[0.17.x] Bob's Mods: General Discussion

[GrimerX]

FYI some of your technologies conflict with AAI Industries

These are the main ones:
steam-power and electricity

I'm merging these with a modpack but with the name conflicts it's not something I can easily address.

The problem is... do I do what I did with Bobplates metal technology, where it checks if the technology exists before creating it, then adds things to it...
or do I make it separate by adding a bob- prefix?

Edit: AAI Industry is annoying to work with. Part of it's "Add this recipe to this technology" function removes it from all other technologies.
the entire structure of the early game in that mod is in conflict with what my mod is trying to do. I am unsure if it is even possible to make the 2 work together.

Yeah - My little modpack has a fair amount of "straighten out AAI" code.
From my POV, putting it in a separate technology is better because I (or others I guess) can merge them in the modpack. If you go the other way, it's hard to predict that the intent of your tech aligns with the tech of whoever made the other one. I'd rather have an explicit wart (two "electricity" techs) than false integration.

That said, if you want to mark AAI Industries incompatible I respect that as well. I prefer your mods in any case.

[bobingabout]

FYI some of your technologies conflict with AAI Industries

These are the main ones:
steam-power and electricity

I'm merging these with a modpack but with the name conflicts it's not something I can easily address.

The problem is... do I do what I did with Bobplates metal technology, where it checks if the technology exists before creating it, then adds things to it...
or do I make it separate by adding a bob- prefix?

Edit: AAI Industry is annoying to work with. Part of it's "Add this recipe to this technology" function removes it from all other technologies.
the entire structure of the early game in that mod is in conflict with what my mod is trying to do. I am unsure if it is even possible to make the 2 work together.

Yeah - My little modpack has a fair amount of "straighten out AAI" code.
From my POV, putting it in a separate technology is better because I (or others I guess) can merge them in the modpack. If you go the other way, it's hard to predict that the intent of your tech aligns with the tech of whoever made the other one. I'd rather have an explicit wart (two "electricity" techs) than false integration.

That said, if you want to mark AAI Industries incompatible I respect that as well. I prefer your mods in any case.

the two being merged isn't such a bad thing, since he already makes the tech with no unlocks in the data phase, then my mod comes along and replaces the tech, then he adds unlocks to it in the updates phase.

the problem is, since his functions remove unlocks from all other technologies when he adds them, it causes a few issues, like my steam power not having a boiler on it... or being fused, it has a steam engine on it when it shouldn't.


The biggest issue however is... if you disable bobpowers burner electric generator, it falls into a cyclic technology loop and the game fails to load.
Steam power requires basic fluid management, which requires electricity, which requires steam power. This issue is based on the fact that he has no steam powered entities, which means there is no phase where you'd want a boiler before electricity, so he considered boiler and steam engine to be an upgrade from a simple entity that produces power from burning fuel items. The offshore pump requires an electric motor to build, I'm not sure of any other changes he's made to it, but in theory I think it's supposed to require electricity to run.

Most of the other issues can be worked out, but the fact that he makes the offshore pump require electricity, and you need that before steam power, kinda breaks what my mod is trying to do.

[GrimerX]

FYI some of your technologies conflict with AAI Industries

These are the main ones:
steam-power and electricity

I'm merging these with a modpack but with the name conflicts it's not something I can easily address.

The problem is... do I do what I did with Bobplates metal technology, where it checks if the technology exists before creating it, then adds things to it...
or do I make it separate by adding a bob- prefix?

Edit: AAI Industry is annoying to work with. Part of it's "Add this recipe to this technology" function removes it from all other technologies.
the entire structure of the early game in that mod is in conflict with what my mod is trying to do. I am unsure if it is even possible to make the 2 work together.

Yeah - My little modpack has a fair amount of "straighten out AAI" code.
From my POV, putting it in a separate technology is better because I (or others I guess) can merge them in the modpack. If you go the other way, it's hard to predict that the intent of your tech aligns with the tech of whoever made the other one. I'd rather have an explicit wart (two "electricity" techs) than false integration.

That said, if you want to mark AAI Industries incompatible I respect that as well. I prefer your mods in any case.

the two being merged isn't such a bad thing, since he already makes the tech with no unlocks in the data phase, then my mod comes along and replaces the tech, then he adds unlocks to it in the updates phase.

the problem is, since his functions remove unlocks from all other technologies when he adds them, it causes a few issues, like my steam power not having a boiler on it... or being fused, it has a steam engine on it when it shouldn't.


