[0.17+] Space Exploration WIP

[Qon]

[Moderated by Koub]

[Deadlock989]

[Moderated by Koub]

[Qon]

[Moderated by Koub]

[Deadlock989]

[Moderated by Koub]

[Qon]

[Moderated by Koub]

[Koub]

[Koub] Okay so there has been a lot of drama going on here. I removed everything I judged drama related. Whoever reopens the drama subject will be moderated and get a small ban because reasons.
For obvious reasons, I won't lock the thread, because it's much needed, but I'll keep an eye on this, so now, please behave.

[Earendel]

I think that the issues with reverse factory recipes are resolved from version 0.1.12 and onward but you need the latest version of reverse factory too. If anyone sees the problem again when they're on a later version of Space Exploration and they have updated reverse factory then please let me know. It may be related to mod load order so posting the mod list would also be useful.

[il-cat]

First of all i want to say, that this is absolutely damn awesome! Factorio team did promise space platforms and stuff at some point, but with as much stuff as they are doing and redoing on this project, the possibility of them getting to it eventually was bleak at best. Now we have this amazing thing here and whats more its by my favorite modder. Perfect endgame goal, to expand it beyond a single rocket launch and endless researches to sink resources into. Your creations always look, move and work amazingly fitting with factorio concept, which is why i am so glad to see thats its exactly you, Earendel, are working on it.

I always liked mods that add to Factorio rather than completely or partially overwrite the experience (i do like Angel's and Bob's mods, but the sheer complexity and progression changes, resource variety that takes hundred times more space to just do basic processing of them all than all my previous factories smushed togerher - all that s a bit overwhelming, not to mention some stuff looking way out of place art-wise). Which is why i join the ranks of people that hope for AAI Industries and Bot Attrition being optional. I like some aspects of AAI Industry (it fits incredibly well with Angel's refining mod that produces craptons upon craptons of stone and AAI Industries introduces heavy usage of said stone in most of the recipes for machines and even circuits), but for those who don't use Angel's and want to have vanilla recipes mostly untouched, mixing in stone and concrete into almost everything might not be so fun. Remaking vanilla recipes requires reworking from scratch every effective blueprint you had and got used to just to add some stone to it... And for bot attrition - isn't it fine for new bases to be entirely bot bases? I am all for freedom of player's playstyle. I, for one, still heavily use belts even in uber-late game stage, because they don't need recharging and don't up electricity bills, while doing their job perfectly fine. I use bots for shopping malls and places where i am just lazy to build a proper belt based factory, but having them randomly drop just for additional cost in resources for their use, while belts remain completely place-and-forget? Feels more like an annoyance, rather than a challenge. You already are paying in power for them and both bots and bot hive construction is pretty resource intensive. There is no need for artificial costs placed on them.

TL;DR - I am really darn hyped about the mod and will watch its development very closely and hope for dependancies to be made optional at some point, when you have the time to make it so. Thanks for your time and effort - i repeat, this is amazing, both art-wise and concept-wise.

[Earendel]

Thanks for the kind words.

With robot attrition it's a different situation from the base game where you had to start with belts in your main base. Increasing their power cost would not solve the problem. As I said before you can reduce the crash rate to near zero and not worry about it. I would encourage people to give it a try before rejecting the idea completely.

I will try to remove AAI Industry as a dependency, there are difficulties beyond just recipes and techs. I'd also like to keep the initial crash sequence in for both mods but I don't want to duplicate all of the code. Maybe it gets moved to Space Exploration, or maybe Space Exploration has an alternate start where you're in the spaceship. I'll have a think about which way is best, but it is on the todo list either way.

[il-cat]

Initial crash sequence i actually like a ton! It creates a sense of story behind player's appearance on Nauvis and it also looks amazing too. So i will be only glad if you can keep that in, while not overwriting the vanilla recipes too much. New burner stage tech is also quite nice to have for progression feel, the only thing i have issues with are vanilla recipes modified towards increasing ingredient count. Its quite fine in an Angel-bob run, because there you ll have to rethink the entirety of production chains anyway and also the stone is so abundant as a byproduct, you don't have to worry about your factory growth depending on stone supply. But if you want to just play vanilla-AAI-Space Exploration, to have pretty much vanilla+ game it becomes a problem.

As for Bot Attrition settings, i might be missing something, but i tried reducing bot crash modifier to lower than default 1 and it didn't accept the changes. Maybe i am doing something wrong, but if you can just lower the chance to be almost non-existent - then i am fine with it staying a dependancy.

[Earendel]

Initial crash sequence i actually like a ton! It creates a sense of story behind player's appearance on Nauvis and it also looks amazing too. So i will be only glad if you can keep that in, while not overwriting the vanilla recipes too much. New burner stage tech is also quite nice to have for progression feel, the only thing i have issues with are vanilla recipes modified towards increasing ingredient count. Its quite fine in an Angel-bob run, because there you ll have to rethink the entirety of production chains anyway and also the stone is so abundant as a byproduct, you don't have to worry about your factory growth depending on stone supply. But if you want to just play vanilla-AAI-Space Exploration, to have pretty much vanilla+ game it becomes a problem.

As for Bot Attrition settings, i might be missing something, but i tried reducing bot crash modifier to lower than default 1 and it didn't accept the changes. Maybe i am doing something wrong, but if you can just lower the chance to be almost non-existent - then i am fine with it staying a dependancy.

The default of attrition rate is 10, the minimum is currently 1, but I can make it lower if you find that is still too much.
Edit: I just went ahead and reduced the minimum to 0.01.

Maybe it is worth duplicating some code so both mods have the initial crash sequence...

