[0.12.x][v0.12.11] Bob's Warfare mod

[Recon777]

So, I just tried out the Invar Cobalt Steel Armor for the first time, and... okay, am I missing something?

The armor's performance is fairly "early game" in terms of protection. Unless you absolutely fast-track the tech, at the expense of other more practical techs, it seems like the acquisition of both invar and cobalt steel is something which is way too complex for the stage of the game where the armor would still be useful. Should this perhaps be made much more effective? Though even if that were the case, there's still yet another tier of armor which is not modular. And by this stage of the game, the player is absolutely itching for modular armor if for no other reason than walking slow is getting very, very old by now.

I'm just wondering what the game's justification is for such weak armor at the point in the game where you can actually build that armor. Also, I'm not sure what else cobalt is useful for, or if I've built my whole copper/cobalt refining area for nothing.
[edit] Mmm okay so cobalt is required for the next tier of batteries. Well that's good. But still, that's much more late game than the corresponding armor mentioned above. Still curious about that. And even with the batteries, cobalt plates aren't a part of the recipe. So I'm not sure what other use there is for cobalt plates.

[bobingabout]

Cobalt steel was actually supposed to be used a lot more widely than it actually is. It's also used for a mining pick, and one of the tiers of mining drills.

the main absence for most cobalt use is... it was first added specifically for the Li-Ion batteries, then tacked in a few other places. One of the things I really need to do is write out a list of each metal in the mod, it's tier and purpose, and go through all the recipes to change them to not only use the most appropriate metals for the job, but make sure everything is used for more than just the odd novelty item you could manage without.

One of those, possibly annoying solutions I've been doing for Aluminium and Brass, which are the same tier with similar use lists, is using Aluminium plates alongside Brass gears, forcing you to require both at the same time, which is just a little more annoying than intended.


But the true reason why I added the armor? Basically... Just for the sake of adding more armor, you're probably right in that either it needs to be stronger, or easier to produce. I basically just stuck some numbers in a calculator to make MK3 and MK4 basic armors, then added Tier 3 and 4 (or 4 and 5 depending how you scale it) materials to their recipe.

To note, my scale on how I grade materials has changed since I started, there's 5 tiers of basic materials (And tier 6 through 8 starts with alien artifacts, though that should really change to be more of a side by side thing for combat related things, though most of the Tier 6 to 8 things are modular equipment)

Damn, 0.15 is going to keep me busy, if half the mod needs to be re-written just to work with 0.15, I might as well just re-work everything else that needs to be done at the same time, right?

[Nexela]

The biggest problem for me with cobalt armor/tools is the fact that you can't make cobalt-oxide until you have one of the fancy electrical furnaces. And for me at this point in the game I am already doing titanium or gemstones.

[bobingabout]

The biggest problem for me with cobalt armor/tools is the fact that you can't make cobalt-oxide until you have one of the fancy electrical furnaces. And for me at this point in the game I am already doing titanium or gemstones.

Yeah, I should look at that again to make it so you can get cobalt earlier.

[SquarelyCircle]

I'm unable to craft the personal laser defense 2 (it doesn't appear in the crafting menu). 3 and 4 are there, but I can't make them since I can't make any of the 2. Any ideas on troubleshooting this? I'm inclined to just cheat and change the recipe of 3 to require 1 instead of 2, since I can't make 2.
Update: I made a migration file for the current version (which is weird, since it's FROM the current version) and that seems to have fixed the issue. Did anyone else have this issue?

[bobingabout]

Double checking things, you need to research 2 before you can research 3, so you SHOULD have 2 if you have 3.

Though, it is possible if you've been using other mods that something else overwrote my own stuff, and broke things.

[Recon777]

Bob, I think you're on the right track with those proposed changes with cobalt! It sounds like it would be good to just make it easier to get early-on. One big problem I'm finding is that if you want proper copper production, you really have to go with straight-up smelting. I have an area making some cobalt, but because I don't need much of it, the copper production from that line is rather slim.

This issue is more pronounced in the Lead/Silver situation. I've found that my lead line stops because I'm not using the sulfuric acid as fast as I'm producing it. And yes, I'm routing it into my battery farm (which incidentally also needs lead). So lead just stops as well as silver, and I end up drawing lead from regular smelting there as well. Of course, I'm still learning how everything fits together, so I could simply be neglecting something. There are a few balance issues I'm not quite solid on. Like why there's so much excess Sodium Hydroxide. I suppose it's because I'm not needing mass quantities of Aluminum yet.

