[MOD 1.1] Xander Mod v3.6.1

[Airat9000]

4 bug?

coal not more - he is everywhere scattered

2018-01-28_15-16-55.png (788.38 KiB) Viewed 8176 times

[DarkyPupu]

When you think you are finally done ...

@Repofme1 cheers and thanks for all your work anyway !!

[jodokus31]

@Repofme1: Thanks for the update

@Bugreports: I did not have any of the mentioned problems. Maybe its again just another problem, with heavy mixing of mods

Second, some more details on the current state of my work on the mod. The issue is not entirely a matter of time, since I don't have a huge amount, but I do still have some, enough to do something with. I feel that the main reason I have lost focus is low motivation to keep working on the mod in the way I have been. To clarify, I still very much want to play Factorio, and work on Xander Mod, and I still even get good ideas that come to mind. The trouble is the structure and format I've been working in: I spend such a large fraction of my Factorio time working on the mod, that I don't have any time to play the game - even for testing he mod myself! In more detail, things like bugfixes, responding to comments, discussing features, writing changes to the code, and publishing take up 95% of the time I have for Factorio. Not only does this discourage me, since I rarely get to enjoy playing the mod of my own making, but it also makes my work inefficient and misguided, because I don't have the same first-hand perspective as the people playing and testing the mod. The conclusion is that my typical activity patterns with Factorio are not very conducive to inspiration, creativity, and good mod making.

I think, its a good idea to actually playing this mod I played a decent amount of time since release and it has got better every time. The problem is, that only playing and progressing already takes a big amount of time, because it's the most complex overhaul i played, so far. If you want to play and also develop/manage the mod and responding to requests etc., it could fill a full time job...
Maybe there are things other than playtesting, where I or other volunteers can support?
So, please don't feel pressed and go at you own pace, or take a break from it

Third, we come to future plans. The apparent way forward, as it seems to me, is to finish the current mod to a certain point, and then work on a new major version: 2.0.0. Ideally I would like to bring the current version 1.X to a point where it is reasonably possible to launch a rocket with it. Of course this is a very fuzzy distinction, because there is a gradient running from 'technically possible but absurdly difficult' through 'possible and well-balanced', to 'far too easy'. I would be fine with getting XM 1 roughly near playable, even if it is still awkward, for the sake of moving on to XM 2. Perfect balance and optimization, as well as strict realism, should not be my priorities here, even though I have focused on them a lot so far. Now, the reason I want to move on to a new major version has a few different parts. A main one is to establish a new work format: playing through a world, building the mod as I go along, and informally publishing whatever I've got on a regular schedule of every week or two. My hope is that this will do a better job of keeping me motivated. Work style alone doesn't strictly demand a new major version, but other things do: I have a major revision to the ore generation, a handful of big ideas for the bulk material mechanics (and others), and a wide variety of miscellaneous things, built up over the past six months. Of course many things will remain, so I plan to use the current mod as a base to modify instead of completely rebuilding everything, but declaring a new major version will also be an opportune time to improve a lot of naming conventions, file structure, code organization, etc. I should also be able to more fully incorporate the somewhat better knowledge of the game's code that I have learned so far.

My approximate time scale for wrapping up the current version and starting the next is within the next 2 or 3 months, since my schedule will be switching from classes to work for the spring and summer, and I should have significantly more time for the mod.

I am aware that this is heavier stuff than usual for a Factorio mod, and I understand if people just want to have fun and not analyze it too deeply. That being said, we have had a lot of good thoughtful discussion so far, so I ask: what do you think?

Sounds like a good plan. Wrapping up the mod, to be able to launch a rocket and create some placeholder workarounds for unresolvable things.

[Airat9000]

do not be offended to me = just saying how I'm having problems.
and thank you for noticing. but I have coal just after turning on the mod.

[jodokus31]

do not be offended to me = just saying how I'm having problems.
and thank you for noticing. but I have coal just after turning on the mod.

I explored a bit in a new generated areas, and i didn't experienced any ore scattering.

