Industrial Revolution 2 discussion

[PhatzDomino]

Hello Guys,

Quick question, is this is bug with fuelling the kiln or am I being stupid? I'm sure I managed to make some charcoal a while back in my save but now can't.

Many Thanks

Will

[cbhj1]

Wood goes in, Charcoal comes out, no need for additional fuel. You're trading time and pollution for fuel value.

[PhatzDomino]

Yeah I thought so, the game must have had a funny 5 minutes because after restarting it was fine.

[AlexGreen]

For example it would make more sense for me to have copper burner grinder and bronze steam grinder.

So, here are "my" new grinders. Not sure whether I got the colors right though. Definitely would be easier to render from source than to color individual pixels, but that will do for now I guess.

With the old burner machines - I made a minor mistake with north/south positioning when I was rendering some of the new crafting machine animations. If you bring in IR1 machines unchanged you might find yourself having to align things up manually in the north/south direction using vertical shift.

Good to know, thanks. I've aligned burner grinder with steam grinder since latter has to be aligned with the pipe layout. Some more changes:
- Added floor-glow layer to burner grinder. Might probably add another glow layer. Reflection layer is still missing however. And for sure I won't be able to make proper remnants with a simple coloring. I was thinking that I could remodel those machines in Blender but not sure whether it's worth the effort.
- Changed crashed ore to look more like IR1 gravel (still not quite satisfied with the color). I really liked the ore doubling process from IR1.
- Adjusting inserters. Again, liked that feature.
- Shift-E now also toggles between one and two steam I/O. Probably a useless feature but it looks more esthetically pleasant to me, especially for a vertical build.

ultimate_mod_1.png (4.08 MiB) Viewed 7688 times

[Fuzzician]

I am definitely liking the way you are going with this. The gravel-like ore does feel a lot more real, and is one of the few things I also miss.

On a separate thought, has anyone thought about making some tweaks to IR2? I find that some of the components get so little use that they might as well be scrapped (looking at you Invar). I have a few ides of my own, and was wondering if anyone else was thinking this

Some things I would change:
Cut Bronze completely - It does very little ultimately, since you upgrade to Iron, and it being required for Green Science feels like a contrived way to force the player to make it. I would just replace all instances of Bronze in recipes with something copper/tin related, and change Green Science to need Clockwork Motors instead.

All basic intermediates (beams, rivers, gears, plates, etc...) are made directly from Ingots - As is, Gears are made from plates, which just adds another step for no reason. Same with Rivets and Rods. Reinforced plates could be exempt from this.

Cut several items that see little or not use (or just annoy me) - Corrosion Resitant Plates (both steel and iron), Shielded Plates, and Heat-resistant plates should just be mashed into a single item used in all those recipes. Pistons maybe could just be used to make Motors, and those become the main intermediate for making all machines, the way Large Chassis is now.

Change Cubic Press to not need Yellow Science - Since you need it to duplicate gems, and Ruby is required to make Lasers (to make Laser Assemblers), which is needed to make blue chips, which are needed to make Yellow Science in the first place, this causes a bit of a gate. Making Cubic Press only need up to Purple fixes this.

These are just some of my ideas. I am definitely curious to hear more.

[AlexGreen]

It is probably impossible to make a game that everybody would like. Factorio is a great game but what makes it even better is the possibility to mod it. I like the base game, but sometimes I feel that it is not quite the game I would like to play. Mod support is a brilliant feature, it allows with a relatively low efforts (comparing to making a game from scratch) make a perfect game for you.

Deadlock989 created a version of the game that they prefer to play. Even though I really enjoy the art work (and still hope to get the sources ) and lots of the ideas I still prefer a bit different game with even more steps and intermediates and quite a different balance.

Even if you find someone who shares your ideas there are still probably going to be some points of disagreement. That is why I really encourage you to try to make some changes by yourself. Making mods is also a fun process and you might like it

For some new ideas I usually look for an inspiration browsing existing mods and trying them out. There are a lot of cool stuff out there.

