Development and Discussion

[Black_Fire95]

Is there a way to make Logistics bots the old way without removing a mod or losing these new Angels Industries reworks? I don't like having to make Crawler Cargo Robot MK2 to make the first tire of logistics bots.

[evandy]

Supplement it with nitric acid from nitrogen from air separation. Nitric acid is the easiest acid to come by literally out of thin air (it requires some metal catalyst unless you want to do some massive blue algae farming, but that only consumes a tiny fraction of your ore).

Oh wow, thank you!

I missed that you can create Nitrogen Monoxide (the input to dioxide) from Green Metal catalysts too. And I do have blue algae.

Unfortunately I set up a large-ish Florite ore setup I don't need only for it to output extra Sodium Nitrate. I'll start using the method you described.

The addition of sodium nitrate is pretty new, actually... maybe 2 months back? Used to be you had to make Nitric acid on the side with catalysts exclusively.

[khalismur]

The "Automation" research costs 64 x (1x "Red Science Analyzer" + 2x "Basic Datacore") and I'm not able to complete it.

I have access to all Basic Technologies 1 and their labs, which can be researched in the "Tech Archive 2". However, I'm not finding a research building able to accept both "Red Science Analyzer" and "Basic Datacore" and thus can't research "Automation". None of the specialized laboratories nor the "Tech Archive" will accept "Basic Datacore" and the "Basic Laboratory" won't accept "Red Science Analyzer"...

What am I missing? I have completed a bob+angels game in the past and didn't encounter this issue.

[Zyrconia]

The "Automation" research costs 64 x (1x "Red Science Analyzer" + 2x "Basic Datacore") and I'm not able to complete it.

I have access to all Basic Technologies 1 and their labs, which can be researched in the "Tech Archive 2". However, I'm not finding a research building able to accept both "Red Science Analyzer" and "Basic Datacore" and thus can't research "Automation". None of the specialized laboratories nor the "Tech Archive" will accept "Basic Datacore" and the "Basic Laboratory" won't accept "Red Science Analyzer"...

What am I missing? I have completed a bob+angels game in the past and didn't encounter this issue.

You need a basic laboratory mk2. Keep both Mk1 and Mk2 around since they don't upgrade into each other regarding what they can research.

[khalismur]

The "Automation" research costs 64 x (1x "Red Science Analyzer" + 2x "Basic Datacore") and I'm not able to complete it.

I have access to all Basic Technologies 1 and their labs, which can be researched in the "Tech Archive 2". However, I'm not finding a research building able to accept both "Red Science Analyzer" and "Basic Datacore" and thus can't research "Automation". None of the specialized laboratories nor the "Tech Archive" will accept "Basic Datacore" and the "Basic Laboratory" won't accept "Red Science Analyzer"...

What am I missing? I have completed a bob+angels game in the past and didn't encounter this issue.

You need a basic laboratory mk2. Keep both Mk1 and Mk2 around since they don't upgrade into each other regarding what they can research.

I see it. So I have to craft and research all the basic "processing", "energy", "warfare", "enhancements" and "logistics" to unlock the laboratory to have electric assemblers....? Thanks for the help I see the way but I find that very weird. So much electricity use researching that just to have an electric assembler feels quite off.

Cheers

[lovely_santa]

So I'm experiencing a weird issue with transporting molten glass by train (and honestly I'm not sure if the issue lies within Angel's or Bob's).

1 - Only molten fluids are affected
I thought this was just an issue with molten glass but it was the only molten fluid I was transporting. tried it with a few others and same deal.
2 - My train only fills if I put it to manual. I've tried every auto condition, only manual makes it actually fill. When on auto, it will fill with 400 units, and then stop
3 - The first time I did this it just showed the train as 1 single tank (i, displayed 400k units when full). Now it shows each wagon separately
https://i.imgur.com/Suf17WT.jpg
4 - Destroying the train and rebuilding it didn't work
5 - Making a brand new train didn't work
6 - Destroying the whole station and all fluid didn't work
7 - The casters on the bottom making glass panes work fine
8 - Getting rid of the petrochem mod didn't work (but before i did that I tried the petrochem wagon, didn't work)

I should also add I'm not running the latest update of Angel's or Bob's because I don't want to reconfigure my factory to deal with RTGs that Bob's added for satellites this late in the game, but to troubleshoot I did update and the issue remained.
This was working perfectly fine when I first built it. I transported millions of units with no issues (there have been a bunch of updates to both Angel's and Bob's since then).

