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

[mikavelli]

Idea for expansion, probably, but probably there's no chance of implementing due to lack of available data outputs OR monitoring entities around structure without straining CPU to the fullest

working title - "Corrosion and Decay" (or "How I got suicidal playing Factorio" )

For Corrosion part - i.e. sulfuric acid basically dissolves most containers(pipes) - iron, steel, unless made acid-proof. So using wrong pipes for a liquid/gas could give "damage" to pipes over time, forcing to repair/replace them to the right kind, otherwise risking halted production.
- It could be a way for making specialized pipes (enrichment of pipes), cause not even titanium would be able to withstand some acids
- not possible, but maybe in factorio 2.0 - hydrogen chloride put over v.long pipes at low pressure would become ferride chloride solution ^^
- There is also corrosion, when two different alloy pipes are connected - (Galvanic corrosion) it would force to remember about changing pipes for boilers/steam engines while upgrading them, or risking blackout due to simple corroded pipes after a while.


Decay
- Engines running at 95-100% of capabilities would sustain damage due to "material strain"
- Same rule could be applied to batteries
- For Li-Ion added bonus - less than 10% of charge could damage them
- There's another possible modifier - climate (ground color) - closer to savanna - faster decay for steam engines(+x%), but x/3% more solar panel output
- High pollution could cripple solar power output gradually
- When using offshore pumps - "ground" could gradually show up around water reservoir, after making 1-block wide extra ground around lake, pump would stop working
- High concentration(generation) of heat(combined power use over 5-100MW- depending on structure - over 100sq radius) could mostly limit overall production by some percentage - or i.e. of basic belt, get heat damage after being exposed to 5MW heat at 1hp/5MW every 60-120secs(so 50-100 mins of game); it would require total upgrades to higher tier structures; also, in dire situations; cripple ability to improvise factory layout - by heavily damaging underground entrances/exits in multi-underground build -
- similar to point above - plastic pipes near furnace would "melt" almost instantly

Other ideas
- Modules dont change building graphics, but there could be "solar panel" modules for autonomous work, where insanely high production is not necessary(they could have 4 stages of effectivity like with Your panels)
-At random, over long belts, a fraction of cargo would "drop" (either just drop or dissappear)

[bobingabout]

The 2z2 grid is from FARL, Do you have the latest version? Farl is supposed to only add the grid if there is not already an existing grid but mod dependencies can mess it up.

I removed FARL and now there is no grid at all.

You do have bob logistics installed, right?

The grids for trains are added in Logistics, the grids for tanks and the car are added by Warfare. The equipment mod itself doesn't add the grids.

This is something I plan to change for 0.15 version of the mods, the Vehicle equipment should add the grids.

"Suggestions"

Pretty much everything you have suggested is far beyond the simple "Create new assets" area of modding I aim for with these mods. They're whole new functionalities specific to an item/fluid/entity. This basically means CPU intensive monitoring of all of these items/entities, which is something I have strictly stated I want to avoid. I originally said no scripting at all, but as you can see starting with 0.13, I moved away from this, and have included some action based scripting (things happen when the player does something, like placing an entity, or pressing a button.)
Things like decaying entities (Via wear, or transporting the wrong fluid in a pipe) means keeping a list of all those possible entities, which is unpleasant to say the least. Finding entities that already exist is a very CPU intensive task, the first iteration of my inserter migration script would cause the game to lock up for about 2 minutes, and that was just finding all existing inserters.

I'm not saying a mod can't be made to do these things, I'm just not going to be the one to do it.

[mexmer]

for some reason, there are always people that like things to break just because they exists (rust, decay, wearing, call it whatever you want), sooner or later they will find such mechanic also tedious, and will ask for some way of automatic repair all along the progress (research in these case, although construction bots will take care of this) or turn that off.

anyways, wearing/decay has been already suggested even for vanilla, but nobody explained, how such tedious stuff will improve/enhance gameplay.

[Deadly-Bagel]

That's because there aren't any reasons it would benefit gameplay. It's a hassle and nuisance until you can automate repairs, then it's irrelevant.

