[MOD 0.15] Portal Research (Asteroid Mining) 0.7.5

[nucleargen]

And what do you think about integrate remote interface such as in omnimatter? In that mod a could use omni.add_resource in data_updates, instead remote.call from control.lua. What is the best way?

The thing is, Omnimatter has to do it there, because it's dynamically creating new techs to unlock the various ore processing recipes (I believe that's how it works anyway). So it has to be done at the stage when raw data is modifiable.

Whereas with my mod I'm not doing anything tricky like that, ores can even be added/removed from the list even at runtime. So it's better to do it with the standard script interface that is normal for mods to use to communicate.

ok, nice, so my addon must work now correctly.

[HorusOP]

I'd like to post some new bug reports; I cannot for the life of me get the microwave transmitters to work. I place the red ones (microwave transmitters) on the main planet and then the green ones (microwave antenna) on the asteroid, but no power gets transmitted. I also get these two errors when launching the telescope and harvester. Running 0.6.7

[doc]

I'd like to post some new bug reports; I cannot for the life of me get the microwave transmitters to work. I place the red ones (microwave transmitters) on the main planet and then the green ones (microwave antenna) on the asteroid, but no power gets transmitted. I also get these two errors when launching the telescope and harvester. Running 0.6.7

Don't know why I'm having such a nightmare with this today Those bugs should have been fixed in 0.6.7 but the wrong version of the file somehow ended up there. Please try 0.6.8, should be all fine now.

[The Zero]

I'd like to post some new bug reports; I cannot for the life of me get the microwave transmitters to work. I place the red ones (microwave transmitters) on the main planet and then the green ones (microwave antenna) on the asteroid, but no power gets transmitted.

The way I understand it, transmitters and receivers need to be on the same planet/asteriod, it's the Solar Harvester that provides multi-planetary power

[doc]

I'd like to post some new bug reports; I cannot for the life of me get the microwave transmitters to work. I place the red ones (microwave transmitters) on the main planet and then the green ones (microwave antenna) on the asteroid, but no power gets transmitted.

The way I understand it, transmitters and receivers need to be on the same planet/asteriod, it's the Solar Harvester that provides multi-planetary power

Sorry, did miss that question. Yes the green ones can only beam elsewhere on the current surface. The harvesters will collect power in orbit and beam down to their local planet surface, so you still have to position them in orbit where you need them (since 0.6.x). They can be moved using the orbital GUI. Once I actually add a beam visual it will be clearer when antennas (and the player suit) are receiving power. I am considering reverting back to harvesters being able to power any asteroid, I'm not sure if the 0.6.x situation is a bit annoying, feedback welcome.

When you first reach asteroids you will want to set up solar farms. Asteroids have a randomised light level, however it is constant - so you don't need to worry about how many accumulators you need for overnight. It's still good to have a lot of accumulators though to handle the power surges caused by teleports.

[qwerter96]

Hey nuclear, thanks for the modfix. I was wondering if you could make a setting to allow those who want to make asteroids yield only omnite to do so.
in settings.lua just put

Code: Select all

	data:extend({
		{name = "offworld-omnite-only", order = "a", type = "bool-setting", setting_type = "runtime-global", default_value = true},
	})

and then make control.lua

Code: Select all

	if settings["offworld-omnite-only"] then
		remote.call("portal_research", "clear_offworld_resources")
	end
	remote.call("portal_research", "add_offworld_resource","omnite",1000,3)

[doc]

I would recommend that being the default/only behaviour -- that seems to be the whole point of Omnimatter after all!

[featherwinglove]

it is very unlikely there are significant, let alone measurable, amounts of life-derived carbon ejected from Earth within our solar system. And whatever might be there will have been profoundly altered by the pressure and temperature of the meteoric impacts which would have ejected them.

Remember this isn't our solar system. That's an excuse to do many things differently. And there are lots of non-biological organic processes, probably some which could put oil on asteroids. I don't recommend that. Likely irl reasons for asteroid mining would be stuff you don't find as much of on Earth, especially rarer isotopes of ordinary elements: deteurium, helium-3, lithium-6, silicon-28, argon-36 come to mind immediately. Helium-3 is handy as a coolant and nuclear fuel, lithium-6 would be used to make lighter batteries and alloys (Castle Bravo taught us that it has no special utility as nuclear fuel, what we originally sought it for.) Silicon-28? Dunno, just know that it was used to make the world's most accurate kilogram. Argon-36 is slightly preferable to Argon-40 as electric rocket propellant, but I don't know how we'd give a crap about that in Factorio.

Also, we can just make shit up. Something to manufacture grasstons of space science packs? Another good idea is to come up with some funky stuff recipes that can only be made in space, i.e. microgravity environment. Next-gen electronics, new shield projectors or high-power/miniaturized modular armor batteries, generators, shields, that sort of thing.

