[MOD 0.17.x] Modular Armor Revamp

[jpas]

I have gotten a bug report on my mod that is currently incompatible with yours on a new save.

I have looked into your code and saw that you overwrite the properties of a couple technology prototypes. This causes any changes made by mods loaded before yours to be overwritten. I have a couple suggestions to help fix these issues but as you do not have a license I am unsure of how to go about this.

Note that the mod conflict bug I'm experiencing is a very minor one. It'd still be nice to get it resolved, granted, but unless I've misunderstood something then the problem is quite minor.

I has the potential to become a larger issue if more mods modify the same technology.

[Ranakastrasz]

I need to figure out how to extend an existing table rather than overwriting it entirely in a prototype. Until I can do that I am not sure how to manage this.

[jpas]

I need to figure out how to extend an existing table rather than overwriting it entirely in a prototype. Until I can do that I am not sure how to manage this.

http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.ht ... ble.insert should be what you are looking for

[Ranakastrasz]

Ran a quick test, works great. Gonna have to re-compare the old and new prototypes to see what I changed still. Also, since I actually changed a few tech costs there might still be limited compatibility issues, but unless a specific example shows up that I can look up I think it will be fine.

Also, batteries and shields can't really be fully compatible period.
Gonna probably be up by tomorrow.

Side note, Can anyone explain to me how the "order" node in the table works?

order = "g-h"

I believe it determines which order it shows up in the UI, but I am unsure how the sorting methods works, and my attempts to use it so far are not satisfactory. The t3 shield shows up before the T1 and T2 shield for some reason, and so on.

[Ranakastrasz]

v14
Superconducting Cable stack size 50->200
Personal Roboports no longer scale.
Used table insert instead of overwrite for existing technology.



Roboport scale was removed becakse It wasn't really needed in the first place once the power was increased as they had such high power levels before already simply because modular armor in vanilla produced so little power.

[Peter34]

Scale, how? Does this mean you no longer get a larger Constructin Area if you use multiple Personal RoboPorts?

Also, I meant to write a reply about the power-per-tile of your modules, but for some reason it appears it never got sent: I think that the Burner Generator module should produce a bit more power (and so also use fuel faster), from 125 kW/tile to 160 or even 180 kW/tile. Maybe boost up Fusion Reactor from 312 kW/tile to 350 or 400, but I'm not really sure if that's necessary. I do think Burner Generator needs to get a boost relative to the 3x3 tier 2 Modular Solar Panels.

Also, as for the Conduits being 500 kW, that was because I was using an older version. As soon as I updated to the latest version (12) they went down to 400 kW, which seems perfectly fine to me. I've also discovered that no matter how many you fit into your Armor, they max out at either 4.8 or 5.0 MW, I think 5 but not entirely sure. That seems fine to me, though. You need a huge amount of Conduits to even reach 500 MW.

Having a tier 2 Conduit MkII that takes up 1x2 or 2x1 tiles and which can transfer just 1000 kW would be nice, though. I'm often a stay-at-home type of player character, so being able to recharge faster when inside my base would be very nice.

[Ranakastrasz]

Scale, how? Does this mean you no longer get a larger Constructin Area if you use multiple Personal RoboPorts?

No longer has a higher energy draw and capacity. As a result, it won't take forever to charge with low level stuff, but has no loss of functionality.

Also, I meant to write a reply about the power-per-tile of your modules, but for some reason it appears it never got sent: I think that the Burner Generator module should produce a bit more power (and so also use fuel faster), from 125 kW/tile to 160 or even 180 kW/tile. Maybe boost up Fusion Reactor from 312 kW/tile to 350 or 400, but I'm not really sure if that's necessary. I do think Burner Generator needs to get a boost relative to the 3x3 tier 2 Modular Solar Panels.

Perhaps. I've been messing with balance a lot. Main issue is that I want solar to be viable, but engines to be better. Hence the T2 solar panel is slightly better than the burner during the day only. I can't really be certain that is a good idea, but the was the intent for recient change.

Also, as for the Conduits being 500 kW, that was because I was using an older version. As soon as I updated to the latest version (12) they went down to 400 kW, which seems perfectly fine to me. I've also discovered that no matter how many you fit into your Armor, they max out at either 4.8 or 5.0 MW, I think 5 but not entirely sure. That seems fine to me, though. You need a huge amount of Conduits to even reach 500 MW.

