[MOD 0.12.X] Ore processing & complex material processing

[albatrosv13]

Name: Ore processing & complex material processing
Version: 0.8.2
Factorio-Version: 0.12.21
Description: Adds various machines to get more output per lesser input material - iron, copper, stone and coal.
License: Do what you want, just don't be an asshole.
Release: 2016-04-04
Download-Url: download/file.php?id=9487
Website: viewtopic.php?f=93&t=22383
Dependencies: No dependencies. May interfer with other mods, dunno.
Category: Machines and items.

Long time ago i made a mod - viewtopic.php?f=87&t=8884
This time i have updated the mod to include some more stuff(like the new techs).
Short description - Anyways, this mod adds machines for ore productivity gaining purposes(in the end makes iron, copper, stone and coal renewable) + adds some (semi-)enriched plates to make some basic stuff(gear wheel, steel and copper cable) with less material input.

Long description - The first tech to this mod is 'ore processing 1'(needs advanced material processing 2), which adds two machines so that you can make plates with lesser ore input. For example pulverizer makes 7 chunks from ore(iron or copper), whilst throwing 6 chunks into a smelter makes a plate(iron or copper), thus 1 chunk is a 'bonus'(that makes 16.67% gain). Second machine is ore washing plant, which furthers the gain again with 16.67%. Second tech is 'ore processing 2', which adds another two machines so that you can make plates with even lesser input. There is also a production line for stone too(mainly to get stone bricks with less stone).
Third tech would be 'matter compilation', which adds one machine so that you can remake ore(iron, copper, stone and coal). The goal is to make iron, copper, stone and coal 'infinite' - it does need a big investment(in machines and infrastructure) for practical usage.
This is where my 'old' mod ends and 'new' begins. Next tech is 'complex material processing 1', which adds a material enricher(machine), where you can enrich copper and iron plates so that iron gear wheel, steel and copper cable production needs even less input(usually 20-33% gain in materials). The first tech only adds semi-enriched plates, the second tech adds enriched-plates. You need to develop quite an infrastructure to make it feasible - For example to make semi-enriched iron plate you need iron plate(duh) and small clean iron chunk; To make enriched iron plate you need semi-enriched iron plate and crystallized iron dust. You can make 1 steel out of 2 enriched iron plates.
There is also a coal production line, where coal is processed into coal chunks(you gain MJ out of it), then coal coke chunks and then you can choose either to make solid fuel(1 coal is needed to make 1 solid fuel, thus transforming 8MJ into 25MJ, energy costs not included) out of it or back to coal, thus making coal also renewable. Coal chunks and coal coke chunks can be used to further gain of iron and copper in centrifuge.
Supports 0.12.x.

Bugtesting is welcomed.
Also, i usually change iron, copper, stone and coal generation into poorer direction(size and/or richness) to offset the material gain from the machines. Just a pointer.
A quick rundown of the ore processing mod productivity - When using level 1 productivity modules at every step - in mining drill, pulverizer, ore washing plant, centrifuge, crystallizer and electric furnace, 10k ores turn into 30.5k plates(total count, cause centrifuge gives a side product - with iron you get copper, with copper you get iron). To keep up the throughput the player needs to construct multiple machines of each step.
Without productivity modules 10k ores turn into 19.4k plates.

Version history

Version history
0.7.1 (04.04.2016): Fixed the missing solid fuel recipe; Pulverizer is now assembling machine(it was furnace before), so that it can take in coal automatically(player needs to set the recipe). Players may possibly need to remove and place the pulverizers to get all effects. Also, pulverizer and ore washing plant have now 2 module slots instead of 1(was really limiting before).
0.7.2 (04.04.2016): Thanks to Qons calculations i made most of the iron and copper produciton line easier. The base material gain is now 14.28% instead of 12.5%. Centrifuge gain is also 14.28% instead of 11.1%. I dropped the sulfur from crystallization process and put petroleum gas instead - The usage is also dropped about 5 times. The production speed of most steps in iron and copper production lines have been also sped up about 10%. The ore compilation have been also powered up, majorly - It used 12 crystallized dust before, now 9.
0.7.3 (05.04.2016): Energy costs of machines has been reduced by 20% and speed of the machines increased by 20-30%. Also, petroleum gas usage in crystallization process has been reduced from 0.3 to 0.2.
0.7.4 (06.04.2016): Every step now gains 16.67% ore. Matter compilator type has been changed to asssembling machine, so that it should take in coal stuff automatically. Petroleum gas usage in crystallization process has been reduced to 0.1 per operation.
0.7.5 (08.04.2016): Matter compilator recipe change, where the 0.7.4. nerf should be fixed. Coal production line is more profitable.
0.7.6 (11.04.2016): Added migration script for recipe changes.
0.8.0 (21.04.2016): Balanced complex material processing part of the mod, where instead of using 2 chunks per plate it now uses 1 chunk per plate(the previous balancing versions nerfed it). Also added new technology energized ammo 1 - can enrich piercing bullets with semi-enriched iron plates and enriched iron plates to get stronger ammo(piercing does 5 damage, energized bullet(tier 2) does 13 damage).
0.8.1 (22.04.2016): Enriching copper plates needs now 1 crystallized copper dust instead of 2. Fixed technology icons.
0.8.2 (23.04.2016): Can use productivity modules in more recipes - matter compilator recipes + dust recipes.

End: Any modder wants to mod my mod, you are welcome. I have left.

[Qon]

Haven't researched all of it yet but I love the idea. I can comment on balancing when I know more about it. Much more interesting than productivity modules and infinite resource patches. I usually play with high or infinite resources because spending all your time rebuilding mining outposts is really boring and broken since it can't be automated. With this I can have fun with scarce resources! Also a the complex loops in this mod to create a the perpetuum mobile is much more satisfying than shorter ones like treefarm (which is also nice though).

