The new 0.16 Prod pack recipe.

[bobucles]

In short, it's too easy. I can see why the assembling machine was removed; the recipe is almost exactly the same as mining drills. Why ask the player to do the exact same thing twice? It doesn't pose a very interesting challenge. However, we now have a 2 ingredient science pack and that seems too simple. The electric engine is one step beyond regular engines from making blue science, so the only unique challenge is getting electric furnaces. It doesn't seem like enough. It needs something more.

So what would be a good third ingredient for the production pack? Ideally it's something pretty cheap, something the player needs, and something he hasn't done before. There aren't many ordinary items that fulfill all those conditions but one of them comes very close.

U238. The dull uranium.

The process of making U238 is pretty involved. The player needs sulfuric acid, which means exploring more oil options. At this point in the game some oil is already set up for blue science, so the main challenge is to hack in some sulfur. The mining process is a new step for the player, since the drills look cooler and need the acid to work. Beyond that the player needs centrifuges, which the player has 90% of the stuff for. Building them means automating concrete, which is an easy step used later for the rocket silo. Processing the ore is a simple matter of dunking them into the centrifuge. One final challenge is to trim out the U235 so it doesn't clog the system.

The recipe doesn't need more than 1 U238 to get the point across, yielding a raw ingredient cost of 1 iron and 75 petroleum to drill the 50 uranium ore for 10 production potions. It's maybe a bit high on the oil demand, but otherwise is more of a challenging setup than an expense one. Perhaps the biggest obstacle is that the centrifuge is gated behind a very expensive nuclear power tech, costing 1000xRGB. That's too expensive for a player who only wants the centrifuge.

Pros
- More glowing green centrifuges!
- Introduces the final ore of the game and makes it a non optional resource
- Not overly expensive- not much grind.
- A way to clear out chests of U238 before Kovarex

Cons
- AntiElitz will hate you
- The current research steps are too expensive
- Uranium generation might need to be tweaked to support the mandatory demand.
- I don't want to mine Uranium!