[MOD 1.1] Xander Mod v3.6.1

[Therax]

I’m a little sad that there isn’t a wood-free recipe for soda-lime glass anymore. The whole production chain for sodium carbonate was one of my favorite bits of XM2.

[Repofme1]

Hi all -

Over the past couple months, I've mostly taken a break from Factorio, only doing a bit of work for the latest update 3.6.1. This has again got me thinking about my involvement with the game, and the truth is that I've felt my interest and motivation substantially decreasing for a long while now. Maybe this is because I'm sufficiently satisfied with Xander Mod? Not really, because some things still feel awkward or incomplete. Also, the process of community software development and publishing has always been awkward and difficult for me - simply not a personal strong point. It's possible that I'm tired of the game after playing it for several years. I think the main thing, though, is that my interests as a whole have been shifting towards reality and away from the computer as my life develops.

With this in mind, I am looking to mostly conclude my involvement with Xander Mod. To be clear, I won't be taking it down, at least not that I can forsee. I've read from Wube that they consider Factorio 1.1 essentially finished, although they are still interested in the game and are contemplating some sort of future data pack. Understandably so; it's a great game with an awesome community! This is actually somewhat good news for me, since it reduces the near-term need for updates to maintain the mod, allowing me to step away from the project. Perhaps I'll revisit it on my own at some point, but I'm not sure. I'm also not entirely confident in transferring the actual project, mainly for personal reasons. Fortunately, the General Public License v3 is very open, and I would be happy for people to make their own forks of my project.

In some ways I'm kind of sad to leave, since I still have ideas for so many things: nuclear, rocket launches, overall cohesion, RSO, graphics, locales... the list goes on. I have read comments about several of these topics, and I do appreciate all of your interest in the mod. I can tell that it's even inspired some people, so if anyone feels super enthusiastic, I would encourage you to try making your own mods! It's not too challenging, heck, I made the majority of XM with Notepad++ (text editor) and Paint.NET (image editor). However, at this point I simply don't have the drive to contine the project myself; to enjoy the work or produce quality content. I might continue to lurk around the forum here occasionally, but again I'm really not sure. So, with that, I suppose it's farewell for now, and best wishes for the future.

[jodokus31]

Sad news, man. You delivered great inspiration, although I got a bit burned out in the end.
Thank you very much and wish you all the best.
I'm sure, the project will continue somehow....

[eradicator]

However, at this point I simply don't have the drive to contine the project myself; to enjoy the work or produce quality content. I might continue to lurk around the forum here occasionally, but again I'm really not sure. So, with that, I suppose it's farewell for now, and best wishes for the future.

Lack of motivation plus sunk cost fallacy makes a pretty evil trap, don't fall for it (speaking from my own experience ). Modding should first and foremost be fun for the author. I wish you farewell and a happy future.

[Airat9000]

good idea Space Exploration compatible

[argbla]

It's possible that I'm tired of the game after playing it for several years. I think the main thing, though, is that my interests as a whole have been shifting towards reality and away from the computer as my life develops.

Good on ya OP. It's a real problem that we're collectively dealing with, and few with influence have interest in addressing it more broadly, but that has little to do with us here. As I've been putting it, computers should be tools, not ways of life. Hopefully the next generation will know this better than we did.

In any case, good luck and Godspeed.

[iriomotejin]

One thing that hindered my progress with this mod is the need to size the individual production lines. Due to XM's complexity its footprint tends to be very large with indefinitely scalable designs. Since I like to play with enemies on, footprint matters. Optimizing it involves calculating the required size of each production line in advance, which is tedious.

For those of you who don't want to go through that process, here is my ~2 bottles per second compact factory module. It is optimized for the productivity to pollution ratio, first, energy consumption second and footprint third. It has multiple issues, but I believe I've got all but one production line sizes right. Production lines for which the player has a meaningful (in my estimate) choice of a crafting recipe are omitted.

In addition, the module produces most of the items a player might need to build it and its supporting infrastructure, although for most items the rate is minimal.

Technical data

Nominal productivity 2.1 bps, measured 1.75 bps.

Solid inputs, units per second, nominal:

• Coke - 99.0
• Sulfur - 3.39
• Gunpowder - 2.25
• Heavy sand - 37.2
• Iron ore - 51.8
• Copper ore - 25.7
• Laterite - 62.3
• Skarn type ore - 53.9
• Mass sulfide ore - 9.69
• Igneous sulfide ore - 14.1
• Evaporite salts - 3.24
• Phosphorite - 10.6
• Economic stone - 73.1

Liquid inputs:

• Methane - 158
• Oxygen - 941
• Surface water - unknown, at least 2100
• Hydrogen - 1110
• Heavy oil - 12.9
• BTX - 289
• Ethylene - 158

Liquid waste not treated in the module:

• Sulfur dioxide - 96.8
• Distilled water - unknown, a... whole lot
• Steam - 268.5, temperature unknown (mixed), equivalent to between 5 and 10 MW of power

Miscellaneous:

• 1.144 units of platinum are produced per second.
• Weapons submodule can be supplied with U-238/U-235 via the bottommost belt to produce uranium ammo and nukes.

Power consumption with all supporting infrastructure (oil-based, alkali electrolysis as the hydrogen source) is about 650MW.

Known issues

1. Water distillation column is likely oversized. Additionally, the amount of surface water that needs to be pumped in and of distilled water that needs to be pumped out seems to exceed the pipe throughput.
2. Production of gold is insufficient when running recipes that do not require violet bottles (e.g. artillery shell range). This is because copper consumption drops and so does the extraction of gold from copper ore. Presently, gold extraction from skarn can't compensate for that.
3. Footprint is somewhat suboptimal, mostly due to me not recognizing the potential of speed modules early on. The flipside of that is the possibility of reaching the nominal production rate without tier 3 modules by adding extra machines in the available space.
4. In the absence of any production of the means of production the platinum is not consumed. In the current design it is stored in boxes, which will clog up after a while.
5. Production of efficiency modules 3 is excruciatingly slow and should probably be done in a dedicated factory module.
6. Layout and logistics of the beacons-covered submodule can be improved.

Figures

overview.jpg (411.81 KiB) Viewed 3540 times

connections.jpg (590.4 KiB) Viewed 3540 times

extra water supply.jpg (833.46 KiB) Viewed 3540 times

whole beast, export, v0.txt

Blueprint string

(378.46 KiB) Downloaded 150 times

[mrsdvorse]

what do i need to make oxygen

[iriomotejin]

You can make it out of air in an oil refinery (which is implied to be a general-purpose fractional distillery) and dump the excess nitrogen. Or, if you also need hydrogen, you can split water using acidic or alkali electrolysis.