How does a no-input coal loop power plant compare to solar panels+accumulators in energy/squaretile with all ? I haven't gotten that far yet and I have very little space. It should be much better than a solar farm to be balanced taking into account the complexity and research costs required to set it up. I guess I could try to calculate it purely from recipes but I'm to tired atm.

I recommend bergius process mod viewtopic.php?f=93&t=14699 to be used together with this for infinite oil products and to complete the chain of the later recipes like slurry stone

Bugs:
* The pulverizer doesn't take coal from inserters or control click with it in my hand. I have to insert it manually :<
* I can't find the solid fuel recipe among in the recipes from this mods research. Is it really there?

I'm currently playing the NESTT mod (Never Ever Stop The Train) viewtopic.php?f=97&t=18637 and resources are not only finite with limited options to explore, the amount you get is limited to a half basic belt on average. If I can increase my productivity or get independant from the locomotives collection rate then that would be cool. And that's why I have so little space q:

[albatrosv13]

''How does a no-input coal loop power plant compare to solar panels+accumulators in energy/squaretile with all ?''

I don't know, all i did was adding some ~50% MJ with every step. Of course inserters have more work to do due to amount increase(1 coal -> 6 coal chunks), but this can be mitigated by researching inserter stack size, feeding coal stuff directly to next machines and using standard inserters. Maybe i will do the 1->4;2MJ->3MJ conversion(same total MJ - 12MJ from one coal) to decrease the inserter work. I haven't really played the coal loop myself(i'm not that big fan of using coal as fuel actually), but i added the option so that some players may like the idea(and i may develop it further if needed). The basic numbers for coal loop is that to get an extra coal from loops you have to run the loops 5 times(that is, without productivity modules, but when doing this for solid fuel, efficiency modules are recommended). That is, with every loop of coal an extra coal coke chunk is generated and you need 5 of them to get 1 coal.

'' The pulverizer doesn't take coal from inserters or control click with it in my hand. I have to insert it manually :<''

I don't know what causes this thing. I'm not at home and will try to fix that bug later at evening, though at first glance when looking at the recipe i didn't find anything irregular compared to other recipes. Well except one space, but some few other recipes have that also.

'' I can't find the solid fuel recipe among in the recipes from this mods research. Is it really there?''

Well, shit. I forgot to enable that recipe in the ''complex material processing 2'' technology. It's now added.

Thank you for your feedback, cause i haven't really played through some later technologies myself(complex material processing 2 for example) + the whole coal thing. Balancing of the coal production line should be really improved, i admit. The mod is really simple in structure, so when i did all the 'new' stuff i copy-pasted a lot of stuff from the old mod.

[Qon]

'' The pulverizer doesn't take coal from inserters or control click with it in my hand. I have to insert it manually :<''

I don't know what causes this thing. I'm not at home and will try to fix that bug later at evening, though at first glance when looking at the recipe i didn't find anything irregular compared to other recipes. Well except one space, but some few other recipes have that also.

I would guess it is because it is a modded furnace. I've read in other threads that modders had some problems with that. Furnaces only take coal to the fuel slot by default.

Half bug and really annoying: After researching complex processing 1 the handcrafting autorecipe chain selecting algorithm desperatly only wants enriched copper plates to make copper coils and same for enriched iron plates to cog wheels. If I run around with non-enriched copper plates (can be used in more recipes, I don't have the setup to make enriched yet) I can't craft things like circuits by clicking it even if I have enough copper plates in my inventory. It works if I follow the recipe chain backwards and find the missing ingredient and first craft that, but that is annoying. Please fix the priority order so handcrafting isn't extremely painful.

[seronis]

Your priority issue is actually a game problem not mod problem. The alternative wood recipe in bobs mods causes same issue. The devs need to fix it so that when multiple recipes exists it will check all of them instead of look for just the first one and ignore others if the first recipe doesnt have ingredients

[Qon]

I'm going to compare Ore Processing mod to regular mining for comparison. Lots of calculations in this post. Sometimes I also use efficiency modules. Productivity and speed modules were ignored for now but it might be a great idea.

And btw, I made some calculation errors and was going to post that Ore processing was 100 times worse than regular mining in every way. But just before pressing post button I realised my mistake.

Ore processing is actually 1000 times worse than mining...

Mining requires 19.9 SqrTiles/Ore/second
Energy/ore = 171.0 kJ (34.2 kJ with 3 efficiency module 1)

Calculations

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(Mining power - Mining hardness) * Mining speed / Mining time = Production rate (in resource/sec)

source: https://wiki.factorio.com/index.php?title=Mining_drills

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Electric mining drill   Power 3                 Speed 0.5     90 kW (electric)  Size 3x3
Iron ore                Mining hardness 0.9     Mining time 2

~91.3% space efficient setup gives effective size 1/(126/138)*9 = 9.86 effective SqrTiles/miner
source: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2569&start=18
Belt mining can be 86% space efficient anyways which is almost the same as bot mining = 9/0.86 = 10.5 effective SqrTiles.
source: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2569#p18726

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Ore/second = (3 - 0.9) * 0.5 / 2 = 0.525/s
SqrTiles/(ore/s) robot = 9.86/0.525 = 18.8 SqrTiles/Ore/second   (18.775510204081634)
SqrTiles/(ore/s) belt = 10.5/0.525 = 19.9 SqrTiles/Ore/second   (19.93355481727575)

Seconds/ore = 1/0.525 = 1.90s
Energy/ore = 1.90*90 = 171.0 kJ (34.2 kJ with 3 efficiency module 1)

=========================================================================

Ore processing mod "assemblers" and recipes used

lists

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Pulverizer:          200kW      Crafting speed 2.2      Module slots 1
Ore washing plant:   230kW      Crafting speed 2.2      Module slots 1
Centrifuge:          280kW      Crafting speed 2.2      Module slots 2
Crystallizer:        210kW      Crafting speed 2.2      Module slots 2
Material Compilator: 400kW      Crafting speed 2        Module slots 3

Item input and output speed: (I use faster centrifuge recipe to create the dust because it is faster and doesn't use coal chunks which can't be automated because of the bug.)

