Re: Pymods Feedback

Pridesfall · Post by **Pridesfall** » Fri Sep 13, 2019 7:59 pm

I love the mod. I'm getting pretty close to circuit 2's.

It seems petty but I would really love to get night vision goggles a lot sooner.

zizzleswomp · Post by **zizzleswomp** » Sat Sep 14, 2019 12:08 am

Yes, I absolutely love the mod pack. I can't play Factorio without it anymore.

I really like a sense of progression, which usually comes down to two things for me: a feeling of accomplishment, and a reward for the investment. The challenges presented in your mod certainly deliver on the feeling of accomplishment. The natural reward for producing a new material is unlocking a whole new set of recipes, and that feels great. Sometimes the rewards don't really feel like they match up with the effort, though. For instance, higher-tier buildings cost a lot more but don't always net much of a speed gain - which seems to encourage just making lots of lower-tier buildings, rather than me celebrating and getting excited about upgrading lots of my factory to the new tier.

Similarly, some of the higher-tier ore processing recipes did not bring very much gain for all the effort they required. But after that was brought to your attention a few months ago and you made some adjustments it seems much more worthwhile to use higher-tier recipes. So I have no specific complaints right now, just a hope that you continue to consider the investment/reward tradeoff as you add to and balance the mod pack. (Also, this isn't a plea to make higher-tier stuff stupidly overpowered either, just suitably rewarding, is all.)

Some of the tech tree prerequisite ordering seems a little off, too. For instance, I always seem to need to research Logistics 2 long, long before I ever get anywhere near producing stainless steel. So unlocking the red belts recipe seems like such a mean tease that early in the tech tree. Also, it might help newer players if you separate out the science packs into their own tech (as vanilla recently did) with prerequisites including the components needed to make them. Especially since they have different graphics rather than just different colored science flasks, it can be hard for newcomers to the mod to even find where the next tier of science pack is in the tech tree or what they need to research in order to work towards it.

Anyways, not meaning anything here to be a complaint. I really appreciate your hard work on the mod and look forward to future additions and refinements.

Damage · Post by **Damage** » Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:10 am

I absolutely love it! The complexity is amazing, the art is fantastic and the challenges that each tier and new material bring along is just like one rabbit hole after the other

I never made it past second tier circuits due to my base becoming a mess, but i am close to that point now and it's just great. As for feedback, I think you got the complexity and challenges right in the sweet spot. The one thing I love to see improved is the sound volume of some of the machines, I think they are quite loud compared to some of the vanilla things.

For the rest, I am just really looking forward to more of your mods and patiently waiting what you have in store for them. I think you're on the right track with it.

I hope this is useful to you, keep on rocking with your mods!

immortal_sniper1 · Post by **immortal_sniper1** » Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:21 am

py great mods

atm it is a must for me , figuring out the relevant recipes for a patch the dead ones and finishing a production block is always so satisfying
another great thing is that py mods can be played in many ways some play it as sea-block type mod others go on a direct route , some like me build top down with a science /s goal in mind

difficulty , that u got right , amazing graphics and chain design(mostly)

well like all things there are still problems here and there when it comes to balancing but those things are being ironed out slowly

things that would be nice: mk2-4 buildings for more things involved in ore processing , tho here i say it with a grain of salt since some like flotation cell are used for other stuff and py usually removes module slots so if u want productivity u are in a bad place

well module numbers and lvl is a interesting resign choice with the mk1 having most of them so if you want to use productivity u need to use mk1-2 and also beacon with speed

another nice thing would be maybe a gold from sand siffing recipe

Blokus · Post by **Blokus** » Sat Sep 14, 2019 11:58 am

Overall I like Pymods. But I do have quite a few criticisms to raise. These aren't really in any particular order.