That is because the dummy consumer has only so much capacity. That said, I originally calculated it such that at 100 conduits it would match 3MW, and fudged it to 5MW instead.
500 MW is so ridiculously out of range that I have to assume you made a typo.
That said, changes I made since then make it obvious I need to boost the cap.
400 * 100 = 40k, which is clearly more than 5k.
As is, you would cap out at 12 conduits.... which is a serious problem in need of a hotfix. Thank you for pointing this out.

This was a legacy of when I was using an accumulator, and I didn't want to entirely flood the accumulator capacity. Using a laser turret dummy makes that irrelevent. Will be boosting it a thousandfold, which requires then 12,500 conduits to exceed.

Having a tier 2 Conduit MkII that takes up 1x2 or 2x1 tiles and which can transfer just 1000 kW would be nice, though. I'm often a stay-at-home type of player character, so being able to recharge faster when inside my base would be very nice.

Yea, I will consider making such. Probably gonna be horizontal 2x4 or something, just because we need something odd like that.

[Ranakastrasz]

v15
Conduits stack past 12 properly now.

[Ranakastrasz]

0.0.16: Fixed Actuator equipment icons.
Fixed orders for all items and techs.
Renamed shields from basic, Mk1, and Mk2 to Mk1, Mk2, Mk3
Fixed prerequisites for Mk1 Shield, Fusion Reactor, Advanced Actuator,

I had a custom icon for Advanced actuator vs Basic, but I forgot to plug it in. They look different from each other now. Basically just a green + sign in the top left corner, same as I used for my chest mod.

Figured out how the Order node works, so items and techs are all in the correct order now. Other mods might cause issues, but it works fine on its own. not gamebreaking even if there was a problem.

Me and my friend have been having trouble communicating which tier of shield is which, so I just simplified it.
When I transitioned from full overwrite to single-node overwrite, I missed most of the prerequisite changes. This is fixed now.

[Peter34]

Renamed shields from basic, Mk1, and Mk2 to Mk1, Mk2, Mk3

Nice! The weird naming was rather annoying, but since your mod is so good, and you're doing such a good job at balancing it (at least listening to feedback even if you don't always agree with me) and even rapidly fixing conflicts with other mods, I didn't really feel like pestering you with such a pedantic complaint. But it is much nicer to have formally progressing module names.

[Ranakastrasz]

Nice! The weird naming was rather annoying, but since your mod is so good, and you're doing such a good job at balancing it (at least listening to feedback even if you don't always agree with me) and even rapidly fixing conflicts with other mods, I didn't really feel like pestering you with such a pedantic complaint. But it is much nicer to have formally progressing module names.

Yea, I originally wanted to keep the naming the same as vanilla, which made adding a lower tier version somewhat problematic. I did the best I could with the name, but its awkward to communicate. Also, I eventually entirely renamed the exoskeleton equipment (mainly because I couldn't ever remember the name) entirely, and changed basic to advanced. So I decided that there wasn't really any reason to not change it.

Notably, the ingame data corresponds to the old names, meaning that if you want to cheat one up, it won't work as expected.

Also, if you find anything problematic, do tell me about it.
---
I consider myself rubbish at balancing. Honestly pretty much sat down and came up with a tier system and put each thing as having progressively increasing values per tile for each tier. That was mostly functional, but I kept altering it repeatedly, until they ended up quite close together.

I am trying to work on another mod, which basically has me almost entirely throwing out combat balance and redoing it. Redoing resistances and quite a few damages, etc, etc. Its rather difficult because too many things are interconnected.

[Peter34]

I consider myself rubbish at balancing. Honestly pretty much sat down and came up with a tier system and put each thing as having progressively increasing values per tile for each tier. That was mostly functional, but I kept altering it repeatedly, until they ended up quite close together.

You're doing a fine job with balance. I even point that out in my "mini-review" of your mod (see the link in my sig).

I am trying to work on another mod, which basically has me almost entirely throwing out combat balance and redoing it. Redoing resistances and quite a few damages, etc, etc. Its rather difficult because too many things are interconnected.

Given that alpha 0.13 is going to be "the combat mod", seriously overhauling how combat works, you might want to consider postponing that project, since alpha 0.13 might come out in 3-8 weeks (I'm hoping for 3, of course) and require you to re-do lots of your mod. Or you might even find that your mod has become largely pointless if alpha 0.13 fixes almost everything you (and others) are unhappy with

[Ranakastrasz]

Given that alpha 0.13 is going to be "the combat mod", seriously overhauling how combat works, you might want to consider postponing that project, since alpha 0.13 might come out in 3-8 weeks (I'm hoping for 3, of course) and require you to re-do lots of your mod. Or you might even find that your mod has become largely pointless if alpha 0.13 fixes almost everything you (and others) are unhappy with

True enough. I actually have it somewhat functional, and have been using it for a while. It branched off of my trying to make rockets useful, and spiraled out from there.
I pretty much started by making rockets having doubled range and something like 5x damage. Later, rockets just got a significant damage multiplier vs larger biters/spitters instead, but still got the range bonus. I also tried to reduce Shotgun effectiveness vs buildings, making Flamethrower the most effective vs buildings, and rocket being second best, mainly due to range. Number of other changes, but those are the notable ones.