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Pulverizer:    1 iron ore @0.22/s                 -> 10/2.2 = 4.5454_s    -> 9 Small iron chunk @1.98/s
Ore washing plant:   8 Small iron chunk @1.46666666_/s  -> 12/2.2 = 5.4545_s    -> 9 Small clean iron chunks @1.65/s
Centrifuge:          9 Small clean iron chunk @1.32/s   -> 15/2.2 = 6.8181_s    -> 10 dust  @1.46666_/s 
Crystallizer:        18 dust @1.721/s +1 sulfur @0.01/s -> 23/2.2 = 10.4545_s   -> 21 crystal @2.0086956521739/s
Material Compilator: 12 crystal @1.2/s                  -> 20/2 = 10s           -> 1 ore @0.1/s (Not actual gain! 91% of this is just what the pulv took as input)

(9 iron 1 copper dust from centrifuge, but if you do the mirror setup with copper you can just say "dust" for calculations and worry about it when linking up the machines in-game instead)

Good to know how much sulfur you pay for your ore: 0.7 sulfur/ore! I'm sure you can afford that...
I have one savefile where I produce 5.5k iron + copper plates/minute and 250 sulfur/minute. I would need to increase my sulfur production to more than 16 times as high to replace my iron + copper mining with ore processing!
In other words: You pay 0.7 sulfur for 1 ore, even though 0.7 sulfur is 10 times more valuable than 1 ore!
And that's just the side product cost...



Perfect ratio (0.0086 ore/second/materialiser with chain):

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1.00 Material Compilator
0.60 Crystallizer
0.70 Centrifuge
0.56 Ore washing plant
0.42 Pulverizer
0.91 Material Compilator (it's the same one as the top of the list if you are looping the ores around)

Yes, that is 2 minutes for 1 ore processing chain to produce a single iron ore!

Calculation

Linking the machines input and output to equal rates gives us:

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1 Material Compilator input = 0.5974025974026013 Crystallizer output = 1.2/2.0086956521739
1 Crystallizer input = 1.1739130431 Centrifuge output = 1.72173913/1.46666666666
1 Centrifuge input = 0.8 Ore washing plant output = 1.32/1.65
1 Ore washing plant input = 0.7407407404040405 Pulverizer output = 1.466666666/1.98
1 Pulverizer input = 2.20 Material Compilator output = 0.22/0.1

From which we can calculate the complete ratio for all machines:

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1 Material Compilator input = 0.5974025974026013 Crystallizer output
0.5974025974026013 Crystallizer input = 0.7012987010727318 Centrifuge output
0.7012987010727318 Centrifuge input = 0.5610389608581855 Ore washing plant output
0.5610389608581855 Ore washing plant input = 0.41558441526160583 Pulverizer output
0.41558441526160583 Pulverizer input = 0.9142857135755329 Material Compilator output

0.1 * (1-0.9142857135755329) = 0.008571428642446711 ore/second/material compilator
1/0.008571428642446711 = 116.66666570003089 seconds or ~ 2 minutes for 1 ore!
0.5974025974026013*0.01 = 0.005974025974026013 sulfur/second used when creating 1 ore.
0.005974025974026013/0.008571428642446711 = 0.6969696911949942 Sulfur/iron ore!

============================================================================
1 ore energy cost
It's 109 MJ! You then need a ~1.5 GW just to feed a single slow basic belt. If you have that much spare power for ore production you have a megafactory that needs like 20 blue express belts just for one type of ore. So iron and copper needed would be 120 times as much as ore processing gives you counting only energy cost.
(inserter energy cost, water and sulfur ignored, but none of them don't apply to regular mining (In NESTT mod even water is in short supply so...))

calculation

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(Perfect ratio setup for 116.66666570003089 seconds gives 1 ore)
    (in MW and MJ)          
    Material Compilator = .400 * 116.67 * 1       = 46.6667 MJ
    Crystallizer        = .210 * 116.67 * 0.5974  = 14.6364 MJ
    Centrifuge          = .280 * 116.67 * 0.7013  = 22.9091 MJ
    Ore washing plant   = .230 * 116.67 * 0.5610  = 15.0545 MJ
    Pulverizer          = .200 * 116.67 * 0.4156  =  9.6969696 MJ
Total = 46.66667 + 14.636364 + 22.909091 + 15.054545 + 9.6969696 = 108.96364 MJ/ore

Mining compared to ore processing mod: 637 to 1200 times more energy required for 1 ore with materialiser chain than mining!

calculation

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    637 times more energy required to produce 1 ore. (109 MJ/ 171 kJ)

With tier 1 efficieny modules in miners and tier 1, 2 and 3 in materialiser chain (less module slots in most machines so lots of tier 2 and 3 needed):

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    29.218 MJ = 46.6667*0.2 + 14.6364*0.2 + 22.9091*0.2 + 15.0545*0.5 + 9.6969696*0.5

854 times more energy required to produce 1 ore with materialising chain if you use efficiency modules in miners and ore processers. (29.218 *1000 / 34.2 )
If you can afford tier 1 modules only for miners and materialisr chain

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    41.678 MJ = 46.6667*0.2 + 14.6364*0.4 + 22.9091*0.4 + 15.0545*0.7 + 9.6969696*0.7

1218.64 times more energy required for 1 ore with materialiser chain! (41*1000/34.2)

Basic belt compressed takes 13.39 items/s. 13.39*108.96364 = 1459.0231396 MW.
https://wiki.factorio.com/index.php?tit ... port_belts

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1 ore/s space cost
It's 4600 SqrTiles = 230 times as much as mining as a lower bound estimate! And that's without the whole sulfur chain and water included. And energy generation also excluded (Which also has to be much bigger to accomodate the energy drain required)!