My best bet, with keeping the past updates in mind... Are the different fluids in the tanks for example, are they the same temperature? My guess would be they are a bit too cold, and when the train starts filling up, the tank is draining, so new hot fluid enters and the temperature can rise, when it bumps the temperature, the train stops filling? If this is the case, you should report this to the base game, as it is meant to equalize the temperature, so the fluid in the fluid wagon should rise as well, instead of stop filling. I did change the temperature on the smelting fluids to represent real life melting points, as requested on /r/factorio a while back.

So it seems like the issue has something to do with the default max temp of the game being 1000°C
Honktown has some input on a potential fix from within the mod:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=84303&p=493161#p493161

Upload your save file to our github and link that post. I can start writing that script to replace fluids so it uses their default temperature everywhere. However, without any answer of the devs, I wont drop the temperature below 1000° as it does work on maps that do not have this issue. I do however want to put a fix up such that all the fluid has the same temperature everywhere.

The "Automation" research costs 64 x (1x "Red Science Analyzer" + 2x "Basic Datacore") and I'm not able to complete it.

I have access to all Basic Technologies 1 and their labs, which can be researched in the "Tech Archive 2". However, I'm not finding a research building able to accept both "Red Science Analyzer" and "Basic Datacore" and thus can't research "Automation". None of the specialized laboratories nor the "Tech Archive" will accept "Basic Datacore" and the "Basic Laboratory" won't accept "Red Science Analyzer"...

What am I missing? I have completed a bob+angels game in the past and didn't encounter this issue.

You need a basic laboratory mk2. Keep both Mk1 and Mk2 around since they don't upgrade into each other regarding what they can research.

I see it. So I have to craft and research all the basic "processing", "energy", "warfare", "enhancements" and "logistics" to unlock the laboratory to have electric assemblers....? Thanks for the help I see the way but I find that very weird. So much electricity use researching that just to have an electric assembler feels quite off.

Cheers

It should be the final handcraft. After that you're out of the grey analyzer area, which is handcrafting part.

[Zyrconia]

Today hopefully I unlock modules at around the 100 hour mark. They are a bit hard to get, but probably because I'm doing it for the first time.

But I have a question: why are Factorian fish so bad? They produce a net 0.75 fish/minute. While all other fish like Levac produce 4.125/minute. They all unlock at the same time. And getting raw meet from all other fish gives 1 meet, while Factorian give only 50%. Yes, I know the rest have a negligible algae cost, which you get for free anyway.

And what is the purpose of fish petting? It has a net loss of fish. Fish breeding has a net gain. Is it a fish dump? It has no benefits that I can see. And they unlock at the same tech level.

Is it because you can't find more advanced fish in the starter are or?

But otherwise fish are really cool and the Fish tank graphics are great. Maybe a bit pixelated though. They could be rendered at double the resolution.

Edit: nope, you can 100% find them in the starter area...

[Tommo175]

Epic amounts of crushed stone is a hallmark of Angel's. You'll probably have more then you could ever need so at some point you'll need to void it.

I kinda managed to run out of crushed stone entirely in BA and had a crushed stone bottleneck... because I never considered geode crushing.

Yeah I had a fantastic idea to make a massive brick making factory (240 basic furnaces) and within an hour of it running I had burned through 4million crushed stone. And then I also Encountered geode crushing....

[lovely_santa]

Today hopefully I unlock modules at around the 100 hour mark. They are a bit hard to get, but probably because I'm doing it for the first time.

But I have a question: why are Factorian fish so bad? They produce a net 0.75 fish/minute. While all other fish like Levac produce 4.125/minute. They all unlock at the same time. And getting raw meet from all other fish gives 1 meet, while Factorian give only 50%. Yes, I know the rest have a negligible algae cost, which you get for free anyway.

And what is the purpose of fish petting? It has a net loss of fish. Fish breeding has a net gain. Is it a fish dump? It has no benefits that I can see. And they unlock at the same tech level.

Is it because you can't find more advanced fish in the starter are or?

But otherwise fish are really cool and the Fish tank graphics are great. Maybe a bit pixelated though. They could be rendered at double the resolution.

Edit: nope, you can 100% find them in the starter area...

Originally you only had the recipes for the angel fishes, so the base game fish (renamed to factorian fish) had no recipes what so ever. So I just added them in to have some recipes. Due to other mods maybe doing something with the factorian fish, maybe a way to duplicate them for more healing during fights, I decided to nerf them, so you would use the angels fishes instead, as it was intended in the first place.

