[0.14.x] Bob's Mods: General Discussion

[mexmer]

I favour a different direction.
Productivity modules can be used in too many processes. Imo, they should not be able to be used for intermediates, and only for the very find processing steps, such as iron ore > iron, but not even for iron > steel. That way, they can't multiply with themselves. Also not in mining. Literally only one step per resource.
And, maybe, a cap to productivity, like there is a cap to energy/pollution reduction. 100% seems fair enough.

Allows you to double all your resource yields, which is still huge, but you cannot make 2 million tunsten plates out of a small ore field.

actually there is limit to production. assemblers and others cannot produce more than double, when you reach higher productivity machines start backloging. so even if you remove production module, you might still see, they produce at higher speed (2nd bar).
at least that's what of devs said, when someone reported as bug, that his factory produces surplus stuff after removing productivity module (you can search for that thread in "not a bug" section).

technically, if you have 400% productivity (total), you will still make 4 items instead of one (material wise), but time wise, you will not build more than 2 items at time. so you will be just stacking your item backlog. eg. going past 200% productivity does not benefit you in terms of immediate result.

[Darkas]

I favour a different direction.
Productivity modules can be used in too many processes. Imo, they should not be able to be used for intermediates, and only for the very find processing steps, such as iron ore > iron, but not even for iron > steel. That way, they can't multiply with themselves. Also not in mining. Literally only one step per resource.
And, maybe, a cap to productivity, like there is a cap to energy/pollution reduction. 100% seems fair enough.

Allows you to double all your resource yields, which is still huge, but you cannot make 2 million tunsten plates out of a small ore field.

Your idea reminded me of angels mods, where you cannot use productivity anywhere in the refinement processes (ores and chemicals), which I liked a lot. This should include alloys and things like carbon and the intermediates for electronics (probably allow productivity only for the last step in a chain of intermediates, even though that is sometimes not well defined).

Sadly, it seems impossible to set a productivity cap, maybe I missed it, but I think there is no such setting. I will repeat my experiments with these productivity constraints, maybe tomorrow.

[mexmer]

I favour a different direction.
Productivity modules can be used in too many processes. Imo, they should not be able to be used for intermediates, and only for the very find processing steps, such as iron ore > iron, but not even for iron > steel. That way, they can't multiply with themselves. Also not in mining. Literally only one step per resource.
And, maybe, a cap to productivity, like there is a cap to energy/pollution reduction. 100% seems fair enough.

Allows you to double all your resource yields, which is still huge, but you cannot make 2 million tunsten plates out of a small ore field.

Your idea reminded me of angels mods, where you cannot use productivity anywhere in the refinement processes (ores and chemicals), which I liked a lot. This should include alloys and things like carbon and the intermediates for electronics (probably allow productivity only for the last step in a chain of intermediates, even though that is sometimes not well defined).

Sadly, it seems impossible to set a productivity cap, maybe I missed it, but I think there is no such setting. I will repeat my experiments with these productivity constraints, maybe tomorrow.

see my post above.
you don't need to worry about productivity, because there is "builtin" cap in production output.
you know, with productivity there is green and purple line.
purple line cannot grow faster than green. so you cannot produce more than double output at same time (eg. 1 green and 1 purple line).
even if you hit let's say 300% production. you will still be producing at same rate as with 200% because of this cap, only your production output will backlog, so if you remove production module, you will still see additional output until backlog is cleared.

if you guys want to complain about something then it's RAW productivity module (since it removes downsides) or GOD module (those are now disabled by default, but can be still enabled), since they don't follow suit of something for something, but are really something for nothing (although costs are high, in lategame you don't care about costs). still it's just optional part of game, and up to everyone to use, or not use such thing.

[Darkas]

I favour a different direction.
Productivity modules can be used in too many processes. Imo, they should not be able to be used for intermediates, and only for the very find processing steps, such as iron ore > iron, but not even for iron > steel. That way, they can't multiply with themselves. Also not in mining. Literally only one step per resource.
And, maybe, a cap to productivity, like there is a cap to energy/pollution reduction. 100% seems fair enough.

Allows you to double all your resource yields, which is still huge, but you cannot make 2 million tunsten plates out of a small ore field.

Your idea reminded me of angels mods, where you cannot use productivity anywhere in the refinement processes (ores and chemicals), which I liked a lot. This should include alloys and things like carbon and the intermediates for electronics (probably allow productivity only for the last step in a chain of intermediates, even though that is sometimes not well defined).

