[0.14.x] Bob's Mods: General Discussion

[Mylon]

Some remarks on balance:

Power:
Power seems too easy. I built ~15 steam gen 1s early on and I haven't had to tweak it in a long while. I went back and replaced a few boilers and steam engines with mk2s. Not because I needed the power, but was just curious how difficult the upgrade would be. I would think breaking water into hydrogen and oxygen would be much more energy intensive.

Crafting intermediates:
Some items seem to craft far too quickly. I filled a chest with salt and carbon before I found a use for them. This means one production chain for each intermediate could supply a fairly large base rather than needing to scale up production of these.

Warfare:
Sniper turrets kinda trivialize enemies and they do it early on and they have the added benefit of being much more ammo efficient. They're too good.

Crafting with cordite to make ammo then magazines looks neat, but there doesn't seem to be any need thanks to sniper turrets.

Tier 2:
A lot of tier 2 techs/buildings seem to come too soon. Before I even built my first solar panel I already had researched tier 2 solar panels. Which I still haven't built because steam engines are doing fine. With the earlier remark of production chains being very fast, tier 2 and higher production builds don't seem terribly necessary. For example, tier 1 electronic assembling machines have a crafting speed of 1 and tier 2 have a crafting speed of 2.25. That's a huge increase. Especially when, for example, I already produce 5 transistors in 3.5 seconds in a tier 1 assembler.

Bugs:
Steam gens 2 cannot be placed over steam gen 1s to upgrade them.


I'll have more when I get deeper into midgame.

[bobingabout]

Power:
Well... if you're using MK1 boilers and Steam engines, that's not even my stuff, that's still base game.
The ones I added have already been vastly rebalanced, and a total revamp from MK1 to MK4 boilers and MK3 steam engines results in... using 5 boilers instead of 14, and 5 steam engines instead of 10, with a 96% fuel efficiency instead of 50%. Previously the efficiency went up to 800%.

The electrolysis is something I plan to revisit, I agree that it probably doesn't use enough power.

Intermediates:
I do plan to revisit salt again at some point... Carbon is basically just cleaning your coal though, so I don't see a problem with this one.

Warfare:
I agree that Sniper turrets are probably overpowered... the longer range is the first problem, the more damage per shot is supposed to be balanced by the slower firing rate, but I agree, it might be a bit much. I only really added them because they were requested, and have had to nerf them twice already.

MK2:
the MK2 level usually starts around Steel level... and since steel is easy to get into, that's why you get them so soon. It's partly because of the line I draw for MK2 (on the full MK1 to MK5 scale) starts at no research, and finishes on requiring science pack 4. And since you have to research to get a MK1 in most cases, it puts the MK2 straight after MK1. Which is one reason why most only have 4 MKs.

Steam engine upgrade is a known issue... the code to make it work is in place, checked, double checked, and triple checked... and unless I'm missing something, should work, but just doesn't.

[strubellp]

Were the God modules removed in the version 14.X

[ukezi]

quite a while longer ago. you can switch them on in the config.

[bobingabout]

Were the God modules removed in the version 14.X

Yeah, back in version 0.12 they were disabled by default, and can be enabled in the config mod.

Hopefully in version 0.15, the config mod will be obsolete, because config options will be available in game, and can be part of the mods again.

[TheTom]

THe problem with power is that the OP statement is not reall good to start...

> Power seems too easy. I built ~15 steam gen 1s early on and I haven't had to tweak it in a long while.

There is a point coming soon you will start pushing for a lot more energy. Then the pain starts. Energy management really gets bad when you expand a lot and start using a lot of robots. I am by no means large, but I am peaking more than 1 gw energy use at times. Refuse to use solar (except for small radar outposts I pop here and there when exploring, but I still run a 20gj battery park to handle those peaks.

If I would use coal - the coal usage would be close to brutal to handle and dirty. Using nucular nuclear reactors, though. But really, 15 steam gens is really not a lot once the base starts getting bigger.

[Pe334]

Hi bob,

short question, would it be possible to close the window, open with SHIFT+E, with the ESC-key?
Everytime I want to close this window like all other with ESC

Thx for your GREAT!!! mods

[Mylon]

Re: Balance

A course solution to the balance problem I mentioned would be to multiply all crafting times by the output number. For example, making transistors take 17.5 seconds to craft the set of 5 instead of 3.5s. This would make needing multiple assemblers or upgrading to higher tier assemblers more important.

Since tier 2 boilers and engines exist, nerfing the tier 1 boiler to 40% efficiency would allow for more range in the progression. Similarly nerfing tier 1 steam engines by 20%.

I'm not sure what the other types of accumulators are for. The most important stat is total charge held so that's what I look for.

[bobingabout]

Hi bob,

short question, would it be possible to close the window, open with SHIFT+E, with the ESC-key?
Everytime I want to close this window like all other with ESC

Thx for your GREAT!!! mods

Been covered before, and once very recently.

The short answer is no. The main aim of the custom GUI stuff added by mods is aimed to be used as nothing more than a Dialogue box type thing, as a result, there is no integration with base game GUI functions. To do what you ask would require a custom keybind being created for the specific purpose of closing the GUI, and ESC probably wouldn't work anyway, as unlike base game GUI items, wouldn't prevent the main menu from popping up and pausing the game.

Re: Balance

A course solution to the balance problem I mentioned would be to multiply all crafting times by the output number. For example, making transistors take 17.5 seconds to craft the set of 5 instead of 3.5s. This would make needing multiple assemblers or upgrading to higher tier assemblers more important.

Since tier 2 boilers and engines exist, nerfing the tier 1 boiler to 40% efficiency would allow for more range in the progression. Similarly nerfing tier 1 steam engines by 20%.