The biggest issue however is... if you disable bobpowers burner electric generator, it falls into a cyclic technology loop and the game fails to load.
Steam power requires basic fluid management, which requires electricity, which requires steam power. This issue is based on the fact that he has no steam powered entities, which means there is no phase where you'd want a boiler before electricity, so he considered boiler and steam engine to be an upgrade from a simple entity that produces power from burning fuel items. The offshore pump requires an electric motor to build, I'm not sure of any other changes he's made to it, but in theory I think it's supposed to require electricity to run.

Most of the other issues can be worked out, but the fact that he makes the offshore pump require electricity, and you need that before steam power, kinda breaks what my mod is trying to do.

Hmm, I see. I'll point Earendel to this feedback and move away from AAI Industry for now. Thanks Bob.

[Zyrconia]

Hmm, I see. I'll point Earendel to this feedback and move away from AAI Industry for now. Thanks Bob.

This is of course not a priority, but something that I hope eventually will be fixed.

SpaceEx is highly in flux right now, but it may be that 6 months from now Bob's will be not only a go to mod pack, like it is today, but also a go to mod pack if you want to increase SpaceEx complexity while removing some of the grind (stronger miners, modules, assemblers, etc...).

[RocketManChronicles]

FYI some of your technologies conflict with AAI Industries

These are the main ones:
steam-power and electricity

I'm merging these with a modpack but with the name conflicts it's not something I can easily address.

The problem is... do I do what I did with Bobplates metal technology, where it checks if the technology exists before creating it, then adds things to it...
or do I make it separate by adding a bob- prefix?

Edit: AAI Industry is annoying to work with. Part of it's "Add this recipe to this technology" function removes it from all other technologies.
the entire structure of the early game in that mod is in conflict with what my mod is trying to do. I am unsure if it is even possible to make the 2 work together.

Yeah - My little modpack has a fair amount of "straighten out AAI" code.
From my POV, putting it in a separate technology is better because I (or others I guess) can merge them in the modpack. If you go the other way, it's hard to predict that the intent of your tech aligns with the tech of whoever made the other one. I'd rather have an explicit wart (two "electricity" techs) than false integration.

That said, if you want to mark AAI Industries incompatible I respect that as well. I prefer your mods in any case.

the two being merged isn't such a bad thing, since he already makes the tech with no unlocks in the data phase, then my mod comes along and replaces the tech, then he adds unlocks to it in the updates phase.

the problem is, since his functions remove unlocks from all other technologies when he adds them, it causes a few issues, like my steam power not having a boiler on it... or being fused, it has a steam engine on it when it shouldn't.


The biggest issue however is... if you disable bobpowers burner electric generator, it falls into a cyclic technology loop and the game fails to load.
Steam power requires basic fluid management, which requires electricity, which requires steam power. This issue is based on the fact that he has no steam powered entities, which means there is no phase where you'd want a boiler before electricity, so he considered boiler and steam engine to be an upgrade from a simple entity that produces power from burning fuel items. The offshore pump requires an electric motor to build, I'm not sure of any other changes he's made to it, but in theory I think it's supposed to require electricity to run.

Most of the other issues can be worked out, but the fact that he makes the offshore pump require electricity, and you need that before steam power, kinda breaks what my mod is trying to do.

Earendel provides an interesting scenario to produce electric power. He has the burner generator which MUST be built to kick start your base's electricity; since, as you both state, the offshore pump requires electricity to run. Once started, the player now must maintain electric power at all costs to prevent entering a power plant restart mode. I find this really interesting, because as you work through the steam power phase (before solar and nuclear), you actually have to have a power plant reboot circuit network. If power starts to run low, you have to start shutting down different parts of your factory to have enough power for the power plant itself to remain operational. And consequently, if you run completely out of power and hit zero, everything has to be unplugged (power switches) to be able to power the offshore pumps again. This forces gameplay in maintaining power supply to demand during this phase of the game.

