Bob's Angels Playthrough by eloquentJane

[septemberWaves]

This is a thread for documenting my progress through a Bob's Angels modpack that I've put together. I've quite recently got into modded Factorio. I've spent a few days playing with Bob's mods and Angel's mods, and I've gotten very familiar with how they affect the game. However, there are definitely a few things which the two of those mods do not add, so I've added a lot of extra mods too.

Mod List

•Angel's mods (all)
•AAI mods (removed)
•Alien Biomes
•Autofill
•Auto Research
•Bob's mods (all)
•Bottleneck
•Bullet Trails
•Clock
•Crafting Speed Research
•data-raw-prototypes (dependency for AAI)
•Detached Gun Sounds
•Evo Gui
•Helmod
•Initial Scan
•Larger Inventory
•Long Reach
•More Floors
•Nanobots
•Off-grid Effects (dependency for AAI)
•PCP (addon for Angel's Petrochem)
•Rail Tanker
•Recursive Handcrafting Fix
•Resource Spawner Overhaul
•Text Plates
•Tree Collision
•Uranium Power
•Useful Byproducts (addon for Angel's Petrochem)
•Water Fix
•What Is It Used For
•YARM

I wasn't sure where to put this thread. I figured this was the best subforum for it because I'll use it to showcase my various designs, but if it should be elsewhere then I would guess that a moderator will move it.

The long-term goal of this playthrough is to create a very optimized factory that can be easily modified to deal with just about any resource demand. After the early-game phase I'll be using a spreadsheet of my own design to assist with planning and resource management. The idea is that I will have a series of different machine arrays dedicated to producing certain intermediate products and/or end products. Each array will be as optimized as possible for dealing with either an input or an output that is an exact multiple of yellow belts (or half a yellow belt for early rare-resource production), or different numbers if it's a fluid-based array. Such arrays will be kept as blueprints for ease of replication, and they will essentially contribute to a fully modular factory design. The spreadsheet I'm using includes a resource manifest of all overall inputs, intermediate products, and end products, so whenever I add a new consumer it is easy to see what resources are being affected, which new machine arrays I need, and how much extra input the whole factory needs to compensate.

Here's the starting area, and my initial power generation and early mining setup:

Starting Area

This is far from an optimal setup, but the game has to start somewhere.

Map

As you can see, the Alien Biomes mod makes the map a lot more interesting. It also seems that resources will be hard to come by once I deplete these nearby ore patches.

I will post updates at significant milestones.

[septemberWaves]

After several hours of play time and far too much manual crafting, I have created a very basic ore processing system and a temporary main bus for producing the technologies I will need in order to upgrade my factory.

Mining Area

Here is the mining area, as well as the remnants of my quick setup for assembling basic electronic boards. I had to make it early and messily because filter inserters require basic electronic boards, and creating a proper ore processing system would be needlessly inconvenient without them.

Ore Refining

This is the crushing/sorting setup I'm using to start off my factory. It's not particularly fast, but this is still very much an early-game setup. Each base ore is first crushed (which produces crushed ore, with crushed stone as a byproduct) and then sorted into two useful products as well as slag. Crushed stone can be crafted into stone, and slag is useful later in game, but I'm currently storing them both. I am converting some of the crushed stone into stone and stone bricks for the main bus, the latter of which are extremely important for creating most of the first tier of machines.

For those unfamiliar with the mods, from left to right the ore inputs are bobmonium, rubyte, stiratite, and saphirite. With this early level of refinement, bobmonium is currently my only way to obtain tin ore and quartz (silicon ore, also used for glass which is what I needed it for). Rubyte produces lead and nickel. Stiratite and Saphirite both produce copper and iron in different ratios, with stiratite being the primary copper ore and saphirite being the primary iron ore.

As these images show on the right, I've also expanded my power production. It now consists of 100 steam engines and 140 boilers.

Smelting

This is the current smelting setup. I didn't need much glass so I just had some temporary furnaces for smelting the quartz. Tin, lead, copper and iron go through large buffer storages before being smelted and sent to the main bus.

Main Bus

And now here is the main bus itself. I did initially plan for it to be neater, but it's hard to avoid spaghettification this early in the game - especially with 11 resources on a temporary bus system. From left to right, the end of the bus consists of the following resources: basic electronic boards; stone bricks; stone; tin; lead; copper; iron; wood; basic circuit boards; coal; steel.

Why these resources? The answer is that there are a couple more production lanes to add to this main bus, and they will consume most of those resources (not stone, coal, or wood, but those are components for some of the others). The production lines to be added are for producing refining machines, metallurgy machines, petrochemical machines, cargo vehicles, storage, and various other devices that I need to rework my factory for the next tier of technology (with the ultimate goal of creating blue science production, basic petrochemical processing, basic metallurgy, and chemical refining).

The next update will probably occur once I have a refining setup including hydro refining, and the most efficient smelting setup for the numerous metals I can acquire before obtaining blue science packs. Blue science packs, like most things with Bob's and Angel's mods, are notoriously difficult to acquire. The increase in difficulty of obtaining blue science compared to green is even greater than it is in the base game, with batteries requiring plastic and a lot of complex chemistry.

[septemberWaves]

I have made some progress. I currently have iron and copper being produced by precision sorting from crushed ore, and I have enough of a backlog of lead and tin to maintain my production until I finish my second-level ore processing. All machines being used are still Mk1 machines.

I still consider this point of the game to be the early-game despite having spent 34 hours playing, as I lack plastic and oil products and I still only have the first tier of Bob's four tiers of circuits. That being said, future progress is likely to occur much quicker.

