Development and Discussion

[shuzen]

That's awesome news! Thanks a lot to Angel and all you other guys for creating and updating the mods!

[Molay]

Is there a place to follow the current progress or read weekly updates or some such?

[lovely_santa]

Is there a place to follow the current progress or read weekly updates or some such?

You can follow our progress on github, especialy the 0.18 update branch. Our main to-do list are in the projects.
Our current goal is to get a functional release up by the end of the weekend (no promisses)

[Molay]

Thanks for the update Santa! Interesting new ideas about the biter bodies. There could be lots of potential for it.

I'll actually dive into it a little and perhaps you like some ideas.

- biters sometimes leave behind harvestable corpse (some are just too shot up/burned/mutilated for use; 50% chance. Advanced feature: % chance based on weapon getting kill. Example: bullet 70%, laser 50% , fire 30%, explosion 20% and new bio weapon 0%)

- Ability to set up roboports to automatically mark bodies for harvest (deconstruct). Similar to the mod that auto-designates trees to be chopped perhaps? Preferable to teleport to chest; looks cooler?

- corpse left varies on biter size. I suggest furnace-type process to cut it up, so a single building can process all types, but yields vary. Early biters give little, later biters more.

- results of processing: (example numbers)
Biters:
- yellow: 2 meat
- red: 4 meat, 1 carapace fragment
- blue: 8 meat, 3 carapace fragment, 1 organ piece
- green: 12 meat, 5 carapace fragment, 3 organ piece
Spitters: same amount, but drop acid glands in stead of carapace fragment

Uses:
Meat can get turned into a bio sludge. The sludge can be used in farming as a growth agent. Separate tech unlocks adding this sludge to existing recipes for increased yield
and/or
Separate tech unlocks simplified farming, only requiring sludge but no other inputs other than seeds. Same or lower yield (ease of use being the target)

Organ pieces can go into a grinder. Result in alien DNA.

DNA can be used to create meat industrially in meat growth labs. It's consumed on use. Also requires bio sludge (about 30% of meat sludge yield, so it generates meat essentially, to avoid surplus) and green algae perhaps? Blue algae? Both? Could use CO or CO2 + hydrogen gas instead of algae.

DNA can be used to make alien genome tokens. Required to progress in this particular branch of science. Similar to bio.

Carapace fragments can be ground into a powder. It's essentially a flux and could be used in a steel recipe. Good way to get rid of it. Efficient steel recipe.

Carapace powder could also be used as an additional fertiliser for plants, along with the bio sludge, increasing yield further.

Surplus could go into an advanced bio sludge recipe.

Acid glands can be extracted into some compound. That compound could be used to supplement the creation of newly proposed bio weaponry. It could also be used to create medkits, a more potent version of the mighty fish. Surplus could be turned into acid gas or some other acid.

Suggestion: the ultimate goal: DNA and bio sludge could be used to craft genetically modified friendly biter nests. Those nests would take an input of bio sludge and another ingredient to spawn friendly biters.

Each nest could spawn a maximum of say 10 live biters, before it stops spawning (until existing biter dies).

You would spawn genetically modified biters based on input in your nests (furnace type reaction for simplicity?)

Biter types:
Bio sludge + a finely ground metal dust (which would make up armor/claws/teeth - dust made in a metal grinder facility)
Iron dust (equivalent to yellow biters)
Cobalt? dust (red)
Titanium dust (blue)
Tungsten (green)
Optional: make the metal dust required to be mixed with carapace dust to create a compound.
Spitter types require acid gland compounds to be mixed with dust beforehand, creating an iron compound/cobalt compound/etc. To limit spitter quantity. They also need bio sludge. Could use less sturdy ores here for variety (copper, silver, gold, platinum?)

The biters would stick close to their nests and defend the vicinity by default.

The player can craft pheromone bags from DNA compounds. If thrown, will attract all friendly biters in a large area to it's location.

