Support - Uranium Power

[Val]

While I like the depleted uranium bullets, I think they are a little bit unrealistically overpowered.
Uranium in bullets is only useful because of its density. It's not radioactive in any significant way. I might give you heavy metal poisoning, but so can tungsten or lead. Contrary to some movies and video games, they don't explode or give you radiation poisoning.

[Fatmice]

My bullets don't poison things nor are they radioactive. In the current version, the only damage they do is physical. In the next version, I've added impacting as well as physical. Those biters will not stand a chance. If you don't like the bullets, then you should save your depleted uranium for a rainy day, like for use in breeding when it is released. The current damage numbers are just right for the efforts to produce them. The clip size is also much smaller than any modded bullets that I've seen. The main reason they exists was to give two conflicting uses, make ammo to defend yourself, or use the depleted uranium for breeding. If you did the former, you have deprived yourself of much potential energy.

[Val]

I know, and I like the uranium bullets, and I also know that they don't explode or irradiate, they are just so powerful as if they did.
I also know that for balance reasons something which is rare and hard to produce should be very powerful, I just had the feeling that they are unrealistically powerful.

But you are right, if they were realistic and only gave a very little damage bonus, no one would use them.

[Peter34]

I've started my first game (an SP one), using this mod. I just left all the Uranite/Flourite settings at default, but the map I got seems to have a fair abundance of Uranite, even though it was my impression that it was supposed to be fairly scarce.

I'm only about 90 minutes into the game, and taking it very slow (VL starting area, etc), I haven't even begun thinking about nuclear power yet, but I'm just wondering, is this mod meant to be played with Uranite (and Flourite) on default abundance settings?

[Fatmice]

Hi, it is hard to say from what you've seen since random being random can spawn local abundance. Let me know your experience when you have charted a few thousand chunks.

[Irunfold]

Hello Fatmice, I finally attempted to run the game with the updated technology.lua file but then Factorio crashed on loading because some recipe's assignID was missing (I'd like to see this recipe in action )

[Fatmice]

Hm, I will investigate this shortly and give you a solution.

[Fatmice]

Okay, the reason you saw the technology error was because that technology.lua came from my development version.

Here is the technology fix made for the current release of 0.6.2

technology.lua

(4.95 KiB) Downloaded 298 times

Make the switch then issue the same commands

Code: Select all

/c game.local_player.force.recipes["heat-exchange-water-water-02"].enabled = true
/c game.local_player.force.recipes["heat-exchange-pressurised-water-water-02"].enabled = true
/c game.local_player.force.recipes["heat-exchange-pressurised-water-pressurised-water-02"].enabled = true

That should do it.

[Irunfold]

You answer so rapidly, I should call you 'Fastmice' !
Foul jokes apart, I tried your new fix and it's working fine! I'm a happy nuclear plant manager now. Thanks a lot.
I'm also impatient for the next version's release given what you're concocting.

[Fatmice]

The technology.lua that didn't work for you has a sneak peak into what I'm working on, but not all things as I usually add technology entries last. This is why you had that missing technology problem. The recipes were introduced in 0.5.x of Uranium Power, but the migration scripts were masking them being missing on old save-games. It was not until I made new test save-games that I found them missing after the current release of 0.6.2. However, by this time, I was already adding code for 0.6.3 and it wasn't yet in a working state for a bug release and so no bug release for this problem, which I thought was minor and would not affect the ones who have been playing since 0.5.x. I will make an announcement on the download thread regarding this.

[Peter34]

Please post your questions or thoughts regarding this mod. Version supported is 0.5.x and 0.6.0.

Please include mod version in your post if it is about bug(s).

I think the map colour of Flourite should be changed slightly. It's a very black'ish purple, something very roughly like 303 or 404, and I think adding more colourfullness to it would make it easier to see, especially smaller Flourite patches. Maybe 737 or 958 or something like that.

Other than that, I've yet to actually get started using your mod. It's installed, but I keep starting over with a new map, before I reach the point where I feel I have the resources to go nuclear. But I am looking forward to actually using it.

[Fatmice]

Well real-life fluorite is very colorful since the crystal structure is very accommodating. I think 737 is a nice change.

http://rgb.to/hex/737

You don't need that much to start the nuclear energy What have you been doing with your starter resources? I go nuclear immediately and usually will go off coal within an hour of starting a new map. I then use the coal to do other things since I always play with YuokiTani's mod.

[Djohaal]

The problem with the current fluorite is it seems to have been done with a quick HSV adjust. It looks like candy for me. An appropriate recolor should make it purple fading to black, not white fading to purple (if you get what I mean about the gradients).

Which software did you use to model the buildings? They look great but lack a bit of... grunge. To fit into the factorio theme. I am a 3d artist, depending on the software I could give the model some love.

[Fatmice]

Hello,

The coloring of the ore was done by Liquius and quite early in the mod's life. Since then, I've never touch the original sprite for it yet. I think it was faded out so it looks white-washed. I'll adjust the coloring in the next version.

As for the models, they were made in blender by a friend of mine and he's not an artist either. Yes, they lack the grunge of Factorio's art style and is indeed too clean and modern looking. I would prefer it look more steampunkish like Factorio. The next set of models will be made by YuokiTani and I will request that he makes them more grungy and have more greebles. Once the next release is done, I think I will upload the model files to github. You can take a look then if you incline.

[Djohaal]

Oh Yuoki is doing the new models? Hist stuff is great, I'm sure it'll look awesome

[Peter34]

This 210 minute long game-streaming video is an interesting study in how the Uranium Power mod fails to be easy to use:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdEdkMCvyao



About 90 minutes in, he starts actually starts trying to set up fission power. He has tiny problems, easily resolved, with the Uranium HexaFluoride enriching process. Same as I did.