The closest thing I saw to a good suggestion was one that meant certain items required specialised repair packs because say a gear wheel had broken or a circuit got fried or w/e and that part needs replacing, but only happens when you "overclock" the machine for better performance. So at the start of the game it's never a problem but your mining outposts can optionally be provided with whatever repair packs it needs to fix its miners and you have a logistic problem to solve, but that's an awful lot of work and CPU time for a mildly interesting optional feature.

[bobingabout]

The idea of metal pipes breaking when you run ferric chloride through them is realistic though. That's what Ferric chloride does, dissolves metal. Use the right pipe for your fluid, and all that.

It's just a pain in the arse to try and do, not to mention the CPU usage monitoring all those pipes to see what's in them.

[mexmer]

The idea of metal pipes breaking when you run ferric chloride through them is realistic though. That's what Ferric chloride does, dissolves metal. Use the right pipe for your fluid, and all that.

It's just a pain in the arse to try and do, not to mention the CPU usage monitoring all those pipes to see what's in them.

Well realism in game like this, there is certain level of "gaminification" of every real world principle, that makes your game enjoybale, while pertaining feel of having some close to real mechanics and principles. i would say that breakdown due aging, rust, corosion and such is not one of them, unless you play game, that is about maintenance, or maintenance of stuff is part of game core (it's developed with mind, that you will need to take care of stuff all time)

factorio, from start seemed to by more like logistic type puzzle (well until you get robots, but you can decide to play without robots)

did you at least once measure, how much time you spend moving your character, when building your base? playing cargo bot, until you have pipes/belts everywhere, there is reason, why there are achievements like "lazy bastard" or "you doing this right" (although first one not possible with your mods).

also whenever someone starts about "realism", there is simple argument - inventory. how the hell you stuff whole factory in you pocket, and not just one, thousands of them - so. now talk about realism.

anyways, i think most of us agree, that adding any kind of maintenance at this stage of game, would be hassle, not to mention performance issues (which would also make game less playable)

[Darkas]

Let me start with saying that I love bob's mods and I've played about 5 games with them, currently I'm playing bobsangelthon. With that out of the way, I have 2-3 big issues:

First, the modules. Even with god and mixed modules disabled, they are insanely strong and cheap, compared to the base game, where the cost goes up exponentially by tier. In the base game, if you decide to put modules everywhere, you usually have to dramatically ramp up your production of everything, while in bob's mods, you maybe have to fix some minor issues with not producing enough of something and if you got your first few stacks of modules done, everything basically becomes free, which makes the game quite trivial: productivity everywhere, if something is too slow, put down beacons with speed. The fact that in the end, everything has ~6 module slots in the end doesn't help there.

My second issue is intermediates, i.e. why do I make gear wheels out of everything? Or pipes, or bearings. I get that the idea is to require a new metal for a new tier, but the result is that you usually unlock an entire tier of buildings at once when you finally decide to get, say, titanium. But these are so many, that you can never be bothered automating them, so you make what you need right now, and when you have bots, you just let them automate all this stuff. Why not have a single (main) titanium intermediate, say light titanium structure (like iron gear wheels and chopper wire in the base game), that you can automate on a belt and spaghetti everywhere, just to make the better stuff?

This is closely related to third issue, namely the tiers themselves. In general I like them, but right now everything needs the same stuff. Why not have decision making, like: You want better drills? Get titanium! You want better chemical plants? Get gold! (just making stuff up). This would mean of course less tiers which is probably just fine.

[Mendel]

I think it is almost always better to automate the products that need gear wheels, wires or bearings by directly feeding the wheels etc from an assembler that makes them to assembler that needs them instead of feeding them by a belt.
This way you can scale the production more by adding bunches of these assemblers and only feeding raw plates on belts. less spaghetti too.