Calculation

Each machine is about 3x4 in size if you include inserter gap between machines. Impossibly low estimate and even more so if you want to go for efficient ratio between machines.
3*4 * 1.00 * 116 = 1400 SqrTiles for Material Compilator
3*4 * .60 * 116 = 840 SqrTiles for Crystallizer
3*4 * .70 * 116 = 980 SqrTiles for Centrifuge
3*4 * .56 * 116 = 784 SqrTiles for Ore washing plant
3*4 * .42 * 116 = 588 SqrTiles for Pulverizer
4592 SqrTiles = 1400 + 840 + 980 + 784 + 588

Not counting water and sulfur:
230 times more space required = (4592 / 19.9 = 230)

============================================================================
Is Ore processing mod worth it?

• Needs end game research with blue (even for crafting the machines) and purple science. (Mining needs none)
• Many times more complex to set up. (Mining is super simple)
• And even more complex since your copper and iron ore chains can't be separate.
• Needs water as input. (Mining needs none) This doesn't really matter for most though. Feel free to calculate how much water you need for a single ore, lol.
• Doesn't work well with belts or robots since the quantity is 10 times as high and direct insertion is recommended. The slow rate of the machines makes the rate of items/second pretty low though.
• Costly to make the machines. (Electric mining machines are so cheap to make that you can craft them before you get electricity)
• Needs oil products as input. Is "free ore" really worth it when it costs colossal amounts of sulfur? lol. (Mining needs none)
• Uses ginormous amounts of energy. (Mining doesn't need much energy and only 0.1% as much as this mod)
• Uses huge amounts of space. (Mining doesn't need much space and much less than 2% as much as this mod)
  -- And dont forget that 100 times more energy required also means 100 times bigger energy production facility for ore production!

Even at infinite ore/second for free the game doesn't become broken. You still need to build a base to produce products and ore mining is just one part of factorio. Inifine resource patches (other mods do this) still requires you to expand to new mining outposts since the yield decreases and you also always need more and more resources/second when you base grows.

While the idea is nice it is incredibly insanely ridonkulously underpowered at the moment. The complexity and cost to set up would be fitting and worth it if it could replace mining completely at the end game when mining sites starts to dry up to quickly. But right now it is pretty much impossible to switch from mining to ore processing.

Yield is way to low for every step. 12.5% for another step to complicate your chain with a machine that takes more space and energy than another cheap miner which gives 100% more? That is extremely low. It should be better than placing more miners and furnaces but it is far from it. And should be much better for the longer processing chains.

Takes way too much time (less time means less machines in parallel needed for high throughput which would decrease space usage and energy/ore),
============================================================================
Took me a whole day to make this post. I should use a spreadsheet next time...
Hope I didn't write too many found and fixed all bugs in my math. I'm pretty tired atm so it's possible...

Saying that ore processing mod makes ores renewable can be countered by the fact that ores are already infinite in factorio since the world is infinite. Even if your train to your outpost takes 1 hour to make a roundtrip to your outpost and fills a single wagon it will still be worth it compared to anything you could possibly build locally. Oh, btw, that "local" ore creation materialiser factory will be so big that it reaches that outpost 1 hour away if it actually makes enough to support you factory.
============================================================================

Material Compilator takes 12 crystallized to make 1 ore (worth 1 plate~) but 8 crystallized can be converted to 1 plate directly. You lose 33% in your Material Compilator! :<
I tried to edit the mod but nothing changes in game.

Bugs:

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    * Coal chunk and Coal coke chunk looks like coal inside chests when seen with detail view (the overlay on top of chests).
    * Complex material icon is cropped in research menu.

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But hey it's a cool mod and I like it. Just needs a few minor balance tweaks and it's perfect

[Speadge]

think this mod is not about efficiency but getting "more" out off the ressources given.

To balance this, its almost needed to make it expensive (energy-/spaceneeded-like)

.. and yeah, the sulfur seems to kill the calculation here - otherwise it would be really nice.
but it seems kinda cheaty that u would create a "self-feeding" machinery here


edit: and yeah, after doing the math, its not worth it to add sulfur, since one ore would just process into 1,0833 ores.
so its a ~8% gain for adding much energy and oil.

I dont care bout space or logistics... but about my oil

[Qon]

think this mod is not about efficiency but getting "more" out off the ressources given.

To balance this, its almost needed to make it expensive (energy-/spaceneeded-like)

.. and yeah, the sulfur seems to kill the calculation here - otherwise it would be really nice.
but it seems kinda cheaty that u would create a "self-feeding" machinery here

I dont care bout space or logistics... but about my oil

If you like this mod for being about spending massive amounts of time waiting for your investment to give a return then you might like marathon mod. I don't want the game to be slower, just more intresting. I see it as an opportunity to play with low resources instead of high/infinite.

Are you going to spend 100 000 hours building your resource processing facility? Is that fair? Twice as big means twice~ as much time spent building it. A thousand times bigger means thousand times as much time spent building it.

How is a self-feeding machine cheaty? A self-feeding machine is something that takes it output and then says "screw you, I'll take my output for myself". Is it cheaty to power your factory with solid fuel then? How about solar panels, are they cheaty, and would they be more cheaty if you took some of its output to feed itself, giving you a net gain of 60W instead of 60kW? With only 1000 times more solar panels to build you can probably at least use it to power several of your factorys lamps, lol.
Do you see the error of your reasoning here? Self-feeding is another word for output-reducing.

Do you realise that it sound a bit funny when you add that the thing you care about is not your finite time, but the "infinite" oil?
It's not going to run out, just create a 10 times more oil outposts every x hours. And keep building and building new ones. Hey, given infinite time a single oil derrick working on 10% yield is enough to support the creation of your factorys entire need of energy and 1000 sulfur for each ore.