The only two things you can do with fish is creating polluted fish water and creating meat from fishes. The only reason you would make meat from them is "in case you run out of meat". However the primary use of fishes is to create polluted fish water. Similar to biters and puffers, you have 2 recipes, a breeding recipe to create more, and just "petting" as in let them live till they die a natural death, and creating more polluted fish water for you. The combination of breeding and petting will keep you at a steady amount of fish, without having chests full of fish, or running out of fish in the end. In short: it's a small loop to create mainly polluted fish water, and some meat 'just in case'.

Epic amounts of crushed stone is a hallmark of Angel's. You'll probably have more then you could ever need so at some point you'll need to void it.

I kinda managed to run out of crushed stone entirely in BA and had a crushed stone bottleneck... because I never considered geode crushing.

Yeah I had a fantastic idea to make a massive brick making factory (240 basic furnaces) and within an hour of it running I had burned through 4million crushed stone. And then I also Encountered geode crushing....

I mentioned it numerous times already, you'll get a lot of stone early game, but you'll use it all up midgame, to the point where you'll need to add for example geode washing as extra source of stone. You also get a lot of slag from making oxygen from electrolyzers, however, when you can, move it over to air filtration as that only produces a byproduct nitrogen (similar to the hydrogen), without producing slag. I think seablock is playing a big part in this, as there, the slag output is crucial for progression, which is not the case in Angels/BobAngels.

[brysamo]

So I'm experiencing a weird issue with transporting molten glass by train (and honestly I'm not sure if the issue lies within Angel's or Bob's).

1 - Only molten fluids are affected
I thought this was just an issue with molten glass but it was the only molten fluid I was transporting. tried it with a few others and same deal.
2 - My train only fills if I put it to manual. I've tried every auto condition, only manual makes it actually fill. When on auto, it will fill with 400 units, and then stop
3 - The first time I did this it just showed the train as 1 single tank (i, displayed 400k units when full). Now it shows each wagon separately
https://i.imgur.com/Suf17WT.jpg
4 - Destroying the train and rebuilding it didn't work
5 - Making a brand new train didn't work
6 - Destroying the whole station and all fluid didn't work
7 - The casters on the bottom making glass panes work fine
8 - Getting rid of the petrochem mod didn't work (but before i did that I tried the petrochem wagon, didn't work)

I should also add I'm not running the latest update of Angel's or Bob's because I don't want to reconfigure my factory to deal with RTGs that Bob's added for satellites this late in the game, but to troubleshoot I did update and the issue remained.
This was working perfectly fine when I first built it. I transported millions of units with no issues (there have been a bunch of updates to both Angel's and Bob's since then).

My best bet, with keeping the past updates in mind... Are the different fluids in the tanks for example, are they the same temperature? My guess would be they are a bit too cold, and when the train starts filling up, the tank is draining, so new hot fluid enters and the temperature can rise, when it bumps the temperature, the train stops filling? If this is the case, you should report this to the base game, as it is meant to equalize the temperature, so the fluid in the fluid wagon should rise as well, instead of stop filling. I did change the temperature on the smelting fluids to represent real life melting points, as requested on /r/factorio a while back.

So it seems like the issue has something to do with the default max temp of the game being 1000°C
Honktown has some input on a potential fix from within the mod:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=84303&p=493161#p493161

Upload your save file to our github and link that post. I can start writing that script to replace fluids so it uses their default temperature everywhere. However, without any answer of the devs, I wont drop the temperature below 1000° as it does work on maps that do not have this issue. I do however want to put a fix up such that all the fluid has the same temperature everywhere.

where on the github?

[lovely_santa]

...

where on the github?

Create a new issue our the Angel mods github. The link to github can always be found inside the mod (through the mod portal or ingame).

[Zyrconia]

OK, unless I did a mistake first time using Hellmod, getting wire from wire coil is significantly more efficient, both resource and power wise.

There is always something new to build...

silver coil.png (28.95 KiB) Viewed 6075 times

[MEOWMI]

It breaks the flow of the game a bit that I'm able to unlock facilities and recipes without having unlocked prerequisites for using them. For example, steel smelting which requires oxygen is researchable without having researched electrolysis to get the oxygen. Similarly, the crop processing plant requires electronic circuits which are not a prerequisite of researching it (I only have basic circuit boards unlocked and have no idea what techs even unlock the more advanced version.)