Now, with bob's 'newer' early game (I have yet to play through), steam powered buildings introduce a whole another way to play. If anything, I am on bob's side here with how his mods now handle the early game (very interested to start over at some point). Having steam powered 'everything' before electricity is a unique start to Factorio, and is more 'Factorio'-like than AAI's approach.

[bobingabout]

Now, with bob's 'newer' early game (I have yet to play through), steam powered buildings introduce a whole another way to play. If anything, I am on bob's side here with how his mods now handle the early game (very interested to start over at some point). Having steam powered 'everything' before electricity is a unique start to Factorio, and is more 'Factorio'-like than AAI's approach.

Unfortunately, my ideas are more theory than practice. The For starters, the base of the burner stage (Technology mod) only really adds a burner lab and steam science pack, then shuffles everything around, adding new technologies that require this new science pack to research. Other mods (Power, Assembling machines, and Mining) add the Burner electric generator (Power), Burner and steam powered assembling machine, along with oil powered furnaces (Assembling machines) and a steam powered mining drill (Mining).

The main novelty with the steam powered stuff (even though there's only 2 machines with it right now) is that they scale in speed based on the type of steam you put into them. it actually only really becomes worth considering replacing a steam assembling machine with AM3, as the boiler 2 is easy enough to research, and will provide a faster crafting speed than AM2, but Boiler 3 gives a crafting speed only slightly slower than AM3. Steam powered things are also not effected by modules, so that's another reason to switch to AM3.

I added oil burning furnaces at steel furnace stage (it's actually just a steel furnace with a different power source, the advantage is it has a slightly lower pollution level), considering 2 factors.
1. there's nothing to do with your steel furnaces, so why not offer an upgrade path for them?
2. It's cleaner than fuel items, and it's available earlier than electric furnaces (no other tech remains on burner power as long as furnaces... except boilers of course)
So, if you consider that you need oxygen to make steel in bob's mods, what do you do with the excess hydrogen? Well... why not use it to power the same furnace? and you get only a tenth of the pollution from hydrogen power.
Also you're likely to want to figure out what to do with an excess of light oil once you do start oil processing, you could use that to power the oil powered furnaces.

Something I haven't mentioned yet, also part of this overhaul, is the burner and oil burning heat sources, with yet another tech tree shuffle around nuclear power and heat exchangers. (they're pretty much separated from each other now with heat pipes being the gateway technology)
What can you do with your old oil burning steel furnaces? make an oil-burning heat source, of course. Also you can turn a steel furnace into a burner heat source too.
These only start with 750C as a max temperature, so definitely lower tier than a nuclear power plant, but even with that temperature, they're able to power up to heat exchanger 2. they also only have a 50% neighbour bonus. A general rule is that it takes the power of 2 of them to power a single heat exchanger, but, neighbour bonuses can easily change things to have more HEs than HSs. The T2 goes to 875C with a 75% neighbour bonus and the T3 1000C with 100% bonus. The only difference between the burner and oil burning versions is the fuel source.

Note: when using any heat sources (including nuclear) and neighbour bonuses... the bonus only works with the same entity. So a BHS1 needs to be next to a BHS1 to get a bonus, and NR2/TR would need to be next to another NR2/TR, a NR1 and NR2 would get no bonus for being next to each other, likewise a BHS and OBHS would get no bonus, or a BHS1 and BHS2 would get no bonus.


Anyway, after saying all this... the fact that I consider steam power to be level 2, between burner and electric makes it incompatible with any mod that makes an electric powered offshore pump, as my mod assumes you have steam before electricity.


I'm open to suggestions and ideas for more steam powered, oil powered, and heat powered entities. To note: although oil/steam powered inserters are possible, they look kinda dumb with a pipe base.

[bobingabout]

Logistics 0.17.13:
Change all recipe enabled = "false" lines to enabled = false
Fixed underground belt bounding boxes causing an error in 0.17.53.

[fishycat]

Not sure if there's already a mod, but when I hear more steam stuff is needed, I immediately had this in mind: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:410 ... 5_2016.png

So you would need coal and water to run them - and a shovel

[bobingabout]

Not sure if there's already a mod, but when I hear more steam stuff is needed, I immediately had this in mind: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:410 ... 5_2016.png

So you would need coal and water to run them - and a shovel

I would love for locomotives to require water, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Maybe with a script and a fluid-wagon full of water, but... you know I don't like runtime scripts.

