[MOD 0.12.30+] VanillaΣx (Vehicles, Defense, Energy & More!)

[bloc97]

v0.0.8 is live and stable! You can now choose which parts of this mod is enabled. Code is also much more readable, which can help you tweak values for balance.

Name: VanillaΣx (Short for Vanilla Extension, with Σ being a play on "summing up" stuff that is not implemented in vanilla)
Description: I originally found a lack of mods expanding the military of Vanilla Factorio. Most mods I encountered were not well balanced, outdated or were too complex for an authentic vanilla feeling. I initially created this mod to use on my private server with my friends, but now I decided to make it public, and since then many features were added.
License:
The art was used and modified under fair use.
Version:


Release: 2016-04-16
Tested With Factorio: 0.12.30
Category: (Item, Gameplay, Mid-Game, End-Game)
Tags: Tanks, Solar Panels, Warfare, Weapons
Downloads:
FOR LONG-TERM MULTIPLAYER, PLEASE USE v0.0.7 for now, as there is a apparent problem with v0.0.8a/b/c causing frequent desyncs in long lasting games for some people.
Recommended for Multiplayer
Recommended for Singleplayer
(older than release, do not download)

Links:



0.0.8c:
Sprite/Entity switching engine, done. (Used for 0.1.0)
Code streamlining, done.
Config file implementation, done.
Amphibious vehicle removed, to be re-added with more features in 0.1.0.
Fixed crash when loading previous game.
Fixed invisible accumulator.

Coming up in 0.0.9 (available as @pre in nightly builds):
A tidal generator, done. Making advanced tidal generator.
3 wind generators, 75% done.
A solar thermal boiler (using mirrors), 25% done. Postponed to 0.1.0.

Currently working on (0.1.0):
Planes, 25% done, 1 plane out of 4 planned.
Better Vehicle Sprites, 5% done.

In the future (post 0.1.0):
Your vote counts! Current WIP features are from past votes. Unpopular features will be pushed into the next poll, so vote for the feature you want the most!

License

License
Use in modpacks and derivatives using parts of this mod is permitted without my permission, just give some credits...

Long description + Pictures

Long description
Since I don't have much time right now, I'll keep the description short. I will come back later and improve the layout.

This mod is mainly focused on vanilla aspects, and I take balance very seriously. Everything in this mod was carefully edited to be as balanced as possible for an authentic vanilla feel. If something feels out of place, please leave a comment.
Most of the current content adds to the Mid-Game, I will add early-game content soon.

What this mod adds:
4 types of walls + 3 more types of gates. (Iron, Concrete, Plastic, Composite) Each suited for a different purpose (explosion, acid, impact, physical damage etc.)
2 Advanced solar panels + advanced energy accumulator
7 types of vehicles (Cargo Truck, Amphibious Vehicle, Armoured Car, Flame Tank, Autocannon Tank+ Flak Cannon, Self-propelled Artillery, Main Battle Tank)
9 new types of tank shells
3 new ammo types (Hollow-point, incendiary, explosive)
3 new guns (Assault rifle, LMG, Rotary MG)
Finally 12 new techs to research in order to unlock these advanced items.
And a lot (really a lot) of flavour text.

All new items (click if image is not appearing)


The new entities, mixed with vanilla items for comparison.

Techs, all 12.

Long description
All 12 Researchable technologies.

GIFs

Videos
Fast autocannon

Mighty German Flak cannon

Flames

Boom

MBT firing a missile

Versionning

Releases on github are stable (bug free)
The Master branch is the beta version. Will have the latest features, but might crash your game or corrupt your saves.
The Nightly builds branch is updated mostly each day, it is unplayable and will print debug text to console!

[sporefreak]

Wow! This looks amazing! can't wait to try it out. But the Gifs don't work unless you click on them. you should find a better website to upload them to. (I recommend Imgur for their drag and drop uploading.)
Edit:
One problem while trying to launch.


This is easily fixed by renaming the downloaded ZIP File to "Vanilla++_1230.4.16" (Same as the file right inside it) But its annoying to have to do manually.

[bloc97]

Thanks! I hope you're enjoying the mod.
I will try to find a solution to that issue, since github doesn't support filenames with characters that contain a "+", If the player extracts the mod, it runs fine.

EDIT: I temporarily fixed the problem by renaming the mod to "VanillaPlus", and maybe one day I might change this mod's name for good. Maybe a better sounding name? Any suggestions?

[sporefreak]

I think VanillaPlus sounds great all by itself. Simple yet meaningful.

