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

[Mad Mephit]

Logistics seems to have made stack inserters largely useless. Whereas the vanilla game's single research track for inserter stack size ensures that stack will always be increasing faster than non-stack - sometimes by multiple units for research - with Bob's Logistics splitting them up, all the way through science pack 3 research stack inserters are barely any better than regular. Should the stack inserter capacity research perhaps increase stack inserter capacities by a greater amount earlier on? Or should stack inserters perhaps also benefit from the non-stack inserter bonus (which they currently/in vanilla don't)?

[nagapito]

Logistics seems to have made stack inserters largely useless. Whereas the vanilla game's single research track for inserter stack size ensures that stack will always be increasing faster than non-stack - sometimes by multiple units for research - with Bob's Logistics splitting them up, all the way through science pack 3 research stack inserters are barely any better than regular. Should the stack inserter capacity research perhaps increase stack inserter capacities by a greater amount earlier on? Or should stack inserters perhaps also benefit from the non-stack inserter bonus (which they currently/in vanilla don't)?

Inserter capacity bonus only goes to level 4, giving a max of 5 units picked up by an inserter.
Stack inserter capacity bonus goes up to 7, giving a max of 12 units picked up by a stack inserter.

I fail to see your point....

[Mad Mephit]

By the time you have ALL RESEARCH, sure. The problem is that they don't become useful until well after the inserters themselves can be researched. Stack inserters themselves only take green science, but with the first three tiers of science pack - red, green, AND blue - the bonuses are +3 for regular inserters and +4 for stack. That one extra item is not worth the difference in material costs, and it won't be until production science that they start to pull away at all, starting to gain multiple items per completed research project.

[bobingabout]

I think what you're saying is... although you suggested that the base games method was better... the issue is that the research is imbalanced. Perhaps the solution should be to make the stack inserted stack size bonus cheaper for those mid levels, and the inserter bonuses more expensive, so that the stack Inserters have an advantage before requiring the more expensive science packs.

Yes?

[nagapito]

By the time you have ALL RESEARCH, sure. The problem is that they don't become useful until well after the inserters themselves can be researched. Stack inserters themselves only take green science, but with the first three tiers of science pack - red, green, AND blue - the bonuses are +3 for regular inserters and +4 for stack. That one extra item is not worth the difference in material costs, and it won't be until production science that they start to pull away at all, starting to gain multiple items per completed research project.

Not an extra item, 2 extra items, since stack inserters start already with a 2 item capacity.
And you said it right, early game you use inserters, late game you use stack inserters. If stack inserters didnt use normal insertes in the recipe, I would kinda agree that you would be wasting a lot of resources with the upgrade but, those inserters that are part of the recipe for the stack inserters.

So... when you reach late game, where research gives an obvious bonus to the stack inserters, you upgrade!

To me this change makes even more sense, since vanilla gives you late bonus to an inserter that you dont even want to use in most cases. With Bob's change, the difference is that the late game bonus to insertes are actually available mid-game, not like vanilla that forces you to upgrade to stack inserters so soon, rendering normal inserters obsolete at mid game, when you might be struggling for such expensive ingredients.

[Mad Mephit]

Not an extra item, 2 extra items, since stack inserters start already with a 2 item capacity.

The numbers I'm seeing in my game don't bear that out (more below).

I think what you're saying is... although you suggested that the base games method was better... the issue is that the research is imbalanced. Perhaps the solution should be to make the stack inserted stack size bonus cheaper for those mid levels, and the inserter bonuses more expensive, so that the stack Inserters have an advantage before requiring the more expensive science packs.

Yes?

What I'm getting at is more that the early tiers of science - where stack inserters themselves are enabled - could stand to give stack inserters a bit more benefit.

I've got all the available research on inserter stack size done that doesn't need production science. Currently, my standard inserters have a stack size of 4. Stack inserters? 5. In each case, the bonuses listed on the Bonuses window are one less than that, suggesting that each has a base capacity of 1. By this time in vanilla, I think standard inserters would be at 2, MAYBE 3, but stack inserters would be a bit higher - I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think it's 5 or 6? So they aren't as good as they will be later on, of course - but they ARE a clear improvement over regular inserters, whereas as things currently stand, up through blue science the difference is marginal and fails to justify the extra resource cost. Being able to push stack inserters faster is okay in concept, and the cost wasn't anything I cared about hugely; it's just that the result up through blue science feels lackluster. Having standard inserter capacity research not go as far before it jumps up to a new research tier could help make them more worthwhile from the other end.

[bobingabout]

what I meant by expensive is science pack wise. Say, by the time you get to blue science, your stack inserters should be able to carry twice the amount of regulars, not just +1. therefore, take the next level of stack inserter bonus and remove the blue science, and add blue science to the previous tier of non-stack inserter bonus.

[Mad Mephit]

I think I'm following you, and that sounds about right; shifting the tier boundaries so the inserters don't advance nearly in lockstep. The ramp-up that comes from higher tiers giving more than one point of increase to stack inserters may still be good, but I can understand not having any of those until production/high-tech science.