[HunterTricky]

A general question about how to deal with over production of oil byproducts and ore washing. What to do with the sulphurous gas? And I have an abundance of tin. What can I do with that.

[Kyralessa]

A general question about how to deal with over production of oil byproducts and ore washing. What to do with the sulphurous gas? And I have an abundance of tin. What can I do with that.

There's a vent you can build to vent out the sulfurous gas, at the cost of causing a lot of pollution.

As for the tin, one option is to make things out of it, turn them into scrap, then turn the scrap into more tin.

For example:

Tin ingots -> [assembly] -> tin plates -> [recycling] -> tin scrap -> [smelt] -> tin ingots

You'll end up with about 75% as many ingots as you started with. So you can use circuits to set a condition that whenever you have more than X excess scrap, send the excess to this cycle to reduce it.

[HunterTricky]

So there is no way to balance this as there is in the vanilla game?

[Kyralessa]

The only case I know of in the base game where where you end up with multiple outputs from a single operation is Uranium processing giving you U-235 and U-238. Of course in that case you have a way to change the balance of the two, but only in one direction.

There's not a way to convert the tin into some other element, and outright destroying it would be a manual process (e.g. shooting chests full of it), so recycling it into smaller amounts seems to me the simplest way, but perhaps someone else knows another way to deal with it.

[Silari]

The only case I know of in the base game where where you end up with multiple outputs from a single operation is Uranium processing giving you U-235 and U-238. Of course in that case you have a way to change the balance of the two, but only in one direction.

You seem to have forgotten about oil. Which also can change the balance in one direction by further processing.

[Kyralessa]

The only case I know of in the base game where where you end up with multiple outputs from a single operation is Uranium processing giving you U-235 and U-238. Of course in that case you have a way to change the balance of the two, but only in one direction.

You seem to have forgotten about oil. Which also can change the balance in one direction by further processing.

Indeed I did.

[Deadlock989]

And I have an abundance of tin. What can I do with that.

In descending order of personal preference:

1. Don't make as much tin. I'm not even joking.

2. If the problem is washing and your lead requirements, use smart (i.e. circuit-controlled) acid-washing to balance your tin/lead ratio to what you need. That is also a way of using up gas. If you are running infinite science then you will have a constant sink of tin without any lead. If the problem then becomes too much lead, don't make lead.

3. Incinerators. You can launch a rocket without incinerating a single item but incinerators exist. They were put in the mod because you can't shoot chests easily, not because you "need" to incinerate anything. Gas venting is another story, it is hard to go a full run without venting any gas.

4. Weird scrapping hacks.

[HunterTricky]

I do need to make Lead.
I have not used circuits very much. I don't believe you can switch the ore washers to use the other recipe. So the solution would need to switch the ore being feed to the washers from a washer using the basic recipe to one using the advanced recipe? Can this be done using belts or inserters?

[Kyralessa]

I do need to make Lead.
I have not used circuits very much. I don't believe you can switch the ore washers to use the other recipe. So the solution would need to switch the ore being feed to the washers from a washer using the basic recipe to one using the advanced recipe? Can this be done using belts or inserters?

If you're using belts, you can attach a red or green wire to a segment of belt. Then you can enable/disable that belt section based on a condition. Have a look here, for example:

https://wiki.factorio.com/Belt_transpor ... it_network

You would set it to enable/disable and the condition would be based on something else the wire is connected to, some way of measuring your tin and lead. It could be as simple as connecting to another section of belt that your lead is on just before it gets turned into other things, and if you're running short on lead running on that section of belt, you feed tin to acid washing instead of water washing.

[Fuzzician]

Is there a IR-related discord anywhere? Would love to discuss the mod, share blueprints, etc....

[Fuzzician]

In case there isn't one, I have made one just in case anyone is interested.

https://discord.gg/MZztUFyK2E

[GruveXp]

I have been playing the game a lot recently, but there is one thing that really bugs me out: When I process ores with ore washers, I have circuit systems to manage ratios and stuff. When I process for example Iron ore I will get both pure iron and pure chromium. But sometimes the chromium is backing up, so I need to switch to just using the crushers to output crushed iron, which is outputted on the same belt and sent to the furnaces. This means that the furnaces will have to be able to smelt crushed iron, pure iron, and sometimes iron scrap. This has been working fine on the normal iron furnaces, but this is not working for arc furnaces, where its only possible to smelt either pure, crushed, or scrap. I don't wanna make a furnace array for each type, it's too expensive.