[Xynariz]

Fixed underground belt bounding boxes causing an error in 0.17.53.

Came to report this ... and a fix had already been uploaded. Thanks for the quick turnaround!

[Zyrconia]

I'm lurking around here to find the perfect moment to start a new 0.17 map.

But Bob is on fire with the updates right now so I'll wait a couple of weeks .

actually, now is probably a good time to start a new map. I've just finished messing with the early game stuff, don't forget to turn on the new burner stage option under bobtech. It's off by default as not to mess with existing games.

Thanks! I admire your commitment towards your mods!

On the other hand: ewwwww, burner stuff. I hate the burner stage! For me a Bob's game begins when you have automated BEBs and can use exclusively fast inserters and classic red belts. And now things are moved even further back with gray belts. So I'll be skipping additional burner stuff, unless its Space Ex.

you can have the additional burner stuff without burner stage being turned on. Burner stage basically locks the non-burner stuff behind a research wall.

Fair enough!

But I can't just jump in, I need to prepare a separate Bob's install, download an configure mods and so. That's what I'm doing now.

Especially with the the state of Angel's. I don't think I can help with that, but might be able to help with balancing.

So a full play-through of Bob's is in order, burners to rockets and all modules, to get an updated hang of the current feel of you mods and balance.

BTW, could you update the description of your mods, as seen in Factorio. I just downloaded Bob's Logistics and it says "Adds logistic related things." I bet it does. Could we have a better and more verbose description please?

[bobingabout]

BTW, could you update the description of your mods, as seen in Factorio. I just downloaded Bob's Logistics and it says "Adds logistic related things." I bet it does. Could we have a better and more verbose description please?

I'll have a look at that, however, the mod itself contains quite a verbose description now. it might be pulling that data off the mod portal. (there's 2 descriptions on the mod portal, the non-verbose description is basically the description from within the mod on your first upload.)

[Zyrconia]

BTW, could you update the description of your mods, as seen in Factorio. I just downloaded Bob's Logistics and it says "Adds logistic related things." I bet it does. Could we have a better and more verbose description please?

I'll have a look at that, however, the mod itself contains quite a verbose description now. it might be pulling that data off the mod portal. (there's 2 descriptions on the mod portal, the non-verbose description is basically the description from within the mod on your first upload.)

Yup, it is fine on portal. Maybe even too long for the in game mod manager. Only the in-game mod manager shows this brief line. It is so short and vague that you need to check mod settings to see what each mod does.

BTW, I'm over-viewing your mods right now without ores or plates. Don't want to play like that of course, but just to see what you did.

[bobingabout]

BTW, could you update the description of your mods, as seen in Factorio. I just downloaded Bob's Logistics and it says "Adds logistic related things." I bet it does. Could we have a better and more verbose description please?

I'll have a look at that, however, the mod itself contains quite a verbose description now. it might be pulling that data off the mod portal. (there's 2 descriptions on the mod portal, the non-verbose description is basically the description from within the mod on your first upload.)

Yup, it is fine on portal. Maybe even too long for the in game mod manager. Only the in-game mod manager shows this brief line. It is so short and vague that you need to check mod settings to see what each mod does.

BTW, I'm over-viewing your mods right now without ores or plates. Don't want to play like that of course, but just to see what you did.

Most of the recipes in that case will be over-simplified. T3 basically costing a T2 plus all the same ingredients that the T2 cost to craft, etc.

[Zyrconia]

BTW, could you update the description of your mods, as seen in Factorio. I just downloaded Bob's Logistics and it says "Adds logistic related things." I bet it does. Could we have a better and more verbose description please?

I'll have a look at that, however, the mod itself contains quite a verbose description now. it might be pulling that data off the mod portal. (there's 2 descriptions on the mod portal, the non-verbose description is basically the description from within the mod on your first upload.)

Yup, it is fine on portal. Maybe even too long for the in game mod manager. Only the in-game mod manager shows this brief line. It is so short and vague that you need to check mod settings to see what each mod does.

BTW, I'm over-viewing your mods right now without ores or plates. Don't want to play like that of course, but just to see what you did.

Most of the recipes in that case will be over-simplified. T3 basically costing a T2 plus all the same ingredients that the T2 cost to craft, etc.

Yup, saw that.

Still configuring.

