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[featherwinglove]

Bob, I've seen you struggling in the FFF threads to absorb all the insanity coming down the pipe for 0.17. Wube seems to really be MGTOW with the vanilla game with complete disregard for the huge modding community now along for the bumpy ride. And they locked the axe modding thread. I'm starting to wonder if they're trying to get you to give up or suffer a nervous breakdown. How bad is it really? Does it seem better from your angle than mine?

[bobingabout]

It may be that I'm blind, and you did already address this, but I didn't find a post from you about it when I went looking.

With the removal of assembler ingredient limits in vanilla 0.17, will your mods follow suit, or will you be readding the limits? Not having to do hand assembly of anything as you're bootstrapping into Basic Electronic Circuits would be really, really nice.

I decided to follow what the base game does and follow the removal of the limits across the board.

Bob, I've seen you struggling in the FFF threads to absorb all the insanity coming down the pipe for 0.17. Wube seems to really be MGTOW with the vanilla game with complete disregard for the huge modding community now along for the bumpy ride. And they locked the axe modding thread. I'm starting to wonder if they're trying to get you to give up or suffer a nervous breakdown. How bad is it really? Does it seem better from your angle than mine?

It's pretty terrible from the modder's perspective. The big picture though is that they're really just trying to clean up the base game, make the game as polished as possible for a 1.0 release. This requires playing a lot of base game and removing features they they feel don't make as much sense in the big picture now as they once did, such as the mining hardness, it was a thing that wasn't really used by the base game, removing it isn't just clean up for clean up sake, but also to improve run time efficiency. other things like science pack changes, just a pain in the arse. there's just so much stuff that needs going through. like fuel value changes and stuff.

Each thing by itself isn't that much of an issue. there's just so many little things, it's easy to get burried.

fuel value changes
efficiency multipliers change
crafting speeds changing
science packs changing
the entire tech tree has small changes everywhere, and a few big ones like rocket science and nuclear being split up.
more.

[featherwinglove]

I decided to follow what the base game does and follow the removal of the limits across the board.

That's a major bummer. I think it's a brilliant progression mechanic and the major motivator to automation research and machine upgrading. While less cleverly used in Bob's Mods, it is even more important in the deep environment. Optional please?

beggingpuff.png (8.72 KiB) Viewed 8460 times

A major part of the reason I like your mods is because the vanilla game is too flat, with few tiers of base components and often little-to-no motivation to upgrade them. The only significant change to that I've seen recently is the ingredient count limit (in #266) which made the game even flatter. The reason why removing mining hardness and efficiency from vanilla makes any "improvement" or "streamlining" is because of the vanilla game's flat nature. Now they're making changes which flatten the mods as well, in an environment where people mod the game because vanilla is flat. It seems like a really bad idea.

In a typical vanilla 0.17 game, there's no reason to stop using AM1, and instead of ever upgrading the machines, the same throughput can be achieved by simply building the line 50% larger and save 25% materials on the assemblers. The only place an AM2 is likely is for a small SL2 workshop to develop grenades for clearing a dense forest, but most people I've seen simply roll another map at the start of the game to make sure they have enough clear real estate.

[RocketManChronicles]

In a typical vanilla 0.17 game, there's no reason to stop using AM1, and instead of ever upgrading the machines, the same throughput can be achieved by simply building the line 50% larger and save 25% materials on the assemblers. The only place an AM2 is likely is for a small SL2 workshop to develop grenades for clearing a dense forest, but most people I've seen simply roll another map at the start of the game to make sure they have enough clear real estate.

In vanilla, AM1's cannot use fluids as inputs, so you would need to go to AM2's. The only real reason to upgrade the Assembling Machines is for speed and more modules to insert.

What I liked about Bob's before 0.17, was that I had to create a temporary factory to make Logic Circuit Boards to be able to research the technology to unlock the Electronics Assembling Machine to make the Logic Circuit Boards more efficiently. It forces you to spend time on setting something up before you can really have the production set up. Now, it seems I will be able to roll right into the production line without having to create a temporary setup and then getting rid of it once I was set.

[featherwinglove]

In vanilla, AM1's cannot use fluids as inputs, so you would need to go to AM2's. The only real reason to upgrade the Assembling Machines is for speed and more modules to insert.

Good point, assuming that's still the case in 0.17. The counterpoint is, of course, that very few assembly machine recipes use fluids.