Vanilla Factorio always avoids this and it makes playing the game a lot more pleasant when you don't have to guess what you're missing or check everything manually in advance. Something to bear in mind perhaps. It's especially problematic with so much increased tech tree complexity.

(I'm playing with most of Bob's & Angel's mods, only the ones by the official authors. The two above examples were listed as part of Angel's mods.)

[BlueMarkers]

Will there ever be an option in bio processing to turn off the requirement for the biter chain to progress down the modules and ultimately the rest of the science chain (similar to how you can turn off the "components" piece)? I mentioned it before here when I first noticed it: viewtopic.php?f=185&t=19652&p=482341#p482341

While I like 90% of what comes with Angels, one of the things I don't feel fits in well has been certain parts of the bio piece, specifically the biter chain. For most, if not all other chains, there are 10 different ways to accomplish the same output, each one more complicated (and efficient) than the last, with it's own drawbacks. I believe that's what makes Angel's great, that you can choose to do direct ore smelting, or combo sorting, or whatever fits your current build...but you're never forced to go down a chain you don't need to.

The biter chain is an extremely complex chain with no way around it, that comes up very suddenly (you're not gradually building it at the same time as every other chain). I understand that it get's easier once you get the queen set up, or something to that nature, but I'm not really looking to RNG just to get the "easy" loop otherwise I could just console spawn a queen and keep building my base.

What I would love to see is a less efficient approach to building modules, with the biter/bio chain supplementing that approach with an alternate, significantly more complex, but ultimately much more efficient process. I feel this is how bio-plastics and bio-resins have been implemented and I think that's a great feature because it gives a second means of getting something like plastic that can supplement your base if you don't want to build out your petrochem setup yet.

Being stuck into going down the biter chain has been really discouraging for me and has not really been the fun "building" experience that Factorio and Angels usually gives. It seems like just adding complexity for the sake of making things more complex.

[KiwiHawk]

Will there ever be an option in bio processing to turn off the requirement for the biter chain to progress down the modules and ultimately the rest of the science chain (similar to how you can turn off the "components" piece)? I mentioned it before here when I first noticed it: viewtopic.php?f=185&t=19652&p=482341#p482341

While I like 90% of what comes with Angels, one of the things I don't feel fits in well has been certain parts of the bio piece, specifically the biter chain. For most, if not all other chains, there are 10 different ways to accomplish the same output, each one more complicated (and efficient) than the last, with it's own drawbacks. I believe that's what makes Angel's great, that you can choose to do direct ore smelting, or combo sorting, or whatever fits your current build...but you're never forced to go down a chain you don't need to.

The biter chain is an extremely complex chain with no way around it, that comes up very suddenly (you're not gradually building it at the same time as every other chain). I understand that it get's easier once you get the queen set up, or something to that nature, but I'm not really looking to RNG just to get the "easy" loop otherwise I could just console spawn a queen and keep building my base.

What I would love to see is a less efficient approach to building modules, with the biter/bio chain supplementing that approach with an alternate, significantly more complex, but ultimately much more efficient process. I feel this is how bio-plastics and bio-resins have been implemented and I think that's a great feature because it gives a second means of getting something like plastic that can supplement your base if you don't want to build out your petrochem setup yet.

Being stuck into going down the biter chain has been really discouraging for me and has not really been the fun "building" experience that Factorio and Angels usually gives. It seems like just adding complexity for the sake of making things more complex.

This whole chain is being reviewed. Check out the discord if you want to read / contribute to the discussion. https://discord.gg/ff5p6KE

[blahfasel2000]

The biter chain is an extremely complex chain with no way around it, that comes up very suddenly (you're not gradually building it at the same time as every other chain). I understand that it get's easier once you get the queen set up, or something to that nature, but I'm not really looking to RNG just to get the "easy" loop otherwise I could just console spawn a queen and keep building my base.

For what it's worth, I've had good success just making a small mostly hand fed ad-hoc build for the "eggsperiments" to make about 400 biter eggs, then use them to kickstart the queen breeding cycle. 400 eggs is usually enough to get a handful of queens from hatching unless you are very unlucky with the RNG. Once you have a few queens, the cycle can continue slowly bootstrapping itself. The ad hoc build can then be reused for the first batch of medium and big biter eggs, you just have to add some crystal dust to powder milling for the crystal enhancer needed by those. Methane and chlorine (for the chloromethane) are usually easy to find somewhere in your factory already where you can siphon of a few bottles (about 50 or so of each will do) with a quickly placed temporary barreling pump.

