Development and Discussion

[Darkas]

I am playing with UP and I find it very frustrating that I cannot use the flourite ore generated by the waste water in the production chain of UP. At least it should be doable to make the flourite out of flourite ore.

Also, the geodes which are not red or blue are only coming from mining stone right? It seems strange to have a whole processing chain for these. Why not let them be byproducts like the red and blue ones, or remove them?

[Light]

I am playing with UP and I find it very frustrating that I cannot use the flourite ore generated by the waste water in the production chain of UP. At least it should be doable to make the flourite out of flourite ore.

Also, the geodes which are not red or blue are only coming from mining stone right? It seems strange to have a whole processing chain for these. Why not let them be byproducts like the red and blue ones, or remove them?

1. This was already discussed with the UP developer, he may perform the change in his next update.
2. All geodes come from chunk creation, not just red or blue.

[Arch666Angel]

@Zyrconia
At the moment the A-L is only overriding the graphics for the loaders in the base game and the better ones added bei add-loaders, so yes you need both mods. With 0.15 A-L will add loaders on it's own, because they add the ability to copy over filters base game side.

@aklesey1
Smelting will see an update as soon as I know which kind of metals and alloys I want and need for the components mod.

@MainTango
Compared to the base game tank or car the crawler is at a huge disadvantage: It is slow and it has no weapons. The other reason for the HP and (mostly physical) resistance is that the crawler is intended to be able to clear a path through a forest, it will still need repairs after that but it can go a long way. So yeah it has massive HP but it is also a massive vehicle that has no other means to defend itself.
For the size: You are right that the crawler should be bigger and I did consider that when I made the model and renders, but there are practical reasons to keep it at a reasonable size (to remind you, the player model is almost as big as the tank itself): For one the sprite sheet already is massive, the Logistics Mod is already by far the biggest of my mods file size wise, making the render bigger would only increase the size, the other thing is that you have to handle it ingame and really big vehicles are unwieldy and also provide other problems as well, the game is simply not made/balanced for handling really huge entities. I will check how it feels if I do increase the size by a bit, but like I said I feel that the current size is O.K. for handling and driving it around.

@Psawhn
The problem is that you cant really burn liquids for energy production, you have to go the route of making it a solid with fuel value, or use some scripting to make such generators possible, I hope that this will be easier with 0.15 and added feature but we will see. Rather then turning it into solid fuel, I would prefer to have a generator that can burn some of the gases directly for energy and/or heated water.
I see the solid fuel recipes as a kind of upgrade for the coal/carbon, since like I mentioned you cant really use the gases to produce energy. Also I'm waiting for Py to finish his mod for coal processing, that's why I havent extended the coal side of Petrochem. Also the use of solid fuel in the base game was either as a dump for oil products, their way to give you means to not have one product block production and late game for rocket fuel.
The other problem was that sometime the old solid fuel recipes were still ingame, which of course conflicts with Petrochems resulting in just not using the petrochem ones, because they are way more expansive than the vanilla ones. To really balance it out, one would have to math the fuel value of the gases, based on what coal cracking would yield per piece of coal and compare that to the solid fuel recipes.

[mexmer]

@Arch666Angel while you cannot burn liquids in base game (not sure if there mod exists), you still can use it as heat transfer media have you seen boiler plant, that actually uses heated oil and not water for running steam engines? although voiding unnecessary liquids is easier.

[Light]

I have no issues using Napatha, Lubricant, Crude, Oxygen, Nitrogen, or even compressed air to fully power steam engines if the flow can be kept strong enough.
The major issue is that steam engines seem to void the air/liquids at the same rate, so you'd never want to use anything aside from water or compressed air, since it's free to obtain in large amounts rather quickly.

Funnily enough, thermal water doesn't work. Since it's so rarely required and already at 100C, it would be perfect for a pollution free setup without transporting fuel long distances.

If you don't feel like using water for whatever reason:

[Zyrconia]

Only now do I realize what your new mods has given us: the blessing of early logistical bots? I tend to not use bots for production, but this might mean that I can skip circuit network condition phase and instead go directly for logistical network based conditions?

I need to test if the nanobots mod works with your early logistical bots (nanobots don't work in logistical networks). Probably not, which is a shame.

What are you supposed to be using for builder bots in the new crawler vehicle?

And what is the new train used for? Can I use it as a replacement for vanilla trains and as a general purpose train? It look too cool not to use it!

[Nexela]

I'll spend some time this weekend working on PyCoal - Petrochem compatibility.