I also forgot to mention that in Bob's Mods, the cost increment of AM1 to AM2 (already 100% in vanilla) is considerably greater because they use different tiers of electronic boards.

What I liked about Bob's before 0.17, was that I had to create a temporary factory to make Logic Circuit Boards to be able to research the technology to unlock the Electronics Assembling Machine to make the Logic Circuit Boards more efficiently.

That's never been a problem for me. I first noticed the phenomenon with the Electronic Circuit Board, where EAM1 (the blue one) can't make the circuit board nor the final assembly. What I did with this, and the later ELB line, is build it with a pair of 2x2 machines (two slightly cat-corner beside each other in a 3x4 piece of real estate) that don't work, and then swap out a couple of the lines (usually building four) with working 3x3 full assembly machines long enough to unlock and build the next EAM and then switch it back to the original design by removing the 3x3 machines on the partially activated line(s), and fast-replacing them on the non-activated lines still on the original design.

Do we agree it's still a very interesting progression mechanic either way?

[bobingabout]

I'll consider it as an option then.

another thing to consider is that energy efficiency goes down as the speed increases, so the AM2 consumes more power than the AM, and the AM3 even more than the AM2, per recipe.
With bob's mods, the energy costs are tweaked, so per recipe craft, every higher tier uses less electricity, and does it faster. Also you have more module slots every tier.

It might not be incentive enough like it used to be, but it's still an incentive.

[Cadde]

Believe me, it's incentive enough. My ultimate goal is to max out all machines so they do one recipe per tick. Because it's fun.
And you do have the speed without the energy consumption modules.
And energy production takes less space and materials than making long lines of assemblers for all the different recipes.

[RocketManChronicles]

I'll consider it as an option then.

another thing to consider is that energy efficiency goes down as the speed increases, so the AM2 consumes more power than the AM, and the AM3 even more than the AM2, per recipe.
With bob's mods, the energy costs are tweaked, so per recipe craft, every higher tier uses less electricity, and does it faster. Also you have more module slots every tier.

It might not be incentive enough like it used to be, but it's still an incentive.

That is enough incentive for me.

What about pollution? I would assume the higher tiers would pollute less than the previous tier.

Speaking of pollution, I am reminded of the Pollution Creating Modules... Do you have a plan to include these in a recipe or two? I have not really found a good use for these, as I have very little incentive to make them other than the chips for the module science tree (which is awesome, btw!). I think there should be something added to these to entice people to use them. Simply adding pollution is not enough... maybe these module give a small speed boost or an efficiency boost, as a trade-off. It just seems these exist solely for existence other than the science tree.

[bobingabout]

Believe me, it's incentive enough. My ultimate goal is to max out all machines so they do one recipe per tick. Because it's fun.
And you do have the speed without the energy consumption modules.
And energy production takes less space and materials than making long lines of assemblers for all the different recipes.

keep in mind when doing that, that maxing out the lowest tier machine would be better, due to energy consumption being per second, so using modules to buff to 60 items per second for a Tier 6 and a tier 4, the tier 6 will consume more power per cycle than a Tier 4, but the tier 6 will cost less modules to get there.

What about pollution? I would assume the higher tiers would pollute less than the previous tier.

Speaking of pollution, I am reminded of the Pollution Creating Modules... Do you have a plan to include these in a recipe or two? I have not really found a good use for these, as I have very little incentive to make them other than the chips for the module science tree (which is awesome, btw!). I think there should be something added to these to entice people to use them. Simply adding pollution is not enough... maybe these module give a small speed boost or an efficiency boost, as a trade-off. It just seems these exist solely for existence other than the science tree.

Every higher tier either produces the same pollution or less than the previous, keep in mind it is based on energy consumed, so overall if they're consuming less energy per recipe cycle, then they're better.

and the pollution modules pretty much just do exist for existence sake. It's a hold over from DyTech. It was DyTech that introduced 8 tiers per module, adding pollution cleaning and pollution creating modules, and removed the speed debuff from production modules. I liked the general idea, but not his implementation, so copied his module tree, but with an entirely different set of recipes and stats on it, with an entire new method to research them. The only things I actually kept the same were module names (to over-write his if both mods were installed) and the number of tiers.