But yes, cobalt for the Tier 2 batteries is fine. It's difficult enough to get Lithium, so it probably won't hurt to make cobalt more accessible. Because right now, the armor is useless for the biter evolution I'm at. I die pretty much instantly regardless of whether I'm wearing it or not. Power armor is still VERY long to get in this mod, and if I could make a suggestion, it would be to fix that. Mostly, it's simply how much time we have to spend walking slow and not having personal roboports for blueprints. Those two things are really a MAJOR turning point in my opinion, where the game can "really get going". Everything up to that point is kind of a rush job to GET to that point. But if you have to spend 40+ hours walking slow and building each and every thing by hand... yeah that gets old.

[SquarelyCircle]

Double checking things, you need to research 2 before you can research 3, so you SHOULD have 2 if you have 3.

Though, it is possible if you've been using other mods that something else overwrote my own stuff, and broke things.

I've got a lot of mods, but nothing that I think would overwrite this. I doubt I'll be able to find out what the cause of this was, or I'd report it. If I'm able to determine anything, I'll let you know. For now, the custom migration file fixed it.

[Recon777]

Heh you know what might be really cool? If you could somehow give us a way to get at least a SINGLE personal roboport before building a module line. Modules are incredibly complex, but having the ability to construct things via blueprints would be SO helpful, even if it was painfully slow. Building by hand for so much longer than in vanilla is something I'd love to avoid if possible.

[Nexela]

Heh you know what might be really cool? If you could somehow give us a way to get at least a SINGLE personal roboport before building a module line. Modules are incredibly complex, but having the ability to construct things via blueprints would be SO helpful, even if it was painfully slow. Building by hand for so much longer than in vanilla is something I'd love to avoid if possible.

Insert shameless Nanobots plug here... https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Nexela/Nanobots

[bigyihsuan]

I took a look at some late-game recipes from Warfare, and I noticed that the new power armors need Enemies artifacts to craft, along with having the "Unknown key" error appended in front of the artifact names.

Is there a way to craft these new armors without Enemies?

[bobingabout]

Is there a way to craft these new armors without Enemies?

No.

The idea being that Combat items require combat to craft. Higher tiers require higher levels of combat.

Which is why enemies drop small artifacts. so you don't have to actually go out and kill bases, just let your defences handle them to get your first few artifacts.

[Recon777]

I just built some laser robots, but I have no idea how they work. I tried deploying them manually, and that doesn't work. They don't attack anything automatically, either. What do they do and how do I make them go?

[kinnom]

I just built some laser robots, but I have no idea how they work. I tried deploying them manually, and that doesn't work. They don't attack anything automatically, either. What do they do and how do I make them go?

put them in a capsule

[bobingabout]

Is there a way to craft these new armors without Enemies?

No.

what am I saying. Without the enemies mod, rainbow artifacts won't exist, so it uses something else instead.
you still need base game alien artifacts though.

I just built some laser robots, but I have no idea how they work. I tried deploying them manually, and that doesn't work. They don't attack anything automatically, either. What do they do and how do I make them go?

It adds an extra stage to making capsules. Basically, you make the laser robot, then make a capsule out of several. Depending on config options, the base game robot capsules will have been changed too, so you have to build a robot, then make a capsule out of it.

The main reason why this was changed is that the destractor robot mine, and destractor robot artillery shell used to cost capsules, now you make them straight out of the robots.

There's also a robot launcher for the personal armor, but that has no recipe, so you can't build it, because it just creates robots from energy. Suit modules can't use ammo.

I did plan to add the ability to do this with other combat robots too, however, launching a robot with a "Follows the player" option set causes the game to crash unless either placed in the world directly by the player (Like you can with construction and logistic robots) or created by a projectile created by the player (Capsule, MAYBE but untested, a weapon the player fires. it MIGHT work in a tank, since the player fires the tank), but other entities such as a Mine, or module in the suit do not count as the player creating it, so the game crashes. Presumably because it doesn't know which player it should be following.

For these instances, I was considering creating a clone of the robot, with "Follow the player" turned off, so they just do the same as the Defender. I just haven't done it yet.

[MainTango]

Hi Bob,

I just noticed a minor inconsistency. Out of all the gun turrets the Mk2 takes 5 seconds to craft while all the others (including the vanilla one) take 10 seconds. Probably just a tiny little oversight.

Thank you for your great work!

[popster99]

So is there any way in the files to change the grid size of the power armors

[popster99]

nvm found the file to do it I'm an idiot for not looking in the prototypes

[British_Petroleum]

i was just messing about in cheat mode and noticed it's very easy to blow yourself up with the vehicle plasma cannon, because it prioritises closer targets and has a large damage radius. Is it possible to give it a minimum range?

[bobingabout]

Yes it is, I thought it already had one. Either it doesn't or it's too short, I'll have a look tonight.