[albatrosv13]

There are two major things i want to point out.
In the example of crystallized dust 'losing' 33% material to get ore back, an ore doesn't equal to a plate(at least in this mod). Theoretically with a single ore a player can feed a whole factory, a plate is already a finite product(though you can still enrich the plates to get more from less input). I must admit though, that running the loop more than 10 times to get one extra ore is a bit overkill. Productivity modules can lessen the loop count, but when running the loops effectivity modules are recommended. So i have reduced the loop count to about 5 times to get an extra ore. Also, the speed of steps have been increased by about 10%.
Second thing - I really can't compare the calculations to mining. At least in terms of ''better to mine than going renewable''. Of course i admit again, ''thousand times worse than mining'' is a clear sign that the mod was underpowered. The idea of the mod though, is that resources can be scarce(as i pointed out, i play with less resources than average) and/or the player may choose to not go mass-genocidal against the natives and expand his/her bases to miles. Also, there CAN be situations where you have so little recources left unguarded by natives that you have to use productivity modules and/or this mod to get some military up to get some resources cleaned up.
The two major underpowered mechanics of the mod have been changed - Compilation needs now 9 crystallized dusts instead of 12. Take away 1, cause pulverizer produces now 8 chunks instead of 9(plates have been also configured to 7 chunks/dusts/etc per plate).
Sulfur from crystallization have been dropped, but petroleum gas used instead, because sulfur is derived from petroleum gas directly and i could throw in a float instead of integer. The usage of petroleum gas have been reduced by about 5 times. The choice why i still wanted an 'oil' in the process was because i didn't want that process become into another pulverizer step.

Now, with this mod a player doesn't have to go renewable. Just throw pulverizer inbetween and you are done - you have already a 14.3% gain. Want a little bit more? Throw in ore washing plant. Those two give now total 29% gain, without productivity modules.
Of course i ALWAYS use productivity modules everywhere and my views are skewed anyways, so...

[Qon]

I don't think you understand. When you have something that off by a factor of 1000 it won't be solved by a 10% buff a few times. I'm sorry but If you don't do the math you will never balance the mod correctly. I've read the changelog of the old thread and it seems you give a small buff here and there with every little update to improve it because it doesn't seem to work out. But the thing is you won't reach balanced with your method. Ant steps will never take you to the top of the mountain.

There are two major things i want to point out.
In the example of crystallized dust 'losing' 33% material to get ore back, an ore doesn't equal to a plate(at least in this mod).

Yes it does, an ore is strictly less worth than a plate with this mod. The fact that you can spend infinite energy, time and space to increase the value doesn't mean that you have already done so. $1 can be turned into $1 000 000 if you do a lot of work. That doesn't mean you can buy a car with $1 and just skip the time and work.

There is a saying among rationalists: "Shut up and multiply". What it means is that you need to stop and really think about your decisions and go by numbers and not intuition. Because intuition will give you completely wrong answers. And that's what I did. I can recommend it, it can save you from making the bad decisions in many situations. It should be considered everywhere in real life too. You don't have to do it if you don't want to, completely optional. The cost of not doing it is hidden from those who don't though.

Theoretically with a single ore a player can feed a whole factory,

Completely meaningless if you actually want to run a factory. A single solar panel can power any factory. A single assembler, refinery, chem plant and rocket silo is all the machinery needed to finish the game. You can hand mine a trillion ores with no equipment. Do you only place down a single oil derrick, once for every world you start in factorio? Another way to make ore patches last an infinity: You can decrease your mining speed so that it never runs out by decreasing your mining speed by a function of the amount of ores left. Or just plain stop mining from them! As long as you don't extract any resources it will never run out!

Also that is a single ore + a millions of oil + years of time + all the space your computer can simulate unless you plan on running your entire factory for an entire 0.01 seconds.

Everlasting is not the same as infinite throughput. Nothing is infinite in factorio unless you are a god. Everything in factorio is infinite if you are a god.

I must admit though, that running the loop more than 10 times to get one extra ore is a bit overkill. Productivity modules can lessen the loop count, but when running the loops effectivity modules are recommended. So i have reduced the loop count to about 5 times to get an extra ore. Also, the speed of steps have been increased by about 10%.

I need to see your calculations and the exact recipes to verify. But you need to double 10 times to get to a thousand. I'm cautiously optimistic but might rebalance it myself based on math so that it is actually viable to replace mining if you don't. And you can do that without removing any of the challenge from factorio. But if your goal is to make it harder then maybe you should also remove mining? What is the point of a mod that makes the game harder (or more correctly: slower) if you can just skip the hard parts and get through it faster that way? I don't know how little you get from a "very low yield" ore patch in vanilla but unless it makes the game impossible it seems it would be superior.

Second thing - I really can't compare the calculations to mining. At least in terms of ''better to mine than going renewable''. Of course i admit again, ''thousand times worse than mining'' is a clear sign that the mod was underpowered. The idea of the mod though, is that resources can be scarce(as i pointed out, i play with less resources than average) and/or the player may choose to not go mass-genocidal against the natives and expand his/her bases to miles. Also, there CAN be situations where you have so little recources left unguarded by natives that you have to use productivity modules and/or this mod to get some military up to get some resources cleaned up.

If you want to wait a year to pump out some extra plates from your ore patch, sure. But maybe you should just reroll the world and play with reasonable amounts of resources instead? And building a few hundred square km of extremely resource hungry and polluting machines isn't really an option in that case. Since you go with productivity modules and scarce resources you might be able to tell me if it actually helps. How much ores/s do you get if you have no input? Or if you have miners as input, how many compressed belts do you have going in and how much is going out of your smelting setup?

