Factorio Forums

Ok, so far the mod is ok just needs some work on balancing <.<
But I added a new Solar Panel, about half the size of the reg one, that produces about 25% of a reg solar panels output, as well as a mini accumulator.
Both are availble at the start, and requre little materials to build. The Solar panel only needs 1 copper and 1 iron plate, just like you can make a small solar panel in your backyard with iron and copper sheets, just dosent put out a lot of power compared to a regular silicon solar cell.
The accumulator really needs work on balancing to try to let it run decent for a small mining operation for example in the middle of no where for when you make a new map and are not near a certain resource, say iron or copper near the coal or you start with no coal near the water so hard to place a steam generator.
I also made a new electric dill for mining, it mines faster, uses twice the power, more materials to build, about 3x as long to craft, has to be researched for 50x each of sci pack 1 and 2 (red and green)

Not exactly usfull to most Im sure but hay its my first mod for this game have to start somewhere

RE Drill:
I think it's more useful than you might think, as there are several people that go for pure output over efficiency to the point of using Burner drills because of smaller footprint for the same output speed.
Doubling the output brings your drill to slightly slower than the same area of Burner drills, but also mines the areas that can't be mined with Burner drills like under the conveyor.

As far as the panel and accumulator go, I'd be worried about balance with the stock parts, since space is VERY rarely at a premium, while resources often are.
I don't know if it's possible, but one fix would be making them hand-made only, making the player directly spend the time on the crafting (which should probably be significantly longer than the 25% of the stock panel)

In any case, glad to have another contributor to the modding community!
Looking forward to seeing this in action

Well it WAS finished >.> then I renamed the mod now nothing works so tearing into my code looking for the one peice i didnt update to the new mod name

Currently the new stuff is all stock parts recolored, I am thinking the panels will be more or less a just to get going kinda thing, once you have a base going well you can mass produce full size panels quickly, another idea is to just leave the mini accumulator out of the mix, just run for example a few mini solar panels next to a for example coal mine in the middle of no where, with its higher output speed can produce coal most of the day and at pitch black nothing but have more on the belts and stored around to handel a few game hours of no output, also might be usefull for like a mini refuling station for a car or train near a mine in middle of no where, just use a belt transport to get to the rail store in a chest for the train to stop and refuel since wont be a constant need for coal just the refueling can save the power from the main base for things like laser turrents instead of powering up a remote mine