I think it would be pretty fair to basically multiply all finished yields in Raw Ores by something like 4/3. I like the overall ratio of what you get from investing in higher tier recipes for the most part, this is more about making the early game less of a crawl.
IMO the buildings in general are too hard to make. This is both in terms of raw materials and in terms of overall complexity of fitting them together from a reasonable set of intermediates. The raw materials issue eventually becomes not such a big deal, but it does make the early game slow, in a way that you can't really even do anything about for several hours. (Consider for example how much you have to spend on your first fawogae plantation, crystal mine, botanical nursery, and wood processing unit. Then consider just how slow a factory with only one of each of those is...) You would think that the complexity part would feel like content, but it doesn't. It's so complicated, and the throughput needs of a mall are so low (at least for the Py structures), that you just mindlessly throw together a sprawling bot mall and call it a day. A belt mall is basically not possible because of the insane dependency graph between the buildings themselves.
IMO the buildings above mk2 cannot justify their price tag except through their UPS savings. For things that take productivity, even the UPS savings are questionable, because of your peculiar approach to module slots. Even mk2 is only really any good when it triples the craft speed, not when it doubles it. This might be different for people playing with aliens, since then space is at more of a premium.
There are some recipes that are objectively bad, particularly in Raw Ores. This has been greatly improved in the time that I have been following Pymods, but I'm still pretty sure that there are some high grade -> molten or reduced -> molten recipes that are strictly worse than their predecessor just in terms of ore to molten ratio, and they consume extra side inputs as well. If you really don't want us smelting those, just prevent us from doing so. Doing the math only to find out that the new recipe you just got is objectively worse than the one you already had is not fun.
There are also some places where expensive side inputs overwhelm the utility of a seemingly more efficient chain. This is usually at max tier metal production.
IMO the structure of PyHighTech should be shifted to generally make the game more automation-friendly early in the game. Specifically, I think the handcraft recipe of circuit board 1 should instead produce "circuit board 0", which can be made automatically or by hand and is used in a relatively limited number of things. Then the automated recipe of circuit board 1 would stay the same, it wouldn't feel so bad to delay getting it set up, and there would come a well-defined point before working on circuit 2 where you need to get it set up. As it stands, not only is it rather complicated, but automated circuit board 1 also costs more total stuff than handcrafting it. Thus the optimal early strategy is to automate wood and cable and then feed your early game mall with handcrafted circuits, which just seems wrong.
I don't really know why, but for some reason utility science looked vastly easier than it is. (Maybe this had something to do with production science not actually being all that difficult.) This led me to start working on making utility science pretty quickly, because I wanted to use the goodies that it unlocks to fix some of the bottlenecks in my base (rather than just building more of the stuff I already had). I quickly gave up as I came to fully understand the magnitude of the task. It might be nice to introduce a science pack in between production and utility that consumes circuit board 3. Maybe that pack could be used to unlock sintering instead of utility, to smooth out the pain of the late game.
Please adopt the vanilla convention for the science pack technology, where there is a tech that just unlocks the science pack and has all the techs that you will need to start making that science pack as prerequisites. As it stands there is already a third-party mod that achieves this (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/pyscienceorganizer), which I helped make, but there's no guarantee that this will stay up-to-date with any changes you make, especially when PyAL drops.
In general it also might be nice to split up some of your huge techs like Coal Processing 2. This would also give more of a sink for automation and logistic science packs early in the game. That sink would be nice, because right now you wind up with a very long period in between logistic and chemical science where you have nothing to research. That period feels bad, just as it does in some other overhaul mods.
I suspect it is already on the todo list, but it would be nice if rockets were more complicated. Not necessarily more total material, but just more complicated...think of Bob's to see some of the kind of things you might do. Right now utility science is more difficult to make than space science. (But admittedly I am saying this without having actually unlocked rocket silo, just based on looking at the recipes rather than actually building a factory that launches rockets.)

immortal_sniper1 · Post by **immortal_sniper1** » Sat Sep 14, 2019 1:37 pm

Blokus wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 11:58 am

yes rocket parts seem easy BUT they are NOT that case is more abut quantity not input difficulty tho if u want to make say x space science /s and use hellmod a bit you will soon realize the amounts needed are HUGE
lets say 5/s or 300spm that means if u use as much productivity as possible 17-18/s super alloys not bad BUT that means 200/s or so nickel plates and like a few hundred/s Mo ore in order to make the make the alloy ALONE
then comes the fuel rods for the rocket fuel....
and i shouldn't mention that control modules need speed module 1 and that is a ton of circ 1 38-39/s circ 2 22-23/s
yes the inputs are not that hard at that time but the amounts are .