Lategame: pheromone rocket heads. Player can craft pheromone rockets and a small tactical missile silo. Very long range. Can select where to fire with a control item (similar to artillery manual targeting). The rockets attract all friendly biters to its detonation. Ideal use: 1 rocket to group all biters, another one to send them to attack.

Lategame: pheromone dispenser. 1x1 power armor component. Makes 4 biters follow you. If you have less than max following you, close-up biters start following you until max is reached. Stackable. Bonus: can be turned on/off with the gui like personal roboport. Not sure what to do when turning off with biters following. If they have a reference of their home nest they could return perhaps?

To add on to the tactical missile silo: I'd think regular tactical missiles as well as nuclear tac missiles could be added. Behaving like artillery turrets, but very long range at the cost of significantly more expensive ammunition. Could also be limited to manual targeting.

Anyway, not sure you like any of that, or how feasible it is. But breeding biters is a stupendously cool idea in my opinion.

[Molay]

Addendum: upon further thought, I see one problem. Meat is only used in farming and making biters. If the player doesn't do any of that, could result in large stockpiles or piles of bodies.

Possible solutions:
- corpses decay over time and disappear at some point. Unless I'm not seeing a clever way, this seems very computationally intensive to keep track of.

- meat can be transformed into some usable resources. High pressure chambers could intake meat and hydrogen to create crude oil. Long crafting time.
Or
High pressure chambers could intake meat and purified water to create crude oil and oxygen. Long crafting time.
Or
Some input of meat + X creates natural gas. Not sure what would make sense here.

The other drops can already be converted to standard type resources.

This should prevent the bodies becoming useless if the play style does not involve farming.

[Dregre]

Some input of meat + X creates natural gas. Not sure what would make sense here.

Quick idea based on the rough results of meat decomposition(too many variables for a single formula) allow it to decompose into fertiliser, ammonia, carbon dioxide and/or methane. Based largely on this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_ ... egradation

This would allow for an alternate source of fertiliser and ammonia, though in relatively low quantities and with a long production cycle.

[BlueTemplar]

"Biter bodies" ?
Are you talking about expanding the current blue science "biter raising" system?

[lovely_santa]

"Biter bodies" ?
Are you talking about expanding the current blue science "biter raising" system?

The idea is to not let biter drop artifacts on the ground, as they consume quite a bit of UPS over time (as they start to really pile up). The idea is to have biter corpses, similar to character corpses that have a lifetime, and such they vanish if you do not collect them.

From the collection, a new chain would be required to process the bodies to obtain the artifacts, and also a rework, such that the artifacts are required for the gameplay, including some alternative for those who like to play without biters. It's just a rough idea that I've put up on the idea board, and explicitly stated that it will NOT make it into the initial release, as this is only in the thinking stage so far.

There are quite a few concerns as of now, like the automation of the collection of the bodies (without requiring construction bots to go in the unknown and die trying to collect the bodies). I quite like the (extended) post Molay wrote about some process. I already have a few notes on paper, and I'll read it in detail, but first I am focusing on the actual things that still have to be done for the 0.18 release before thinking about new content. (Hence why I didn't reply to it yet either...)

That mensioned, this idea would tie in with bio industries, which I would like to first get some feedback from since it still might require some balancing to figure the details/ratios out.

[BlueTemplar]

Was there any re-balancing of "biter raising" in 0.17? (If some was needed.)
Last I checked (in 0.16) it was strictly worse than crystal dust from geodes, but that might have been just Sea Block's balance ?

Also, these artifacts you are talking about are Bob's (?) - any love given to Bob-free Angel for 0.18 ?

I messed a bit with those new component blocks, labs, science cores etc. myself :
(Also featuring some other mods like by TheSAguy's Bio Industries and Deadlock's Awesome Burner Lamps... and the Alien Artifacts are from Natural Evolution Enemies rather than Bob - this is a completely Bob-free game !)

angels_red_science.jpg (4.88 MiB) Viewed 7380 times

[lovely_santa]

Was there any re-balancing of "biter raising" in 0.17? (If some was needed.)
Last I checked (in 0.16) it was strictly worse than crystal dust from geodes, but that might have been just Sea Block's balance ?