Now only if there was a petrochem-rail-tanker so I could do another petrochem train

[KepperMIEM]

Arch666Angel, may i use some you png files?
Mу mod https://yadi.sk/d/tLfXdHrv3CfKjS - Deleted

[aklesey1]

I'll spend some time this weekend working on PyCoal - Petrochem compatibility.

Now only if there was a petrochem-rail-tanker so I could do another petrochem train

Tanker Train Alarm!!! The train prepares for departure from depot!!!

[mexmer]

hmm, just curious, why smelting, when you reasearch it, doesn't give simple iron smelting recipe?

when you unlock advanced metalurgy you get steel recipe and machines (cast machine, blast furnace and induction furnace), but no iron recipe, yet you need iron to make steel.
you can research copper smelting to get simple coper ore to coper ingots
you can research advanced iron smelting to get recipe that uses coke and processed iron ore

yes i know, i can use vanilla iron process, or i can get iron from smelting crushed saphirite, still seems to me like piece of puzzle. you can't redirect your production from normal furnaces to smelting block, because you can't process iron in smelting block, when you unlock smelting technology.

[Darkas]

2. All geodes come from chunk creation, not just red or blue.

All recipes for hydro refining return red and blue geodes for me. I haven't seen other ways to get geodes.

[Arch666Angel]

Arch666Angel, may i use some you png files?
Mу mod https://yadi.sk/d/tLfXdHrv3CfKjS

No sry I don't share them, one reason I changed the liscence on the mods. But I would be willing to make some replacement sprites for you.

[Light]

Out of curiosity, I took a look at all the smaller scale power production mods in relation to the discussion earlier. Only one really stood out for me.

Klonan's power mod has a recipe that will use 60 units of water + 1 oil or heavy oil or 0.5 light oil in the oil burner to create 60 units of 100C water for use in steam engines. Effectively removing the need for any boilers or coal, with just a tiny oil setup required. Even barrels of oil are great for this!

His other option is mixing methane and light oil to create diesel fuel liquid which is very slowly burned in his diesel generators, allowing another small oil setup that doesn't waste fuel so rapidly.



The first method of using water and fuel seems appropriate for petrochem and can have its costs scaled depending on the gas being burned. The second method could work too, but it sounds like you'd need to create your own power generators, which I'd imagine is a lot of work.

Just some food for thought.

[Light]

2. All geodes come from chunk creation, not just red or blue.

All recipes for hydro refining return red and blue geodes for me. I haven't seen other ways to get geodes.

It's always good practice to update your mods when starting up Factorio. The other geodes were added in Refining 0.6.0 a week ago.

[mexmer]

@ Arch666Angel
just thought, can you add resin to bio processing mod if bob electronics is present? there is already wood board, but resin is needed also. so it will remove need for building greenhouses.

[Durabys]

@Arch666Angel
When will you add the names of inputs and outputs of Angel Mod recipe's? It is quite difficult to navigate through the production chain if you have to go by only icons. It is nearly like playing Factorio blind.

[ridesdragons]

I haven't even gotten into oil yet (currently working on making a massive station for ores, and do not have tin being produced en masse yet so I can't even make the 2nd tier circuit boards yet. I've ran out of techs to research orz), but I do pretty much have the smelting/ore crushing down pat (smelting still frustrates me with how each ore type has different ratios). However, thanks to my mass construction and mass production (and I know I'm nowhere near what I need for even mid-game), I've noticed an issue regarding warehouses. a quick search shows I'm not the first, but even so, I don't see any point in actually using them anymore (which is gonna be a pain to fix).

the advantage of iron over wood is more space in one tile, albeit at an increased cost. steel follows suit. 3 wood chests are far, far cheaper than 1 steel chest, but it's still preferable to use them (and not just because of the smart/logistics chests). This is because of how much space 3 wooden chests would need to take.

so first off, the storage-per-tile (SPT) of wooden chests is 16 (obviously), with iron at 32 and steel at 48. silos, with 256 storage and 16 tiles, have an SPT of 16 (the same as wooden chests), and warehouses have an SPT of 21.33 (slightly better than wooden chests). although much cheaper, when I'm trying to store tens of thousands of iron and steel plates, I don't really care about the costs associated with storing them. I make a habit particularly of carrying around 5 stacks of bricks, steel, 10 copper, and 20 iron, so I can do whatever needs to be done when I need to. I can afford 32 steel chests without issue. the problem is that the warehouse has the same amount of storage as 16 steel chests, while taking up more than double its size. I can make 3 rows of steel chests and 2 rows of inserters (30 tiles), I can get 864 storage slots, for an SPT of 28.8. iron chests in the same configuration provide 576 space, with an SPT of 19.2, which is slightly less than the 21.33 of warehouses. bob's mods allows sideways inserters, which allows all 18 chests involved to be connected to each other, keeping the 864 storage, though reducing the SPT as it now takes up 36 slots (checkerboard design with chests and inserters), dropping it to 24, which is only slightly better than the warehouse, but there's no real point to doing that as it's more expensive and takes up more space that way anyway. with the wide-chests mod as well, which allows you to combine a row or a column (but not both) of steel chests into one long chest, you can get 6 rows of 5-wide chests and side-ways inserters connecting them to provide 1440 slots while still taking up 36 tiles, for an SPT of a whopping 40. sure, it's more expensive, but I'm drowning in the materials I need to produce said storage.