besides that i agree with most points
and in the case of the ore chain where high grade is worse then prev recipe please tell me and ill do the math and maybe fix it
and regarding the top recipe yeald increase that would be nice but not sure if py wants that , tho titanium might need a buff , since the less ore needed the easier it would be to acquire with ground borers and py is very against their extensive use

and yes the big 2 leaps in difficulty are science 2 and high 2 being the largest
and yes early games is super slow and u need to handcraft circ 1 like 90% of the time

and i mentioned dead recipes too and i am really glad that someone else noticed them to when one dies some other tends to be come thee better one by comparison

Rue99 · Post by **Rue99** » Sat Sep 14, 2019 5:59 pm

I've bounced off Pymods several times over the years; the new tutorials from Otaku Showboat inspired me to try again. I've a couple of thousand hours in Factorio, mostly Angels/Bobs, but also Seablock & SpaceX.

The complexity is appealing, but the scaling of some production chains and design decisions around module slots seems perverse at times. I don't always feel that the rewards from an upgraded chain repay the time invested. The reason I persist is that the mod graphics and animations are simply beautiful - I've played enough Factorio that it's more a toy than a game at this point, and aesthetics are important.

Given that you and your team give your time freely makes any requests I make rather impertinent, but I think your suite deserves to be more widely played, and any future balance passes should concentrate on smoothing the power curve and speeding up the initial part of the game. I can give specifics if necessary, but some of the other, earlier respondents have provided a flavour.

Light · Post by **Light** » Sat Sep 14, 2019 10:27 pm

My feedback is rather simple, because I can't persist long enough to go further than a certain point before I'm bored. This came as a surprise from someone who plays with AAI/Angel/Bob/Space Exploration + other extension and biter mods.

Simply put, the early game is such a slog to get through that it takes forever to get anything done without massive scale production right from the get go. Biters being disabled is a mandatory requirement given the remarkable scale of buildings needed to get any reasonable processing going, otherwise you're building small and wasting hours upon hours waiting for things to get made. That doesn't include the amount of pollution created trying to power all of these things either, as it does add up very rapidly.

Not playing without biters is unappealing for my preferred style of play, where biters present a pressuring element to get things done in a timely fashion.

One remedy to this is already present in Angel's, which is that mined ore provide a reduced efficiency per plate instead of needing large numbers of ores to make a single plate. You use three ore to create two plates at the start until eventually getting 4:3 and 1:1 ratios, with later tech eventually providing 1:1.5 and 1:2 which helps ore patches last a lot longer with considerable infrastructure to achieve it. This way the player can constantly craft what they need early on with limited infrastructure, but know that their ore fields will deplete faster unless they tech up to better options.

Another remedy is to make the starting plates require fewer ores but leave the higher tier plates as is, this way you can continue crafting the basics without standing around and should have enough infrastructure built to tackle the next tier. The other advantage is that you can also defend yourself against the biters before the next tier jump when better weapons will become available. Consistent ammo production will be viable without taking away from other production.

Ultimately if the early game had fewer moments of standing around and presented more of a bump later on, then it would be easier to want to stick with it without making compromises to preferential playstyles just to possibly enjoy using Py.

Spoo · Post by **Spoo** » Sun Sep 15, 2019 1:08 pm

My idea of the ideal start would have the bare minimum of forced hand crafting. Handcrafting a new machine is fine. Constantly hand crafting circuits is a chore.

