Development and Discussion

[lovely_santa]

Mostly yes, but there are a few cases where Angel's seems to throw things on one line or not inconsistently. And some other ones that are maybe a bit subjective but I think would improve things (electrolyser should go on water treatment, for instance, filters I think should go on the same line as filtration recipes generally, etc.)

I think petrochem is quite a mess, just because it's soo much together... A whole rework of the tab should be in order... Moving electrolysers to water treatment only takes care of 6 (or 7) recipes, and own't make much of an impact at all..

[Arch666Angel]

Most or some of it is a result of splitting stuff to several mods and making it modular. Making one package would make things easier to handle and streamline.
But in general yeah there are techs that are semi redundant depending on the config you are running, or in different orders as needed. Again it's pretty difficult to account for all possible cases and configurations. One package that's just there would make things easier.

[alercah]

It seems very weird to me that, while three of the five logistic network big chests don't require white circuits, the base game ones do. Perhaps that should be changed so that you can build the smaller chests once you get the tech, without needing to get white circuits running?

[lovely_santa]

It seems very weird to me that, while three of the five logistic network big chests don't require white circuits, the base game ones do. Perhaps that should be changed so that you can build the smaller chests once you get the tech, without needing to get white circuits running?

It has been reworked a bit so some chests unlock earlier than others. Hence why some of them have more advanced recipes than others. This should be fine as they have extended features as well. We're talking about the active provider and buffer chest in particular here.

[alercah]

I agree with respect to the big chests. I mean that perhaps the small chests (from the base game) should be modified similarly. As it is, it's better to use big chests even when you don't need the capacity because the circuit requirements are easier. Arguably logistic silos and warehouses should similarly require the lower tier circuits for the lower tier chests.

[valneq]

I agree with respect to the big chests. I mean that perhaps the small chests (from the base game) should be modified similarly. As it is, it's better to use big chests even when you don't need the capacity because the circuit requirements are easier. Arguably logistic silos and warehouses should similarly require the lower tier circuits for the lower tier chests.

The smaller chests have higher storage per tile and are easier to fit into more compact designs, so the small logistic storage chests are waaay better than large logistic storage chests. That could be a justification for why the small chests (and silos and warehouses) require better circuits.

[ent00]

Hello. I have problem with Angel's Refining mod 0.11.14 version. It new version don't let generate bitters when I start new game. I download older version (0.11.13) and this bug disappeared

[valneq]

Hello. I have problem with Angel's Refining mod 0.11.14 version. It new version don't let generate bitters when I start new game. I download older version (0.11.13) and this bug disappeared

This is intended with the most recent release. The changelog to Angel's Refining (version 0.11.14) reads:

[…]
- Biter balance: (291)
- Biters are by default disabled when playing without angels exploration. There is a setting
in case you want to re-enable biters anyway. For optimizations, pollution cloud and biter
evolution is turned off in this case.
- Increased starting area size
[…]

TL;DR: Go into mods settings for Angel's Refining and "Enable Alien Enemies" before starting a new map.

But please consider adding additional mods that help you deal with biters: Angel's Exploration, Bob's Warfare, or something similar. Otherwise it might get very tough.

[lovely_santa]

I agree with respect to the big chests. I mean that perhaps the small chests (from the base game) should be modified similarly. As it is, it's better to use big chests even when you don't need the capacity because the circuit requirements are easier. Arguably logistic silos and warehouses should similarly require the lower tier circuits for the lower tier chests.

The smaller chests have higher storage per tile and are easier to fit into more compact designs, so the small logistic storage chests are waaay better than large logistic storage chests. That could be a justification for why the small chests (and silos and warehouses) require better circuits.

I don't think I'll change the smaller logistics chest's recipes. I can see how the warehouses and silos might need a similar tweak. I'll add it to the todo list.

Hello. I have problem with Angel's Refining mod 0.11.14 version. It new version don't let generate bitters when I start new game. I download older version (0.11.13) and this bug disappeared

Currently there is some limitation to the base game, such we cannot disable biters without removing them completely. Kingarthur did make a mod interface request in order to change this. In the mean time, you can re-enable the biters in Angel's Refining mod version 0.11.14 with a setting that has been added. That way you can re-enable biters as before. This is also mentioned in the changelogs of angel's refining 0.11.14, as valneq mentioned above.

[Chapeau-Claque]

The Clarifier is, IMO, subject to overtech - it should use Electronics Block 0 instead of EB 1.

Clar.png (71.97 KiB) Viewed 7397 times

[lovely_santa]

The Clarifier is, IMO, subject to overtech - it should use Electronics Block 0 instead of EB 1.
Clar.png

I can see how the classifier might come in handy at grey science. I've changed this for the next release.