I'm not sure what the other types of accumulators are for. The most important stat is total charge held so that's what I look for.

I tried not to nerf any of the base game stuff, the steam power stats have had a lot of thought go into them, I think what I currently have is balanced.

Accumulators... well, if your main aim is to store as much power as possible, the high capacity ones work best. the other types do have purposes, Slow for example has been tuned so that a full charge is guaranteed to last all night long, so you should never have black outs when using them, the power will drop from the start to brown out levels.

[Mendel]

Couild you maybe make the rocket launch harder to achieve, requiring more of your high tech ingredients?

I´ve pretty much been bypassing the whole rocket thing altogether on your mod so far, as I have been concentrating on getting everything else first

But a cursory look to the requirements of the rocket seemed to show that there isnt much extra compared to base game to get it launched. seems like almost like an afterthought like yea I have this huge base, also it can launch rocket but I dont want to because too easy

[Iorek]

yea, I generally build a base, etc then find I can build a rocket faster than it takes to launch..

Would be nice if the requirements got bumped to something like

control unit;
speed module - > raw speed 8 + clean 8
processing unit - > loads of bobs electronics bits t1-4

rocket fuel;
Solid fuel > Solid fuel+liquid fuel+nitroglycerin

low-density-structure
steel/plastic > titanium/ceramics/bearings et al


Could also add some power armor components (reactor, battery etc) to the satellite.


could change the description from "launch a rocket" to "launch the enterprise"!



Currently I would argue that "complete" in bobs mods is Mk5 power armor components as these generally need everything in game and require a considerable about of alien farming for blue and green alien artifacts.

[bobingabout]

Couild you maybe make the rocket launch harder to achieve, requiring more of your high tech ingredients?

It is something I plan to come to eventually.

However, try this mod by someone else who had similar thoughts to you viewtopic.php?f=51&t=26053

[fractalman]

I'm in love with these. SO MUCH FIDDLING! Ridiculously wide main bus? Check. Ridiculously messy initial factory? Check. Needing robots just to keep the factory under control? check. Needing to devise new ways to modify the "main bus" design? Check. Unnecessarily devising a completely jam-proof treefarm* because the initial crappy one kept jamming? Check! Needing to make extensive use of underground belts on the branches to cut down on bloat? Check!

Why, I felt accomplished just getting green science up and running! When I got blue science up and running, I outright celebrated.



*1/32nd of the sapling output from the greenhouses is fed to a burner inserter, which in turn is very, very slowly moving a long-handed inserter on a looping belt. If it somehow temporarily jams up (like if I dump a couple thousand saplings into the greenhouses), the excess output will all be made available to the burner inserter via splitter logic, and the excess will eventually be burned away. Saplings from the greenhouses are forcibly prioritized over saplings from the factory. I doubt I will ever add fertilizer, as I made sure I had room to simply add more greenhouses if necessary, and I made a LOT of greenhouses as it is.

[bobingabout]

I'm glad you're enjoying my mods!

[fractalman]

After running out of sulfur and batteries, I drew up a diagram regarding all sulfur sources and oil processing in general, and...might I recommend changing the coal->heavy oil recipe into coal->(raw) oil, or otherwise providing a way to get sulfur out of it? With your change to sulfur (receiving sulfur only from the initial refining and a little bit from a couple of random ore processings), it is currently impossible to extract sulfur from coal that I can see.


somewhat Relevant real life data:
[quote=gooogle]
Typical Sulfur Content in Coal.
Anthracite Coal : 0.6 - 0.77 weight %
Bituminous Coal : 0.7 - 4.0 weight %
Lignite Coal : 0.4 weight %
[/quote]

[bobingabout]

You're right, I really need a method of extracting sulphur from coal.

[Iorek]

That reminds me

you can put production modules (purple/red) in the default Oil refining and advanced Oil refining with water, but not in your "new ones" with Sulphur, with Sulphur gas.

[bobingabout]

Then I guess I need to add productivity filters for that then.

[Mylon]

After running out of sulfur and batteries, I drew up a diagram regarding all sulfur sources and oil processing in general, and...might I recommend changing the coal->heavy oil recipe into coal->(raw) oil, or otherwise providing a way to get sulfur out of it? With your change to sulfur (receiving sulfur only from the initial refining and a little bit from a couple of random ore processings), it is currently impossible to extract sulfur from coal that I can see.


somewhat Relevant real life data:

Typical Sulfur Content in Coal.
Anthracite Coal : 0.6 - 0.77 weight %
Bituminous Coal : 0.7 - 4.0 weight %
Lignite Coal : 0.4 weight %

I'm currently running the basic oil processing (with sulfur) and I have a gigantic surplus of sulfur. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I'm producing way more plastic and other products than I'm consuming in sulfur.

[fractalman]

I'm currently running the basic oil processing (with sulfur) and I have a gigantic surplus of sulfur. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I'm producing way more plastic and other products than I'm consuming in sulfur.

Laser turrets, accumulators, and blue science eat far more sulfur than they eat plastic if you're using the basic oil processing recipe. It's pushed me to prioritize reworking my fluid processing sub-base (i was going to improve my robots, but nope! Ran completely out of sulfur and very low on batteries, made worse by the lead oxide chests filling up and the oil slowing way way down despite me having about 5 k petrol, 5k light oil, and 5 k heavy oil in tanks, and when I do this I'll be using the less petroleum-efficient recipe that outputs 6 sulfur dioxide and some heavy+light oil as a sulfur source; since I've also got biofuel installed, I can just shove a ton of wood into making petroleum for plastic if I don't get enough from the former method.