[lovely_santa]

The biter chain is an extremely complex chain with no way around it, that comes up very suddenly (you're not gradually building it at the same time as every other chain). I understand that it get's easier once you get the queen set up, or something to that nature, but I'm not really looking to RNG just to get the "easy" loop otherwise I could just console spawn a queen and keep building my base.

For what it's worth, I've had good success just making a small mostly hand fed ad-hoc build for the "eggsperiments" to make about 400 biter eggs, then use them to kickstart the queen breeding cycle. 400 eggs is usually enough to get a handful of queens from hatching unless you are very unlucky with the RNG. Once you have a few queens, the cycle can continue slowly bootstrapping itself. The ad hoc build can then be reused for the first batch of medium and big biter eggs, you just have to add some crystal dust to powder milling for the crystal enhancer needed by those. Methane and chlorine (for the chloromethane) are usually easy to find somewhere in your factory already where you can siphon of a few bottles (about 50 or so of each will do) with a quickly placed temporary barreling pump.

The idea behind the rework is not to alter existing recipes, but rather add early game variants to them. When you want to start with any crystals (usualy crystal splinters), you'll have to setup some farming (for pulp), fish (for fish water), puffers (for eggs) and biters (for crystals), which is quite a lot to take in all at once.

I've added lower yielding versions to have some crystal exclusively from fish and and puffers, to make the ramp up smaller:

1. First you setup your fish water production, at green science, and have some chance of getting crystal splinters out of it, which you can use making some first tier modules with (more if you play with bobs, but let's assume angels in this conversation, but it also applies to bobs).
2. The following setup (also at green science) includes the alien processing of the fish water, which does require alien bacteria (which has received some bugfixes), to create crystal seeds to stimulate the growth of the crystal splinters from the fish water.
3. At green science you can start breeding puffers already, but only at blue science you unlocked lubricant, creating access to the powderizer, which is used to convert the egg shells you get from hatching puffers into egg shell seeds. Using these stronger seeds, you can start crystallizing for shards
4. With the powderizer, you also unlock the ability to create crystal powder, which is used in making the crystal enhancer. Similar to the crystal seed in green science, adding a crystal enhancer allows you to stimulate the growth of the crystal shards.

earlyCrystals.png (901.94 KiB) Viewed 5759 times

As I said before, these new recipes will not affect the existing recipes. Once you have your puffers up and running (you can do it at green science already), you can start producing small biters as well as alternative for the splinters, once you have the crystal seed unlocked. Similarly, once you have your crystal enhancer (blue science), you can start producing medium biters as alternative for shards. Don't underestimate the amount of polluted fish water you need with these crystallizing recipes!

This way you can build first a fish setup for crystal splinters, then focus on a puffer setup for crystal shards, and finally focus on (big) biters for full crystals.

You can follow the ideas on github, as well as me posting some updates in Angels discord.

What did I not mention here yet.. I am planning on introducing some sort of mixed puffer breeding to get guaranteed 1 type of egg instead of a mix of all eggs. This way the puffers become easier to build, rather than having to build all types at once. This will also help manage your eggs a bit better for your eggsperiments to get biters going. And another thing that I am not sure of, since you only need full crystals at purple science, I am still debating to lock those effectively behind purple (not the biters, only the crystal processing).

I also mentioned that there were some bugs in the alien bactera, as of now, this required perchloric acid, which is a bug. It is not meant to be locked behind chlorine processing 3 (blue science), but rather behind chlorine processing 1 (green science), with hydrochloric acid, which is the main ingredient in perchloric acid. This way alien bacteria should be easier to obtain, and more in line with the equivalent from farming as well.

[Zyrconia]

Will there ever be an option in bio processing to turn off the requirement for the biter chain to progress down the modules and ultimately the rest of the science chain (similar to how you can turn off the "components" piece)? I mentioned it before here when I first noticed it: viewtopic.php?f=185&t=19652&p=482341#p482341

While I like 90% of what comes with Angels, one of the things I don't feel fits in well has been certain parts of the bio piece, specifically the biter chain. For most, if not all other chains, there are 10 different ways to accomplish the same output, each one more complicated (and efficient) than the last, with it's own drawbacks. I believe that's what makes Angel's great, that you can choose to do direct ore smelting, or combo sorting, or whatever fits your current build...but you're never forced to go down a chain you don't need to.

