[MOD 1.1] Xander Mod v3.6.1

[Repofme1]

One thing I didn't mention that I thought was missing: using previous tier items as part of the recipe for the next.

I do use this a lot for upgrades of my electric machines once they are attained, but I think I'll keep the break between burner and electric 1 tiers. It helps distinguish them, and now that I have a plan and reason for the burner era, my suspensIon of disbelief is stronger and I don't mind less realistic costs/detail there so much. Plus, I've never had more scrap equipment than can fit in a chest, and TBH I kinda like the abandoned feel of an old starting base. Like some ruins to re-discover, just a quirk of mine

[Repofme1]

Short note: above is guaranteed to happen.. sooner or later
(Cue all bob's games where some nasty gold patch needed searching of about 2.5k tiles area from start and then fight to get to it)

HAHAHA! I know exactly what you mean Still, I'd like to get this sort of thing down to a little less common before the config is 'good enough'.

I think I'm mostly going to effect the era separation (it's really only burner vs. electric - after that I'm happy with things being continuous) via some different parts required, as well as higher quality materials (I do love materials), but also via limiting burner inserters to only make parts for burner and electric 1. That way there's one, unified, strong reason to advance, and I don't have to worry about cost+efficiency balancing making anything too easy or too hard.

PS.
If you would aim for 5-10h startup then science multiplied version would be "fun" (in Dwarf Fortress way). But I did play Dwarf Fortress and enjoy it

PPS.
My AAI Industry/hardcrafting is at around 3h and still not even green science in sight

Never played Dwarf Fortress, but heard a lot about it, very Fun . I am aiming for that sort of complexity, and I'm definitely in the ballpark. Also not played many different overhauls, probably not such a good step to making one, but it all works out okay.

[Repofme1]

Well, if you don't like lategame plates so much make IronOre -*chemistry-chemistry* ->FineIronPowder-> *3d printer machine* -> a complex irregularly shaped part for whatever or even the whole mechanism. Like, fineMetalPowder+Coils+MagnetizedIron->*3d-printer*->Electric Stepper Motor.
You also don't really need Wires for lategame circuits, they can all be done with chemical means.
You can also make 3d-printer recipes for the most parts and devices you need.
Make it like in real life - it can be kinda slow but it actually saves you partcount and materials needed. -> perfect for anything complex like engines, robots and stuff.

I like these ideas very much, as in difficulty through realistic complexity, which is probably why most of the electric era is already made that way in XM. I guess the trouble was that some intermediates are so simple I had to re-use them, f.e. you still need bulk copper plate/ingot to draw into wires. So I had to make a copper-ore -*chemistry*-> copper-plate recipe that had an advantage over plain smelting. And this was difficult because of the the amount of chemistry going on needed a heavy balance difference, but I think I've figured things out. Now with the idea of a greater burner->electric distinction, everything seems clear ^_^

[donoya]

Hey, I started playing with this mod earlier today and noticed that you can't research the tech for the blue science packs without first unlocking a few techs that require them. So... yeah. Should be an easy fix, though, as it's just 2 techs. And I love what I see so far, by the way. The amount of content is staggering. Keep up the good work.

[Repofme1]

Hey, I started playing with this mod earlier today and noticed that you can't research the tech for the blue science packs without first unlocking a few techs that require them. So... yeah. Should be an easy fix, though, as it's just 2 techs. And I love what I see so far, by the way. The amount of content is staggering. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for trying it! And a good observation. I'm not too surprised, when I built all the techs I ran into a lot of recursive errors, and I fixed the tech prerequisites but forgot the associated recipes And I think, that no one (including myself) has played far enough, to really leave the early game, so thanks for putting this on my development radar. I'm glad you like the mod, too - I put a lot of thought and care into it

[Repofme1]

Hi all -

Patch 1.1.1 is now out, mostly (relatively) small fixes like the furnace re-write. Completing the full set of burner machines for a distinct starting age will take a little while, and I didn't want to delay this finished stuff for too much longer.

Also...

I'm researching steel parts and anything using standard belt/shaft/gear mechanism will no longer autocraft because the steel recipe is taking presidence?

I didn't really understand what you meant when I first saw this, but now I found the problem on my own, and I think I get what's happening. The old recipes do still work, but the base algorithm for automatically lining up the necessary had crafting doesn't know which recipe to use, so it picks the most recently unlocked one - the higher-quality steel ones. This makes hand crafting very inconvenient, but the whole problem *should* be bypassed in the next update 1.2.0, where the iron and steel type recipes are going to be changed to make separate outputs.

