pY Alien Life - Discussion

[DarkyPupu]

but also fear it might be just that bit too much for new-ish players in the early game.

I don't know, i think Pymods target the audience which won't be discouraged by such (maybe even better they discover the spirit earlier than after hundred hours )

As for myself i can't wait to get my hands on this, looks deliciously complex

[Blokus]

PyAL at launch won't be balanced around dealing with biters. Pyanodon has been pretty explicit about this point. I've seen speculation that a biter balance patch may happen partway through the patching cycle of AL. So basically those of you that play with biters are on your own. Most py players don't, to my understanding (myself included).

Still, the general point about front-loaded difficulty driving people new to pymods away from it seems like it might be relevant. In current 0.17, the very very early game is really not that bad...most of the pain is in building your first copy of various py structures, particularly at a time when your smelting ratio sucks really bad. Even then I have talked to people who ragequit during the exponential burner miner phase.

It sounds like early AL will be a lot harder...

[aklesey1]

Ahahahahh thanks for review BlueTemplar
I can't wait i hope pyanodon Nexela and kingarthur will end bug fixing soon

[Pridesfall]

Stuff

I think you make some good points but I think you just confirmed that the mod is shaping up to be what we all know and love about the Pyanodon mods. I picked playing this mod over ones like Bobs & Angels because I have limited time to play and so I wanted to just stick with the hardest one from the beginning. Most "new" people probably should get their feet wet in another mod set if this feels overwhelming.

That said, I appreciated that Pyanodon said once, in the Raw Ore mod forum, that he tried to make processes as accurate as possible except where they would make the game not fun. I'm sure he will make modifications in areas that seem ridiculous to make playing feasible as time goes on.

[Squelch]

Oh, yes, all of the above. Don't get me wrong, Py suite is most probably not for the faint of heart. I was merely commenting on how much more complex the early game in PyAl appeared to be, and that might just be a little too much for some. Not a complaint, but merely an observation.

As for biters, I do have them enabled, but nerfed to allow me to get established and then have to fight them off the resource patches I need. It also makes me consider pollution, and I've found that "guarding" the most polluting of areas with a ring of pollution absorbing buildings, even if ultimately less efficient, pays dividends. Each to their own I guess.

[Edit to add]
The only thing that triggers me as in any way unrealistic, is gasoline vs petroleum. They are the same thing, but interchangeable names (British commonwealth English vs US English) and I find it hard to reconcile every time I come across needing one or other for a recipe. I've grown used to being able to switch between, and use them depending on real life situations. Nexelit, is a fantasy substance, and that I can handle I hasten to add.

[Mecejide]

Oh, yes, all of the above. Don't get me wrong, Py suite is most probably not for the faint of heart. I was merely commenting on how much more complex the early game in PyAl appeared to be, and that might just be a little too much for some. Not a complaint, but merely an observation.

As for biters, I do have them enabled, but nerfed to allow me to get established and then have to fight them off the resource patches I need. It also makes me consider pollution, and I've found that "guarding" the most polluting of areas with a ring of pollution absorbing buildings, even if ultimately less efficient, pays dividends. Each to their own I guess.

[Edit to add]
The only thing that triggers me as in any way unrealistic, is gasoline vs petroleum. They are the same thing, but interchangeable names (British commonwealth English vs US English) and I find it hard to reconcile every time I come across needing one or other for a recipe. I've grown used to being able to switch between, and use them depending on real life situations. Nexelit, is a fantasy substance, and that I can handle I hasten to add.

But there's no item called "petroleum".

[Sopel]

I'm concerned about what BlueTemplar brought up already, that is how expensive the higher tiers of "animal modules" are.

Regarding the science complexity now. One solution would be to add a science pack below red, which would be used just for a few essential researches like automation, logistics. But I don't think it's that much of a problem.

Regarding biters... I cannot understand what people find fun in having to deal with stupidly overpowered (in py) creatures that just sidetrack you from the core concepts of the game. Pymods are explicity not made to be played with biters. Nobody cares.

Regarding scaring new players... The earlier the less they suffer. Pymods shouldn't be deceptively easy.