Then he stumbles, painfully, over the thingie that the mod wants him to place down next to the Reactor building. Because he doesn't know that the thingie has been automagically placed in his inventory. Nor is the thingie particularly visible whenever he has his inventory open, because it looks utterly like a Steel Chest. There's no symbol, or greebling or anything else on it to make it different from a Steel Chest, or at least nothing that stands out. His subsconscious mind skips over it, because to the subconscious mind, it's a very familiar visual, that of the Steel Chest, which he is used to. So it is perfectly understandable that he doesn't notice it.

He keeps trying to put the fuel rod into the reactor, even though the game always gives him an error message when he attempts that.

He spends the 60 or 90 last minutes of the video not being able to progress.

Two suggestions:
1. The mod's text should be improved. Currently it says something like this:
"Place the [thingie] next to the reactor."
That should be changed to this:
"The [thingie] has been put into your inventory.<br>Place it next to the reactor."
2. The thingie's graphics should be modified, even if just slightly, so as to make it visually distinct, so that even a fairly inexperienced player can see that it is not a Steel Chest. So that even if he fails to notice - or decides to ignore - the feedback text that the mod gives him, he still has a chance to notice it the next time he opens his inventory, notice that there is a new item in his inventory that wasn't there before and which doesn't look like the items he's used to fiddling around with when playing the vanilla game.

I know about the odd chest, of course, because I watched the tutorial YouTube videos. But it'd be really good if this mod was useable even for people who haven't watched those videos. They are, after all, something like 70-100 minutes long in total (more with the newer "bonus" video that goes into more detail about the water flow processes).

[Evilness]

So I've been wondering when the fuel decay is gonna be released. Atm i feel the mod is a bit too overpowered. Its like easy to make, compact solar. Perhaps it would be nice if ore spawn was changed to only spawn individual squares of ore. Like dytech ores spawn. It would make it a bit harder to obtain enough ore for a reactor.

[Fatmice]

So I've been wondering when the fuel decay is gonna be released. Atm i feel the mod is a bit too overpowered. Its like easy to make, compact solar. Perhaps it would be nice if ore spawn was changed to only spawn individual squares of ore. Like dytech ores spawn. It would make it a bit harder to obtain enough ore for a reactor.

So when fuel decay is available will you be back to say that the mod is now underpowered?

But back to your question, I've said multiple times that it will be available in 0.7.x. I'm currently stuck with coding 0.6.3. There is a nasty counting problem that I've yet to resolve so progress has been slow. I think you will be glad the the ore is what it is when fuel decay is alive and kicking. This mod isn't meant to be challenging by keeping a needed resource too rare. Why go through the trouble of playing with this mod at all if coal is plentiful and oil is everlasting?

This 210 minute long game-streaming video is an interesting study in how the Uranium Power mod fails to be easy to use:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdEdkMCvyao



About 90 minutes in, he starts actually starts trying to set up fission power. He has tiny problems, easily resolved, with the Uranium HexaFluoride enriching process. Same as I did.

Then he stumbles, painfully, over the thingie that the mod wants him to place down next to the Reactor building. Because he doesn't know that the thingie has been automagically placed in his inventory. Nor is the thingie particularly visible whenever he has his inventory open, because it looks utterly like a Steel Chest. There's no symbol, or greebling or anything else on it to make it different from a Steel Chest, or at least nothing that stands out. His subsconscious mind skips over it, because to the subconscious mind, it's a very familiar visual, that of the Steel Chest, which he is used to. So it is perfectly understandable that he doesn't notice it.

He keeps trying to put the fuel rod into the reactor, even though the game always gives him an error message when he attempts that.

He spends the 60 or 90 last minutes of the video not being able to progress.

Two suggestions:
1. The mod's text should be improved. Currently it says something like this:
"Place the [thingie] next to the reactor."
That should be changed to this:
"The [thingie] has been put into your inventory.<br>Place it next to the reactor."
2. The thingie's graphics should be modified, even if just slightly, so as to make it visually distinct, so that even a fairly inexperienced player can see that it is not a Steel Chest. So that even if he fails to notice - or decides to ignore - the feedback text that the mod gives him, he still has a chance to notice it the next time he opens his inventory, notice that there is a new item in his inventory that wasn't there before and which doesn't look like the items he's used to fiddling around with when playing the vanilla game.

I know about the odd chest, of course, because I watched the tutorial YouTube videos. But it'd be really good if this mod was useable even for people who haven't watched those videos. They are, after all, something like 70-100 minutes long in total (more with the newer "bonus" video that goes into more detail about the water flow processes).

I blame Liquius for using the steel chest as a stand-in. But honestly, I half want to keep it that way to see how many more will suffer by not reading the tool tip or go cold turkey and not watch my tutorial

But more seriously, the chest image is on my top list to do for 0.6.3. I know it causes problems because it is hard to notice. A better solution would be to do away with the chest altogether, but Factorio doesn't natively support composite prototypes so that will remain a dream. I will improve the messaging so it is more clear what is going on after placing the reactor.

Personally, I enjoy watching how others solve or not solve a problem, especially if it is a problem of my own making. It reveals a lot about how the person thinks. That's just my personal observation.

[neothehitman]

hey fatmice can we have pic's and some building info on the new added parts?
also love that the mod is still evolving Atomic Power is still in my list of best factorio mods

[Fatmice]

You mean the ones that will come in 0.6.3? They are simply ugly stand-ins at the moment. I don't think you want to look at them =P