The two major underpowered mechanics of the mod have been changed - Compilation needs now 9 crystallized dusts instead of 12. Take away 1, cause pulverizer produces now 8 chunks instead of 9(plates have been also configured to 7 chunks/dusts/etc per plate).
Sulfur from crystallization have been dropped, but petroleum gas used instead, because sulfur is derived from petroleum gas directly and i could throw in a float instead of integer. The usage of petroleum gas have been reduced by about 5 times. The choice why i still wanted an 'oil' in the process was because i didn't want that process become into another pulverizer step.

Have you calculated those numbers to be balanced?

Usage of petrol dropped by 5 times would mean that your petrol product isn't worth 10 times more than the ore you get. With the other bonuses you might now be trading petrol for almost equal worth in ores. Which is really sad since you also need a huge production chain with massive energy, complexity and space costs. So you went from massive losses for each loop to slightly smaller losses.

I support the complexity of the setup as long as it is worth it. Having small amounts of oil in the chain is a good idea if it is mostly to make the factory design harder but doesn't cost a lot in actual oil numbers. With bergius mod oil producs can be produced from coal so it means more fun designing your "just add water"-production line. I usually avoid mods that change or make the recipes just more complex and annoying. But this mod was appealing because it seemed like an optional addon that was complex to solve but would pay off in the long run. If you want it to be strictly a much slower way of playing then I'll make something for me so that you can keep your marathon-like mod as you want it.

Now, with this mod a player doesn't have to go renewable. Just throw pulverizer inbetween and you are done - you have already a 14.3% gain. Want a little bit more? Throw in ore washing plant. Those two give now total 29% gain, without productivity modules.
Of course i ALWAYS use productivity modules everywhere and my views are skewed anyways, so...

But you can't "just throw in a pulverizer inbetween". It does not work if you want to keep your throughput. For your throughput it's a loss. You need 2.6 pulverizers without prod modules to feed an efurnace. A productivity module doesn't increase space required by 260%, it doesn't increase energy required by 260% and it doesn't complicate your setup (unless you also do the speed module beacon combo). I haven't done the calculations on productivity modules but since the module slots are kinda limited it might not be enough to fix anything. I just doubt that it solves it for now unless your problem is that it is too fast and uses too little energy. Are you using tier 3 modules everywhere? If you can afford thousands of tier 3 productivity and speed modules then you must be doing something right that I don't...

[albatrosv13]

''When you have something that off by a factor of 1000 it won't be solved by a 10% buff a few times.''

Theoretically, it can. 1.1 powered by 10 is not 2, but 2.59. Actually, the main problem in the development i have seen is that when users say ''this thing is overpowered'', developers usually cut that power by 50%. This specific thing which was overpowered before becomes now underpowered and useless. I'm that guy who changes things little by little, but the last update wasn't that minor. Anyways...

''...based on math so that it is actually viable to replace mining... ''

In my logic, it would never replace mining as in throughput terms. The logic of the mod, again, is that when you have less resources. You play with more-than-average resources, i play with less-than-average resources. The math is instantly different for both of us based on that simple principle.

''$1 can be turned into $1 000 000 if you do a lot of work. ''

Okay, let's imagine you have two currencies, dollar and euro. Now let's imagine you can convert dollars to euros, but can't convert euros to dollars. Once you have converted your dollars to euros you can't go back to dollars. I see the ore and plate as same. I don't know how you can see ores and plates just ''1 dollar and 1 million dollars''.

''. You can hand mine a trillion ores with no equipment. ''

Actually... It's very costly to hand mine stuff, because a pickaxe has a limited durability and you have to make a lot of pickaxes for that.

'' How much ores/s do you get if you have no input? Or if you have miners as input, how many compressed belts do you have going in and how much is going out of your smelting setup?''

My playthroughs go mainly like this - When i get something which raises productivity i reduce throughput to get the machines/modules up, then step by step increase the throughput until i'm satisfied and go for another productivity gaining step and the loop continues. I guess i play more slowly than the average - the current game is 6 hours in and i'm setting up blue pack production.

''Usage of petrol dropped by 5 times would mean that your petrol product isn't worth 10 times more than the ore you get''

Well, i don't use oil as solid fuel, so i guess the worth of the oil is less for me than for you. But your math is viable, i will change the usage.

'' I haven't done the calculations on productivity modules but since the module slots are kinda limited it might not be enough to fix anything.''

Actually, when i calculated(in my head, of course) whether to use productivity modules first(the 1st ones) or the first steps of the ore processing mod, the productivity modules were almost 2 times better than the ore processiing mod. It was pre-0.7.2 though. I guess i have to make them par-to-par at least.

Now, all your criticism is viable. You have your terms, i have my own terms. Again, i will change some stuff here and there when i have more time(uni). I guess the speed and power consumption would be next major things to balance.

Edit: Seems basic calculations were wrong - from one loop of ore you have 3+ crystallized dusts left as a bonus, so you actually need to run the loop 3 times to get an extra ore.

[Qon]

''When you have something that off by a factor of 1000 it won't be solved by a 10% buff a few times.''

Theoretically, it can. 1.1 powered by 10 is not 2, but 2.59.

I think I know some basic maths. I proved that I know some multiplication at least in my earlier post, didn't I?
So 2.59 is almost 1000 then? In case it isn't it would seem to me that you didn't really prove your point. And even 10 times is stretching the limit of what is considered "a few". You are not convincing me with that...

''...based on math so that it is actually viable to replace mining... ''

In my logic, it would never replace mining as in throughput terms. The logic of the mod, again, is that when you have less resources. You play with more-than-average resources, i play with less-than-average resources. The math is instantly different for both of us based on that simple principle.

Usually playing with lots of resources. I'm currently playing NESTT mod. Which means my access to ores and space is likely to be quite restrictive even from your viewpoint. If I had lots of resources though then I wouldn't really need ore processing mod though, would I?

