[MOD 0.12.x] Science Overhaul Mod A.K.A Science Cost Tweaker

[Ice Forge]

Any chance of you manually uploading it for one of the .14 versions so i can grab it ?
Having trouble with mp train syncing so id like to go for that with my server.

[Ranakastrasz]

Any suggestion on how to manage power costs of the higher tier science labs? 2 Megawatts of power is a lot, and manually disabling them when researching non-purple tech is somewhat tedious. I thought of disabling belts or inserters, but it would still run the initial amount. And even then, I can't think of a way for the combinators to determine whether tech uses purple or not.

[UberWaffe]

Devs are fixing that game can't handle two mod versions in updater - portal can do it without problems.

And game had issues only when there were no dependencies at all I think - it worked correctly in other cases basing version on factorio_version from json file.
Only issue is figuring out how to version mod itself

Btw. Changing factorio_version seems to be enough to get the mod working again.

Awesome, thanks! I'll get on fixing this up now for version 0.14.

Any chance of you manually uploading it for one of the .14 versions so i can grab it ?
Having trouble with mp train syncing so id like to go for that with my server.

I've been informed that the mod portal works correctly even with multiple factorio versions. (0.13 and 0.14).
So I've just uploaded a 0.14 version to the mod portal. You can grab it there now.

Any suggestion on how to manage power costs of the higher tier science labs? 2 Megawatts of power is a lot, and manually disabling them when researching non-purple tech is somewhat tedious. I thought of disabling belts or inserters, but it would still run the initial amount. And even then, I can't think of a way for the combinators to determine whether tech uses purple or not.

While you cannot stick efficiency modules in the labs themselves, you can still put down beacons near them and stick the efficiency modules in those.
That should cut down significantly on their energy usage.

As for shutting them down entirely when not doing purple science. I can't think of an elegant way.

[Neemys]

Any suggestion on how to manage power costs of the higher tier science labs? 2 Megawatts of power is a lot, and manually disabling them when researching non-purple tech is somewhat tedious. I thought of disabling belts or inserters, but it would still run the initial amount. And even then, I can't think of a way for the combinators to determine whether tech uses purple or not.

When labs don't use a kind of bottle, the insert don't try to take some, so using conbinator, you want to have one lab all time powered, with an inserter picking bottle, when the inserter take a purple bottle (circuit network read hand on the inserter), power all the other lab for like 2 minutes. As at regular interval during the research, the inserter will take again some purple bottle, the labs will stay powered, when you switch research to non purple bottle ones, the labs will shutdown by themselves after the timer.

If you don't know how to do timer, you will need to do a bit of research as I can't show you a working one right now.

[TBCWolfi]

Awesome mod ! Thank you i have been looking for something like this for a while and the marathon mod was messing up my stuff to much
(how can somebody transport that much of copper plates O.o)

I also have a Question on how i can change the costs on science packs. I used your command but it didnt changed anything :/

[hoho]

I also have a Question on how i can change the costs on science packs. I used your command but it didnt changed anything :/

Extract the mod and change the values in config.lua file.

[hoho]

Is it just me or is the crafting of Bob's blue science pack broken at the moment?

Looking at the source, seems like many intermediates lack recipes and looking at the history of the file, seems like they never had one.

Personally, I've turned the complexity to 11 when playing and it usually takes some 200-ish hours of game time to even reach the point where I need to build a system for making those science packs and I tend to reset game before reaching that point, I haven't noticed the problem before. I find it hard to believe that no one else has noticed that too over the months.

[edit]

I just realized that the recipes for making the intermediates give more than one output. Silly me.

Does that mean everything is working as intended or is the current state just an intermediate step before making each component have a separate recipe?

[Neemys]

In this mod, each potion (blue, green, red, purple, and maybe dark purple, not sure about the last one) use new intermediate added by this mod. So every item needed by potion should have a recipe available. If not post your problem here to be corrected.

Then if all intermediate have a recipe, the items needed for each intermediate will vary depending on if you have (or not) bob's mod, and which part of bob's mod is present. If you find yourself with no recipe for an intermediate component, either you don't have the necessary technology researched yet, or there is a problem. For the first case, you can check using technology menu (remember, this research menu have a search function in the top right), if you should have it and don't have it and you are using bob's mod, then post in bob's mod forum to see your problem fixed.

Last time I used this mod in 0.12.35 I have automated blue potion without problem with all bob's mod enabled. I needed to do the complete setup (messy) one first time to see how it's working, but I have now a nice and clean setup blueprintable for the red/blue/green potion.

[hoho]

If not post your problem here to be corrected.

I appeneded an edit to my last post about me just misunderstanding how things work. It seems to work just fine as is but I'd still like to know if it'll remain as-is with the recipes giving several outputs at once for the dark blue Bob's science pack.

[Neemys]

If not post your problem here to be corrected.

I appeneded an edit to my last post about me just misunderstanding how things work. It seems to work just fine as is but I'd still like to know if it'll remain as-is with the recipes giving several outputs at once for the dark blue Bob's science pack.

I can't speak for the author, but I don't think he will change the way it work, he will maybe tweak the number if needed. He design it that way, I don't see any reason to change it.

[hoho]

He design it that way, I don't see any reason to change it.

In the tweaks folder there is a file named Planning.txt that describes what ingredients each component should take. In there, each individual component has separate manufacturing recipe.