The alternative is Space Exploration starts the player in a tiny damaged space ship in Nauvis orbit. You have little to no fuel so you'd have to land. It would mean you'd have access to a limited number of things early: a solar panel, an accumulator, a power pole, a few walls, a laser turret. You wouldn't be able to make more so I don't think it would affect the game too much apart from having a safe fallback point.

[il-cat]

Ah, so default is 10, not 1, i see, thats why i wasn't able to change it down. Its fine to keep it on 1 as default, but the option to tone it further down is good to have for sure. I didn't play much with that, so i honestly can't say if its too much or not, I ll have to find my own value i am fine with having during playtesting it. I am used to bots being only destructible by biters, so if one crashes once in eons, that would be fine, i guess.

Spaceship landing sequence is a fine option too. Really intriguing one. Though i don't know how to feel about starting with some high tech stuff, while also being burner tech dependant. I think its fine as an optional thing, where if you have AAI Industries installed - you start in a total wreck, where only a few pieces of scrap are left for you to craft initial burner drills. And if you don't have it - its a higher tech "faster" start, where you start out with some remnants of high level technology you had on your ship, like said solar panel, turret and accumulator. So you have an option to start out from total primitive level, or with some crutches in the form of those items.

Regardless of how will you go about it, its still quite incredible. Factorio kind of gets old for me once i launch a rocket or two (which is why i am drowning in bob-angel now), since i kind of don't have any reason to expand further, find more resources, fight biters etc. Now i ll have something to look forward to even past rocket silo, try out remote controlling my facility from space with bots and self-replicating factory parts, that i can place via blueprinting from remote view etc. Going interplanetary factory sounds too good to be true.

[Light]

My intention was to retire after launching a rocket per minute in AAI/Angel/Bob, but this could be what I'm looking for to make the retirement end on a high note. Launching rockets more frequently isn't that exciting, as it's just larger scale production than normal. It's not challenging or engaging as this appears to be.

The unfortunate problem is having to disable several mods to get it to function, but I've already waited several months for the wrinkles to iron out with other mods so I can be patient for this one too.

If there's one thing I did get concerned about, it was lacking enough fuel for a return trip. Being in cheat mode permitted escape, but is it actually possible to become stranded forever? It took a LOT of fuel just to reach orbit, so I'm just imagining the costs to go beyond the stars and back again being pretty intense. Especially given how my baby ship demanded 407GJ of fuel, which was far smaller than the much larger and more functional ships in the examples.

Hopefully the compatibility issues can be ironed out rather easily, with RSO being one of them. It's the one mod that perfectly tailors the resource generation to fit my playstyle that vanilla generation can't accomplish, so it's hard to live without.

Now I'm in the mood to play some FTL.

[orzelek]

I'm not sure where it will go with RSO.
Multi surface setup might not be a big problem (I hope).
There is one feature that I might find hard to duplicate - it's a tile restriction for resource spawning. In base game you can make noise layers that will match a tleast partially to align tiles and resources. RSO has no good way atm to do this.
It might end up a bit strangely looking if ore meant for certain tiles would spawn on different tile set.

[Earendel]

If there's one thing I did get concerned about, it was lacking enough fuel for a return trip. Being in cheat mode permitted escape, but is it actually possible to become stranded forever? It took a LOT of fuel just to reach orbit, so I'm just imagining the costs to go beyond the stars and back again being pretty intense. Especially given how my baby ship demanded 407GJ of fuel, which was far smaller than the much larger and more functional ships in the examples.

No you can't get stuck forever. It was a problem that was addressed early on (because the first time I blindly launched myself to another planet via rocket I stranded myself on a tiny island.) There are multiple ways of escape:

If you're anywhere other than a planet, a space capsule will take you to the nearest planet for free. Moons are not considered planets for this, you can leave a moon with a space capsule.

If you are stranded anywhere you can put your items in a chest and press the 'Home' key or use the respawn shortcut. You will either respawn at Nauvis, a random rocket landing pad, or a random spaceship.

You can get back to an abandoned spaceship by respawning there, boarding it with another spaceship, or launching yourself there with a rocket.

If you don't want abandon your spaceship you can also get fuel delivered to you by rocket, you can use the satellite uplink to change rocket launch pad destinations remotely.

If water is the problem there's also a trick you can do with spaceship tiles where you can make a bridge that you pick up as you go along.

[Earendel]

I'm not sure where it will go with RSO.
Multi surface setup might not be a big problem (I hope).
There is one feature that I might find hard to duplicate - it's a tile restriction for resource spawning. In base game you can make noise layers that will match a tleast partially to align tiles and resources. RSO has no good way atm to do this.
It might end up a bit strangely looking if ore meant for certain tiles would spawn on different tile set.

Perhaps the best way to handle tile restricted resources would be to not handle them at all and let them spawn naturally?

[AmatorPhasma]

Outstanding, great Mod! and.... just WOW

Love this Idea!

[Earendel]

Outstanding, great Mod! and.... just WOW

Love this Idea!

Hey thanks.

If you find any incompatibilities with your mods just let me know and I'll get them fixed asap.

[orzelek]

I'm not sure where it will go with RSO.
Multi surface setup might not be a big problem (I hope).
There is one feature that I might find hard to duplicate - it's a tile restriction for resource spawning. In base game you can make noise layers that will match a tleast partially to align tiles and resources. RSO has no good way atm to do this.
It might end up a bit strangely looking if ore meant for certain tiles would spawn on different tile set.

Perhaps the best way to handle tile restricted resources would be to not handle them at all and let them spawn naturally?

It depends on how many resources like that are in the mod. If it's only few then it's a good solution, if most of them then it will look like RSO is not there at all.

[Arch666Angel]

Simplest solution would be to make mod themed planets But that depends on how much each mod interacts/changes the progression at all.