''$1 can be turned into $1 000 000 if you do a lot of work. ''

Okay, let's imagine you have two currencies, dollar and euro. Now let's imagine you can convert dollars to euros, but can't convert euros to dollars. Once you have converted your dollars to euros you can't go back to dollars. I see the ore and plate as same. I don't know how you can see ores and plates just ''1 dollar and 1 million dollars''.

You said that "Theoretically with a single ore a player can feed a whole factory,". But you can't feed a factory with single ore just like you can't buy a car with $1. Both take a lot of hard work and time to turn into a million. That quote was in reference to your 1-ore-to-feed-the-factory. Which somehow got quoted after instead of before. But still. See now?

''. You can hand mine a trillion ores with no equipment. ''

Actually... It's very costly to hand mine stuff, because a pickaxe has a limited durability and you have to make a lot of pickaxes for that.

No equipment means no equipment. You can mine without a pickaxe, it's just ~10 times slower or something. But it doesn't matter if you have a pickaxe or not. It's completely infeasible for mortals even if the pickaxe never broke and was a thousand times faster. The point was that it was a ridiculous idea, comparable to your statement of 1-ore-feeds-the-factory. It would be nice if making a no-input ore production was eventually possible though. The devs are considering making all ore infinite like oil. Making an ore factory that can support your factory would be a harder way to achieve endless resources. It isn't unbalanced if done right.

'' How much ores/s do you get if you have no input? Or if you have miners as input, how many compressed belts do you have going in and how much is going out of your smelting setup?''

My playthroughs go mainly like this - When i get something which raises productivity i reduce throughput to get the machines/modules up, then step by step increase the throughput until i'm satisfied and go for another productivity gaining step and the loop continues. I guess i play more slowly than the average - the current game is 6 hours in and i'm setting up blue pack production.

If you have blue science by 6 hours then you are quick by my standards. I got automated electric mining after 5 hours in my previous game. Biter spawners on the only iron ore patch...
Did you mean 60 hours?

You didn't answer my question about your plate and ore throughput though.

If you are activly reducing your throughput then 60 hours seems more likely to me. I'm spending a lot of time to get anywhere. While I go for high throughput I don't rush anything since there's more fun to factorio than building. Like calculating proper balance for mods q:

''Usage of petrol dropped by 5 times would mean that your petrol product isn't worth 10 times more than the ore you get''

Well, i don't use oil as solid fuel, so i guess the worth of the oil is less for me than for you. But your math is viable, i will change the usage.

I don't either in the factory I used as example. The sulfur being 15 times more valuable than iron plates was taken just from the production values in my factory and should be more properly calculated if you want numbers to use as basis for balancing. It's a good estimate only. But it's good to hear

'' I haven't done the calculations on productivity modules but since the module slots are kinda limited it might not be enough to fix anything.''

Actually, when i calculated(in my head, of course) whether to use productivity modules first(the 1st ones) or the first steps of the ore processing mod, the productivity modules were almost 2 times better than the ore processiing mod. It was pre-0.7.2 though. I guess i have to make them par-to-par at least.

I wonder what it will end up as then.

Now, all your criticism is viable. You have your terms, i have my own terms. Again, i will change some stuff here and there when i have more time(uni). I guess the speed and power consumption would be next major things to balance.

Yes they are slow. But why didn't you use crafting speed 1 for all buildings and reduced time needed? Doubling the time needed and the crafting speed to 2 only has one effect: Makes calculations require more steps. Would be nice if they all used crafting speed 1 and then times were balanced.

Also it would be nice if the perfect ratios between machines were less awkward numbers so that you don't need to start with a hundred of each just to get a good approximation.

Is there a simple way to reload the recipes from the mod files? If I just change the numbers nothing happens in game. Might be because they are already researched since I could modify the recipe files for another mod with no problems but that recipe wasn't unlocked yet at the time. Cache is the enemy of debugging :<

[albatrosv13]

''Did you mean 60 hours?''

Actually, i wasn't honest before. It's almost at 7 hours. I just skip a lot of 'optional' techs like damage upgrades and so on.

''You didn't answer my question about your plate and ore throughput though.''

100-110 iron plates per minute and 70-75 copper plates per minute. It changes a lot through time. Sometimes less, sometimes more.

'' But why didn't you use crafting speed 1 for all buildings and reduced time needed?''

I will simplify things. Everything just takes time and understanding.

''Is there a simple way to reload the recipes from the mod files? ''

I haven't yet implemented this. It's in my queue though.

When i have more time, i will rerun your math with 0.7.3 version.

[Qon]

''Is there a simple way to reload the recipes from the mod files? ''

I haven't yet implemented this. It's in my queue though.

How do you do it? Is the recipe cache cleared automatically by increasing version number or something?

When i have more time, i will rerun your math with 0.7.3 version.

Already did. Making a spreadsheet this time. Might write some code if a spreadsheet can't handle the complexities but it's harder to share in tabular form then.

Sulfur from crystallization have been dropped, but petroleum gas used instead, because sulfur is derived from petroleum gas directly and i could throw in a float instead of integer. The usage of petroleum gas have been reduced by about 5 times.

2.392 times. You get 2 sulfur from the sulfur recipe.

Comparing 0.7.0 with 0.7.3:
1 Iron ore energy: 100MJ -> 15MJ
1 ore petrol cost: 1.5 -> 0.63

Filling a basic belt now takes 200MW and 70k Square tiles (if you include energy production)
That is a 87x87 block of just the buildings and 245x245 for energy production. That is without inserters and belts and energy poles, counting structure area only. So at a minimum you would have to double the processing are for estimating what it would take to build it. Also it's over 800 buildings, not very cheap to make either.

Things are going forward

[Qon]

Thanks for fixing Pulverizer so that it can take coal.
Now you just have to fix Matter Compilator so that it also works with Coal from coal coke chunks

Yes, it's also bugged

[albatrosv13]

''How do you do it? Is the recipe cache cleared automatically by increasing version number or something?''