Also, it bothers me when the hand crafting recipe is easier. In this case, something like a limited circuits 0 recipe is a good compromise.

havvy · Post by **havvy** » Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:32 am

So, without looking into a tutorial or anything, I started a new game with all of the official mods. First thing I've noticed is that looking for intermediate things like small parts and automation science packs is basically hunting through all of the tabs since there's no order as to where anything is. For some reason small parts is in petroleum handling, for example, instead of in intermediate products.

shadowpho · Post by **shadowpho** » Fri Sep 20, 2019 6:12 pm

Played >100 hours with a friend. We are both very hardcore mod players of minecraft and factorio. Keep that in mind as our feedback will likely be skewed.

[*]I think early game is fine-ish. It's a bit cumbersome but not terribly so. It sets the mood right.
[*]Speaking of the mood -- the night is terrible. Lights do jack-shit. Afraid of the dark mod is essential just because of how crappy lights are and night vision is too far away. Would be fantastic if we could increase light range.
[*]The biggest disappointment is balance of the game.

Electrolysis should be far more expensive.
Other gas burning should give more power.
Balance of higher tier processing isn't always better then lower tier, and it's very hard to figure that out
Glass is essential but harder to procure then anything else early game with no tech options for it really
Some power options are just eh.
Higher level machines are expensive and IMHO not worth it at all.

Lurve · Post by **Lurve** » Fri Sep 20, 2019 7:38 pm

Point of view context: I've played through automating circuits 2, just before pyPH was released. I've no idea what "tholins" are, maybe they would have changed things.

The power generation options are far and away the best part of the mods. Most everything else feels like it's being a pain in the tuchus for the sake of it.

The key word there is "options." You can get coal from fawogae or wood. You can coke it and burn it, or process it and burn fuel, or process the fuel and burn better fuel. You can burn the leftovers from your factory, or have a stand-alone plant and truck out the ashes once in a while, or something in between and use intermediates more efficiently.

But if you are making circuits 2, you are going to make literally every recipe you have access to. There are no options. It doesn't matter what order you do them in, because none of the components are useful for anything until you get circuits 2, which you can't make until you do them all. This isn't obvious, when you look at circuit 2's recipe. It comes in little gotchas, like the building for a sub-sub-component requiring a tiny amount of stainless steel (and the whole processing chain involved in that). It makes for an incredibly frustrating experience to have to do everything badly just to unlock options to do it slightly better.

I'm using circuits 2 because it's the most egregious example, but that kind of terrible design is found throughout the pyMod suite. I recall early lead production being a similar PITA, though I don't recall the particulars of what hoops it made people jump through.

Again, this is a somewhat outdated perspective, hopefully things have improved. My overall impression is still a positive one - I liked the production chains, I liked designing a base sensibly using them all, I even liked that all of the buildings were enormous. I did not like the staggering inefficiency of it all, or the tech tree gotchas, or the way progression ground to a halt at each new step while dozens of new chains had to be sorted out.

masterzh · Post by **masterzh** » Sat Sep 21, 2019 12:59 am

Hello there pyanodon... here it goes...

Disclaimer:
I am playing on "old" 0.16, Coal / Fusion / Hightech / Industry Py setup (+many quality of life mods along) with current map at 390 hours (no biters)

Why i chose PY:
So after Bobs/Angels/Youki and longest playthrough being roughly 150h i was looking for the "ultimate challenge" and at the same time something which will reward me with some majestic "eye-candies" along the way. Your mod was a "spot on" logical candidate.
First attempt and experience however went a bit sideways... I was overconfident that i can take anything, after such deadly combo as Bobs+Angels, however your mod proved me extremely wrong. Long story short... fighting biters, expanding base, expanding power and pushing research race to defend myself was lost after some 30 hours. I unlocked laser turrets however my base was falling apart, power outages and constant need to scale production in all directions in enormous rate turned to be beyond what i can do alone in reasonable time while defending. (and this was with very careful setup of map and "convenient" starting resources) Maybe i had the chance but it would be huge uphill fight spending most of my time "gaining small steps" in territory while barely surviving with almost no technological progress. I am not any amazing factorio player however i would say with some 500+ hours in vanilla and mods i didnt expect to fail so hard.