What do you exactly mean by "biter raising"? The biter keeping from bio? You'll have to do it in 0.18 no matter what...

Also, these artifacts you are talking about are Bob's (?) - any love given to Bob-free Angel for 0.18 ?

Yes! I am not talking about a bob game, they are currently disabled, but angel also has (the same) artifacts and processes for them. They do however need some deeper work and extension as they are just a loose end as of now.

I messed a bit with those new component blocks, labs, science cores etc. myself :
(Also featuring some other mods like by TheSAguy's Bio Industries and Deadlock's Awesome Burner Lamps... and the Alien Artifacts are from Natural Evolution Enemies rather than Bob - this is a completely Bob-free game !)
angels_red_science.jpg

Pez is doing work on the components, those are heavily WIP, but they should work for sure in a pure angel game. We didn't forget about bob-free!

[Molay]

I figured you'd be busy with other things, but I noticed you added a link to my post so I knew it didn't go unnoticed. I genuinely liked the idea so I thought I'd just drop my thoughts here, in case they might contain something interesting

I'm happy to see the regular progress on github now, though I think it will take a while longer than this weekend, eh? Edit: nevermind looks like we're getting real close! Exciting!

Either way, thank you guys for picking up the torch and polishing Angel's for the new world of .18. I see quite a few interesting things coming soon. Liquid robots, the work on bio, new weaponry, fixes (I saw that thorium issue got addressed!). Can't wait to give it a shot. Bio in particular. Never went deep into it before, though now I'm very eager to see where it's at!

[danyax]

Rocket booster fuel looks incomplete. It has no uses except as fuel, but it does not fit logically into fuel quality progression.

Solid fuel (acceleration 120%, level 2 science) -> Enriched fuel block (150%, level 3 science) -> Rocket fuel (180%, level 4 science) -> Nuclear fuel (200%, level 5 science)

Rocket booster is just 2 level science but has 180% acceleration. Is this intentional or just oversight/WIP?

[danyax]

A balancing proposal - increase size of big chest to 2.5 size of iron chest, i.e. 80 slots. This would match better with trains wagon progression in bob mods and size/space ratio between 1x1 and 2x2 chests. Bobs wagon sizes are multiple of 40 slots.

Would you consider adding progression on 2x2 chests same in the way they as they implemented in Bobs? Like iron->steel->bronze->titanium?

Another strange thing is difference between angels wagon and robotic wagon. They are unlocked by same tech, but robotic version is twice bigger having very easy ingredients. I feel that getting 2x advantage should be not so easy.

All logistic storages (chest, silo, warehouse) have no logistic filter.

[lovely_santa]

Rocket booster fuel looks incomplete. It has no uses except as fuel, but it does not fit logically into fuel quality progression.

Solid fuel (acceleration 120%, level 2 science) -> Enriched fuel block (150%, level 3 science) -> Rocket fuel (180%, level 4 science) -> Nuclear fuel (200%, level 5 science)

Rocket booster is just 2 level science but has 180% acceleration. Is this intentional or just oversight/WIP?

Rocket boosters are indeed a dead end (as of now), but I plan on giving them a purpose again (not in the initial 0.18 release).

I've left them untouched (for now), they do indeed give a bigger acceleration boost (180% indeed), and on top of that, it also increases the top speed to 115% (similar to rocket fuel, again). However, the fuel value is only 10 MJ (compared to 50 MJ for enriched and 100 MJ for rocket fuel). So you'll need a lot more (5x or 10x) fuel to use them to travel the same distance. So they're more expensive in that manner than 'just rocket fuel'. They're however great for use on smaller distances.

A balancing proposal - increase size of big chest to 2.5 size of iron chest, i.e. 80 slots. This would match better with trains wagon progression in bob mods and size/space ratio between 1x1 and 2x2 chests. Bobs wagon sizes are multiple of 40 slots.