I could consider adding a process to convert some arbitrary carbon form into a useable fuel, but there is also a gameplay reason why I prefer to have some things unavailable on asteroids.

Carbon burns just fine on its own. The item in Bob's has 2MJ fuel value, and in real life, the RBMK-1500 type nuclear reactor used a graphite (pure carbon) moderator. This was a problem when one of these reactors blew up on 1986 April 26; 31 firefighters got killed putting the fire out. Metallurgical coke is coal processed to reduce the elements in it other than carbon to make it better fuel for blast furnaces.

[nucleargen]

Hey nuclear, thanks for the modfix. I was wondering if you could make a setting to allow those who want to make asteroids yield only omnite to do so.
in settings.lua just put

Code: Select all

	data:extend({
		{name = "offworld-omnite-only", order = "a", type = "bool-setting", setting_type = "runtime-global", default_value = true},
	})

and then make control.lua

Code: Select all

	if settings["offworld-omnite-only"] then
		remote.call("portal_research", "clear_offworld_resources")
	end
	remote.call("portal_research", "add_offworld_resource","omnite",1000,3)

Agree. I add settings to next release. Plan to integrate my addon with some other mods.

[nucleargen]

I've updated addon with some settings and improvements.

Doc, are exists any uses for small factorium crystals? Or any built-in way to recycle it to other crystals?

[doc]

Doc, are exists any uses for small factorium crystals? Or any built-in way to recycle it to other crystals?

Right now, no. Obviously I initially planned for this, so the ore would be a bit more complex to process than a normal ore, much like uranium. However as I developed things, other gameplay features started to seem a lot more interesting. A couple of uses for small crystals I was thinking were high-powered "phase ammo", and something like a factorium-tipped mining drill. And as you suggest, some recipes to process all the smaller crystals into larger ones. But I realised that there are plenty of other mods already providing high-powered things and it was kind of a solution looking for a problem. I decided to leave this for now until I come up with a solid plan but I might in the short term collapse it into a single type of crystal and just increase the processing time; the important thing is that the crystals should be reasonably hard to obtain. I'd like the mining and ore processing to feel unique how uranium does, but right now it's just feeling like another flavour of uranium.

(Originally as well, the crystals were just going to be diamond ... not sure exactly when I decided to invent this "magic" crystal but it does avoid conflicts with other mods!)

[doc]

Likely irl reasons for asteroid mining would be stuff you don't find as much of on Earth, especially rarer isotopes of ordinary elements: deteurium, helium-3, lithium-6, silicon-28, argon-36 come to mind immediately. Helium-3 is handy as a coolant and nuclear fuel, lithium-6 would be used to make lighter batteries and alloys (Castle Bravo taught us that it has no special utility as nuclear fuel, what we originally sought it for.) Silicon-28? Dunno, just know that it was used to make the world's most accurate kilogram. Argon-36 is slightly preferable to Argon-40 as electric rocket propellant, but I don't know how we'd give a crap about that in Factorio.

This is all pretty good stuff. One use I could see for some of these ores would be working towards lower-cost rocket launches. But I kind of want to stay away from just adding a bunch of ores and then thinking up things to do with them; I'm more interesting in new logistical puzzles and gameplay, which I've already achieved by the different way you have to approach creating outposts on asteroids (and the other planned gameplay around managing the orbital network).

Also, we can just make shit up. Something to manufacture grasstons of space science packs? Another good idea is to come up with some funky stuff recipes that can only be made in space, i.e. microgravity environment. Next-gen electronics, new shield projectors or high-power/miniaturized modular armor batteries, generators, shields, that sort of thing.

Space science packs are definitely a good point. But one of my planned features is orbital research stations - these would have free (or very much lower) space science cost, but you have to deliver other science packs to them by the 1000s via rocket launches. With regards other next-gen tech, all of this is possible of course, but as I mentioned in my previous reply to nucleargen, I kind of want to stay away from the "more better faster stronger stuff" thing, as there are already plenty of other mods that do this. What *could* be really good though is a well-thought-out integration with bobs/angels -- where the rarer ores from those are only available on asteroids, forcing you into space before you can get the highest level techs.

Carbon burns just fine on its own. The item in Bob's has 2MJ fuel value, and in real life, the RBMK-1500 type nuclear reactor used a graphite (pure carbon) moderator. This was a problem when one of these reactors blew up on 1986 April 26; 31 firefighters got killed putting the fire out. Metallurgical coke is coal processed to reduce the elements in it other than carbon to make it better fuel for blast furnaces.

I am certainly considering adding a pure carbon ore which can be used as fuel, and also as a nod to the commonness of C-type asteroids. But for this to be interesting it would also need to be (or have the ability to process it into something that was) even more powerful than rocket fuel.