I've seen this problem before, in Bob's Mods, after unlocking the recipe to make synthetic wood from oil. All the recipes that used to want regular cut wood in the hand crafting queue then wanted synthetic wood, even though they could actually use either. I guess it's a Factorio issue, but I can't think of a really good fix for it, other than dynamically checking which items the player has on hand and trying to route through those. Then that creates all sorts problems for complicated situations like having both possible items, or even having the same amount of two interchangeable items, or having some amount of each that's not a whole-number multiple of the recipe cost... You get the idea.

[jodokus31]

Ok, thank you very much.
I'll take a look later after work.

Those ambigious recipes should also be less a problem, if you setup an automation rather than handcrafting. (as far it makes sense.)

[Patashu]

If you make all 'less convenient to handcraft' recipes not be handcraftable (only craftable in an assembler), does it fix the problem?

[jodokus31]

Looks really nice after the first minutes.

One starting problem:
- bronze can be obtained only in a clay furnace with the recipe selection, because of the 2 inputs.
- for the first clay furnace you need bronze.

EDIT: Just want to share my iron starting setup for a bit of automation without belts (Not so impressive to feed coal manually):

click

iron_starter_setup.jpg (35.69 KiB) Viewed 11248 times

[Repofme1]

One starting problem:
- bronze can be obtained only in a clay furnace with the recipe selection, because of the 2 inputs.
- for the first clay furnace you need bronze.

I thought I made the stone furnace (at least the one you can craft and place) be assembling-machine type so it can take multiple ingredients... I remember it worked in my test world. Does it work like a traditional furnace with no recipe selection? If so I must be missing a proper recipe->item->entity link somewhere, or maybe I uploaded the wrong version

Those ambigious recipes should also be less a problem, if you setup an automation rather than handcrafting.

Yep, since they're specifically selected.

If you make all 'less convenient to handcraft' recipes not be handcraftable (only craftable in an assembler), does it fix the problem?

Making the less obvious recipe assembler only would fix the immediate problem, but the lower-grade one is supposed to become obsolete by the end, and I prefer to keep a hand craftable option for the final step of making a machine, in case you need like one more but don't want to have to run all the way across your rail world to get it I think of these recipes like final assembly, just putting the correct parts together and tightening bolts, so I don't feel an inherent need to limit them to assembling. Possibly a practical need, like your suggestion, but I think I can avoid it here.

[jodokus31]

One starting problem:
- bronze can be obtained only in a clay furnace with the recipe selection, because of the 2 inputs.
- for the first clay furnace you need bronze.

I thought I made the stone furnace (at least the one you can craft and place) be assembling-machine type so it can take multiple ingredients... I remember it worked in my test world. Does it work like a traditional furnace with no recipe selection? If so I must be missing a proper recipe->item->entity link somewhere, or maybe I uploaded the wrong version

I just opened the last save from previous version and the stone furnace acted like the old stone furnace witout recipe.
Now, I checked a new world:
- the furnace which is delivered as starting item, is actually a recipe furnace.
- if i craft one, it's a normal non-recipe furnace... i dont know, if that was intended

So, no big problem here. Just a bit confusing

[Repofme1]

One starting problem:
- bronze can be obtained only in a clay furnace with the recipe selection, because of the 2 inputs.
- for the first clay furnace you need bronze.

I thought I made the stone furnace (at least the one you can craft and place) be assembling-machine type so it can take multiple ingredients... I remember it worked in my test world. Does it work like a traditional furnace with no recipe selection? If so I must be missing a proper recipe->item->entity link somewhere, or maybe I uploaded the wrong version

I just opened the last save from previous version and the stone furnace acted like the old stone furnace witout recipe.
Now, I checked a new world:
- the furnace which is delivered as starting item, is actually a recipe furnace.
- if i craft one, it's a normal non-recipe furnace... i dont know, if that was intended

So, no big problem here. Just a bit confusing

Ah! I see what's going on. Thing is, I can't really change the type of the base game entity, so I just had to add a new one in parallel, and redirect the recipe to make the XM version. This makes the old one inaccessible, but doesn't actually remove or replace it, resulting in partial save breaking. Sorry about this, but I don't know how to fix it, and hopefully it's not a very serious problem for existing saves