[BlueTemplar]

[Edit to add]
The only thing that triggers me as in any way unrealistic, is gasoline vs petroleum. They are the same thing, but interchangeable names (British commonwealth English vs US English) and I find it hard to reconcile every time I come across needing one or other for a recipe. I've grown used to being able to switch between, and use them depending on real life situations. Nexelit, is a fantasy substance, and that I can handle I hasten to add.

But there's no item called "petroleum".

Before it derails : to the pYOil ?
viewtopic.php?p=475584#p475584

[Squelch]

But there's no item called "petroleum".

Ok. petroleum [gas] to be precise.

Regarding biters... I cannot understand what people find fun in having to deal with stupidly overpowered (in py) creatures that just sidetrack you from the core concepts of the game. Pymods are explicity not made to be played with biters. Nobody cares.

Regarding scaring new players... The earlier the less they suffer. Pymods shouldn't be deceptively easy.

Each to their own, and nobody has complained or forced anything on anyone else.

[Blokus]

Regarding scaring new players... The earlier the less they suffer. Pymods shouldn't be deceptively easy.

Eh...there's something to be said for reducing the pain that it takes to get some basic automation going, and then throwing them off the cliff when they actually have the tools to deal with it in hand. This is part of why I have previously proposed "circuit board 0" as an automatable item with the handcraft circuit board 1 recipe, going into inserters, assemblers, splitters, and also into the early game py buildings like the DDC and the fawogae plantation. (Perhaps resulting in crappy mk0 versions of these machines, if you want.) Then force players into the actual circuit 1 at some point, perhaps in logistic science if you want to be a bit cruel, or as an obstacle in the path to circuit 2 if you want to be nice.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, also, even if playing without biters : no science = no assemblers, red inserters, splitters, undergrounds, lamps...

(Check also out Bob's new(ish) "steam science" & burner phase - and the well-known AAI (and also now IndRev) burner phases...)

[kingarthur]

we are well aware that the early game needs some attention and its coming but one thing at a time. still havnt got pyal. ive looked in to several of the early game mods. ir, armorphasma coal and steam, bit of bobs steam stuff, and aai industries. looking at what the others have done and what works and what doesnt.

ive started some experiments for some stuff currently but had to put it on hold to work on pyal

[ZombieMooose]

As a joke do you plan on updating A Bug's Life?

[kingarthur]

As a joke do you plan on updating A Bug's Life?

i actually do have some stuff i want to do with that. i want to expand it so you actually play as like a biter "queen" or whatever and have to deal with the ai creating a factory on your planet.

but i run into a big issue with the animations not working right as biters only have 16 rotations but the player has 18 rotations or something like that so i cant get them to line up right and would need to reanimate them or replace them outright. also need to put something together to build a factory and react to your attacks.

[DarkyPupu]

we are well aware that the early game needs some attention and its coming but one thing at a time. still havnt got pyal. ive looked in to several of the early game mods. ir, armorphasma coal and steam, bit of bobs steam stuff, and aai industries. looking at what the others have done and what works and what doesnt.

ive started some experiments for some stuff currently but had to put it on hold to work on pyal

I do play with bitters with any other mods (Py, IR, etc.), it's usually enough to have good pollution control + 1 cheap turret (like IR for example) and you're good to go. Of course if you don't care about pollution, this won't do but pollution is supposed to be something to control in first place. And i play with most difficult pollution settings so it's definitely doable. Of course, i understand some / lots of people don't like

Anyway, pollution control is the key.

[kingarthur]

we are well aware that the early game needs some attention and its coming but one thing at a time. still havnt got pyal. ive looked in to several of the early game mods. ir, armorphasma coal and steam, bit of bobs steam stuff, and aai industries. looking at what the others have done and what works and what doesnt.

ive started some experiments for some stuff currently but had to put it on hold to work on pyal

I do play with bitters with any other mods (Py, IR, etc.), it's usually enough to have good pollution control + 1 cheap turret (like IR for example) and you're good to go. Of course if you don't care about pollution, this won't do but pollution is supposed to be something to control in first place. And i play with most difficult pollution settings so it's definitely doable. Of course, i understand some / lots of people don't like

Anyway, pollution control is the key.

well the biggest flaw is that the game use pollution production not the pollution the biters absorbed as part of evolution. so no matter how do you control it the pollution still increases evolution even if the biters never get any. i like the idea of pollution mattering and needing to control it but if your still getting penalized even when you hamstring yourself to control pollution it stops being fun. although in writing this ive just had an idea. need to test will say more if it pans out

[DarkyPupu]

Oh yes my bad sorry, i use this mod :
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/EvolutionThroughResearch
with time / destroy / pollution original settings at 0.