I actually cloned the GitHub repo in order to add those individual recipes from that file myself. I managed to crete about half the "missing" recipes before I noticed some of the existing ones have more than one outputs. After seeing that I thought perhaps the current solution was just a quick and dirty way to get the thing working with the idea of having each ingredient with their own recipe defined some time in future update.

[Neemys]

The github should have the more up to date version. I don't see any difference, there is still recipe with multiple output. The txt was surely made in a way to facilitate calculation. Like I said before I don't speak for the author, so we should wait for him to properly answer

In dark blue science the only component that don't have multiple output are PL, IN,SU,CB. They are the final step before making the bottle. With those 4 there is 5 other recipe that have multiple output.

[UberWaffe]

@hoho: It is as @Neemys explained.
The dark blue science packs from Bobmods should be all available, given that each recipe outputs multiple intermediary products. The thing currently missing is nice graphics for all of them. You'll notice several items with a placeholder graphic with some text ("2C", "3A", etc.) on them.
They are functional, just very ugly looking.

I'm not an artist, and I kinda burned myself out on Factorio. So I'm struggling to find the motivation to finish the icons for them all.


@Neemys: Thanks for explaining. I don't check these forums that often anymore.

[Starfoth]

I was wondering how this mod would play out in 0.15. Do you have an idea of what you want to replace all these science packs with?
Military, production, etc, it looks like science packs are going to become very complex and I love how instead of being able to plot down some small production lines and giant sprawling science assemblers, we actually have to think with your mod. As such, I'd love to see what you do with them.

[Ranakastrasz]

Is it just me, or is the Bobs-mod integration broken? I end up with some white-icons for recipes and items, and those recipes have multiple inputs and outputs, including some which input and output the same thing.

Edit: Oh wait, the numbers on the icons are different for those recipes. Still really complex, and the icons are missing still.

Edit2: Oh wait. Looks like some icons are there, but not all of them. Still, I don't think it should be enabled by default yet.

[UberWaffe]

Busy working on 0.15.* update.
Got the cost adjustment code working, including configs for the new infinite research.

Still busy working on updating all of the custom recipes and intermediates for the new science packs. Hope to have it done by this weekend.

[nagapito]

Busy working on 0.15.* update.
Got the cost adjustment code working, including configs for the new infinite research.

Still busy working on updating all of the custom recipes and intermediates for the new science packs. Hope to have it done by this weekend.

My biggest fears are unfunded

I really thought you would be one of the inactive developers and was scratching my head how would I update this mod and balance it if you didnt showed life signals in 1-2 weeks!

By the way, a couple days ago I did an analisys on your material requirements(with bobs) and I was quite surprised. While iron/copper were pretty equal (which might change if you follow vanilla directions), the rest of bobs materials were pratically inixistent. In relation to iron/copper, the rest of the materials where used like 10x less, some of them not even used.

Quick rundown on the numbers to produce 1 pack per second of all packs with a comparison ratio to iron:

iron: 2295
copper: 2229 (97%)
silicon: 133 (6%)
gold: 228 (10%)
lead: 152 (7%)
tin: 349 (15%)
aluminum: 0
zinc: 99 (4%)
silver: 27 (1%)
cobalt: 7 (0%)
tungsten: 0
nickel: 30 (1%)
Titanium: 15 (1%)

I understand that some materials (titanium, tungsten..) might not make much sense in research, they are more focused for buildings but others maybe they should be used a lot more, like gold, tin, lead, silicon...

Anyway, dont get distracted by these numbers. you can always do a second balance passage on them later, specially after bob updates (we dont know what he might change)

Cheers

[UberWaffe]

@nagapito:

I hope to do the second pass a bit later that will properly include bobsmods resources, but for now I just want to get the basics out at least.

Currently I still have to do the high-tech science pack and figure out how the ingame mod config will work with configuring the mod ingame, as opposed to how it works now.
I aim to put out the v0.15.* version tomorrow, but it won't include the ingame config. Then do the ingame config. And then look at doing the bobmods adjustments.

If anyone wants to help with icons or visual, I'll gladly accept the help.
I don't enjoy doing the graphics part of it.

[nagapito]

take a peek at bob's modules mod and see how the settings system works.

The mod is so small and simple that it is pretty easy to understand how all works. At least for me, it was easy to understand once I seen what bob did. Others mods, can be to complex by themselves to understand how the system works.

Sadly, I am a developer too, not a designer. Best I can do with visuals would be full color coding squares for icons

[UberWaffe]

Allirght, so the first v0.15 compatible version is uploaded to the mod portal. It should be available via the ingame browser if you search for ScienceCostTweaker.

I still need to integrate the new ingame mod config. and do proper bobsmods compatibility, but the basics are in place.


What is new:

• New recipes and intermediates for all existing vanilla science packs (excluding space science. That is still obtained via satellite launch)
• New recipes costs should be similar in cost when NET effect is taken into account (i.e. all byproducts are recycled)
• Byproducts: A lot of recipes and steps now produce junk byproducts, that can be processed back into iron or copper ore. The idea is to take a slightly different spin on the usual one-way nature of recipe chains.

What is gone:

• Biter evolution settings. It is now included in the base game.

As usual, I've done some preliminary testing but probably missed stuff. Please let me know if any bugs are encountered.

Next aim will be to integrate the ingame mod config menu.