So what are your preferred options? The ultimate Bob's experience, the way Bob meant the game to be played? The defaults as they are? Transport belt overhaul? No belt speed overhaul. Inserters require previous tiers? Big and small alien artifacts?

On thing I always do is turn off large area mining drill. Never needed it...

[ukezi]

I would love for locomotives to require water, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Maybe with a script and a fluid-wagon full of water, but... you know I don't like runtime scripts.

How about an additional fuel class for the steam-locomotives? It's a canister made of water and fuel, unifying the two into an item. I'm sure you can create a script to make a variant of the recipe for everything burnable. As far as I know burners have the option to give a return item like nuclear plants, so they could give the canister back.

[bobingabout]

So what are your preferred options? The ultimate Bob's experience, the way Bob meant the game to be played? The defaults as they are? Transport belt overhaul? No belt speed overhaul. Inserters require previous tiers? Big and small alien artifacts?

On thing I always do is turn off large area mining drill. Never needed it...

All mods installed, most of the defaults. Belt speed overhaul off because it's kinda broken. Most of the rest is preference but the defaults are pretty good.

I turned on super nests and god modules in my game.

[mrvn]

I would love for locomotives to require water, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Maybe with a script and a fluid-wagon full of water, but... you know I don't like runtime scripts.

How about an additional fuel class for the steam-locomotives? It's a canister made of water and fuel, unifying the two into an item. I'm sure you can create a script to make a variant of the recipe for everything burnable. As far as I know burners have the option to give a return item like nuclear plants, so they could give the canister back.

I have never seen locomotives give something back.

But you could add a tender and tank to a locomotive and then have a script that converts those into fuel+water-item that is put into the actual fuel slot of the locomotive. The script wouldn't have to run often if the fuel value of the fuel+water-item or it's stack size is large enough. The next script run could be set by how full the locomotives fuel slots are as well. So if you don't fuel the locomotive fully the conversion runs more often.

[bobingabout]

I would love for locomotives to require water, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Maybe with a script and a fluid-wagon full of water, but... you know I don't like runtime scripts.

How about an additional fuel class for the steam-locomotives? It's a canister made of water and fuel, unifying the two into an item. I'm sure you can create a script to make a variant of the recipe for everything burnable. As far as I know burners have the option to give a return item like nuclear plants, so they could give the canister back.

I have never seen locomotives give something back.

But you could add a tender and tank to a locomotive and then have a script that converts those into fuel+water-item that is put into the actual fuel slot of the locomotive. The script wouldn't have to run often if the fuel value of the fuel+water-item or it's stack size is large enough. The next script run could be set by how full the locomotives fuel slots are as well. So if you don't fuel the locomotive fully the conversion runs more often.

there's no reason why you can't say, give hydrogen canister a fuel value and have it act as fuel. the main reason why I don't is because it would require editing everything to have a burnt result box.
It's possible you could have a specific new fuel category (like nuclear is if you're looking for a base game example) so only special entities can burn these new fuel types and return an item, EG, LPG powered vehicles that return an empty canister.

I would love for locomotives to require water, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Maybe with a script and a fluid-wagon full of water, but... you know I don't like runtime scripts.

How about an additional fuel class for the steam-locomotives? It's a canister made of water and fuel, unifying the two into an item. I'm sure you can create a script to make a variant of the recipe for everything burnable. As far as I know burners have the option to give a return item like nuclear plants, so they could give the canister back.

So, although possible given what I said above, requiring a tender? too much scripting effort when it's just using a special fuel item anyway. As for why I haven't considered it... well... if you stick with what I usually do, it would look just like a normal locomotive. if you want a steam engine, that's graphics, I'm not good at graphics.

[ukezi]

There is this oldish mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/goldsword44/JunkTrain

Maybe you could get Angel, goldsword44, or yuoki to make you a nice steam locomotive?

So, although possible given what I said above, requiring a tender?

I was thinking of using the special fuel class instead of a tender. Maybe if one were to make a custom locomotive one could include the tender into the locomotive. If you want to make it cooler a locomotive filling tower( I know custom graphic again...) that creates the special fuel from water and burnables. I personally would also change the diesel locomotive in a way it only runs with fluid fuel. That would get you a nice distinction between the steam locomotives running on solids and the diesel running on fluids.