[MOD 0.17] Ore and plate compress

[Zaflis]

This is discussion thread for mods OreCompress and PlateCompress. Information and downloads are at:
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Zaflis/OreCompress
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Zaflis/PlateCompress

[Damgam]

Any chance to get Bobs and Angels support?

[Zaflis]

Any chance to get Bobs and Angels support?

Someone else should do that, i haven't played with those mods myself. I recently posted there: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... sion_mods/
as there are couple other mods that may support those already. But what most other compression mods do is "loop through all items within category and add them to compressables", whereas my mods deal with only specific items.

[Hostolonius]

I don't know how difficult it would be, but I see your name as a mod author on here pretty frequently. I was wondering what your thoughts would be on creating a specific machine to compress materials in. Like instead of just being able to magically compress things you had to process raw materials through a Hydraulic press that you build out of steel and run water too with some electric engines. Then essentially only be able to use compressed materials for storage, like say on a transportation network of trains, or just to have at your factory for a while before decompressing them using something like Grinder that dropped them in and ground them back up to their initial state before they could be used traditionally. I only say this because your description claims that it could be "Cheaty" I just like the idea. Love your mods though, thanks for all the stuff you make

[Zaflis]

What you're asking is done in https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Nexela/compressor , it has a special machine for compressing.

[factoriomayo]

If you put "compressed coal" into a boiler, the game crashes.
I know the compressed items are no fuel, but crashes are never good.
Maybe you can add a line to the coal prototype to prevend this:

Code: Select all

fuel_category = "chemical",

to

Code: Select all

{
    type = "item",
    name = "compressed-coal",
    icon = "__OreCompress__/graphics/compressed-coal.png",
    flags = {"goes-to-main-inventory"},
    fuel_value = "160MJ",
    fuel_category = "chemical",     <----- add this to prevent problems
    subgroup = "raw-material",
    order = "[compressed-coal]",
    stack_size = 100,
  },

or remove "fuel_value".

See also Bugreport: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=45751

and btw i like your mod

[Zaflis]

Thanks, i guess i should remove the compressed coal usability as fuel anyway. Some other compression mods let it be used as fuel too.

Oh, at the same time i might look into changing subgroup = "raw-material", to something else on Plate Compress and ore too maybe. I believe that is the reason compressed materials show up when looking at recipes resource costs.

edit: And uploaded OreCompress 0.15.1.

[Zaflis]

Even after i changed all item subgroups to "intermediate-product" i get this:

refinery_w_compressed.jpg (52.14 KiB) Viewed 10573 times

I don't know how to fix it... Seems Factorio itself calculates the material costs some way i can't influence it?
Anyway on the live build the values are still "raw-material" and it would serve no purpose to upload with intermediate just yet. It only moves the icons in UI a little bit, and that's all effect.

I was also thinking the case of uranium 235 and 238. They stack to 100 by default and i guess are not needed to compress because they are already 10 times as dense as uranium ore after processing.

[factoriomayo]

Thanks, i guess i should remove the compressed coal usability as fuel anyway. Some other compression mods let it be used as fuel too.

I suggest to define compressed coal as fuel (like briquettes -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briquette) but to reduce the fuel value. Coal compression is not as much needed as for the other ores. To use it as fuel with a malus is a good way to get another usage from this recipe. The new boiler from 0.15 burns extremely fast through coal ore.

It is exactly the same mechanic like solid fuels (250MJ) to rocket fuel (225MJ) from vanilla. A -10% malus. I have changed your mod for my taste: setup compressed coal as fuel and reduce fuel value by 20% down to 128MJ for balancing. Its a energy loss of four coal ore per compressed coal for lower stress on really large steam engine infrastructures. Perhaps worth to consider if you have enough coal. High malus to get sure that the vanilla solution is more attractive at later gameplay: coal liquification -> oil -> solid fuel -> rocket fuel.

[factoriomayo]

I don't know how to fix it... Seems Factorio itself calculates the material costs some way i can't influence it?

Maybe this comment from Rseding91 get you a hint:

Also don't forget you're in cheat mode which makes "total raw" show far more than normal due to it thinking the player can craft any recipe so it degrades each item to the base materials.

Source: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=33823#p214599

A solution could be to (dis)allow manual crafting for the recipes?

[Zaflis]

A solution could be to (dis)allow manual crafting for the recipes?

I'm sure it would fix it. That can be done by going recipe.lua and adding...