logistics chests don't even need mentioning, since they provide the same storage as steel chests while not needing inserters, bumping the SPT up all the way to 48. but, of course, I'd rather have 1 provider or 1 requester chest hooked up to 30 steel chests than 36 of either, even though the SPT is lower, because of cost, though late game I'd probably replace all steel chests with Mk2 logistics chests due to another bump in storage and likely having the resources needed to fuel the creation of all those electronic boards by that time. because of this, the logistics warehouses are useless - just hook a normal warehouse to a logistics chest

visually, warehouses are huge. they're not just wide, they're also tall. and yet, they provide the same amount of storage as 16 dinky steel chests. I don't mind logistics warehouses having a bit less space than normal ones, but they should easily provide more space than steel chests. they just barely provide more space than wooden chests. it should also be noted that, as it's a fixed 6x6, it's rather clunky - while you can string together 18 steel chests in almost any configuration but the most cluttered, the 6x6 warehouse doesn't even fit in with rather open areas. I actually considered creating a storage area and just shipping all the waste products from ore refining to it via rail since I couldn't fit warehouses anywhere once I expanded the refinery to include more than just sapharite. the fact that the storage loader for my trains (20 chests long) is more efficient storage than the warehouses it loads it from it rather sad as well. so I wouldn't use warehouses in a dedicated warehouse zone anyway.

I feel warehouses should have a buff to their storage. naturally, with a comeback of a higher cost, but I don't find the convenience of having everything in one chest being worth losing the advantage of more storage per tile. as it stands, they can't be viewed as an upgrade to steel, and are comparable to iron chests.

[Zyrconia]

Here is more feedback after playtesting:
1. The new early logistic roboport and zone extenders should be connectible to the circuit network. The first thing I tried to do is to create a smart base with the ports, but it is not possible. The port has such a small radius that I doubt it will be of any use in early game, so circuits might help with that.
2. There should be an optional addon mod for the port graphics to be applied to existing roboports. The new ports are highly temporary and you won't see them in mid game basses.
3. Unless you have some special plans for casting machines, their inputs should be more standards. They are clearly the odd man out and pipes look weird in mirrored configurations.
4. In my latest game, "solid fuel research" is gone. It was and angels's an bobsrevamp modified entity, green science, and now it is gone. The one thing I care from there is hydrogen to solid fuel. My base is producing hundreds of hydrogen and there is nothing I can do with it right now. Converting it to solid fuel was a good solution.

[ukezi]

For the H2: CO2+H2-> methanol -> propen -> plastic is a possibility

[BlakeMW]

Out of curiosity, I took a look at all the smaller scale power production mods in relation to the discussion earlier. Only one really stood out for me.

Klonan's power mod...

I'm familiar with the internals of that mod because I analyzed it in depth a while back. The nice thing about the oil burner is it is 100% scripting free (as of 0.14), it's literally just an assembler which then has recipes that convert X liquid + Y water into Y hot water.

The Diesel generator has the advantage of not requiring recipes, but it's a mess of hacks and scripting, altough perhaps not as bad as you might imagine. How it works is that the generator is a Steam Engine that is like 1000% efficient that consumes like 0.1 liquid/s, a script examines what is inside the fluidbox of diesel generators, if it is an inappropriate liquid (like water or anything else) it gets its temperature zero'd out so it generates no power, otherwise if it's one of a predefined set of "burnable" liquids it gets its temperature set to an appropriate level (like 60 or 80 degrees) so that the generator ends up generating an appropriate amount of power - so for example Heavy Oil gets heated to 60 degrees by the script and gets consumed as if it were hot water, but at extreme efficiency.

So anyway, it would be possible and pretty easy to do seamless integration between KSPower and petrochem *for the oil burner* - even a 3rd party mod could do it, it would just be a matter of checking for the existence of the oil burner and the petrochem liquids and then adding the appropriate X liquid + Y water recipes. On the other hand the Diesel Generator would basically require modding KSPower so the script recognizes the petrochem fluids.