Sadly, it seems impossible to set a productivity cap, maybe I missed it, but I think there is no such setting. I will repeat my experiments with these productivity constraints, maybe tomorrow.

see my post above.
you don't need to worry about productivity, because there is "builtin" cap in production output.
you know, with productivity there is green and purple line.
purple line cannot grow faster than green. so you cannot produce more than double output at same time (eg. 1 green and 1 purple line).
even if you hit let's say 300% production. you will still be producing at same rate as with 200% because of this cap, only your production output will backlog, so if you remove production module, you will still see additional output until backlog is cleared.

if you guys want to complain about something then it's RAW productivity module (since it removes downsides) or GOD module (those are now disabled by default, but can be still enabled), since they don't follow suit of something for something, but are really something for nothing (although costs are high, in lategame you don't care about costs). still it's just optional part of game, and up to everyone to use, or not use such thing.

Sorry, this is not true. Try it out, you will see a faster growing purple bar then a green bar, and putting 100 iron ore in a furnace with +240% productivity will give you 340 iron, plus a bit, which are rounding errors I assume. But it is almost true, if the speed of the machine is too big, then productivity over 100% gets lost, I tested that too, a single beacon (tier 3) with tier 8 speed modules suffices. This has implications for my previous and following data, i.e. my numbers underestimate what you could do, so productivity modules right now are way stronger than what these numbers suggest. I just don't want to wait forever to get these tests finished.

Some new figures about productivity: With 6 modules only in furnaces only in the first step (i.e. no productivity in steel) and 4 in the silo @ 5% productivity per level, I get 0.85 rockets + 2 satellites, which might be slightly off because I made a few mistakes, but I would say the margin of error is +- 0.1 rocket. The bottleneck was still iron.

With 6 modules also in what I would call final intermediates (iron gear wheels, stuff that goes directly into the rocket silo, all the electronic boards, solid fuel), 5% productivity per level, I get 1.45 rockets. Same setup with 2.5% productivity per level gives 1.09 rockets. If one forbids the modules in the furnaces altogether, in the last setup with the 1.09 rockets, it decreases to 0.93 rockets.

Also, I think a baseline would be useful. Funnily enough, iron ore stacks to 200, which is how much 0.01 rockets cost. The steel chest has 58 slots, so without any modules, one gets 0.58 rockets (no satellite at all). In my factory, I got 0.38 rockets, because the satellite ate lots of the iron.

Now my opinion: I strongly prefer the 0.93 rockets, this feels very reasonable considering the baseline. In light of the speed + productivity bug, which probably won't be fixed, I would probably remove the option of going over 100% in the first place. There are 3 options that come to mind:
- have at most 4 module slots, and the strongest productivity module gives +25% (possible with 5 tiers of modules)
- have at most 5 module slots, with at most +20% on a module (possible right now with 2.5% productivity per level), but it does look a bit weird maybe
- sadly, 100 is not divisible by 6, you could go to 90% productivity with 6 slots and +15% per module (which is 1.875% productivity per level)

[mexmer]

...

sadly, can't find that post now, might be i read it wrong, and backlog starts with +200% not at 200%, still it's there, since it can be observed, when you remove productivity modules.

as for your calculation example, it's fine, works for rockets, but what about other chains? you think rockets have longest chain?
you will optimize your for single purpose, while for others will still be unbalanced.

i repeat again, modules are optional.

while they might be unbalanced, nobody forces you to use them. and believe me, there are people, who will be happy to have module with 1000+ productivity, so just then don't need to move their miners, or expand factory buildings for basic stuff whatsoever.

[bobingabout]

The issues is that you can't produce more than one item per tick. Which may be independent for Green and purple bars, meaning 2 items per tick.

if you increase the speed so that green bar produces one item per tick, then stick 200% productivity in there, purple bar would be producing 2 items per tick. reduce productivity modules to minimum so it produces less than 1 item per tick, and it will continue to give you 1 item per tick until the backlog has expired.

[ukezi]

yeah productivity, even with more then 100% works fine, if you don't overdo it with speed.

[mexmer]

The issues is that you can't produce more than one item per tick. Which may be independent for Green and purple bars, meaning 2 items per tick.

if you increase the speed so that green bar produces one item per tick, then stick 200% productivity in there, purple bar would be producing 2 items per tick. reduce productivity modules to minimum so it produces less than 1 item per tick, and it will continue to give you 1 item per tick until the backlog has expired.

ok, items per tick make probly more sense (in relation to game engine). still can't find the post tho' where it was explained.

thanks for correction anyways

[Mendel]

Just to confirm: it´s 60 ticks per second, right? so max 120 items/second?

[bobingabout]

Just to confirm: it´s 60 ticks per second, right? so max 120 items/second?

60 ticks a second, yes.