The biter chain is an extremely complex chain with no way around it, that comes up very suddenly (you're not gradually building it at the same time as every other chain). I understand that it get's easier once you get the queen set up, or something to that nature, but I'm not really looking to RNG just to get the "easy" loop otherwise I could just console spawn a queen and keep building my base.

What I would love to see is a less efficient approach to building modules, with the biter/bio chain supplementing that approach with an alternate, significantly more complex, but ultimately much more efficient process. I feel this is how bio-plastics and bio-resins have been implemented and I think that's a great feature because it gives a second means of getting something like plastic that can supplement your base if you don't want to build out your petrochem setup yet.

Being stuck into going down the biter chain has been really discouraging for me and has not really been the fun "building" experience that Factorio and Angels usually gives. It seems like just adding complexity for the sake of making things more complex.

This whole chain is being reviewed. Check out the discord if you want to read / contribute to the discussion. https://discord.gg/ff5p6KE

I built most of the chain but did not manage to get a single module yet because I got side tracked and I'm taking a break since all the complexity got to me, so what I have to say is probably not too relevant, but the path is not that fixed.

Based on what lovely_santa said, you make fish to get polluted fish water. But so far I don't need or want it, I'm using fish to exclusively produce meat for my bitters. And bacteria from mushrooms.

Then I have an egg breeding setup for puffer eggs that works and has generous overflow which I'm converting to bitter eggs and then breeding and it somehow produces almost 8 crystals/minute without any queens. Could not be bothered, the queens go in a box for now. Once the box is full, I'll probably destroy it without using any queens.

And the setup is quite scalable. Unlike things that I don't like how are scaled, like early game paper or mid game hydro refining, this setup feels just about right in size for early game crystals.

Maybe it all changes once you go past tier 1 crystals...

But I do agree: the whole setup is way to complex. Here is a problem with Angel's mods: there are N ways to do everything? Fine! Most of your builds are temporary? Fine! But you can't have a mod set where literally everything, 100% of all is temporary. That means that you have never a single moment to breath, enjoy the game, scale up and have a functioning factory. It is a never-ending treadmill of constantly researching new stuff and replacing it.

You need at least once in a while to research something, find out that it has only a few requirements, be done with the build in 5 minutes and move on to reap the rewards. Put done one build of proper size, be satisfied forever. Scale it up in endgame.

But currently in Angel's with Industry you often research something that before you can use you need to research 10 more things and in order to build it, it has 10 requirements, all too convoluted.

Like that horrible mess that is currently the situation with engines...

What I'm saying is that I like the complexity, but now it went over board. Once in a while, you need to just scale up science, knock out a lengthy research and instantly an effortlessly reap the rewards of said research. Instead, it is always just the tip of the iceberg, a beginning of a hours long saga. Engines and bitters being two primary examples. Both too complex, both distracting you from what you actually want...

I have 20 things that I need to replace before I can even afford to spend 5 minutes to think about what to do with those queens and if they are worth it. So I'm taking my 8 crystals/minute and... well I don't know yet...

[blahfasel2000]

The idea behind the rework is not to alter existing recipes, but rather add early game variants to them. When you want to start with any crystals (usualy crystal splinters), you'll have to setup some farming (for pulp), fish (for fish water), puffers (for eggs) and biters (for crystals), which is quite a lot to take in all at once.

I think even with the early game improvements you are working on there's generally a distinct lack of incentive for starting any sort of module production at an early stage of the game. Angel's even compounds that IMO, because you can get efficiency improvements much easier by upgrading to better smelting recipes rather than going for low tier modules. And you need to upgrade/extend your ore sorting and smelting anyway to progress to the next science tiers, while modules don't really help you with progressing. At least with Bob's Electronics, Bob's Revamp mods enabled and Components/Tech Overhaul in Angel's Industries disabled (haven't played with the latter so far, so I don't know if it has any influence on this) the only module boards you will ever need to make for a rocket launch are 5 of each for a module lab and then 25 speed boards to research speed module 1 as a prerequisite for RCU. Unlike vanilla neither Utility Science nor RCU production need any sustained module production at all.

So once you do get into modules in late game, you often want to skip the lower tiers and use better modules from the start, and you don't want just a few but many so that you can module/beacon whole production lines. So in essence most people will probably still run into having to set up basically all at once. Your changes intended for early game might help players only interested in going up to rocket launch over that late game speed bump of having to do at least some minimal module research, but I don't think it would really help with easing players wanting to continue post rocket gradually into full on crystal production.

