 40 percent. Here, the majority of asteroids are grey, without the carbon material and principally made of silicate compound rock.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicate_minerals
Here you see "Copper silicate mineral chrysocolla" as Wikipedia's choice for the main picture to represent silicate minerals.

Also this: https://www.fastcompany.com/40419405/th ... -asteroids

[many asteroids] are thought to consist of platinum, gold, iron, and more. A single 500-meter-wide asteroid can contain almost 175 times Earth’s annual platinum mining output, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology research.

Obviously my research hasn't been exhaustive but I think I'm doing a decent job of representing reality. I might increase the chance of "barren" asteroids a bit. Also I should point out that the data you linked is only based on our asteroid belt, who knows what the composition of asteroids in Factorio's solar system might be!

I could consider adding a process to convert some arbitrary carbon form into a useable fuel, but there is also a gameplay reason why I prefer to have some things unavailable on asteroids. I don't want to completely remove normal outposts from the game. I solved the two biggest problems, i.e. iron and copper throughput. Stone isn't usually a problem anyway. Neither is uranium with Kovarex up and running. But you will still have to build some outposts for coal and oil, and you might still want to use liquefaction.

[doc]

on 0.6.6:

Code: Select all

Error while running event portal-research::on_rocket_launched (ID 10)
__portal-research__/modules/orbitals.lua:44: attempt to index global 'telescope' (a nil value)

Argh! (I should admit, this is partly due to my keyboard, it has been badly playing up lately causing a lot of typos when I am normally very accurate!)

Edit: No, it wasn't even that, it was the refactor again. Solar harvesters were broken too

[doc]

Fixed in 0.6.7

[nucleargen]

on 0.6.6:

Code: Select all

Error while running event portal-research::on_rocket_launched (ID 10)
__portal-research__/modules/orbitals.lua:44: attempt to index global 'telescope' (a nil value)

Argh! (I should admit, this is partly due to my keyboard, it has been badly playing up lately causing a lot of typos when I am normally very accurate!)

Edit: No, it wasn't even that, it was the refactor again. Solar harvesters were broken too

sadly

And what do you think about integrate remote interface such as in omnimatter? In that mod a could use omni.add_resource in data_updates, instead remote.call from control.lua. What is the best way?

[doc]

And what do you think about integrate remote interface such as in omnimatter? In that mod a could use omni.add_resource in data_updates, instead remote.call from control.lua. What is the best way?

The thing is, Omnimatter has to do it there, because it's dynamically creating new techs to unlock the various ore processing recipes (I believe that's how it works anyway). So it has to be done at the stage when raw data is modifiable.

Whereas with my mod I'm not doing anything tricky like that, ores can even be added/removed from the list even at runtime. So it's better to do it with the standard script interface that is normal for mods to use to communicate.