The concept of salvaging/recycling as the central theme of Fulgora is intriguing but not appealing enough to make me want to select it as the first destination. I will elaborate more on why as I go along.
The weather is tame on Nauvis, and one can build enough infrastructure off-world to deal with a potential loss of factories, logistics, and others due to night lighting, which is more than I can say for a particular Space-theme mod starting area having such loss early in the burner phase.
I suppose I could get used to the idea of having to build lightning rods or near alien ruins for protection, but I am not in love with the concept.
Does the power pole connection to and from remote islands require a lightning rod? How will one build power poles in the oily lowland without being damaged or destroyed by lightning strikes? A new hardened/grounded power pole? There are in-real-life buildings with lightning attractors on top of them to channel the energy to the ground instead of a distinct separate building.
Initially, I was skeptical of the challenge and fun involving a non-deterministic production line. In the end, I am disillusioned with the concept of scrap recycling. I get that WUBE is trying to avoid repetition; there is too much reliance on the recycling process. Having a few items removed as a source from recycling scrap to mineable deposits (stone is a good candidate for this) or already having an alternative source (heavy oil to solid fuel; remove from scrap) should help mitigate the overreliance.
Some aspects looked interesting initially, but I can see myself dealing with high-end products by reserving some for end-product production and recycling high-end products for raw materials.
From a high-level perspective, restricting holmium ore to only show up from recycling scrap sounds like a fresh concept from a story point of view. I have had my share of experiencing non-deterministic recipes from mods that approach the same idea in the same way as presented in the blog.
One inherited problem involving non-deterministic recipes like those is that one of the outlets can become bottlenecked if consumption is not balanced. For example, solid fuel is the second most common material on average. Lightning rods absorb energy during the night into accumulators, Ice + offshore pump-Heavy-Oil-to-solid-fuel boilers to generate energy during the day, rocket launches, and maybe rocket fuel for train logistics.
Then I look at the bottomless pool of heavy oil on Fulgora. I can crank as much solid fuel as I want or need. Why do I need solid fuel from recycling? Or even concrete or stone? Can I unlock the Fulgora landfill early enough to prevent a complete gridlock because all logistics are full of stones blocking/backing-up to the recyclers?
One of the fewest highlights of the blog I am excited about is the electromagnetic plant with its five slots and built-in 50% productivity.
PS, I will repeat one of the requests I made some time ago. Please allow us to change to a different name scheme, something appropriately less fantasy-theme—Q1 to Q5 or optimized or some other options. I will be glad if an alternative name scheme exists that doesn't remind me of a legend in a Role-Playing Game.
I think it also make a good gameplay to have to deal with some fix income ratio of material and to deal with the byproduct, it is well adapted to what we can do in factorio , many way to tackle the problem, many ways to consider one's priority and strategize for it.
Erm. I can't entirely agree with the 'fixed income ratio' bit; as said in this blog explicitly, the existence of recycling avoids repeating the typical miners 'fixed' incoming material mechanics that players are used to on Nauvis (burner miner, offshore pump, electric miner, and pumpjack) and Vulcanis (big miner).
The existence of non-deterministic and non-handled excess byproducts creates unique challenges that conflict with other production lines or block them from producing other necessities. There is no question that it can and will do this. Acting like it can be 'solved in many ways' will not change the reality of oscillating, starved, or blocked production lines.
I would be remiss to point out that it is not fun or challenging to "return to Fulgora to manually clear stones or ice or whatever excessed product" for the umpteenth time. I know this to be true because it has happened to me in mods, especially those well-known for having production lines with imbalanced input/output and non-deterministic in some cases.