I would recommend, that you try to play xander-mod standalone + some QoL mods.
You can download the factorio game zip from the homepage and unpack it to play a parallel installation with different mod constellations
Or you can open factorio with parameter "--mod-directory" to specify a different folder for mod constellations

[Prome3us]

Repofme1: I can remember exactly where I was when I first saw a post about your mod last year in August. I remeber thinking "3hours of burner inserters?! What a pain in the butt! I must try it". I had just started angelbobs so got lost in that and forgot about you a bit.

A comment on Reddit this week made me reference your mod, and when I looked it up oh wow updated 1 day(s) ago! So top of my to-do list. Last night I thought I'd just take a quick peek to see what it's like ; I snuck into bed at 05:15 this morning.

Thanks soo so much. I enjoy logistucs challenges in mods, but the level of detail in your mod (sure "placeholder image" tech tree, whatever) is just so immersive, I have to congratulate you on doing the impossible - you've made my factorio feel more factorio than factorio.

Now shut up and take my moneys!

[Airat9000]

Heavy sand I did not understand where to use it

and mineral water using>?

[Therax]

I'd personally like to contribute more to the mod, at least from the perspective of refactoring, code organization, bug fixes, and so on. I'm a software engineer by trade, not a materials scientist, so actual balance and design for realism is outside what I can do. Unfortunately contributions are gated on your time as the owner and originator of the mod, and at least so far Pull Requests have not seemed to work very well as a model.

Re: XM 2.0, I'd like to direct you to this classic article, if you haven't read it before. If you still decide you'd like to do a complete rewrite, would you consider opening XM 1.x for forks and community development?

[purdueme91]

I have not read through the 21 pages of posts so if this has been covered before I'm sorry but just wanted to give my 2 cents.

First off, this is a great mod from what I've done so far. I normally play Angel/Bob and throw in some kind of mod to change it up like SpaceX or something. I fell in love with Seablock because the challenge on it was off the charts and I put 100+ hours into getting my first 2 satellites launched. This mod is like you have taken Bob and Angel mixed them together then added Marathon mode and SCT to it.

So 2 hours in, here's my feedback:

I am just about through the main part of the crude science research. I am finally setting up a first bootstrap area to auto feed fuel and materials mainly for iron/steel. I should open up red science in the next 30 minutes or so.

!) First map seemed to spawn no coal in the starting area. It looks like one post on this page referenced scattering of ore so maybe that was it. On my second map, I got 2 patches of decent size that should hold me for a bit. If you look back at a recent FFF, they were talking about the copper/iron balance because iron spawned later and could cover a copper field.
2) the copper and iron colors are switched for me. Not sure if this was intentional or not. I wouldn't mind so much if copper was green and iron was still copper colored but it threw me for a bit when I was running around trying to get my first materials set up. Maybe iron is closer to red?
3) it just feels that the first set of furnaces burn fuel too fast. I am assuming that will get better when better tiers are unlocked. I just felt I spent a little too much time grabbing coal to convert to coke to drop into my first batch of furnaces. So maybe coke gets buffed a little or the energy use on the clay furnaces is decreased a little?
4) Steel forging just seems to take a long time. But it seems like it is right ratio for the recipes. And it seemed better once I made a specific forging furnace chain. But getting that first crude assembly machine took a bit. I would suggest adding one crude assembly to initial inventory but that might affect the balance too much at the start? Can't do much with it at the start with only 2 ingredients so limited usefulness.
5) Again, not having looked through everything, is there a long handed burner inserter? Also thinking that letting burner inserters pass fuel from furnace to furnace plus feed themselves would open up some new paths. There is a mod for the leeching of fuel from furnaces.
6) Not knowing what your plans are but I still feel the end game of Vanilla is the weakest part of the game. This is probably something for 2.0 if you haven't done something yet but what about incorporating a SpaceX type of endgame? But I was thinking yesterday that the MSI mod would seem to be perfect fit (crash landed on a planet, complex technologies like nuclear and flying need to unlocked by finding specific crash sites on the planet. I haven't played it yet so that's all I know). It could fit a story that you were a mechanic on a spaceship and you have to start from scratch to progress through the game. So you're not hopeless but you don't have the knowledge to build a nuclear reactor and you never will.

Keep up the good work. Wish I could help you code but I'm a poor mechanical engineer who has no clue where the 0's and 1's are supposed to go. I'll provide feedback and browse this forum to see if I am seeing the same issues as previously mentioned.

