I wanted to share some sections of the base I've been working on and offer some meandering feedback for the py/chem science part of the game, as this feels like the time when all the Alien Life elements really start flowing into use. A few new mushrooms, several new interesting plants and animals, Mk2 modules, and new approaches with assisted embryology all become available to toy with around the same time with py and chemical science, so I think I'll be spending some time here playing around with different critters before attacking the climb toward Prod/Utility science.
Manure Farm
Recipes:
Manure: auog-manure-5 (Quality Food+Water)
Milk: korlex-milk-1b (tuuphra, bhoddos)
Bhoddos: bhoddos1 (spores, biomass, water)
Tuuphra: tuuphra3 (coarse fraction, soil, seeds, water)
Since some things just grow better in a fresh pile. This seemed the most approachable build for scaling manure to prepare for other farms without getting into relatively huge and/or complicated builds. 18 manure in 40 seconds is a solid recipe if you can manage to piece together the quality food. The early availability of the Mk2 Paddock helps keep the paddock area smaller with the additional auog. The goal was to output 20/second, but won't manage that until I get the Auog Mk2s in there (well, it
was 30/s, but I missed that I had planned with the 5
b recipe until mostly finished
). Mukmoux are also an option here, but I don't think they really shine without the craft time reduction with quality food, which takes Rennea, which are either large builds or terrible manure hogs at this stage. For a build that only needed biosamples and sulfuric as notable rail inputs, with coke and wood seeds as minor inputs, I was quite happy with how it turned out.
Yotoi Farm
Recipes:
Aloe: yotoi6 (ash, limestone, sand, biomass, manure, seeds, water)
Fruit: yotoifruit6 (stone, ash, limestone, soil, biomass, manure, water)
Here I wanted to build a farm to feed leaves into the bedding factory, while providing excess fruit for food uses. Even with the improved bedding recipe, it takes 1 aloe for 2 bedding. Targets were about 10 fruit and 8 aloe/second. This is the largest single build I've done to date in Py's mods at close to 400 buildings. Though I have the Mk2 buildings available for these, the single extra module slot didn't do much to reduce build size, and the sheer volume of modules made early adoption of Mk2 modules impractical. Additionally, the #7 and #8 recipes that incorporate blood meal just increase the size of the build or require significant existing support from fiber, wood, and blood mills, for paltry gains. All that considered, this was mostly a task in scaling extraction and sorting systems and the associated belt logistics (which, I must admit, is made different with the stacking beltboxes mod I'm also using; fewer belt lines, more complexity with stacking/unstacking).
I think the Blood Meal recipes for Yotoi could use some attention. The #8 fruit recipe does manage a modest scale reduction due to the craft time reduction (60 -> 50s), but this isn't reflected in the #8 aloe recipe (remains 100s). The additional blood meal only increases output/craft slightly, and I don't think I'd usually exchange 8 blood meal for 1 or 2 of yotoi aloe/fruit. Unless you're desperate for a blood meal sink... somehow.
Small beginnings to some, I'm sure. Anyway, I'm quite enjoying the challenges pyAL has brought on (have managed the glassworks and raw coal changes swimmingly so far) and quite enjoying the new buildings and icons. Now, on to planning the Grod farm, New Vraukland, and the Bedding Factory...
edit: since people have asked, and I should have expected this, the icons on map is a debug menu (F4) option: show-recipe-icons-on-map
Exception at tick 24485468: The mod Pyanodons AlienLife (1.5.7) caused a non-recoverable error.
bad argument #1 of 2 to 'next' (table expected, got nil)