Development and Discussion

[mrvn]

I'm looking at the sheet coils available in a Bobs+Angels game and I'm scratching my head a bit.

Available sheet coils are: Aluminium, copper, iron, titanium, steel.

Titanium? Really? I guess when you go to tier III buildings and belts you need a lot later on. So ok, maybe titanium sheets make sense.

On the other hand I'm missing a few that would make more sense much earlier: Tin and Lead for starters. Maybe bronze and brass mid game.

Any chance of adding them?


Which brings me to my next point: Ball bearings. Currently they are made from plates. What do you do? Cut the sheet in little cubes and then smooth them till they are round? Wouldn't it make more sense to make them from molten metals?

So I googled a bit and it turns out ball bearings are made from wire, cut into roughly spheres and then smoothed to perfection. Lacking iron, steel, titanium, ... wire it seems reasonable to cut up sheet coils or plates. Maybe have both options? Or maybe add wire coils + wire -> ball bearing recipes. It just feels odd to go molten -> sheet -> plate -> ball bearing. Any way that cuts out the need to go through plates would make me happy.


And last: gear wheels. Similar argument: Why do I have to cut sheet coils into plates just to cut them again into gear wheels? A recipe for sheet coil -> to gear wheel would be nice. Or cast them directly from molten metals?

Thoughts?

[evandy]

More ways to make metal products is interesting, but I would personally like to see a better balancing of the items needed to build the blue and purple tiers of angel equipment. To have blue requiring titanium and green circuits is great. To have a dozen machines that require the same four or five different forms of titanium feels weird. Plates, gears, pipes, bearings... Pick one or two for each product so there is a variety across all the things to build, nothing is gained but having so many forms on the same build.

Instead, I like what Bob has done with his tiers, requiring a wider variety of base metals (invar, Cobalt steel, gunmetal, brass, bronze, etc). Much more interesting to have to get multiple types of raw material into the factories than to just have a big pile of titanium.


The purple tier looks a little better with a mixture of tungsten and nitinol.

[Hoschi]

Hi
How can i change the Materials for the Pressure Tank Mod? I use Masotorio Modpack and have Materials they are not ingame !

MFG

[evandy]

Hey Angel, I love the new icons for Stiratite, Sapphirite, and Rubyite; they look Awesome with the procedural stuff, and I really love the look of them on the belts. I'm sure that you're working on your other ores already, but I'd like to throw in a request to do Crushed Stone as well. The base-game stone has the "rough" look on the belts, and I think that the crushed stone should probably do as well.

Perhaps all the crushed ores should get the new treatment? After all, "crushed" products aren't really uniform yet... let me know what you think, and keep up the terrific work!

[evandy]

How does everyone here deal with LTN accidents and/or fractional remaining cargo with gasses and liquids? As I have tried to move into multi-fluid train stations, I have been running into these issues. I tried setting up a voiding setup at my depot, only to find that a flare stack and clarifier will "sit" on a partial amount and not clear the pipes, so they could be used to clear another type of liquid. This seems to make it impossible to design a depot that will unload any remaining cargo from fluid wagons.

[safan]

My LTN + fluid setup works as this:

Only trains with 50k fluid cargo in total (2 wagons)
set fluid provider treshold on 50k
set fluid requester wanted -50k and treshold on 50k
have the requester have more then 50k storage (i use the 80k tank)

no problems.

[mrvn]

On fluid requesting stations connect the yellow constant combinator directly to the pumps and set them to enable "<fluid> != 0". The expected amount for the requested fluid is "-1" and trains not send by LTN will show the fluid content. So unless the train is send manually and has less than 1 fluid left this will activate the pumps. Same for fluid providing stations actually if you only want to deal in full wagons.

My stations use 2 tanks per fluid wagon. I set the povider limit to 30k per fluid wagon in case there is slight imbalance in the tanks for multi-wagon stations. And a requester limit of 25k per fluid wagon so only full wagons will ever be requested. That means I never have to do math for the fluids and don't hit the rounding problem. Requested amount is 50k per fluid wagon for me. Two trains worth and what fits in the 2 tanks per fluid wagon.

If you place tanks on both sides of the track, multiple lines of tanks or with moded tanks you can request more. But I found that if a station needs to request more than 2 trains worth to keep busy then it's better to make longer trains or use less consumers per station. Make the fluid last longer.

[evandy]

I asked this a while back on a separate thread but never saw a reply... is there a way to have Angel's crawler train deploy robots when in "automatic" mode ("manual" mode deploys bots just fine)? Would be really nice to be able to send it to a station with a trigger of "no robot activity" and have it build any blueprints before it comes back.

[behrooz]

How does everyone here deal with LTN accidents and/or fractional remaining cargo with gasses and liquids?