Without testing or even getting normal solar panels in-game I thought the final solar panels were a bit op and halved the output. That being said ill get back to you on that.

Do you plan on adding more for the creeps?

[bloc97]

Yea, I plan to add more types of aliens (since I made a lot of different walls), but I am trying to figure a way to make them spawn without using extra alien spawners on the map, since I do not really like mods that modify the map generation.

I'm thinking of self-exploding aliens, wall-ramming aliens and towards the end, flying aliens (either counter with planes that I will add soon or with AA flak cannon/turrets). What do you think?

EDIT: I chose 400kW for the last solar panel, since I did not want to clutter the player with 20 types of solar panels, and I thought that mid-game, it is not that OP if the player installed other mods for power generation. But maybe it is just me who doesn't produce enough processing units... I might add new steam engines for better generation...

Here's a preview of a seaplane I'm planning to add.

[sporefreak]

Plane looks great!

I realize now that there is already a mod called Vanilla Plus, maybe vanilla_D_E_V (Vanilla_Defence_Energy_Vehicles) something like that, Just an idea.

What if special aliens spawned from landing meteors?
Spawners have a chance to get hit and when they do they get mutated?
Maybe they could just spawn from normal spawners at night? That would make night a bit more frightening (make them attack more during the night as well?

Exploding Aliens would be cool. Low health medium speed high damage small delay before exploding. (Minecraft creepers lol)
wall ramming is a good idea.
Flying also sounds great, Though I would say you should make SAMs instead of a Flak cannon. (SAM = Surface to air missiles) with maybe a late game Beam turret (Laser)
Would be cool if there was a turret that could Prioritize alien types, attacking the ones set by the player first before closest.

I would love to see water monsters that attack pumps if unprotected. or "Tidal" generators if/when you add those.(and eat fish? lol)
Maybe if the current aliens became amphibious at high evolution levels and slowed down a lot when in water (While also taking reduced/no damage?) This would make it impossible to be 100% protected with a mod that lets you place water tiles.

Sorry if I seem a bit weird or annoying, I love mods and want to create my own, I have tons of ideas for mods for many games but lack the knowledge to make said mods (Besides taking premade lines of code and changing little things) and end up dumping loads of stuff onto people that do know how as "ideas" and then they get annoyed (Rip: Good standings with most people)

[bloc97]

Wow, those are great ideas! I always thought that I myself had good ideas, but now I see that external input is really necessary and refreshing.
I really want to expand on the water-aspect of the game, since there are large chunks of water in the map, and its a shame that it only currently serves as alien-blocking "walls".

And yea, the meteor upgrade idea and the night attacks are good ideas, I will look into the code to see if I can make those possible.

Definitively I would make turrets that prioritize different aliens, since it would be stupid for a fast shooting turret to shoot at heavily armoured targets instead of a lot of small targets.

I don't want to sound conceited, but just as a tip for mod-making, don't be afraid when you see the code, try to start simple. (don't modify any mods, take a small sample mod, and type the code by yourself while adding your own touches) There's not much games like factorio that has such a extended modding API, and frankly, you're not going to find simpler languages than LUA. (Maybe Java/Python are on the same level?)

Look at basic LUA tutorials, and look at the Factorio API pages.

And keep posting those ideas, they are great, I took note of most of them.

And just as a note, I added the seaplane on the nightly build of the mod on github. It is really buggy but I got crude take-off/landing mechanisms working, though it isn't smooth, as the plane teleports in the sky when reaching a certain speed. If someone wants to try it, spawn it with the map editor.

Edit: During the next week, when I have time, I am going to probably try to streamline my mod's code to make it easier to add more items, since right now its really a mess, and everything is packed in datalib.lua... (This mod wasn't really ready for release. While it isn't buggy since I used it with my friends for quite a while, but the code is really hard to modify)

[gendalf]

can you make the non-military (upgraded solar pannels and accumulators) as a separate download? (or suggest a working compact power mod )

[ZombieMooose]

can you make the non-military (upgraded solar pannels and accumulators) as a separate download? (or suggest a working compact power mod )

yeah I second this - maybe make a whole set of vanilla plus mods the way bob's does it?

[bloc97]

Yea I was thinking about that... I might do that soon, at the same time as I clean up my code. Don't forget that initially I didn't think that this mod was worth releasing.
Though the problem with the way bob releases his mods is that I don't really like a centralised mod structure where there is a "Core" mod controlling the sub-mods. (though that method has its advantages, such as different mods using the same technology tree) I might make a compromise and give the option to disable features from this mod in a config.xml file... How does that sound?