[jodokus31]

!) First map seemed to spawn no coal in the starting area. It looks like one post on this page referenced scattering of ore so maybe that was it. On my second map, I got 2 patches of decent size that should hold me for a bit. If you look back at a recent FFF, they were talking about the copper/iron balance because iron spawned later and could cover a copper field.
2) the copper and iron colors are switched for me. Not sure if this was intentional or not. I wouldn't mind so much if copper was green and iron was still copper colored but it threw me for a bit when I was running around trying to get my first materials set up. Maybe iron is closer to red?
3) it just feels that the first set of furnaces burn fuel too fast. I am assuming that will get better when better tiers are unlocked. I just felt I spent a little too much time grabbing coal to convert to coke to drop into my first batch of furnaces. So maybe coke gets buffed a little or the energy use on the clay furnaces is decreased a little?
4) Steel forging just seems to take a long time. But it seems like it is right ratio for the recipes. And it seemed better once I made a specific forging furnace chain. But getting that first crude assembly machine took a bit. I would suggest adding one crude assembly to initial inventory but that might affect the balance too much at the start? Can't do much with it at the start with only 2 ingredients so limited usefulness.
5) Again, not having looked through everything, is there a long handed burner inserter? Also thinking that letting burner inserters pass fuel from furnace to furnace plus feed themselves would open up some new paths. There is a mod for the leeching of fuel from furnaces.
6) Not knowing what your plans are but I still feel the end game of Vanilla is the weakest part of the game. This is probably something for 2.0 if you haven't done something yet but what about incorporating a SpaceX type of endgame? But I was thinking yesterday that the MSI mod would seem to be perfect fit (crash landed on a planet, complex technologies like nuclear and flying need to unlocked by finding specific crash sites on the planet. I haven't played it yet so that's all I know). It could fit a story that you were a mechanic on a spaceship and you have to start from scratch to progress through the game. So you're not hopeless but you don't have the knowledge to build a nuclear reactor and you never will.

Keep up the good work. Wish I could help you code but I'm a poor mechanical engineer who has no clue where the 0's and 1's are supposed to go. I'll provide feedback and browse this forum to see if I am seeing the same issues as previously mentioned.

I try to answer a bit, what i understood
1. Do you use RSO mod? I think, with it, it works better. Even didnt try with vanilla ore gen
2. If you come from vanilla its a bit odd, but those colors suppose to be more realistic...
3. The high fuel consumption feels also odd and different from vanilla, but that it is also supposed to be more realistic and that the coke is an actual ingredient in the plates. Personally, I think its a challenge of its own to provide fuel in similar quantities like the ore.
4. Later there are techs (green science), to get iron and steel from iron ore + limestone/clay, which use the half of the ore. However, It needs scaling to get a serious amount. The beginning is really slow, compared to vanilla or even bobs/angels. Maybe comparable to seablock. The assembly machine and machine tool are able to craft things with 4 ingredients, which is handy, but the recipes are rather gated by recipe categories than number of ingredients.
5. There is a slow electric inserter, which helps getting things done with electricity relativly early. Long handed inserters are somewhat later. So its a bit hard to get down the first automation design, if there are 4 ingredients. I used to do it with underground belts and squiggle the far line nearer or using a splitter, which works. I also used a lot of mixed belts because of the variety of different items.

[purdueme91]

Thanks for the info.

1) Yeah the ore patches are packed pretty tight. Maybe I will restart with RSO tonight (never used it yet).
2) once you get the stuff placed and routed it's no issue. Honestly, the ores look different in inventory from vanilla so I don't screw them up.
3) makes sense..Angel is incorporating this in his smelting also.
4) I was just looking through the red science and the amount of stuff to unlock is staggering but then much more realistic than vanilla. So looks like a lot of work and a lot of fun figuring out. I just love that black powder is charcoal saltpeter and sulfur.
5) again thanks. I haven't even made a splitter or an underneathy yet so that will help inputting one side and unloaded on other. I think I have 2 more techs to unlock electricity and I think I just unlocked the second assembly machine when I quit last night.