[Cabble]

It would be nice if ore sorting with catalyst to a single ore would get nerfed.
I like the challenge to balanced out multiple ores from 1 sorting, but it doesn't feel rewarding because the yield of catalyst sorting is as good and doesn't even have by-products to worry about.
Imho it would be much better if catalyst-sorted ores yield less. So it's still a good idea using the recipes to balance out the multi-ore sorting.
I'd suggest to decrease the yield from 100% (not counting catalyst) to 75%. For example: 2x crushed stiratite + 2x crushed bobmonium = 3x tin instead of 4.
Also I'd like to see some minor improvement to multi ore sorting.
Multiple ore sorting is interesting and would scale nice through the game stages, but from the point catalysts are available to sort, I see no reason to struggle with multi ore. Thats kinda sad.
What do you think about that?

[evandy]

It would be nice if ore sorting with catalyst to a single ore would get nerfed.
I like the challenge to balanced out multiple ores from 1 sorting, but it doesn't feel rewarding because the yield of catalyst sorting is as good and doesn't even have by-products to worry about.
Imho it would be much better if catalyst-sorted ores yield less. So it's still a good idea using the recipes to balance out the multi-ore sorting.
I'd suggest to decrease the yield from 100% (not counting catalyst) to 75%. For example: 2x crushed stiratite + 2x crushed bobmonium = 3x tin instead of 4.
Also I'd like to see some minor improvement to multi ore sorting.
Multiple ore sorting is interesting and would scale nice through the game stages, but from the point catalysts are available to sort, I see no reason to struggle with multi ore. Thats kinda sad.
What do you think about that?

Catalyst sorting does have a nerf already, but it's not efficiency... the catalyst nerf is tech level. Like many things Angels, first you do it messy, then later you can tech out of it to do it more efficiently. If you want a personal challenge to avoid catalyst sorting, you can always levy that on yourself, though I have to wonder what you're going to do with your slag at that point; making catalysts out if it is one of the prime uses of slag.

[valneq]

[…] though I have to wonder what you're going to do with your slag at that point; making catalysts out if it is one of the prime uses of slag.

You can be more creative than that.
Slag -> Crushed stone -> Mineralized water -> Green Algae -> Cellulose -> Wood pellets -> Wood bricks -> boilers/furnaces
Reduces coal usage.

From the cellulose, you can also branch off to plastic via methanol, or make carbon mono/dioxide from the pellets.
If you then have surplus of hydrogen (from water hydrolysis?) you can mix that with carbon monoxide to get synthesis gas and the hole world of petrochem opens up

There are so incredibly many possibilities with Angel's

[Chapeau-Claque]

Another design issue.

Lead ore can be refined into lead ingots and then turned into plates with a lvl 1 tech. However, the byproduct, sulfur dioxide gas, cannot be voided at that tech level - it's a lvl 2. That means that lead cannot be fully automated at lvl 1 - you have to empty the SO2 from whatever you use to clear it from the furnace. That is more than a little inconvenient. You also need oxygen and that means that either nitrogen or hydrogen must be taken care of, again without the flare available.

As can be seen, the flare is crafted from lvl 1 components. however, the research to unlock is lvl 2.

Flare.png (71.26 KiB) Viewed 7112 times

[lovely_santa]

Another design issue.

Lead ore can be refined into lead ingots and then turned into plates with a lvl 1 tech. However, the byproduct, sulfur dioxide gas, cannot be voided at that tech level - it's a lvl 2. That means that lead cannot be fully automated at lvl 1 - you have to empty the SO2 from whatever you use to clear it from the furnace. That is more than a little inconvenient. You also need oxygen and that means that either nitrogen or hydrogen must be taken care of, again without the flare available.

As can be seen, the flare is crafted from lvl 1 components. however, the research to unlock is lvl 2.
Flare.png

We had the discussion about the flare stack for the oxygen before, that will change /sometime/ with a new early game steel process.

The lead can already be fully automated by just smelting crushed rubyte. This is your early game, fully automateable way of creating lead (and thus solder). You can use the sulfur dioxide to create sulfuric acid for other stuff in the meantime and stockpile sulfur in warehouses. There should be no bottleneck there.

[Chapeau-Claque]

Another design issue.

Lead ore can be refined into lead ingots and then turned into plates with a lvl 1 tech. However, the byproduct, sulfur dioxide gas, cannot be voided at that tech level - it's a lvl 2. That means that lead cannot be fully automated at lvl 1 - you have to empty the SO2 from whatever you use to clear it from the furnace. That is more than a little inconvenient. You also need oxygen and that means that either nitrogen or hydrogen must be taken care of, again without the flare available.

As can be seen, the flare is crafted from lvl 1 components. however, the research to unlock is lvl 2.
Flare.png

We had the discussion about the flare stack for the oxygen before, that will change /sometime/ with a new early game steel process.

The lead can already be fully automated by just smelting crushed rubyte. This is your early game, fully automateable way of creating lead (and thus solder). You can use the sulfur dioxide to create sulfuric acid for other stuff in the meantime and stockpile sulfur in warehouses. There should be no bottleneck there.

I can follow your reasoning until and including solder production and you can even sort to lead ore and smelt that, though you will be restricted to the very expensive solder mixture recipe for solder. But there will be no SO2 since there is no O without voiding either N or H. That means no ingots, even though the ingot tech can be unlocked.