Would you consider adding progression on 2x2 chests same in the way they as they implemented in Bobs? Like iron->steel->bronze->titanium?

Big chests don't really fit into the (logistics) chest line of bobs chests, as they are unlocked quite a bit (2 tech tiers) earlier than the other logistics chests. If you use 2x2 tiles of regular chests, you'll be able to hold a lot more than just one big chest. It's just an early game variant for the logistics chests (hence why there is only 1 tier), and can help you out in some specific situations. For example directly unloading train -> chest -> assembler -> big chest -> loading train or as another example when you want to share 1 logic chest with 2 assemblers next to each other (quite useful with the electronic assemblers of bob as well).

Another strange thing is difference between angels wagon and robotic wagon. They are unlocked by same tech, but robotic version is twice bigger having very easy ingredients. I feel that getting 2x advantage should be not so easy.

The ingredients of the add-on's and (a lot of) the buildings really need a tweak, which won't make it into the initial release of 0.18. However there was a mistake with the vehicle equipment of bobs (which is fixed), now robots are only able to be inserted into the robot wagon and not in the regular wagon.

I've also balanced the weights out now, so the robot wagon weights twice the amount of the regular wagon, so making a train with 1 robot or 2 regular wagons will act similar. Same happened to the smelting train. These weights are inline with bob trains as well, so they're also balanced when playing with bob mods.

All logistic storages (chest, silo, warehouse) have no logistic filter.

In a previous post I already fixed the ore silo. The warehouse already had one and I've added it to the big chest now as well.

[Molay]

I was wondering if that's a good place to ask this, as I'm not sure if Angel's or Bob's sets those recipes.

Bob's adds an option for a tier 0 belt level. Part of tier 0 needs wood and stone (I think the underground?). Now without greenhouses from Bob's, there's no easy early wood; arboretums are a bit complex and come a while later.

Algae allows us to get circuits going without needing wood, but we can't automate belt production without wood. Might it be possible to tweak the recipe to use some kind of wooden board or something that can be made via algae if Angel's is active? This would not be an issue with Bob's greenhouses of course; but Angel's is imo best played without those. It just pushes proper logistics automation too far back the tech tree due to arboretums complexity and prerequisites.

It used to be that wood was transformed into wooden boards (name?) some versions ago. This would be an acceptable substitute, if those could be made from algae directly (and from wood too of course, as was the case back then).

[lovely_santa]

I was wondering if that's a good place to ask this, as I'm not sure if Angel's or Bob's sets those recipes.

Bob's adds an option for a tier 0 belt level. Part of tier 0 needs wood and stone (I think the underground?). Now without greenhouses from Bob's, there's no easy early wood; arboretums are a bit complex and come a while later.

Algae allows us to get circuits going without needing wood, but we can't automate belt production without wood. Might it be possible to tweak the recipe to use some kind of wooden board or something that can be made via algae if Angel's is active? This would not be an issue with Bob's greenhouses of course; but Angel's is imo best played without those. It just pushes proper logistics automation too far back the tech tree due to arboretums complexity and prerequisites.

It used to be that wood was transformed into wooden boards (name?) some versions ago. This would be an acceptable substitute, if those could be made from algae directly (and from wood too of course, as was the case back then).

It is for sure a good place to ask this question, and yes, the tier 0 belts require wood, and I understand the reasoning behind your request. I guess the reason you don't want to play with greenhouses is because the wood is too easy to get compared to angel? In the 0.18 release I've modified greenhouses a bit so they integrate in the angels playthrough. I'm sure I'll get some feedback on that (from anyone that is playing with greenhouses).

Feel free to tell me any other reason why you don't want to use bob greenhouses, and try to play with the greenhouses in 0.18 (at least the start), and give me some feedback about how the greenhouses are integrated? If not, I can always add in some other way of making tier 0 belts (or wood)...