[jodokus31]

Another word on coke usage:
coal is much denser because 1 coal produces 4 coke. So belting coke on slow belts starts to get problematic pretty soon.
so I designed this steel setup (could be longer, but this was the space i had, the inserters could be slow ones and i avoided the long handed, which could be used in the middle... ):

steel design

Bildschirmfoto vom 2018-02-02 22-45-28.png (1.61 MiB) Viewed 8045 times

[jodokus31]

I'd personally like to contribute more to the mod, at least from the perspective of refactoring, code organization, bug fixes, and so on. I'm a software engineer by trade, not a materials scientist, so actual balance and design for realism is outside what I can do. Unfortunately contributions are gated on your time as the owner and originator of the mod, and at least so far Pull Requests have not seemed to work very well as a model.

Re: XM 2.0, I'd like to direct you to this classic article, if you haven't read it before. If you still decide you'd like to do a complete rewrite, would you consider opening XM 1.x for forks and community development?

I'm thinking, maybe we could help with the organizational stuff, Repofme1 could just approve or deny a change request or parts of them, and someone else can merge the pull requests, and do uploads to the mod portal, etc.
Or maybe Repofme1 has an idea, and someone else could try to implement it.

[Airat9000]

author i like in testing you mod!


extreme in proccesing plates! Goood!

2018-02-04_20-51-34.png (849.01 KiB) Viewed 8013 times

[Therax]

I'd personally like to contribute more to the mod, at least from the perspective of refactoring, code organization, bug fixes, and so on. I'm a software engineer by trade, not a materials scientist, so actual balance and design for realism is outside what I can do. Unfortunately contributions are gated on your time as the owner and originator of the mod, and at least so far Pull Requests have not seemed to work very well as a model.

Re: XM 2.0, I'd like to direct you to this classic article, if you haven't read it before. If you still decide you'd like to do a complete rewrite, would you consider opening XM 1.x for forks and community development?

I'm thinking, maybe we could help with the organizational stuff, Repofme1 could just approve or deny a change request or parts of them, and someone else can merge the pull requests, and do uploads to the mod portal, etc.
Or maybe Repofme1 has an idea, and someone else could try to implement it.

I'd volunteer to help with the coding aspect. I think Repofme1's time is probably best spent playing the mod and coming up with design changes.

[orzelek]

Can you take a look at making mod compatible with this one:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DeadlockStacking
Seems it would be pretty useful due to big throughput needed to produce stuff in the mod.

[GeekinaCave]

Hey guys, any of you is having this problem? i'm using factorio 16.22 + Xander 1.5.0 + alien biomes 0.3.8 and this happens:

test1.png (86.26 KiB) Viewed 7911 times

test2.png (1.36 MiB) Viewed 7911 times

its a new gamesave BTW
when i use alien biomes alone it works fine...

Update: also i just noticed, witn Xander alone, the ores does not appear in the preview map.

[Prome3us]

... wit(h) Xander alone, the ores does not appear in the preview map.

Can't provide you with a solid source, but I've read that the changes to the vanilla ores happen at some later stage during generation, so they aren't displayed correctly in preview. I also get ore-less maps in preview generator, think it's par for the course. No experience with alien biomes though sorry

[GeekinaCave]

... wit(h) Xander alone, the ores does not appear in the preview map.

Can't provide you with a solid source, but I've read that the changes to the vanilla ores happen at some later stage during generation, so they aren't displayed correctly in preview. I also get ore-less maps in preview generator, think it's par for the course. No experience with alien biomes though sorry

well i tested 3 times the preview generation and wait 5 minutes each, in all of them it show cliff but no ores.
i did the same in vanilla and in the worst case the ores appear with 3 second delay.
i have a r5 1600 and r9 380 so i don't think will be for lack of processing.

[GeekinaCave]

UPDATE: okay, i make more test and just realize RSO was the one has problems to show ores in the preview.

To resume my situation:

Alien Biomes: works OK
Alien Biomes + Xander 1.5.0: the images shown earlier.
Pretty Fair Resources: works OK
Pretty Fair Resources + Xander 1.5.0: the game gets stuck and i have to finish with task manager.

I don't sure since i am not a expert in Factorio code; but i think the Xander new code in map and ore generation is kinda incompatible with this mods.

this 2 mod are great to increase the immersion with Xander and is kinda sad i cant use it now.