[jodokus31]

Its not only an issue for previous saves. (and here not a big, if you have one clay furnace)
In a new game, i have only one of your new stone furnaces as starter item
The ones, which are crafted are old ones.
I dont think, thats intended, but its not a showstopper, because you have one to bootstrap bronze.
The highlighted one is the old stone furnace, which can be crafted. They appear as different items in inventory

Click

stone_furnace.jpg (53.3 KiB) Viewed 11238 times

stone_furnace2.jpg (16.2 KiB) Viewed 11238 times

[donoya]

Hey, just thought I'd report a similar issue to before with military science packs. Explosives takes military science, but you can't research military science packs before researching explosives.

[jodokus31]

I just report some further things, that come to my mind...

the burner machine tool can build a selection of items, which is not quite traceable for me:
Those f.e cannot be crafted, but i think, there is not much difference compared to the others:
- clay from bauxite
- bronze bearing from bronze and lead (the one with graphite is available)
- iron rods (alloy steel rod is available)
- wood from raw wood

I understand, that those final products like belts, science is maybe not in scope of the machine tool
Anyway, if this will be mixxed up by your planned early game, then ignore me

EDIT:
The transport belt from steel is twice as expensive iron-wise.
The standard ferrous shaft is 4 times more expensive iron-wise, if alloy steel rod is used.

[Repofme1]

Its not only an issue for previous saves. (and here not a big, if you have one clay furnace)
In a new game, i have only one of your new stone furnaces as starter item
The ones, which are crafted are old ones.
I dont think, thats intended, but its not a showstopper, because you have one to bootstrap bronze.
The highlighted one is the old stone furnace, which can be crafted. They appear as different items in inventory

Ah, I must have gotten confused when making the recipe-item connections The way the game works forces you to have an item to place each entity, so I had to add new furnace items too, and well they're basically identical except for the place result... I'll track down the issue and it should be nailed for good in 1.2.0, but I've started major changes for that already so a 1.1.2 patch would be very half-baked and unlikey to happen.

I understand, that those final products like belts, science is maybe not in scope of the machine tool
Anyway, if this will be mixxed up by your planned early game, then ignore me

EDIT:
The transport belt from steel is twice as expensive iron-wise.
The standard ferrous shaft is 4 times more expensive iron-wise, if alloy steel rod is used.

My idea with the machine tool was that it does those simple sorts of recipes, yes, but also that it has higher precision and strength than the character, so it can do more difficult operations and parts that can't be done by hand. The hand recipes and meant to be discouraged by costing more material, or material that is more difficult to automate in large scale (ex. wood).

Regarding the seemingly higher steel cost, it actually drops to equivalent for iron or steel once Bessemer steelmaking is researched (2 iron -> 1 steel), and drops to the steel version costing half the iron version once the best steel tech is unlocked (1 iron -> 1 steel).

A lot of this is in fact changing for the new expanded burner era, so many of these problems are completely avoided!

[Repofme1]

Hey, just thought I'd report a similar issue to before with military science packs. Explosives takes military science, but you can't research military science packs before researching explosives.

Acknowledged and put on my internal buglist, to fix when development progresses that far. Thank you!

[donoya]

Sorry for the spam, but I found another bug. This one's not that important since it's towards the VERY end of the tech tree. The diamond crystal and nd:YAG crystal recipes are messed up. For future reference, is there better place to post bug reports for this?

Edit: Also, how do you make the brushless motor? I couldn't find it in the tech tree.

[Repofme1]

I've put these issues on my list to look around for too. The brushless motor must be missing a tech recipe unlock or something, it should be analogous to the others (alloy steel shaft, dense coils, probably an aluminum casting). No problem about posting a few; I'm glad for the extra eyes looking over it, because I get so familiar with all the recipes that I don't often notice if something is missing. So far I've been having a lot of trouble with the rough startup, but I think the end is in sight. Maybe not the end of issues with the early game, but a good point at least.

I'm sorry I don't know of or have a better place to post bugs. I'm relatively new to modding, publishing, development, and the like, so I don't know how this stuff is typically handled. For now I just keep it all on my computer.

[houkime]

It is usually handled via Github. It also allows people to easily fork your project and help you fix bugs.
Great thing, whole Linux development is done like that.