[RocketManChronicles]

Believe me, it's incentive enough. My ultimate goal is to max out all machines so they do one recipe per tick. Because it's fun.
And you do have the speed without the energy consumption modules.
And energy production takes less space and materials than making long lines of assemblers for all the different recipes.

keep in mind when doing that, that maxing out the lowest tier machine would be better, due to energy consumption being per second, so using modules to buff to 60 items per second for a Tier 6 and a tier 4, the tier 6 will consume more power per cycle than a Tier 4, but the tier 6 will cost less modules to get there.

What about pollution? I would assume the higher tiers would pollute less than the previous tier.

Speaking of pollution, I am reminded of the Pollution Creating Modules... Do you have a plan to include these in a recipe or two? I have not really found a good use for these, as I have very little incentive to make them other than the chips for the module science tree (which is awesome, btw!). I think there should be something added to these to entice people to use them. Simply adding pollution is not enough... maybe these module give a small speed boost or an efficiency boost, as a trade-off. It just seems these exist solely for existence other than the science tree.

Every higher tier either produces the same pollution or less than the previous, keep in mind it is based on energy consumed, so overall if they're consuming less energy per recipe cycle, then they're better.

and the pollution modules pretty much just do exist for existence sake. It's a hold over from DyTech. It was DyTech that introduced 8 tiers per module, adding pollution cleaning and pollution creating modules, and removed the speed debuff from production modules. I liked the general idea, but not his implementation, so copied his module tree, but with an entirely different set of recipes and stats on it, with an entire new method to research them. The only things I actually kept the same were module names (to over-write his if both mods were installed) and the number of tiers.

I then wonder what the intention was behind the pollution creating modules. As I totally understand all of the others, but this one in particular is a bit confusing. I can see a reason to make certain area pollute more to attract biters and spitters to more heavily fortified defenses, as a way to both protect weaker areas of defense and to gather alien artifacts (looking at 0.16 Bob's setup). It can be an indirect way to 'control' the biter attacks. That is all I can imagine. Anyone else use these in any creative way?

[Light]

I then wonder what the intention was behind the pollution creating modules. As I totally understand all of the others, but this one in particular is a bit confusing. I can see a reason to make certain area pollute more to attract biters and spitters to more heavily fortified defenses, as a way to both protect weaker areas of defense and to gather alien artifacts (looking at 0.16 Bob's setup). It can be an indirect way to 'control' the biter attacks. That is all I can imagine. Anyone else use these in any creative way?

Aside from artifact collection, I've used pollution modules to heavily pollute areas with large forests so the trees mostly die off. This is usually late game when wood is abundant and no longer useful to collect.

Development wise, I've used them to simulate slightly more pollution in order to get a feel for how attractive an area could be to biter attacks in the worst case scenario. Speed modules also increase pollution, thus a single pollution module can simulate many speeds with a single machine during testing as well.

[bobingabout]

Long story short, Pollution modules were to make more Pollution... to attract biters... to farm more artifacts.
This was back when you NEEDED artifacts for research just to progress.
The modules are not that useful anymore, they're mostly just left in for legacy purposes.

[RocketManChronicles]

Aside from artifact collection, I've used pollution modules to heavily pollute areas with large forests so the trees mostly die off. This is usually late game when wood is abundant and no longer useful to collect.

Development wise, I've used them to simulate slightly more pollution in order to get a feel for how attractive an area could be to biter attacks in the worst case scenario. Speed modules also increase pollution, thus a single pollution module can simulate many speeds with a single machine during testing as well.

I've never thought of using pollution to offensively destroy forests. I usually just mow them down with grenades and later bots. This could be a very interesting way to open some areas up....

Long story short, Pollution modules were to make more Pollution... to attract biters... to farm more artifacts.
This was back when you NEEDED artifacts for research just to progress.
The modules are not that useful anymore, they're mostly just left in for legacy purposes.

This is my assumption, to get the artifacts when they were needed for research. However, this is still viable when using your Alien Science and collecting the small orbs from the attacks to create the large ones for science.

This also makes me wonder if having an infinite tech or two to require alien science. I would like to think that after setting up the labs and production lines, that there would be something to continue using them. I guess the same request could be made with the module science as well, however the module science is easily dismantled as the ingredients can be rerouted to making the modules themselves. It does not have to be something game-breaking, but certainly something that would use these setups for the long extreme late-game. God forbid I produce too many of the orange science packs (red+green+blue in one) and can never use them again.