I have found that with the change to non-mixing fluids, most of the issues with LTN and fluid transport have gone away, I'm ~100 hours into a full AngelBobs rail-focused no-logistics game and I don't think I've seen it happen more than once or twice, and both times it was my derp.

The important part is to ensure that only as much as is requested is loaded, and that everything is unloaded at the destination.

1) Provider station -- EVERY pump pointing to the tracks needs to be circuit-linked to ensure that it stops as soon as the requested amount is reached.

You can do this by setting the pump to 'active when $FLUID > 0', connecting the circuit to the Logistic Train Stop Output (which outputs 'what LTN thinks should be on the train') and adding the output of the LTN stop (outputs 'what is already on the train') times -1, so the pump stops after as much as is supposed to has been loaded. This also lets you put as many loading pumps on a station as you can physically fit, as only the fluids you intend to load will be loaded.

provider.png (719.71 KiB) Viewed 6604 times

2) Requester station -- The pumps on the receiving end are easy. As long as the unloading pumps are hooked to something, they should already be locked to the kind of fluid they should be pumping. No circuit is needed-- we want these pumps to go until the tank car is empty. However, you want to ensure that the station always has enough storage space to unload anything that could be requested. So, you'll want to not fill all of your tanks at the destination. If you have 100k worth of tanks and fluid cars that can transport 25k each, request -75k at most and limit the number of trains to one. if it's a really high-demand station, add more tanks and increase the train limit, so that the amount requested plus the amount that could be in transit is still less than the maximum fluid storage capacity available.

requester.png (1.22 MiB) Viewed 6604 times

example: seven pumps unloading five fluids from a single tank car space -- purified water, oxygen, and the three strong acids.

3) If you're still occasionally having issues with trains leaving not-empty, use LTN tracker to find out where/why. To reduce the chances of this happening globally, you can increase the LTN station timeout threshold. If it's causing throughput problems, increase the number of available fluid trains.

Now that fluid mixing is disabled, it REALLY doesn't matter all that much if some of them are stuck with a fluid, 'cause it can no longer permanently break your setup by unloading the wrong thing -- as long as the unloading station pumps are always-on, it'll eventually work itself out when the fluid-stuck train gets sent to a destination that takes its fluid, especially if you set up dedicated unloading stations that have pumps for 3+ different fluids, and the other trains should satisfy enough demand to keep your factory going.

[jodokus31]

I asked this a while back on a separate thread but never saw a reply... is there a way to have Angel's crawler train deploy robots when in "automatic" mode ("manual" mode deploys bots just fine)? Would be really nice to be able to send it to a station with a trigger of "no robot activity" and have it build any blueprints before it comes back.

I think there's a checkbox on the robot wagon: "Enable logistics..." But i'm not sure if it works in automatic mode. But robot port is at least active while moving manually.
Speaking of that, i have the small quirk at the moment, that tiles are not placed by robo wagon. I have to place my crawler vehicle for a short moment and then it triggers tile building from robo wagon. Very strange.

[Arch666Angel]

I asked this a while back on a separate thread but never saw a reply... is there a way to have Angel's crawler train deploy robots when in "automatic" mode ("manual" mode deploys bots just fine)? Would be really nice to be able to send it to a station with a trigger of "no robot activity" and have it build any blueprints before it comes back.

I think there's a checkbox on the robot wagon: "Enable logistics..." But i'm not sure if it works in automatic mode. But robot port is at least active while moving manually.
Speaking of that, i have the small quirk at the moment, that tiles are not placed by robo wagon. I have to place my crawler vehicle for a short moment and then it triggers tile building from robo wagon. Very strange.

You could make these into a base game bug report, since all I do is add entities as they are in the base game, so if the behavior is wrong or not what you expect this is a base game issue.

[jodokus31]

I asked this a while back on a separate thread but never saw a reply... is there a way to have Angel's crawler train deploy robots when in "automatic" mode ("manual" mode deploys bots just fine)? Would be really nice to be able to send it to a station with a trigger of "no robot activity" and have it build any blueprints before it comes back.

I think there's a checkbox on the robot wagon: "Enable logistics..." But i'm not sure if it works in automatic mode. But robot port is at least active while moving manually.
Speaking of that, i have the small quirk at the moment, that tiles are not placed by robo wagon. I have to place my crawler vehicle for a short moment and then it triggers tile building from robo wagon. Very strange.

You could make these into a base game bug report, since all I do is add entities as they are in the base game, so if the behavior is wrong or not what you expect this is a base game issue.

I think I found, why robots are not sent in automatic mode:
viewtopic.php?p=425005#p425005

Thanks for the report. The mod(s) that add the equipment grid to trains need to add the prototype property "allow_robot_dispatch_in_automatic_mode = true" to the trains.