After few months of PY being always somewhere there, laughing at my failure i couldnt resist to give it another try... but with a bit different mind-set this time. After a painful lesson that PY is not one but dozen complexity levels above any factorio mod i played i chose to go peaceful way. Biters as a game challenge is dwarfed by complexity of PY so much i turned them off with absolutely no shame. I was usually the first one to argue that for "full experience" these small buggers need to be there no matter how easy or hard it is, but not this time. PY by itself is a hell and heaven at the same time. I would say you really and truly need to love this aspect of the game to go with it. Everyone get a taste of it in vanilla factorio, a small piece with mods but a whole "cake factory" with PY. Now after 390hours, 30 reactors, 20+ trains buzzing around, 8000 solars, 2000 furnaces, 15 000 inserters, 3 000 miniloaders i am up to some 20 high tech science packs /m. I had to gradually "yield" some of more "cheaty" mods as the mentioned miniloaders, adjustable inserters, far reach, ultimate belts (currently using 200items/s tier 7) to not go insane fighting throughputs and resource requirements. I am not happy for some of these decision but so far everyone i showed and explained "the situation" agreed its almost vital requirement. (otherwise my base would be 4-5 times bigger and explode my already powerful PC)

Closing words:
For those looking for ultimate challenge... this is it... final destination with a cherry on top... you need to be up to the task which is many levels above any other mod experience out there. Saying word "complex" for a mod was a standard which "we" people who love and mastered factorio even with mods forgot long time ago... PY however brought a new "level cap" for us... and its not just few levels up... after 390 hours i am only now scaling up last step of research and there are so many things i skipped entirely to play with later (high tech toys). I must say i enjoyed every step of the progression... even simple thing as "circuits board" require almost all RL components in huge numbers... and all made from RL materials along all required infrastructure. Consider that these chains alone for this simple "board" will take you as much space to build as entire vanilla factorio "medium base'. And i am not joking. There is a strange satisfaction feel when you know its still scaled down compared to RL yet closer then any mod out there.

And the graphic/sprites! PY and his team created absolute masterpiece. From super entertaining and satisfying animations, very fitting design of buildings up to true eye-candies you will spend many minutes just watching. Vanilla Factorio animations are spot on extremely satisfying to watch, as you can almost feel the machines working creating a deep immersive bond with player. PY is proudly on same level.

And the sounds, man, seriously just walking through alleyways of sawmills or chemical plants aggressively sizzling in all direction while pumping gases left and right is a whole new level of "ambient music" for your game.

All above elements turn me back to a little excited boy when i am placing a new building for the first time.
Very high quality sprites, animations, sounds and very deep meaningful complexity is still keeping me exited after 390hours... and thats definitely a huge achievement for a mod in my eyes. Factorio is not my only or even top game i play... so the fact that this mod can bring me back and provide such vibrant-long-satisfying experience is simply amazing.

[edit]
TL;DR complexity is the main reason why i chose your mod, its a BIG continues challenge. It doesnt stop after you finish vital part as in other mods. Provide steady steep challenge no matter which way i chose to go. Continues satisfaction. Realism (in some sense) of how are some products made also big plus. Apologies if i wrote most of it too broad...

Blokus · Post by **Blokus** » Sat Sep 21, 2019 2:22 am

Lurve wrote: ↑Fri Sep 20, 2019 7:38 pm Point of view context: I've played through automating circuits 2, just before pyPH was released. I've no idea what "tholins" are, maybe they would have changed things.

The power generation options are far and away the best part of the mods. Most everything else feels like it's being a pain in the tuchus for the sake of it.

The key word there is "options." You can get coal from fawogae or wood. You can coke it and burn it, or process it and burn fuel, or process the fuel and burn better fuel. You can burn the leftovers from your factory, or have a stand-alone plant and truck out the ashes once in a while, or something in between and use intermediates more efficiently.

But if you are making circuits 2, you are going to make literally every recipe you have access to. There are no options. It doesn't matter what order you do them in, because none of the components are useful for anything until you get circuits 2, which you can't make until you do them all. This isn't obvious, when you look at circuit 2's recipe. It comes in little gotchas, like the building for a sub-sub-component requiring a tiny amount of stainless steel (and the whole processing chain involved in that). It makes for an incredibly frustrating experience to have to do everything badly just to unlock options to do it slightly better.