[mexmer]

I think it is almost always better to automate the products that need gear wheels, wires or bearings by directly feeding the wheels etc from an assembler that makes them to assembler that needs them instead of feeding them by a belt.
This way you can scale the production more by adding bunches of these assemblers and only feeding raw plates on belts. less spaghetti too.

depends on situation, in some cases it's better with direct feed, some are better with belt. although belt might also be bottleneck in your troughput, that's why it's situational.

for example iron gears belt can feed belt production, inserter production and red science pack production (that's usually part of my initial setup), while copper wire is better to be directly stuffed to basic board factories, since it produce just enough for one. you can find lot of similar cases where is better one, or other approach.

[ukezi]

I normally go the way if it's used often and reduces size->belt it. for instance you would need 2 iron belts to create 1 gear belt. so you get less spaghetti by having a few of gear factory at the start of your bus.
in contrast to that you get 2 wire out of a copper->don't belt it. also for a red belts factory you need 5 gear factories to not stall.

[Xeanoa]

I think having both gear wheels and bearing is a nice touch.

However, of steel, titanium and nitrinol, we have both, gear wheels and bearings. That's redundant. Of these three, it should be reduced to either one or the other. I'd suggest dropping these 3 kinds of gear wheels, and only work with the remaining types.

[Darkas]

Wikipedia tells me that using ceramic balls instead of steel increases their operation speed up to 40%. So maybe have ceramic bearing balls + steel -> ceramic bearing recipe?

But I cannot imagine using titanium or nitinol used in bearings or gear wheels. Titanium is used for its lightness (in the aerospace industry, but whatever) and nitinol for its funny deformation properties, so for Titanium I would make a structural element, but I have no clue for nitinol. By the way, there are also diamond bearings, which fail less often.

I would keep the steel bearings but maybe drop the steel gear wheels, in reality it almost never matters what gears are made of.

I have thought more about what I said in my previous post, and I am collecting ideas and making a list, and I will be putting some of these in a mod.

[bobingabout]

Nitinol bearings are actually a real thing. They last a lot longer than Steel bearings.

The idea behind the three grades though is that it's supposed to be T2, T3 and T4 of both Gears and bearings, where Iron gear wheels are T1(without bearings)

[Xeanoa]

The annoying part about this is that you either:

-Spend endless amounts of time crafting gears when you need just a piece of something, because you have go through 4, 5, 6 tiers, which adds up to sometimes around 100 gears for 1 entity
-Have to organise and carry production of 6 types of gears, on top of the bearings, which you, except for steel, can't craft in hand anyway. That's still the best way, but takes up like 2 rows of inventory and logistics slots
-Have huge production chains for thing you may need only a handful of. There's little to no point in making a production chain for most buildings, as that takes more assembling machines to do than the amount of building of that type you will need

[Arch666Angel]

Wikipedia tells me that using ceramic balls instead of steel increases their operation speed up to 40%. So maybe have ceramic bearing balls + steel -> ceramic bearing recipe?

But I cannot imagine using titanium or nitinol used in bearings or gear wheels. Titanium is used for its lightness (in the aerospace industry, but whatever) and nitinol for its funny deformation properties, so for Titanium I would make a structural element, but I have no clue for nitinol. By the way, there are also diamond bearings, which fail less often.

I would keep the steel bearings but maybe drop the steel gear wheels, in reality it almost never matters what gears are made of.

I have thought more about what I said in my previous post, and I am collecting ideas and making a list, and I will be putting some of these in a mod.

Gear wheels are force transmitter, as such their usage ranges from cheap little thingys in toys, to highly engineered products used in heavy machinery, so I wouldnt comply with saying it never matters what gears are made of ^^

[bobingabout]

-Spend endless amounts of time crafting gears when you need just a piece of something, because you have go through 4, 5, 6 tiers, which adds up to sometimes around 100 gears for 1 entity

I kind of agree that if you want a T6, that needing to make a T1 first and upgrade it to T2... all the way up the chain, is quite annoying.

However... it's following base game mechanics, in fact in base game, T3 requires 2 T2s, I change the recipe to only need 1 of them, and a few new components.