I added the property to the entity with "name = "crawler-bot-wagon" and it works. Probably new since 0.17.x

EDIT: Fixed quoting mess

[jodokus31]

Speaking of that, i have the small quirk at the moment, that tiles are not placed by robo wagon. I have to place my crawler vehicle for a short moment and then it triggers tile building from robo wagon. Very strange.

For anyone, who is curious, this is not a bug, but the natural behaviour, if you have to many tile ghosts in the queue (in my case 36000). They need a long time to lookup and trigger. After removing them, it gets lot faster.

[evandy]

I think I found, why robots are not sent in automatic mode:
viewtopic.php?p=425005#p425005

Thanks for the report. The mod(s) that add the equipment grid to trains need to add the prototype property "allow_robot_dispatch_in_automatic_mode = true" to the trains.

I added the property to the entity with "name = "crawler-bot-wagon" and it works. Probably new since 0.17.x

I took some time today and have confirmed that Bob's wagons (With Bob's vehicle roboports) will construct while the train is moving & in station if you select the "Enable Logistics while moving" checkbox, so this is definitely an issue with Angel's Crawler train only. Looks like an easy fix, at least.

I am going to do some more testing later tonight to see if the bots will work in a station without the checkbox enabled.

[evandy]

I think I found, why robots are not sent in automatic mode:
viewtopic.php?p=425005#p425005

Thanks for the report. The mod(s) that add the equipment grid to trains need to add the prototype property "allow_robot_dispatch_in_automatic_mode = true" to the trains.

I added the property to the entity with "name = "crawler-bot-wagon" and it works. Probably new since 0.17.x

I took some time today and have confirmed that Bob's wagons (With Bob's vehicle roboports) will construct while the train is moving & in station if you select the "Enable Logistics while moving" checkbox, so this is definitely an issue with Angel's Crawler train only. Looks like an easy fix, at least.

I am going to do some more testing later tonight to see if the bots will work in a station without the checkbox enabled.

Bob's Trains & Wagons work pretty much how I would expect:
- Enabled Logistics While Moving allows construction bots to be deployed while the train is moving
- With this disabled, bots are deployed when the train is at a station, or even at a temporary stop from Ctrl-Clicking
- Both of these happen while the train is in "Automatic" mode.

Angel's Crawler train deploys bots only while in "Manual" mode. Hopefully Rseding91's note above can be incorporated so that they work again!

[Barhandar]

Why are rolls, except for nickel, called sheet coils, and why is there a bunch of unavailable or nonsensical (like manganese - it's used as ingots, not sheets) ones, but not a tin sheet roll?

[Rolhn]

I downloaded this mod when I saw that it will turn some patches of resources into an infinite version of themselves so that I can easily stop burning through my raw materials for production but when I saw that I needed sulfuric acid just to mine them it became an immediate turn off for me. When I saw Infinite Ores I thought it meant that I never had to worry about my starting area ever running out of what I needed, not having to wait till midgame to finally get sulfuric acid just to return to the infinite patches just to mine them! What a waste of potential for this mod.

[kingarthur]

I downloaded this mod when I saw that it will turn some patches of resources into an infinite version of themselves so that I can easily stop burning through my raw materials for production but when I saw that I needed sulfuric acid just to mine them it became an immediate turn off for me. When I saw Infinite Ores I thought it meant that I never had to worry about my starting area ever running out of what I needed, not having to wait till midgame to finally get sulfuric acid just to return to the infinite patches just to mine them! What a waste of potential for this mod.

Did you try turning off the require fluid setting

[Saevon]

I'm playing bobs+angels (+clowns) and only just realized there are ingredient limits on a bunch of Smelting machines.

Looking at the raw prototypes, a lot of the ingredient limits are useless, with no recipies actually being locked off.

And even then only the tier 2 upgrade unlocks a few recipes. Considering ingredient limits aren't really a thing anymore (and very few recipes are affected) I'd suggest removing that?
Alternatively all of these technologies should at least be gated behind the correct tier of building...

For the following ingredient limits don't affect any recipes
casting-machine: Nothing
sintering-oven: Nothing
ore-processing-machine: Nothing
sintering-oven Nothing
pellet-press Nothing
strand-casting-machine Nothing

powder-mixer only locks away 3 recipes: glass-3/4 & cement-2

induction-furnace Locks away a bunch of recipes: iron-4/5, titanium-4/5, steel 4/5, solder 3, bronze 2/3, brass 2/3, gunmetal

ore-refining locks all the "catalyst" or "crystal catalyst" recipes

(not sure if its been brought up before, but i couldn't find it)

[jodokus31]

Considering ingredient limits aren't really a thing anymore (and very few recipes are affected) I'd suggest removing that?

Ingredient limits got removed in vanilla for assembly machines and can be modded back. That's the only change and does not imply, that every other mod should remove limits, too. So, I would see no need to change it.