[ukezi]

I think there is a step missing in the electronic assembler line. you have one with double speed for tier 1 and tier 3 what I'm missing is one for tier 2 with 1.5 speed and costing basic electronic boards and be able to craft electronic circuit boards.

[arbarbonif]

I think there is a step missing in the electronic assembler line. you have one with double speed for tier 1 and tier 3 what I'm missing is one for tier 2 with 1.5 speed and costing basic electronic boards and be able to craft electronic circuit boards.

It would be nice if there was a burner chemical and metal-mixing smelters with a speed of 2 like the steel furnaces. It would be even better if it would not require blue science and be able to have 4 ingredients (so it can make cobalt and the like).

[nagapito]

what I meant by expensive is science pack wise. Say, by the time you get to blue science, your stack inserters should be able to carry twice the amount of regulars, not just +1. therefore, take the next level of stack inserter bonus and remove the blue science, and add blue science to the previous tier of non-stack inserter bonus.

And how about an infinite research for stack inserter bonus. Something way stupid, so anything that gave more then 20 items to a stack inserter would require hundreds of thousands of packs....

I ask this because only yesterday I noticed the limit was 12, I thought it was above 20.... Forgot that it was late upgrades giving the extra research and not bobs

[Recon777]

I know you said before that this menu icon will fill out when more mods from the suite are installed. But... I've got everything you've released installed and I'm curious when the icon will look like it used to.



The blue science pack image really has nothing to do with this menu. But all the electronics stuff is here. Maybe it needs a new icon?

[bobingabout]

I know you said before that this menu icon will fill out when more mods from the suite are installed. But... I've got everything you've released installed and I'm curious when the icon will look like it used to.



The blue science pack image really has nothing to do with this menu. But all the electronics stuff is here. Maybe it needs a new icon?

I know I said that, but it is actually an icon_size tag bug. I have fixed it on my end already, and will be released when I've finished the current round of tweaks and changes. There's a short list I Want to do before I push it (I'm not in the rush because it isn't a game breaking issue)

[bobingabout]

Hey Bob,

Just so you know, I think today's patches may have made it impossible to play the game in multiplayer. We made sure the game itself was the same, and we share the mods we use with a zip, but we kept getting the error below:



That's what I get joining him, when he tries to join me he gets a bit more info saying that the same issue is found with Bobsores.

If mod settings are different, it also shows this error.
With todays patch, all settings were reseted by the game, to fix a bug where invalid values were being saved, so its probably that.

ah nuts... I know the issue now.

Do not conditionally 'require(...)' things: this breaks the crc checks and people will get errors trying to use your mod in multiplayer. 'require(...)' everything and then conditionally add the values to data.raw using the settings.

Since in the older version where everything was in config, that's how I managed sections, put require within a config if check, therefore when I updated to 0.15, I simply put require within the settings check.

I'm guessing a solution would be to encompass the entire contents of the required file in a check instead.

[Recon777]

I just scanned over the discussion you guys had about stack inserter bonuses.

I'd like to chime in and say that I too have noticed this feels "off" currently. It seems easier to buff up your regular inserters early on, but when you do this, they actually outperform stack inserters (I think). There's this "unsweet spot" where it's just not worth using stack inserters until you power through a few levels of research.

I recommend that the REGULAR inserter research provides bonus to BOTH types of inserters. That way, no matter what path you choose, your stack inserters will always be better. And in addition to this, have the separate tree which provides even more bonus to the stack inserters.

[Ayyno]

So I think something, between Picker, Bob's Logistics, or SqueakThrough is breaking (at the very least) the name of the valves in Bob's Logistics. Screencap attached.

valve broken.PNG (112.68 KiB) Viewed 6696 times

[bobingabout]

So I think something, between Picker, Bob's Logistics, or SqueakThrough is breaking (at the very least) the name of the valves in Bob's Logistics. Screencap attached.

valve broken.PNG

I think by default it just uses the item name, but I'll have a look at it when I get home.

[lieblingsbesuch]

Do Alien Artifacts make any sense since they have been removed from vanilla? Is it useful to turn them on?

[nagapito]

Do Alien Artifacts make any sense since they have been removed from vanilla? Is it useful to turn them on?

Technically.... no

But... if you want extra complexity on some item recipes... or on some specific bobs military technology research (when bob tech is released), then yes.
Since I love his mods for the extra complexity, I dont see a reason to avoid this one

[septemberWaves]

I can't seem to find patches of lithia water on the map. Ground water is generating, every ore appears to be generating (as far as I can tell, I haven't seen them all but I'm using RSO and I've seen as many as I'd expect to by this point in the game), but I can't find the lithia patches. If I remember correctly they were a separate patch to the normal ground water in the previous game version, so I'm somewhat confused by their apparent absence now. Unless they're just particularly rare, and that - combined with RSO - means that they'll generate a lot more sparsely than ground water.