Making a straight up T6 would be better, definitely quicker and easier, but the problem then becomes... what do you do with that old T1 factory? or even what do you do with the T5 you just replaced with a T6?


One of the possible answers to the riddle of these questions is that you could break apart the older structures to get some, or all the materials back, but when you disassemble a T1 factory to basically get back iron and copper parts... but the T6 doesn't use those materials they use Titanium, nickel, and other things. so, what do you do with these reclaimed resources?

[mexmer]

-Spend endless amounts of time crafting gears when you need just a piece of something, because you have go through 4, 5, 6 tiers, which adds up to sometimes around 100 gears for 1 entity

I kind of agree that if you want a T6, that needing to make a T1 first and upgrade it to T2... all the way up the chain, is quite annoying.

However... it's following base game mechanics, in fact in base game, T3 requires 2 T2s, I change the recipe to only need 1 of them, and a few new components.

Making a straight up T6 would be better, definitely quicker and easier, but the problem then becomes... what do you do with that old T1 factory? or even what do you do with the T5 you just replaced with a T6?


One of the possible answers to the riddle of these questions is that you could break apart the older structures to get some, or all the materials back, but when you disassemble a T1 factory to basically get back iron and copper parts... but the T6 doesn't use those materials they use Titanium, nickel, and other things. so, what do you do with these reclaimed resources?

tbh. i like upgrading of stuff mechanics (there are few exceptions in upgrade chains, but one can live with that). what i usually do is make 5 of next tier, then slap them on top of lower tier, so i get 5 lower tier, upgrade, and repeat

i think there is also mod called upgrade planer, which with proper setup works same way (just utilizing bots - they replace "old" stuff with new stuff, putting old stuff back into production chain, so it can be upgraded).

only annoying thing is upgrading bots. since you can't set filter on roboport/robochest, to only allow landing of certain tier/type of robots. so sometimes you need to manually cleanup, or just have filter inserter on every roboport/robochest, to take old bots out and put them in upgrade chain.

[Xeanoa]

I'm not argueing against upgrading, quite the opposite, I like it to be that way.

It's just that you need too many different intermediate and basic materials.

[Darkas]

Same here, I like the upgrading, but there are too many intermediates. But also, getting back iron and copper seems hardly an issue, I have never had the situation of having too much of these, rather you have too much of the late game metals (and nickel), especially with angels mods, where I regularly destroy silos. If nitinol bearings are a thing, I'm all for it. On the gear wheel front, Wikipedia says they are most commonly made of steels and plastics.

By the way, since you are both in this thread: Having angels mods, disabling small alien artifacts does not work, because angels mods add them even if disabled, and then they drop, because they do if they exist. This is easy to fix in angels mods (just don't load some stuff, some researches need to be put in a new file), while the proper way seems to not drop them, even if they exist in bobs mods, which is more work.

I also want to draw attention on the modules again. I made a full steel chest for every resource (including barreled oil) and produced rockets (with satellites) out of these chests. The results:
- With 4 productivity modules tier 8 in every machine at 5% productivity per level: 10 rockets
- 4 productivity tier 8 with 2.5% productivity per level: 1.22 rockets
- 6 productivity tier 8 with 2.5% productivity per level whenever possible: 1.64 rockets

These numbers should be accurate as iron was always the bottleneck, and I removed all solids between the tests, only some liquids remained in the pipes. Even one rocket is insane, but it's still a game, and I like some insanity here and there, so I'm very much for lowering the default productivity per level to 0.025 and maybe lowering the maximum number of module slots to 4.

[Xeanoa]

I favour a different direction.
Productivity modules can be used in too many processes. Imo, they should not be able to be used for intermediates, and only for the very find processing steps, such as iron ore > iron, but not even for iron > steel. That way, they can't multiply with themselves. Also not in mining. Literally only one step per resource.
And, maybe, a cap to productivity, like there is a cap to energy/pollution reduction. 100% seems fair enough.

Allows you to double all your resource yields, which is still huge, but you cannot make 2 million tunsten plates out of a small ore field.