Code: Select all

category = "advanced-crafting",

...to each uncompress recipes. I don't know which one is better in the end. I could live with seeing the compressed plates in raw. I haven't done it myself yet, but it would be luxurious to not need to carry normal plates in inventory and just compressed ones for handcrafting. But now that i think about it, it adds some extra crafting time. I figure over 99% of the mods use goes to decompressing with assembler instead of hand. So on "assumed majority" rule i'll remove handcrafting. It can be restored by removing line as in the above code for recipes.

Note that in original tests i had even the compressing hand-craftable. It was terrible.

I'll try to upload the new versions soon with the de translations by you. I will need to test ingame for the compressed coal as fuel too.

[factoriomayo]

Early furnace setup with your mod in my new save game to test throughput, uncompressing ore-blocks at the bottom and compressing iron plates at the top:

DeCompressingIron.jpg (817.01 KiB) Viewed 10471 times

Beacons missing for now. 3-4 T3-assemblers without any speed modules are enough for a blue belt on full load. I tested with an increased crafting time from 2 up to 3 seconds and it feels more in line with balancing. With 3 seconds the 4 assemblers could barely handle the blue belt. I must use speed modules to compensate a small gap on the belt. Feels better.

After this i try to use a crafting time of 4 seconds with 4x cheap T1-speed modules:

Decompressing4Sec.jpg (65.13 KiB) Viewed 10470 times

4 assemblers + 4x T1-speed could easily handle the belt... no problems. For now i would recommend to increase the crafting time for un-/compressing from 2 up to 4 seconds.

[Zaflis]

4 seconds sounds good, needing modules in order to have just 4 assemblers.

I tested just to be sure that is the ratio. When i cut any of the 4 lines down to 3, the belts start backing up. Those are max researched stack inserters.
edit: Oops.. i could have just used 3 splitters instead of that 4-4 balancer i guess xD

orecompress_test.jpg (141.96 KiB) Viewed 10461 times

Update: If i set crafting time to 4 seconds, the above setup works with just tier 1 speed modules (16 of them). Is that correct?

Also i'm making this easier to change, by having these on top of recipe.lua. Changing 1 value affects them all:

Code: Select all

local OreCompressEnergyCost = 4 -- Crafting time
local OreCompressAmount = 20

Will be uploading both mods in a moment.

And i considered adding a startup config like RSO has, but then i don't think you would be able to change it while a game is in progress and be stuck with value you set. But then i don't know all about that method.

[Oxygene]

I would download this in a heartbeat if you did to ore what you do to coal. Make it smeltable as a compressed block but with some loss.
For example having a compressed (20 ore) block go in to a furnace, take maybe 4x as long as a normal smelt, and outputting maybe 15 plates. Same for iron to steel.

Would massively cut down the smelting setups at the cost of efficiency.

[Zaflis]

I like the idea. I'm making smelting recipes at the moment and considering the balance. Steel smelts in 17.5 seconds, so 4x that would become 70 seconds which is a small eternity Iron, copper, stone base cost is 3.5 sec. 20% loss on base resources is a very heavy price, and for that i don't want to punish too much in time too. Then again 1:1 balance would mean time multiplier x20? But if i went with that, then you would need just as many furnaces as before. I'll go with your original x4 time cost. It'll be configurable in recipe.lua. I will need to make sure the recipe will be available in playthroughs that have already researched the tech.

edit: Steel is different.. i doubt it needs more than just multiplying base values while being lossless. 1 compressed iron becomes 4 steel plates for twice the time.

[Zaflis]

Or if we want steel to be made faster with loss, i can make it smelt 2 compressed iron for 7 steel plates (loss 1 steel plate or 12.5%). Time would be half the original so 35 sec. I think i'll go with this. I got migration file working too so release is soon.

And they are uploaded.

[LethargicChii]

Hey, a buddy and mine really love your mod, ESPECIALLY the latest update.

Edit: Misread your last post: I tried to smelt compressed iron plates into steel, but it doesn't work. Am I misunderstanding you on this actually being a recipe, or is it just not in the latest update?

[Zaflis]

It's part of the plate compress mod, do you have it for sure? Yes you should be able to smelt compressed iron.

[LethargicChii]

Yea it's defiantly not working. I put the compressed iron plates in any type of furnace, and they just sit in there. Do I have to use an Assembly machine? I do have the mod for sure. 15.4 Plate compress. Should it be 15.5? I only see 15.4 in the mod portal for Plate Compress, but, Ore compress is at 15.5?

[Zaflis]

You need 2 compressed iron plates to smelt it, if it wasn't working you would get error message simply trying to put it in smelting slot. And yes those versions are right. It makes 7 steel out of it, so overall you lose 1/8th iron but it's twice faster than regular steel smelting process.