Factorio Forums

blazespinnaker wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 3:39 pm "required to make marathon deathworld easier"

come on man... it's just a game.

I mean, really, is that what this is about? Lol.. ok, I admit I was wrong. I should have said unless you're willing to use efficiency modules, it's going to be harder.

Though to be fair, given the base that he posed, pretty sure em3 would have been a roundoff error at that point.

I mean, what is easier and what is harder, I dunno. Seems rather subjective... which is sort of the point, right?

all i said was this :

mmmPI wrote: Thu Sep 15, 2022 11:15 pm I have to respectfully disagree and advice for using eff1 in mining drill as those are cheaper to cap the reduction in energy consumption ( -80% achieved with 3 eff1) Eff3 would supposedly be because you use beacon setups ?

I don't think if one is using beacon setup that even eff3 would be enough to reduce pollution to the normal level, 3 eff3 would only give a -150% reduction. At this point i think the polution is not really diminshed enough for it to be worth the ressources.

i'm sorry if i had gone not so respectful afterwards and insisted heavily, i know it's just a game, it's a forum of discussion, and sometimes people disagree, the later part of my sentence is subjective : " i think", the first part is an advice, not some dogma, i was mentionning it in case it was an overlook from you because i care (too much) about details i wasn't sure i had understood your explanations too.

blazespinnaker wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 3:22 pm Here's a simple build.. a miner with a pm3, 2 beacons. filled with em3 -60%, filled with em1, +10%?

Yeah, I get that em3 is quite a bit more expensive and maybe wube should do something about that, but eventually it'll pay off.

And maybe that's the real argument here.. the pay off time on em3 is painfully long. Yeah, that's not a bad argument. But on a long enough timeline, it makes sense.

In this case I would say, that the payoff time for this is so bad, that it's only useful at a very far state into infinite research, when UPS gets bad or resources are so rare. Quite similar to the discussion, whether to put pm3 into miners.

For a normal playthrough (even DW), it's not very useful.

I do occasionally have a specific opinion on Factorio balancing. I don't have much motivation to do anything about it, but on the off chance that anyone wants to run with the idea, here it is:

If it where up to me to rebalance, the game would start peaceful and without any biters. The early challenges would instead be surviving both the alien world and your own pollution. Biters would appear in the mid-late game, and, rather than being a persistent nuisance, they would be raiders which appear rarely, target predictable/detectable locations, and attack with overwhelming force (sufficient to break through any defenses which they know about), then upon either defeat or completion of a pre-determined amount of destruction, they would depart and leave the player alone for an extended period of time (he intent here is that the biters should regularly win battles, but they are not vindictive enough to demolish the entire factory and/or colonize the area, so you should always be able to recover from losses). For an optional challenge Biters would have well-defined territories hundreds of chunks out form the spawn location which, at high cost, the Player can temporarily make incursions into to obtain rare/unique/non-renewable materials (to enable ridiculously expensive cosmetic improvements). To the late game, I would add a much more taxing challenge: the grand intergalactic bureaucracy has received reports indicating a sharp uptick in scientific and industrial activity on Nauvis, and is now requiring regular payment of tribute and regulatory compliance.

Apologies to the dead horses, but I thought this was both fun and illustrative. I also really can't speak enough of this mod and it's a true travesty - imho - it's not getting the attention it deserves. But, it must be what the mod author wants, so I guess I really can't complain. Still, a shame - I think a lot of people are probably missing out because of a rare sort (or maybe not) of selfishness on someone's part.

Anyways, it's illustrative because there is a certain parallel between DWM and Vita planets in SE, at least mid to mid-late game. You can't plague these planets, and you either have to make do with what you have locally, or try to find some tiny moon you can blitz in another solar system. You can also go through the tedious process of taking out all biter bases on a larger moon/planet in your own solar system and defend it against biter meteors. These are definitely options. Maybe I was unlucky and didn't get a small vita moon locally, but I wouldn't be surprised if the mod author made it like that. They clearly love to throw up challenges.

One option that doesn't really make sense, is pulling from an island and core mine. As a starter, it's OK, but the packing for fragments is poor (I think it was made worse in latest updates?), so it's a bit of a waste of cargo rocket parts and fuel when you want to amp up production.

Another interesting option though, is EM it to the max and keep your pollution cloud and factory (all it produces is vita stuff) to the absolute minimum so as not to disturb the local inhabitants. You don't let the map expand (SE let's you trim) and it's like you're not even there, also, coincidentally, vita planets do have lots of pollution absorbing greenery, so there's that. In theory, I think trimming might have a buggy side effect of ignoring your pollution cloud, though I haven't investigated that too much and personally that feels a bit like cheating even if it did work.

Ignoring the trimming hack if there is one, you'll want to use the highest possible EMs as you want to leave as many possible slots available to SM and PM. This is because you're going to want a very very high producing base, but at the same time, you'll want the factory footprint and clouds to be minimized. The reason why you want high producing, is because PMs depend on crazy amounts of vita, and PMs are very compelling in the long run.

The parallel to DWM I think makes a lot of sense. SE is like DWM as it requires fairly significant playtime and you're probably going to be in for the long haul (unless you're speedrunning, but again, DWM and SE seems like an odd choice for speed running) and eventually your modules will prove out. Vita planets are also always stocked with biters, though you can find lower threat planets/moons and clear them out as mentioned above.

It's true, I'll agree, in later game DWM PM modules don't mean that much for miners because of prod research bonuses, but also in later game PM modules are also relatively cheap, so why not re-use them?

As an aside, in the latest updates of SE, higher end modules (goes to level 9) appear to get a bit more expensive, which is painfully entertaining. It's almost like the end game now is just getting those max modules..