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I started a new game with Bob's Mods installed and marathon world setting, and I had a bit of difficulty getting past the burner stage.
But I didn't let that stop me. I got busy making some factory, and soon I had figured out how to route my coal. Maybe I got a little carried away, but I still haven't solved my water problem and so I might just keep building bigger.

Here's my factory so far:
I got some science done, too. Has this happened to any of you before?

Never had a game where I didn't start with water in the immediate starting area. So yes it looks strange. You are supposed to have coal, iron, copper, water and now maybe uranium in your starting area with no spawners.

After you get your base going it won't be an issue but you're going to be running back and forth a LOT until then. I would try to bring the water all the way up to your resources. Biters shouldn't attack your pump and water pipe but they will go after the steam engines and boilers.

And Bob's + Marathon is one of the next combos to try on my list.

I cannot imagine how expensive things are in Bob's + Marathon

I could have routed water all the way to my base but it seemed more fulfilling to see how far this situation took me. Eventually I researched water barreling and solar power. I never got very many solar panels because they cost fourteen tier 2 circuits each, but I made one panel just to jumpstart the pump to drain the barrels and get the boiler running. It's amazing how far you can get with only 4 rows of inventory space filled with water barrels.

It was a lot of science to get the car researched but I finally got it. By then my iron patch was about half gone and I was getting tired of that place. So I filled my car with lots of copper, some iron gear wheels and steel, and found a patch of iron near coal, copper, and water. I had to push some spawners off the iron patch, then I set to work on mining up resources for ammo and turrets, using my copper sparingly. Eventually I managed to push the biters back and clear a decent space for myself. I now have a wall surrounding my base and I'm working on getting a setup to automate tier 2 circuits. It's so complex!

Cagbee wrote:I cannot imagine how expensive things are in Bob's + Marathon

It's actually not so bad since one of the mods changes steel from costing 10 iron to just 4. It makes sense I guess, given how some items cost a lot of steel. Before I got steel production running, I was burning through my steel stores like crazy making tier 2 gun turrets, but that 25% damage bonus is wonderful against medium biters or spawners when using basic ammo.

The mod also increases several stack sizes to 200, mostly plates. So you can get more iron, copper, and steel buffered up or if you spend a while building a factory to spend the resources, it'll get backed up and fill the furnaces twice as full while it's waiting for you.

The science is pretty expensive still, but Bob's mods don't really make it any worse (so far). Red science is same as vanilla, and green science is actually cheaper because the circuits are changed to Bob's wooden circuits, so the costs aren't set by the recipe modifier. So green science is more complicated, but cheaper, and costs wood!

One of the biggest challenges for me so far is trying to get basic automation up in the early game. I need tier 2 circuits for fast inserters as well as tier 2 assemblers. But the electronics assembler is really nice for getting some of the automation together. It's a 2x2 assembler that's slightly cheaper than the tier 2 in vanilla, with a crafting speed of 1, but it only makes electronics and components. I'm also not finding hardly any lead. I found one tiny deposit almost eliminated by a stone patch that spawned on top of it, and it's not very close to my base.
edit: scratch that, my radars just recently uncovered THREE lead patches!