If you change the arc furnace recipes so its 1 recipe for each material, i.e. that for example the iron recipe would accept both iron ore, crushed iron, pure iron, iron scrap, and iron ingot the problem would be solved completely

[Deadlock989]

I have been playing the game a lot recently, but there is one thing that really bugs me out: When I process ores with ore washers, I have circuit systems to manage ratios and stuff. When I process for example Iron ore I will get both pure iron and pure chromium. But sometimes the chromium is backing up, so I need to switch to just using the crushers to output crushed iron, which is outputted on the same belt and sent to the furnaces. This means that the furnaces will have to be able to smelt crushed iron, pure iron, and sometimes iron scrap. This has been working fine on the normal iron furnaces, but this is not working for arc furnaces, where its only possible to smelt either pure, crushed, or scrap. I don't wanna make a furnace array for each type, it's too expensive.

If you change the arc furnace recipes so its 1 recipe for each material, i.e. that for example the iron recipe would accept both iron ore, crushed iron, pure iron, iron scrap, and iron ingot the problem would be solved completely

I am not 100% sure what you mean here.

If you meant that there aren't arc furnace recipes for iron ore or crushed iron, that's not true, there are.

If you meant that you would like one recipe which can accept different inputs, that's just not possible in Factorio. Each separate recipe has a single ingredient(s) definition and a single result(s) definition. I would love to be able to define a single recipe which says "any from this list as an ingredient" and have the alternatives listed in a single tooltip in a single crafting menu slot but that's just not the way the game was made.

If you meant that smart furnace set-ups aren't possible with arc furnaces, yes, unfortunately that's true. Arc furnaces have to be an "assembling machine" type entity where you manually select a recipe, because they have one or two different fluid outputs which change depending on the recipe selected. Factorio has erratic treatment of "fluid mixing", i.e. situations where different fluids try to get into the same pipe network, but generally speaking it's not supposed to happen - "furnace" style automatic recipe selection interacts very badly with that if there are fluid outputs. I wrestled with it briefly but life is too short, it was a hundred times easier and safer to have manual recipe selection.

All I can suggest, if you have successfully figured out circuit control for managing byproduct ratios but also want to go full molten metals, you'll have to do the smart furnace part with electric furnaces to ingots, and then melt the ingots. Obviously that's less efficient but unfortunately I don't see any way of avoiding it.

Arguably the whole molten metals thing was a mistake.

[Kyralessa]

If you meant that smart furnace set-ups aren't possible with arc furnaces, yes, unfortunately that's true. Arc furnaces have to be an "assembling machine" type entity where you manually select a recipe, because they have one or two different fluid outputs which change depending on the recipe selected. Factorio has erratic treatment of "fluid mixing", i.e. situations where different fluids try to get into the same pipe network, but generally speaking it's not supposed to happen - "furnace" style automatic recipe selection interacts very badly with that if there are fluid outputs. I wrestled with it briefly but life is too short, it was a hundred times easier and safer to have manual recipe selection.

I've wondered about that myself, but this makes total sense. I can see where having the molten metal furnaces be able to switch on the fly would make a serious mess of the fluids.

Arguably the whole molten metals thing was a mistake.

It may add complexity, but I like having the option. So far I've been doing it with four lines per ore type (ore, crushed ore, pure ore, and the pure ore byproduct) and since they all turn into molten metal, they can all be turned into ingots by the same machines (except the byproduct which has its own). The sulfuric gas output by the ore and crushed ore feeds nicely into chemical plants to make sulfuric acid to get more pure ore and byproducts.

Anyway if people find it overly complicated, it's not as though it's required. One can go all the way through the tech tree and into infinite research without using arc furnaces at all.