So I think just making early module production easier isn't really that much of an improvement, the main issue IMO is that all three of fish, puffer and biter petting/breeding basically only exist to support module and beacon production. Yeah, in theory you can use puffer puffing to replace some petrochem stuff, but the yields are so low compared to the size of the setups that it's not really viable in most cases unless you are really strapped for oil and/or gas (with maybe the exception of hydrazine for rocket fuel, but that's late game again), especially considering that at least right now without a way to specifically breed one type of puffer over time you accumulate loads of the other puffer types.

Farming OTOH has much more other uses, for example for most of my current game before switching to nuclear power the base ran on self contained binafran farming based power plants, and another setup based on elendilomone farming is currently making enriched fuel for my trains. In both cases the setup wasn't much bigger than an oil/gas/coal based one would have been, and in some ways they were even simpler (and with fewer byproducts). So when I came to actually start crystal production, I was already familiar with the farming part of it.

As a side note about farming, I find all the temperate plants noticeably less useful to farm than the swamp or desert plants, because of the soil requirement where swamp and desert only need mud or sand that you can get directly from washing. It's not really difficult to make the soil, but it makes the builds significantly bigger than the swamp/desert counterparts, and even though you can make the cycle self contained by composting some of the farm output, you need some compost from somewhere else to start it.

So in essence I think to ease players more gradually into it at least fish and puffers should have some other uses besides module production.

Puffers are almost there IMO, aside from a way to breed specific puffer types that you are already working on it probably just needs a boost to the puffing recipe outputs (and maybe some recipes for a few other gases by puffing different puffer types together?) to make them useful on their own. Personally I don't mind having to set up 20, 30, maybe 40 puffer refugiums (and the support machinery for them of course) to get a relatively decent output, but when I see that I'd need hundreds to meet my production goal where with petrochem I'd need maybe 20 buildings or so that immediately puts me off the plan (on that note, maybe also some higher tiers of the fish/puffer/biter related production buildings would help at least a little bit; farms have at least the temperate/swamp/desert upgrades available).

That leaves fish. Thinking about some historic industrial uses of fish maybe some way to extract something like fish oil from them that can then be turned into lubricant and other (liquid) oil related stuff? Somewhat similar to how you can process vegetable oil from farming. To differentiate it from vegetable oil you could make the outputs from fish oil leaning more towards base mineral oil, while vegetable oil keeps its higher proportion of fuel oil. Also, fish emulsion is an actual real life byproduct from extracting fish oil and is used (with some sulfuric acid added as a preservative) as an organic fertilizer, so having fertilizer as a byproduct could also be a thing to incentivise fish farming.

Thinking about it, the fish oil (and maybe fertilizer) thing combined with your low scale crystal production from polluted fish water could actually kill two birds with one stone. The oil/fertilizer production as something independent to incentivise players to get into fish farming relatively early independent of module production, and then when they look into what to do with the polluted fish water byproduct they get steered into early crystal/module production.

I also mentioned that there were some bugs in the alien bactera, as of now, this required perchloric acid, which is a bug. It is not meant to be locked behind chlorine processing 3 (blue science), but rather behind chlorine processing 1 (green science), with hydrochloric acid, which is the main ingredient in perchloric acid. This way alien bacteria should be easier to obtain, and more in line with the equivalent from farming as well.

Hydrochloric instead of perchloric acid makes it easier, but I still find the fish water -> spores -> bacteria route to complex (due to the calcium carbonate that's needed for nothing else) compared to doing mushredtato farming for both the bacteria and nutrient pulp. My view might be a bit skewed because I already had a central fertilizer production running when I started the crystal production so that I could just add a LTN train stop to bring in the fertilizer, however I'd say fertilizer has about the same complexity as calcium carbonate and it has much more other uses so it isn't just a one off single purpose build like the calcium carbonate.

[lovely_santa]

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So in essence I think to ease players more gradually into it at least fish and puffers should have some other uses besides module production.