And thanks guys for the input, it really means a lot to me.

[sporefreak]

give the option to disable features from this mod in a config.xml file... How does that sound?

YES! I really wish more mods did this, I can't tell you how many mods have items I would love to use but have to many overpowered items making me not want to use them at all.
I have taken to just manually disabling the specific items I don't like by removing them from the tech research. (Disabling the ore bombs from Mining tools as an example, I also debuffed the drills which is what I really wanted.)

[bloc97]

YES! I really wish more mods did this, I can't tell you how many mods have items I would love to use but have to many overpowered items making me not want to use them at all.
I have taken to just manually disabling the specific items I don't like by removing them from the tech research. (Disabling the ore bombs from Mining tools as an example, I also debuffed the drills which is what I really wanted.)

Curiously I have the exact same thought . That is actually the first reason I made this mod. A lot of "vehicle" mods were seriously overpowered and removed factorio's challenge factor. And I didn't feel the right to force overpowered mods on my friends.

Edit: Just a note to you guys, I have officially decided to rename the mod as VanillaΣx, which won't conflict with any existing mod. And also I changed the versionning, it is now not confusing. 0.0.7 being the official release.

[Galacticruler]

if you do wind up adding new power generation types, I'd not do wind as there is already a mod that adds it in.
Loving the mod btw.

[bloc97]

if you do wind up adding new power generation types, I'd not do wind as there is already a mod that adds it in.
Loving the mod btw.

I still insist to add wind since I might do something differently. And my mod is focused on balance, so wind turbines would be probably really big and loud (attracts aliens). As I said earlier, I will be implementing a config.xml so you can disable parts of the mod if you wish.

[seronis]

if you do wind up adding new power generation types, I'd not do wind as there is already a mod that adds it in.
Loving the mod btw.

I still insist to add wind since I might do something differently. And my mod is focused on balance, so wind turbines would be probably really big and loud (attracts aliens). As I said earlier, I will be implementing a config.xml so you can disable parts of the mod if you wish.

So they're release "noise pollution" then ? (that might be abusing the term a bit too much)

[Guest_4544]

hmm, does this mod touches anything of the vanilla stuff? Since it is placed on Gameplay /Vanilla+ category instead of new entities or where else it could be fitting.

[bloc97]

hmm, does this mod touches anything of the vanilla stuff? Since it is placed on Gameplay /Vanilla+ category instead of new entities or where else it could be fitting.

The planned features of this mod will eventually be focused on modifying vanilla aspects, and would break your save if you removed this mod without preparations. So I thought it fitted the best in this category. Of course if the moderators disagree with me they can move this thread if they see fit.

So they're release "noise pollution" then ? (that might be abusing the term a bit too much)

Yea you could say that, either I make use of the vanilla pollution system or I create a different system. (Might be hard but doable)

[Guest_4544]

The planned features of this mod will eventually be focused on modifying vanilla aspects, and would break your save if you removed this mod without preparations

What a shame, I hoped there would be a option to get only the new stuff without the vanilla changes.

[bloc97]

What a shame, I hoped there would be a option to get only the new stuff without the vanilla changes.

Basically if you delete control.lua from any mod, it removes changes to the original game. Usually it won't bug the game and you can still play normally, but the entities from the mod using control.lua will not work correctly. For example, the wind turbines mod: If you delete control.lua, the turbines can still be crafted, placed, etc, but they won't generate any power.
control.lua is optional, and anything that modifies the vanilla game has to use control.lua

Dislike any mod changing vanilla features? Delete control.lua, no more problem (no more new features either).

And what I meant by "break your save" is that I don't guarantee everything will work 100% after removing this mod, but since I use custom tables in control.lua, the original game isn't modified. For example, if you were in a seaplane, and you exit the game while in the plane and delete the mod, when you come back, a invisible entity that used to be the plane might be stuck in the sky, indestructible and unusable, etc.

[Guest_4544]

Basically if you delete control.lua from any mod, it removes changes to the original game. Usually it won't bug the game and you can still play normally, but the entities from the mod using control.lua will not work correctly. For example, the wind turbines mod: If you delete control.lua, the turbines can still be crafted, placed, etc, but they won't generate any power.
control.lua is optional, and anything that modifies the vanilla game has to use control.lua.

mm apparently it is possible to have multiple control files, by adding

Code: Select all

require "control2.lua"

at the control.lua file, I have no idea if this name pattern is important. For the 2nd file that is.