[Molay]

After we got arboretums, greenhouses just seemed too simple and overpowered in comparison; due to arboretums being added, I understood that they were meant to replace the simple greenhouses with a more involved process, as that's what Angel's does best lol.

So yes, greenhouses are basically too powerful for my taste. Automating wood is awesome, but they went quite beyond that. They just churned out tons of wood at basically no cost - up to the point of being the fuel source of the base. I could only prevent myself from using them by disabling them, leaving a bit of a gap for early wood automation. They did feel too out of place.

I'll definitely try them if they're properly integrated and made to feel a bit more like Angel's. But if they're meant to be used alongside Angel's, then what's the point of arboretums? Unless I'm missing something they're just a more complex wood source limited by exploration (I really don't enjoy scouring the map for trees btw, but I take it over a too powerful greenhouse). Are the trees for arboretums now primarily meant for other bio products - resin and such?

As to greenhouses, I'd think they should either be power negative, neutral, or marginally positive at best. They could just do too much. If their purpose was limited to making wood, and not also fueling the whole base on the side, that might be a good place to be at imo. They could still serve as a means to make coal (charcoal in furnace) leading to carbon and such in the process (for recipes) if the growing process prevented them from netting a large amount of power.

I'll be giving you more feedback once the new version is out! And not to pester you, but you got a better idea for release now? I'm itching to get a good long Angel's game going

P.S.: the new version still works with RSO on release, right? Or will orzelek need to make changes to account for the thorium fix? Would be a shame if RSO had to update before we can properly start

Thanks Santa!

Edit: I did notice planned changes to science. Will mexmer's science cost tweaker still work? Or better yet, will it be fully integrated and become the standard way?

[lovely_santa]

After we got arboretums, greenhouses just seemed too simple and overpowered in comparison; due to arboretums being added, I understood that they were meant to replace the simple greenhouses with a more involved process, as that's what Angel's does best lol.

So yes, greenhouses are basically too powerful for my taste. Automating wood is awesome, but they went quite beyond that. They just churned out tons of wood at basically no cost - up to the point of being the fuel source of the base. I could only prevent myself from using them by disabling them, leaving a bit of a gap for early wood automation. They did feel too out of place.

I'll definitely try them if they're properly integrated and made to feel a bit more like Angel's. But if they're meant to be used alongside Angel's, then what's the point of arboretums? Unless I'm missing something they're just a more complex wood source limited by exploration (I really don't enjoy scouring the map for trees btw, but I take it over a too powerful greenhouse). Are the trees for arboretums now primarily meant for other bio products - resin and such?

As to greenhouses, I'd think they should either be power negative, neutral, or marginally positive at best. They could just do too much. If their purpose was limited to making wood, and not also fueling the whole base on the side, that might be a good place to be at imo. They could still serve as a means to make coal (charcoal in furnace) leading to carbon and such in the process (for recipes) if the growing process prevented them from netting a large amount of power.

I'll be giving you more feedback once the new version is out! And not to pester you, but you got a better idea for release now? I'm itching to get a good long Angel's game going

Greenhouses are for sure not so OP in the new release, I can assure that.

P.S.: the new version still works with RSO on release, right? Or will orzelek need to make changes to account for the thorium fix? Would be a shame if RSO had to update before we can properly start

In the updated version, thorium is not an ore you mine, but an ore that you obtain through refining (similar as uranium).

Edit: I did notice planned changes to science. Will mexmer's science cost tweaker still work? Or better yet, will it be fully integrated and become the standard way?

That's fully up to mexmer, angel doesn't change anything in that process because angel has a (much in WIP) science overhaul himself (part of industries).

[brysamo]

Apologies if this already exists somewhere, but when the update for 0.18 s fully released is there going to be a summarized list of changes?
From browsing through this it seems that some recipe and ratio changes might be occurring. Is that correct? I'd hate to mess up my very late game map.

[Molay]

Guess I'll try out Angel's science overhaul first then if that's now a thing! I wasn't expecting this much new content for an initial release. Figured at first it would just be fixes and updates. Quite exciting!