Without further ado, here's what I've been working on:

Temp Main Bus Input

This is the station that currently serves as an iron and copper input for my first temporary main bus (shown previously). It is not an optimized station, but is only used by two trains. The station to the north without loading or unloading inserters is the service station, which is used by my work train (jade green).

Ore Refinery 1

This is the map of my first basic ore refinery. This deals with all 6 types of ore and produces crushed ore and chunks, as well as crushed stone, geodes, sulfur, and fluorite as byproducts. There is also an oil station (currently unused) to the south of the queue system, because there are several oil wells nearby.


Here the ore crushing can be seen. Each type of ore is crushed with 10 machines to provide a full red belt of output, with a full yellow belt of crushed stone byproduct. Bobmonium and Rubyte are currently not active.



The train outputs for the crushed ores, and also for crushed stone from both crushed ore and ore chunks production.


The ore chunks production. A lot of Mk1 machines are required for a red belt worth of production, but since I'm using precision sorting I only need four arrays (stiratite and crotinnium chunks are not used for precision sorting).


The hydro plants to keep chunk production running. Waste water is being reprocessed, but currently the fluid byproducts are being voided. Future arrays will export mineralized and saline water, but there's no point at this stage in the game.

Ore Processing 1

The crushed ore processing on the map. Most of the length of this array is due to angelic metallurgy setups for copper and iron.


All crushed ores plus coal are imported at the southern end of the array, and sorted by belt to where they're needed (it's possible to do this without as much spaghetti but I didn't realize that until long after I'd built the array).


Sorting machines each create a specific type of ore. Crushed ore sorting in this manner doesn't require anything other than crushed ore, but rarer ores need mineral catalysts to be produced. Coal is turned into coke for the blast furnaces.


I'm using conventional smelting for tin and lead because I don't need much of them yet. Their arrays are also not currently enabled because I have plenty of tin and lead ore in storage.

As for copper and iron, well...





Before blue/alien science, the full angelic metallurgy process is available for both copper and iron. This isn't the latest version of Angel's mods, so it needs to be huge to output a full red belt of each resource.


Each metal is exported at the northern end of the array. My work train is parked at the lead station because there's no service station here.

Stone Processing 1

The stone processing array turns some crushed stone into regular stone to be exported, but most of it becomes mineral water and is immediately voided because there's currently no point to turning it into slag slurry. I will be turning it into slag slurry and mineral catalysts once I properly set up the hydro refining exports and chunk sorting.

Steam Array 1 and Coal Depot 1

This is a 5MW steam array I had to recently set up when the first steam array proved to be insufficient. Yes, my factory is already draining almost 60MW of power, most of which is mining equipment.


This is the coal depot. I had planned for each train to be refueled here, but that turned into a terrible idea so I now send a dedicated coal train to various places.

Map

The existing factory can all be seen here. There are also a couple of mining outposts to the north and south which are not shown on this map.

My next update will occur once I have completed ore chunk processing, basic oil and natural gas refining, and a new temporary main bus (for production with the products of the aforementioned processes).

[foodfactorio]

hi jane, keep up the good work, you can do it
(one thing i noticed in my game of angels and bobs, was that it turned out to be extremely beneficial to have stored every last drop of mineral sludge, waste water, and any gasses or liquids... especially when i ran out of gold and tin and could not gather as much due to lots of rather nasty biters)

[septemberWaves]

hi jane, keep up the good work, you can do it
(one thing i noticed in my game of angels and bobs, was that it turned out to be extremely beneficial to have stored every last drop of mineral sludge, waste water, and any gasses or liquids... especially when i ran out of gold and tin and could not gather as much due to lots of rather nasty biters)

The world of this playthrough is actually gone now. Because of the major changes to Angel's mods in 0.15, I've restarted recently with some changes to my mod set. So things will look different when I come back. And in any case, I'm actually now playing without biters at all, so my only issue will be expansion and finding new resource patches.

I'm glad you like what I'd been doing here though, thanks. And thanks for the suggestion; as I'm learning how to use these mods better I'm getting a better understanding of how everything fits together, and I have a much better idea of how to manage resources. Fluid trains will certainly help. I'll only void things in the early game unless I really can't deal with a backlog, and I'll prioritize creation of processing facilities for basic fluids and gases soon after my basic ore processing (which will also be done differently to how it was in 0.14).

I probably won't come back to this for a little longer, because I'm still getting back to where I was with the old playthrough (early main bus and hydro refining for ores). I also want to make some more of my new guides to Angel's mods (found here: viewtopic.php?f=185&t=50446) before I get beyond the very early-game in my new playthrough, because making those has already really helped me to refine my ideas of how I'm going to play in future.

[foodfactorio]

ah yes, i'm still running things in version 0.14 with all these mods (plus a few more)
viewtopic.php?f=95&t=40288&start=20#p290313

i will most probbaly need to use your guides on newer versions of angels mods, especially the smelting and castings you did, but am still trying to complete the game on 0.14 with a coop friend, before moving to 0.15

[septemberWaves]

i will most probbaly need to use your guides on newer versions of angels mods, especially the smelting and castings you did

You'll be pleased to know that now that I've finished the smelting & casting guides I've started work on making similar guides for Petrochem. I'll probably cover just about every machine process in Angel's mods eventually (though it'll take me a few weeks to a month, or maybe more depending on how often I can actually work on the guides). After Petrochem I'll cover all water-related processes, then go over all of the chemistry that doesn't really fall under Petrochem, and then finally I'll cover Refining and any other processes I've missed by that point.

[foodfactorio]

cool (dont forget to have a large bag of snacks nearby, to keep you going)