Puffers are almost there IMO, aside from a way to breed specific puffer types that you are already working on it probably just needs a boost to the puffing recipe outputs (and maybe some recipes for a few other gases by puffing different puffer types together?) to make them useful on their own. Personally I don't mind having to set up 20, 30, maybe 40 puffer refugiums (and the support machinery for them of course) to get a relatively decent output, but when I see that I'd need hundreds to meet my production goal where with petrochem I'd need maybe 20 buildings or so that immediately puts me off the plan (on that note, maybe also some higher tiers of the fish/puffer/biter related production buildings would help at least a little bit; farms have at least the temperate/swamp/desert upgrades available).

First of all, increasing puffer recipe output, the idea is that you input 100 gas of one sort and get 200 of some other gas out instead. To make this consistent, I was thinking of gaseous puffers requiring for example 100 compressed air. For green science, this seems like a good balance already for throughput.

However, for higher technologies, some more complexted (mixed) puffing recipes might indeed be needed. I was thinking some petrochem specific recipes. Petrochem already has steam cracking recipes to convert naptha, fuel oil and base mineral oil into synthesis gas, which is quite a valuable gas. Puffers could be used as balancing for the natural gas derivatives? Could be a neat way to get an outcome where you have a closed loop system that purely produces 1 fluid, instead of mutiple that you have to balance yourself. (for those that like to play that way). Another suggestion was to have recipes to create advanced gasses towards plastic, so you don't have to setup most of petrochem at once. I'm open for suggestions for these gas conversions. (ideas?)

Current thoughts:

• rancid + corrodent + ammonium chloride gas -> ???
• gaseous/blading + acidic + ??? -> acetone gas

I want to get 5 recipes, mixed puffer inputs, so i have 10 puffer inputs over the 5 recipes, so I want to use each puffer twice.

Another idea was to use the puffers as alternative way to process the waste waters. That way, you don't end up with all the excess products, for example the positive sulfur chain. Instead, it would give some usefull products for later use, in for example petrochem

That leaves fish. Thinking about some historic industrial uses of fish maybe some way to extract something like fish oil from them that can then be turned into lubricant and other (liquid) oil related stuff? Somewhat similar to how you can process vegetable oil from farming. To differentiate it from vegetable oil you could make the outputs from fish oil leaning more towards base mineral oil, while vegetable oil keeps its higher proportion of fuel oil. Also, fish emulsion is an actual real life byproduct from extracting fish oil and is used (with some sulfuric acid added as a preservative) as an organic fertilizer, so having fertilizer as a byproduct could also be a thing to incentivise fish farming.

Thinking about it, the fish oil (and maybe fertilizer) thing combined with your low scale crystal production from polluted fish water could actually kill two birds with one stone. The oil/fertilizer production as something independent to incentivise players to get into fish farming relatively early independent of module production, and then when they look into what to do with the polluted fish water byproduct they get steered into early crystal/module production.

I like that idea. We also discussed this in discord a bit. So keep the butchering recipes for meat, and have alternative recipes inside a bio processor to extract fish oil and some byproduct (fish pulp). Fish pulp can be converted with an organic recipe to fertilizer, or make nutrient pulp from it, while the fish oil can be converted to fuel oil + mineral oil, but with a high mineral oil output. Fuel oil is not so logical, we where thinking something towards rubber, as that is an irl use case, maybe methane in very small amounts. As compensation, we would increase the consumption of lubricant in coolant.

The nutrient pulp would be balanced that breeding fish only would create a positive loop of nutrient pulp, while combining it with petting, it would be net negative.

I also mentioned that there were some bugs in the alien bactera, as of now, this required perchloric acid, which is a bug. It is not meant to be locked behind chlorine processing 3 (blue science), but rather behind chlorine processing 1 (green science), with hydrochloric acid, which is the main ingredient in perchloric acid. This way alien bacteria should be easier to obtain, and more in line with the equivalent from farming as well.

Hydrochloric instead of perchloric acid makes it easier, but I still find the fish water -> spores -> bacteria route to complex (due to the calcium carbonate that's needed for nothing else) compared to doing mushredtato farming for both the bacteria and nutrient pulp. My view might be a bit skewed because I already had a central fertilizer production running when I started the crystal production so that I could just add a LTN train stop to bring in the fertilizer, however I'd say fertilizer has about the same complexity as calcium carbonate and it has much more other uses so it isn't just a one off single purpose build like the calcium carbonate.

I am still thinking about adding a mk2 recipe, that uses perchloric acid instead of hydrochloric acid and gives more bacteria out of it, so it becomes more viable versus farming.

On the other hand, cleaning fish water should maybe give chloric waste water instead of sulfuric waste water, but i'm not sure yet...