[alercah]

It would be nice if ore sorting with catalyst to a single ore would get nerfed.
I like the challenge to balanced out multiple ores from 1 sorting, but it doesn't feel rewarding because the yield of catalyst sorting is as good and doesn't even have by-products to worry about.
Imho it would be much better if catalyst-sorted ores yield less. So it's still a good idea using the recipes to balance out the multi-ore sorting.
I'd suggest to decrease the yield from 100% (not counting catalyst) to 75%. For example: 2x crushed stiratite + 2x crushed bobmonium = 3x tin instead of 4.
Also I'd like to see some minor improvement to multi ore sorting.
Multiple ore sorting is interesting and would scale nice through the game stages, but from the point catalysts are available to sort, I see no reason to struggle with multi ore. Thats kinda sad.
What do you think about that?

Catalyst sorting does have a nerf already, but it's not efficiency... the catalyst nerf is tech level. Like many things Angels, first you do it messy, then later you can tech out of it to do it more efficiently. If you want a personal challenge to avoid catalyst sorting, you can always levy that on yourself, though I have to wonder what you're going to do with your slag at that point; making catalysts out if it is one of the prime uses of slag.

Something was bothering me about this, so now I'm coming back to it after I figured it out: tech level really isn't a "nerf" in any meaningful sense. Partly this is just because of the way the tech levels work out: I think someone was saying in the discord that silver was the only thing where tech level was even slightly an obstacle to catalyst sorting. Partly it's because the tech progression is kind of meaningless: you can easily rush the techs required to catalyst-sort most ores quite productively, and you can crystallise even top-tier ores even sooner.

But most significantly, I think, there isn't actually a meaningful tech progression of mixed-ore sorting into catalyst-sorting because there is already a more obvious tech progression up the mixed-ore sorting tree, and this progression is the more intuitive and obvious one. As a player, when I compare the catalyst-sorting and mixed-sorting recipes, my sense is strongly that the design is supposed to be that the mixed-sorting is the best available option for pure resource efficiency, with the side chains for ferric and cuprous ores being the second-best option, particularly good at making iron and copper and metals that alloy with them, and then catalyst sorting as the worst option.

And this intuition kind of even holds, if you don't think about how easy it is to set up geode washing in quantity in order to mass-produced catalysts and use them, or about how easy it is to manage the various extra inputs to catalyst-sorting. And the ferric and cuprous chains have a lot of extra complexity that makes them too often an afterthought, until they become necessary. It doesn't help that the tech progression is again wonky and weak: the manganese from ferric sorting might be interesting and useful... except that in the early game, you're already drowning in silicon so you don't need to go out of your way to build a separate chain for alloying with.

But it really breaks down when you consider the difficulty of waste management with mixed-ore sorting... and it's so bad on its own, that I'm sure many people would choose catalyst-sorting only just to avoid having to think about managing the byproducts they aren't currently using. That's the challenge, and managing that sounds be rewarded. Instead, it's punished, by giving you fewer ores out for your inputs, at least until you get yourself all the way up to purification where the numbers even out. But then your ratios are so wonky that you are going to need catalyst sorting most likely... so why not convert your entire factory to use it?

Nerfing catalyst-sorting, or buffing mixed-sorting, would be a big improvement.

(I also don't believe slag should be anything other than an undesirable byproduct. It does have its uses, but if there is something for which slag is optimal, that should change. It really should be the sloppy seconds.)

EDIT: This is also further reinforced by the descriptions of the ores, which reference refining and sorting them into specific ores. It definitely implies that mixed-ore sorting should be your primary path.

[cheshire_cat]

I've just discovered something unintuitive in late game Angel's petrochem with the simplex solver:
The ethylene gas should be flared instead of converting into liquid plastic II to make more plastic.

Here's how we make plastic with liquid plastic II

20200722102649_2.png (339.37 KiB) Viewed 7024 times

which turns 400 ethylene and 200 naphtha into 20 plastic bars

However with the same amount of naphtha we can make

20200722102653_2.png (839.51 KiB) Viewed 7024 times

49.2 plastic bars with excess ethylene gas, using the recipies of naphtha cracking, synthesis gas cracking, residual gas cracking, liquid plastic I and III,
which is almost 250% as efficient.
Notice that about 2/3 of the synthesis gas comes from recycling residual gas.

So this implies that whether we make plastic from oil, synthesis gas or natural gas, when we get the ethane gas, we should crack it for residual gas and flare out the ethylene, for higher total yield.
Making ethylene gas and liquid plastic II essentially useless and I cannot find any other way to deal with it.

It feels a little wierd that I'll be unable to utilize one of the components separated from synthesis gas or natural gas even when I have all the technology researched, so it might be a design flaw.

The simpler explanation for this can be that the 20 naphtha used in liquid plastic II is just too expensive (in terms of plastic it can turn into) for 20 liquid plastic. The liquid plastic II is not as efficient as it seems.(so is the recipe of making benzene from methane)

So as a stingy player I might suggest some number changes in the recipe or some way to turn ethylene into energy or some useful things.That's it.

[go_franklin]

Everything works and I'm satisfied