[Ranakastrasz]

I was wondering, Does anyone want me to try and make a standalone Power conduit mod?

[Peter34]

I was wondering, Does anyone want me to try and make a standalone Power conduit mod?

Well, I'm practically married to this mod, so I wouldn't be in the target audience for a smaller standalone mod anyway, but my thinking is that the Batteries available for the vanlla game's modular/power armor are pretty crappy, to the point where a Power Conduit probably wouldn't make much sense.

Hopefully the devs will take a long hard look at armor module balance for alpha 0.13 so that the vanilla game will actually have energy storage options that are reasonable.

[Ranakastrasz]

V17
Added Mk3 and Mk4 Armor

V18
Updated mod for Factorio 0.12.11

------

Mk3 and Mk4 Armor are ~50% larger instead of ~100% larger like previous tiers.

Mk3 armor has a size of 12x12 (144 slots) and costs
2 Mk2 armor
10 of all 3 modules
200 Processing Units
100 Electric engines
1k Superconducting coil

Mk4 has a size of 15x15 (225 slots) and costs
2 Mk3 armor
50 of all 3 modules
1000 Processing Units
400 Electric engines
5k Superconducting coil

So it is a bit excessively expensive, probably comparable to building a rocket, but you get a huge amount of space.

[Peter34]

This may seem a bit weird, or embarassing: But I've actually never played around with the vanilla game Personal RoboPort, only the ReVamp one.

So is the vanilla one different from the ReVamp RoboPort? If yes, how exactly? I'm asking because I may need to teach or explain it to new players, and it won't do for me to be speaking modded game when they expect to hear vanilla game.

[Ranakastrasz]

This may seem a bit weird, or embarassing: But I've actually never played around with the vanilla game Personal RoboPort, only the ReVamp one.

So is the vanilla one different from the ReVamp RoboPort? If yes, how exactly? I'm asking because I may need to teach or explain it to new players, and it won't do for me to be speaking modded game when they expect to hear vanilla game.

It effectively uses 50x as much power, on account of this mod increasing power values by 50x, but has the same capacity and charge rate (massive and fast)

As a result, it will eat all power you throw at it, take a while to discharge afterwards, and if it runs out of power, when you are powering it with solar panels, robots will get stuck trying and failing to charge, requiring you to remove it. Also, if you take it out of the armor, all the power is lost, which can be a pain.

[Peter34]

So it works the same way, without me having to worry about saying something that turns out to be wrong for vanilla. Cool.

Also nice to see larger armours. I've been wishing for at least just a 12x12 one, so getting both that and an even larger one is nice.

[Ranakastrasz]

So it works the same way, without me having to worry about saying something that turns out to be wrong for vanilla. Cool.

Also nice to see larger armours. I've been wishing for at least just a 12x12 one, so getting both that and an even larger one is nice.

Only difference is the significant possiblity of deadlock if you try to use it before a fusion reactor. In fact, even with a fusion reactor it is quite easy for it to eat all of your power and then some. Like, monopolizes Fusion reactor for ~60 seconds or so.

Code: Select all

    energy_source =
    {
      type = "electric",
      buffer_capacity = "7MJ",
      input_flow_limit = "700KW",
      usage_priority = "secondary-input"
    },

It holds 7MJ, and can absorb 700KW. A fusion reactor in vanilla makes 75KW. As a result, it takes 9.3_3 fusion reactors to satisfy the maximum consumption (impossible ofc, and batteries doesn't go that far either) and that would let it charge in 10 seconds, Instead, it takes 93.3_3 seconds, or a little over one and a half minutes using a single reactor.

That alone is pretty insane consumption wise, but it gets worse using solar panels. Not because they are intrisicly way too weak to power it (which they are) but because 4 robots will try to charge, and if you run out of power, they will sit there, losing power over time like normal, while your solar panels futilely try to make enough power to actually charge them. You end up having to remove it from the armor, or mining the robots manually. (For instant recharge, which is kinda manditory)

(For armor, don't look at the price tags)