No, i don't know exactly how it's done. Probably will copy-paste needed code from some other mod. Should be standard.

''You get 2 sulfur from the sulfur recipe.''

Missed that. 0.7.4. version now uses 0.1 petroleum gas per operation.

''Now you just have to fix Matter Compilator so that it also works with Coal from coal coke chunks''

0.7.4. should fix that. I haven't yet tested that myself though.

''1 Iron ore energy: 100MJ -> 15MJ''

My calculations were 16MJ, probably just rounding error. Anyways, 0.7.4. should be even easier. Also, every step now gains even more(16.67% instead of 14.28%).

[Arch666Angel]

''How do you do it? Is the recipe cache cleared automatically by increasing version number or something?''

No, i don't know exactly how it's done. Probably will copy-paste needed code from some other mod. Should be standard.

You need a migration script for that, which is basically the reset recipes/technologies command and than a block which enables certain recipes that should have been unlocked if you changed technologies around.

[Qon]

''You get 2 sulfur from the sulfur recipe.''

Missed that. 0.7.4. version now uses 0.1 petroleum gas per operation.

''Now you just have to fix Matter Compilator so that it also works with Coal from coal coke chunks''

0.7.4. should fix that. I haven't yet tested that myself though.

''1 Iron ore energy: 100MJ -> 15MJ''

My calculations were 16MJ, probably just rounding error. Anyways, 0.7.4. should be even easier. Also, every step now gains even more(16.67% instead of 14.28%).

0.7.3 -> 0.7.4
Petrolium: 0.63 -> 0.33
Energy/ore: 15MJ ->17MJ!!
Time/ore/mc: 23.5s -> 24.7s!!

You nerfed it.

But if it weren't for the speed improvements for the machines the numbers would have DOUBLED. Before i plugged in the new crafting speeds it was 30MJ/ore and 30s/ore/MC. Just so you know how much worse it could have been. Petrol use went down by about 1/3 only if it wasn't for the crafting speed improvements.

Your MC recipes are bad. First I thought I had done something wrong because the recipes appears to have improved, but it's because you nerfed the MC in comparison to the other recipes. When you go from recipes that yield 8 or 10 and then go down to 7, 9 parts for an ore becomes relativly larger. So now your losses in MC are even bigger than 0.7.3.

6 crystal for a plate, 9 for an ore. That's backwards. Why would 1 more processing step give you less? MC should also increase the gain as much as the other steps. It's a very energy consuming machine that costs a lot. The other steps gives you 17% but MC removes 33%. 1 ore should require like 5 crystal to be in line with the other recipes (since you can only make 1 plate from 1 ore). It makes no sense as it is now.

I've started productivity module calculations but had to post my shocking findings after my mathematical adventure as soon as possible.

But thanks for fixing MC so that it recieves coal stuff. I wonder if it produces more energy than it uses though....

Edit: To produce 1 coal (8MJ) you have to use 15MJ energy. I think solar panels are a just a few infinite orders of magnitude better. q:
Here again you lose in your MC step. 5 coal coke chunk = 15MJ, you get 1 coal = 8MJ. Something like 2 coal coke chunk for 1 coal would fit better with the rest of the recipes. Then we can keep iterating from there.
You need to drastically improve the MC recipes. Losses are unacceptable. It's the most expensive machine to craft and maintain.

[albatrosv13]

''You nerfed it.''

I found out about the matter compilator nerf some hours after i posted the 0.7.4. I thought this mod doesnt have this big interest(well you have, apparently) and i thought i should post 0.7.5 with a migration script(so that players could add a mod mid-game with less problems) when i have more time... Which i don't, cause i have other duties to attend(real life). I did change the compilator recipe for myself(at least theoretically) - 8 cryst dust to 1 ore, which should be better than the 0.7.3(well some % at least).

''6 crystal for a plate, 9 for an ore. That's backwards. Why would 1 more processing step give you less? ''

Again, a plate doesn't equal to an ore.

''Edit: To produce 1 coal (8MJ) you have to use 15MJ energy. I think solar panels are a just a few infinite orders of magnitude better. q:
Here again you lose in your MC step. 5 coal coke chunk = 15MJ, you get 1 coal = 8MJ. Something like 2 coal coke chunk for 1 coal would fit better with the rest of the recipes. Then we can keep iterating from there.
You need to drastically improve the MC recipes. Losses are unacceptable. It's the most expensive machine to craft and maintain.''

I have to think about that. Thanks for numbers. Should calculate also with efficiency modules.

Edit: I implemented the preliminary balancing fixes. I guess i have to tweak some numbers here and there. Later.

[Qon]

Coal now takes 2MJ to produce, 0.4 MJ with EM's. Since biolers are 50% efficient you only get half of that coal fuel value as output. So you can actually produce more energy than you use now, but it's less space efficient than vanilla solar panels + accumulators and (compared to panels and accus) requires extremely expensive machinery. Maybe just the efficiency modules alone that are installed in the coal production costs more to produce than the solar panels that produce equivalent output. Solar panels produce no pollution and requires no water and can easily be blueprinted. And solar panels don't stop working permanently because of fuel shortage if you overdraw the power or something. I actually made a power plant that could keep a 0.9MW radar going. I could power as soon as I got 2 steam engines with 80h less in the savefile and much cheaper, but hey, it's a coal perpetuum mobile!

So it's now almost useful for small scale coal generation. It's not worth it yet though since solar is better in every way. But it's improving :>
With solid fuel production it's slightly better (but doesn't beat solar) than burning it as coal, but my main use for coal generation would be in Bergius process so it's not really very helpful for my case. I need lots and lots of coal.

Treefarm gives me more wood than I can process but making coal with ore processing mod instead would be nice.

Think iron ore is at 10MJ/ore now, 2MJ with efficiency 2 modules installed.

Eagerly awaiting your next update :>
That migration code would really help me try out recipe changes in game instead of just calculations.