[The Zero]

Right now, no. Obviously I initially planned for this, so the ore would be a bit more complex to process than a normal ore, much like uranium. However as I developed things, other gameplay features started to seem a lot more interesting. A couple of uses for small crystals I was thinking were high-powered "phase ammo", and something like a factorium-tipped mining drill. And as you suggest, some recipes to process all the smaller crystals into larger ones. But I realised that there are plenty of other mods already providing high-powered things and it was kind of a solution looking for a problem. I decided to leave this for now until I come up with a solid plan but I might in the short term collapse it into a single type of crystal and just increase the processing time; the important thing is that the crystals should be reasonably hard to obtain. I'd like the mining and ore processing to feel unique how uranium does, but right now it's just feeling like another flavour of uranium.

TBH I got fed up with the amassing with small crystals as I process them so I wrote a supersmall addon which adds recipe for transforming them into medium, but it is OP IMHO. So I spent some time thinking and the best I could come up with is melting small crystals back to ore - take a few crystals, add some sulfuric acid, maybe apply heat, and you have ore. Or another type of fluid factorium which can be crystallized similarly to processing ore.


I also sent a small bugfix PR on github; doc - tell me how to best notify you about these, as it went unnoticed.

[doc]

TBH I got fed up with the amassing with small crystals as I process them so I wrote a supersmall addon which adds recipe for transforming them into medium, but it is OP IMHO. So I spent some time thinking and the best I could come up with is melting small crystals back to ore - take a few crystals, add some sulfuric acid, maybe apply heat, and you have ore. Or another type of fluid factorium which can be crystallized similarly to processing ore.

I also sent a small bugfix PR on github; doc - tell me how to best notify you about these, as it went unnoticed.

Thanks for that - merged your pull request and it'll go in the next release. Been working on a few of the bigger features for 0.7 and then I really have to get down to the big task of cleaning up the GUI and making everything much more usable! (GUI is a bit of a nightmare in Factorio but that's another story). I should receive notifications for pull requests, I've just been a bit sidetracked with that annoying thing called "life" this week!

If I do a recipe for combining crystals it could look something like high pressure, high temperature diamond synthesis - requiring extreme temperature, high purity carbon, seed crystals, plus of course a load of power. I'll be thinking about this.

[doc]

Latest release - 0.7.2.

Major new features:

* Radio Masts - wireless transmission for the circuit network allowing signals to be sent and received to/from your asteroid outposts. Also very useful for distant outposts in your base. Limited to 100 channels and 10 signals per channel; there is also a small lag.
* Orbital Logistics Combinator - read information about your satellites in orbit into your circuit network.
* Better GUI!
* Some visual beam effects to show when microwave transmitters/antennas are working
* There is now a delay before orbital units reach a destination
* Loads of other tweaks/improvements/fixes

[buggy123]

So I think I've broken something, but i'm not 100% certain it's a problem with your mod.



Happens on loading a game, it worked fine yesterday so something out of the following broke it:

In this order:

I updated to 0.15.27

Went to the mod menu, updated my mods (there are a lot of them), I updated yesterday so not many things needed to be updated

Tried to load my save, didn't work because natural tree expansion broke

Disabled natural tree expansion

Tried to load again, same problem but with rampart, concluded that the update broke things

Downloaded the 0.15.26 .zip off the website, overwrote factorio folder with contents

Started game, got a warning about being unable to find the achievements file so presumably it got overwritten

Tried to load again, got this issue

Realized i modified the ores to provide angel's ores, and that updating the portal mod overwrite that

Go and edit it back into the sites.lua file

Try to load it again, no dice

Check mod settings in desperation, everything is the same

help

Edit: downgraded back to the last version of portal research and it worked, so u dun broke it

[doc]

So I think I've broken something, but i'm not 100% certain it's a problem with your mod.

Yep, it's a problem with my mod. Factorio is out to get me sometimes

You can remove the offending line, it isn't needed, or it'll be fixed shortly in the next update.

P.S. Slightly appropriate username there

[doc]

0.7.3 released

* Orbitals now take damage over time and eventually die
* Fixed a silly init bug (reported by buggy123)
* Fixed an occasional lockup due to tick handling

[doc]

0.7.5 released, recent changes:

* Add more varied resources back to sites
* Add a button to forget sites you're not interested in
* Fix error when launching orbitals
* Make orbitals die at a much more sensible rate

[The Zero]

Hi,

I'm getting this error (even with 0.7.6):

portal-research-bug.png (74.84 KiB) Viewed 8944 times

Steps to reproduce:

1. Have a launched portal lander (launched with 0.6.x if it makes any difference)
2. Open orbitals
3. Launch portal lander to a site
4. Close orbitals, open them again

Also, there's another pending PR on github