When i was talking about difficult settings, it was purely about "pollution absoption per kill / per tree / per ground etc." -> the sliders on the other tab.

This mod allows to require pollution control, yet be playable at early game. What i like is that it's still a challenge but it allows to play at your pace (i'm on always-online server so time increasing evolution is suicidal )

[DarkyPupu]

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/research_causes_evolution
This one actually...

Bit the same

[BlueTemplar]

Remember that evolution also comes from time.
For instance in 0.17, evolution from time is doubled on Rail World presets (to compensate for the disabled expansion ?) compared to the Default one.
And it's 5 times the Default on Death World ! While being only 1.33.. times the Default for pollution.
It's one of the main reasons that I use Vlad's Auto Time.

For instance, in my 0.16 Death World game, I hit 50% evo (= blue biters) at ~12 hours, while setting up Aluminium mining & smelting. (I set up lead first, for obvious reasons.)
The breakdown for evolution was 83% time, 15% evolution, 2% spawner kills.

But then, being my first Py game, I was quite inefficient.
(I also made some mistakes that I shouldn't have - like allowing biters to settle close and NOT rushing ore processing 1's as fast as possible - which I should have known to do from playing Angel.)

OTOH, I did avoid some of the potential mistakes, like using Combustion Turbines or growing wood for power, or wasting my resources on worse than vanilla Advanced Foundries, or the better than vanilla, but waaay too expensive at that point Automated Factories.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, pollution absorbing buildings are now available much much earlier in the form of Fawogae Plantations and such ? (Though do they help with evolution from pollution too ?)

But then it's IMHO nice that you can't completely control the biters by just killing the nearby nests, and neither have them expand nor evolve after that !
And since you can tweak those settings, this is even less of an issue... though again I want to stress that Default settings should be viable for first time Py players.

----

BTW - DarkyPupu, "most difficult pollution settings" would be in latest 0.17 :
- only sand & water
- no trees
- 111 times (!!!) faster evolution from pollution
- 1/10 pollution absorption from those desert & water tiles
- 10x more biters generated from the same amount of pollution
(- Pollution propagating 12.5 times more in nearby chunks ? Or maybe 2 times less, not sure which one is harder...)

How would you even manage a game like that ?!?

EDIT : oh, my bad,

When i was talking about difficult settings, it was purely about "pollution absoption per kill / per tree / per ground etc."

So, "only" :
- 1/10 pollution absorption from trees & tiles
- 10x more biters generated from the same amount of pollution
- trees damaged starting at 0 pollution
- trees absorbing 0 pollution per "leaf loss stage"
(So, since the "dead" trees that have lost all their leaves absorb 0 pollution - unlike trees that have started out dead/dry - this is like having no trees at all where pollution absorption is concerned ?)
What did you set your diffusion pollution ratio to ?

Still, How do you manage this ?!

[pyanodon]

well... for all this time the py suite was always considered a mod pack for advanced players. Newcomers can always play less complex suites we all known already or a combination of them. Someone who wanna try my mods at first and with bitters will sure be scared out.

Also, that suite ISNT MADE TO BE PLAYED WITH BITTERS. Maybe in the future if my balls resist.

Another thing people are forgeting is my mods are modular. You can tone down the difficulty by NOT playing with the full suite. pyAL will requiere almost all py mods, and if you play the full suite, things will be even more complex, a master level of madness. Same happened when i launched pyHT, its optional and will make the game super complex, specially the electronic part. Now its time to the organic part get their complexity. Its not a begginer add on, if youre starting py mods now, play with pycp, pyindustry, pyfe only..maybe phph if you want.. but leave pyRO, pyHT and pyAL for eventual raise of complexity.

Of course, some stuff will be balanced and it is being now, but the red science is that way and if you think red is hard, wait until blue or purple hehehe. All pyAl buildings absorbs pollution and the whole mod is a huge, massive positive loop, so, its intended to start very harsh.

Otaku is showing the results of almost a year of dedication, process and concept aiming for what it was intended at first, py is hard.