[spinba11]

I've just got going with your mods and I'm very impressed, one thing I can't work out is how to use the item grow trees do I simply place it on the ground or are there more steps involved?

[mexmer]

I've just got going with your mods and I'm very impressed, one thing I can't work out is how to use the item grow trees do I simply place it on the ground or are there more steps involved?

you need to build greenhouse. then use seedlings and water to produce wood.

[spinba11]

I've just got going with your mods and I'm very impressed, one thing I can't work out is how to use the item grow trees do I simply place it on the ground or are there more steps involved?

you need to build greenhouse. then use seedlings and water to produce wood.

I've already got a greenhouse, do I leave "grow trees" in it and just take the wood out?

[torne]

I've already got a greenhouse, do I leave "grow trees" in it and just take the wood out?

"Grow trees" isn't an item, it's the name of a recipe. The recipe takes saplings and water as an input, and produces saplings (though fewer of them) and raw wood as an output. It works the same as an assembler, basically. You can't just leave the saplings in there, you have to actually remove them because they're in an "output" slot after the recipe runs. So: take both the saplings and the wood out of the greenhouse, then refill it with saplings to make it produce more. You will need to divert some of the wood output back through an assembler to make it into saplings, because the "grow trees" recipe doesn't generate enough saplings to run another cycle by itself.

I've made a few different setups for doing this and I'm not really that happy with any of them; it's hard to do without using filter inserters and it's a bit tricky to lay out sensibly

[mexmer]

I've already got a greenhouse, do I leave "grow trees" in it and just take the wood out?

"Grow trees" isn't an item, it's the name of a recipe. The recipe takes saplings and water as an input, and produces saplings (though fewer of them) and raw wood as an output. It works the same as an assembler, basically. You can't just leave the saplings in there, you have to actually remove them because they're in an "output" slot after the recipe runs. So: take both the saplings and the wood out of the greenhouse, then refill it with saplings to make it produce more. You will need to divert some of the wood output back through an assembler to make it into saplings, because the "grow trees" recipe doesn't generate enough saplings to run another cycle by itself.

I've made a few different setups for doing this and I'm not really that happy with any of them; it's hard to do without using filter inserters and it's a bit tricky to lay out sensibly

i usualy use 20 greenhouse, 2 belts, 2 assemblers setup (you can later replace 2 assemblers with 1, when you get green or better, but gray needs to be 2)

until you get filter inserter, you will probly use filterbox, to pickup seedlings from outside belt, then when you get filter inserter, you will use that, and put seedlings back to inner belt, untill then, seedlings are only produced from assemblers. but tbh. when you are at phase, you neeed massproducing wood, you already can make one or two filter inserters by hand (just get some bobmonium - or tin ore - rubytium or lead ore, and rest you already have)

[spinba11]

Makes sense now thank you.

[Darkas]

...

sadly, can't find that post now, might be i read it wrong, and backlog starts with +200% not at 200%, still it's there, since it can be observed, when you remove productivity modules.

as for your calculation example, it's fine, works for rockets, but what about other chains? you think rockets have longest chain?
you will optimize your for single purpose, while for others will still be unbalanced.

i repeat again, modules are optional.

while they might be unbalanced, nobody forces you to use them. and believe me, there are people, who will be happy to have module with 1000+ productivity, so just then don't need to move their miners, or expand factory buildings for basic stuff whatsoever.

The rocket was just the first example that comes to mind, if other chains still appear to be unbalanced, I would try to balance them at a later point.

I know everything is optional, but you wouldn't put a spell that kills everything and has no drawbacks in an RPG would you? There are good reasons why this stuff is not in the base game, and why you need to actively enable OP stuff (in this case, by mods), and I just want to play with bobs mods without making up rules beforehand on what is considered OP and which entity I will not use. In the same fashion, I would much prefer if all the OP stuff would just be hidden until I set a flag in the options to enable it (like with god modules).

[Deadly-Bagel]

But on the other hand, modules are extremely tedious to make. Even without including production of electronic components, they were easily my biggest and most complex factory. I think the biggest problem is that this isn't a drawback to using them since you pretty much need to set up a production of them anyway to make the power armour and modular components, sure I guess most of it could be done by hand but it's a big job regardless.

[Recon777]

But on the other hand, modules are extremely tedious to make. Even without including production of electronic components, they were easily my biggest and most complex factory. I think the biggest problem is that this isn't a drawback to using them since you pretty much need to set up a production of them anyway to make the power armour and modular components, sure I guess most of it could be done by hand but it's a big job regardless.

Yeah. Modules are... well... this is me showing Modules who's boss. ^_^

[ukezi]

real nice. making the combo module direct is way more efficient. you start a lot of rockets, don't you