[foodfactorio]

if some biters (from vanilla or from mods) are actually attracted to areas with high levels of pollution, using pullution generating modules could actually be a good strategy...

just imagine you making a factory, and then trying to lure biters into a particular, more heavily defended area first, before mopping up the remaining biters with some basic turrets that are dotted around your base

[bobingabout]

Yeah, I remember making a biter trap that was just 4 factories doing some repeatable task with pollution generating modules in them, when pretty much everything else has green modules it them instead.

the pollution cloud would touch a biter nest, then biters would run straight towards my biter trap. it even had belts all over the floor to pull the dropped artifacts into my base. basically an automated artifact farm.
At that time I had actually cleared most of the map, these biters just existed in an large walled off area as some sort of biter pen... or wildlife preserve.

[RocketManChronicles]

Yeah, I remember making a biter trap that was just 4 factories doing some repeatable task with pollution generating modules in them, when pretty much everything else has green modules it them instead.

the pollution cloud would touch a biter nest, then biters would run straight towards my biter trap. it even had belts all over the floor to pull the dropped artifacts into my base. basically an automated artifact farm.
At that time I had actually cleared most of the map, these biters just existed in an large walled off area as some sort of biter pen... or wildlife preserve.

This is a good idea! A nice way to farm artifacts. I can see using pollution modules for this.

In my heavily modded 0.16 playthrough, I was using AAI mods and had the Warden vehicle pick up the artifacts along the perimeter walls. They would exit through an "airlock" gate, run along the wall, reenter, and then drop the artifacts of in the Vehicle Depot from the mod, and then a train was loaded to head to the factory area where I create the large artifacts. Was a cool setup to collect the artifacts and have them automatically fed into the main factory after being trained back in.

[RocketManChronicles]

I hate to see it, but the talk in the new science changes still continues over the inclusion of rails in the production science recipe. It got me thinking....

Bob, have you considered adding wood to the recipe for rails? I understand the vanilla recipe: steel for the rails themselves, iron bars for spikes, and stone ore to act as gravel. But I do not see anything about the ties. I'm not asking to add another item that is only to be an intermediate product for only this recipe, such as wood beams (different from wood planks), but just having wood logs go into the recipe? Or is it too much considering how many rails are used in any large to mega factory?

[bobingabout]

I hate to see it, but the talk in the new science changes still continues over the inclusion of rails in the production science recipe. It got me thinking....

Bob, have you considered adding wood to the recipe for rails? I understand the vanilla recipe: steel for the rails themselves, iron bars for spikes, and stone ore to act as gravel. But I do not see anything about the ties. I'm not asking to add another item that is only to be an intermediate product for only this recipe, such as wood beams (different from wood planks), but just having wood logs go into the recipe? Or is it too much considering how many rails are used in any large to mega factory?

Wood planks are gone anyway, we just have wood now. But, it is something worth considering.

[mrvn]

I hate to see it, but the talk in the new science changes still continues over the inclusion of rails in the production science recipe. It got me thinking....

Bob, have you considered adding wood to the recipe for rails? I understand the vanilla recipe: steel for the rails themselves, iron bars for spikes, and stone ore to act as gravel. But I do not see anything about the ties. I'm not asking to add another item that is only to be an intermediate product for only this recipe, such as wood beams (different from wood planks), but just having wood logs go into the recipe? Or is it too much considering how many rails are used in any large to mega factory?

Wood planks are gone anyway, we just have wood now. But, it is something worth considering.

Bioindustries comes with wooden rails. They are a slower version of the normal rails and use wood for beams. That also gives you the normal rails using concrete for beams.

[RocketManChronicles]

I hate to see it, but the talk in the new science changes still continues over the inclusion of rails in the production science recipe. It got me thinking....

Bob, have you considered adding wood to the recipe for rails? I understand the vanilla recipe: steel for the rails themselves, iron bars for spikes, and stone ore to act as gravel. But I do not see anything about the ties. I'm not asking to add another item that is only to be an intermediate product for only this recipe, such as wood beams (different from wood planks), but just having wood logs go into the recipe? Or is it too much considering how many rails are used in any large to mega factory?

Wood planks are gone anyway, we just have wood now. But, it is something worth considering.

Bioindustries comes with wooden rails. They are a slower version of the normal rails and use wood for beams. That also gives you the normal rails using concrete for beams.

Interesting. Does that mod add anything else with Bob's? Like does it make anything in the production chain more interesting other than rails?