I'm using circuits 2 because it's the most egregious example, but that kind of terrible design is found throughout the pyMod suite. I recall early lead production being a similar PITA, though I don't recall the particulars of what hoops it made people jump through.

Again, this is a somewhat outdated perspective, hopefully things have improved. My overall impression is still a positive one - I liked the production chains, I liked designing a base sensibly using them all, I even liked that all of the buildings were enormous. I did not like the staggering inefficiency of it all, or the tech tree gotchas, or the way progression ground to a halt at each new step while dozens of new chains had to be sorted out.

The stainless steel thing was sort of improved since chemical science now consumes stainless steel itself. But yeah, the huge number of intermediates that are each separately useless until you've gotten through all of them for some particular item can be a real drag.

I also agree that I like options and start getting kinda bored as I grind through one of those long lists of intermediates and only rarely being given an option about what recipes to use along the way.

BlueTemplar · Post by **BlueTemplar** » Sat Sep 21, 2019 7:45 am

Others have already mentioned the great graphics/sounds.

I especially love how in Py (compared to other mods adding lots of ores, like Bob's), every non-basic ore needs some specific extraction fluid, so just managing to mine the ore feels like an achievement !

Otherwise, yeah, if/when I start a new Py game, with all the new 0.17 toys like PyOil and PyAlien, I will certainly dial down the Death World evolution time factor from x5 to something more manageable !
(Gave up on that first game... then still pushed through to Iron2, but still !)

immortal_sniper1 · Post by **immortal_sniper1** » Sat Sep 21, 2019 8:06 am

yes all that
here are some addition to my post
there are like 2-3 use matals

Zn : 80-90% goes to zinc acetate nd some goes to filters besides that and ferrite there is little to no other use
Ni : 90% goes into super alloy some goes into syngas>methane and some for some circ 3-4 stuff ; used in nichrome other then that not really much use
Mo ore: super alloys need so much of this stuff that getting plates in not worth it via ore so u kinda need PA and still expand the mines a LOT
Sn : 80% or MORE goes into tinned wire besides that solder and some recipe that feeds into resilion there is little to no use
Ti : besides small amounts needed for scienece the rest goes to TiCl4 to make oil products
Al : use this to make duraluminium and a little to make some circ 2 stuff other then that there are small uses here and there
Ag & Pb : u need tons of Ag for circ2 and silver foam>biopolymer ; lead goes to lead container and propene other then solder there are not really that many uses
Au : small uses in circ 3-4 area other then that nothing amounts are so small PA is very viable
Cr : great cataliver in a few rely good recipes and drill heads really cheep metal ; PA raw material
P : used in HUGE amounts for acid and some other thing in the airflow-15 chain

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » Sat Sep 28, 2019 8:53 pm

The tech tree is does not provide the information I need it to. For example, Advanced material processing, which depends on Steel processing and Coal Processing 1, unlocks the steel furnace, but then I can't build a steel furnace until I also research Iron Ore Processing 2, which takes another thirteen researches. (or fourteen, if for some reason I haven't researched automation yet.) Electric furnaces have the same problem. I could rush Advanced material processing 2, and unlock the electric furnaces, but then there are, if I counted the tech tree correctly, ten more researches I have to complete before I can actually build the electric furnaces. Even Assembling machines 2 are not immune.

Given the amount of genuine difficulty present in making progress through PyMods, the "Finally! I've researched Advanced material processing! I can replace my stone furnaces with steel furn—Oh. No. I can't. Not for at least another dozen hours." thing is just an unnecessary suckerpunch.

If this is the way the tech tree is supposed to work, well, it's your mod, not mine. And I know mistakes happen, especially in a mod-pack this big. There are going to be places where one or two extra researches are required. But with thirteen extra researches between unlocking a building and unlocking its ingredients, the prerequisites don't really make sense.