What are your general thoughts on balancing with Krastorio 2? Krastorio 2 has added its own way of producing wood which when combined with this mod throws balancing way off as you can create much more wood using Krastorio 2 greenhouse than the system for growing wood from bio-inudstries.

I haven't used Krastorio 2 and it's predecessor yet -- modding leaves too little time for actual playing. So, what would you suggest?

As of now Krastorio 2 early wood production is far superior to Bio-industry but in the late game bio-engineering seems superior. Krastorio 2 uses wood for early game research so the greenhouse is unlocked in the first few research. Bio-industry wood production is researched a bit later. Bio-industry early game produces 160 wood per 1000 seconds while Krastorio 2 produces 666 wood per 1000 seconds. At the same time Bio-Industry requires far more space than the single greenhouse Krastorio 2 uses. I personally prefer growing the wood from seeds as it is more immersive. The balancing with Krastorio Legacy seemed pretty good so somehow reestablishing that balance would be ideal.

Not sure what is entirely possible but I'm thinking that 1 solution would be to decrease the amount of wood created by krastorio 2 when bio-industries is enabled. This could be done by just reducing the amount of wood per recipe or increasing the time it takes for the recipe to be completed.

Another solution would be to increase the amount of wood gained through bio-industry when krastorio 2 in enabled. With the second solution I'm not sure how exactly balancing would be disrupted with recipes that use wood but I imagine that those recipes may need to be altered to account for the increase in wood.

Increasing the power consumption of Krastorio 2 could also work. Right now it just uses a small amount of energy and water to produce wood. Perhaps because it works so fast and skips seeds and saplings it should instead require a larger energy supply. (Though this may break Krastorio 2 as early game research relies heavily on wood)

Does Krastorio produce wood only, or is there also a by-product like BI's wood pulp? I know that BI's wood production is kind of slow in the beginning. But you always get twice as much wood pulp as wood, and you have to make sure to consume the pulp so wood production can continue. In my own game, I use Rubber belts (updated locally) as a sink by converting part of the pulp to resin that's processed into rubber to make belts. I also convert pulp to wooden fuel blocks (later processed to solid fuel). But there is a recipe for making wood from resin and pulp that you could use if you don't have enough wood.

Increasing the amount of wood made by BI's recipes looks like it could break the balance. Doubling the wood output may work if the amount of wood used in BI recipes (e.g. wooden rails, darts etc.) may work, but if this involves doubling the amount of wood pulp, this could be dangerous because blocked outputs for one product will block the whole wood production.

I'll have to think about this, and I'll also ask the Krastorio developers for their opinion. Also, it may take some time before I can work on it (RL interferes). However, I'll put Krastorio compatibility on my TODO list, so there is hope for the future. :-)

Not sure what is entirely possible but I'm thinking that 1 solution would be to decrease the amount of wood created by krastorio 2 when bio-industries is enabled.
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Increasing the power consumption of Krastorio 2 could also work.

I contacted Linver from the Krastorio team, and he's strictly against both of these suggestions because they would, indeed, break the balance over there and make it impossible to produce some items.

So the only possible way seems to be to increase the output of wood and wood pulp in BI, while also increasing the amount of wood and pulp needed as ingredients in BI's other recipes. Unfortunately, there are quite a lot of recipes that will have to be changed for BI alone -- and then there are also the recipe updates for compatibility with other mods to consider. However, Linver mentioned a library he has that could do the dirty work, so that may be an option after all. I'm afraid it's still a lot of work to do, and making sure that no recipe has been forgotten and that everything still works won't be a matter of just one or two hours. :-)

Hi,
I think that it could be a priority because krastorio 2 is definitely one of the best mods. Using twice mod will really improve the game experience. I agree that improving Bio industries production would be the best option

Some good news for you all: I've been discussing this with Linver from K2 and he's shown me a nice way to handle this. Recipes producing or using wood/wood pulp will be marked in my mod. If K2 is active, I'll call some functions from it to update these recipes so that input and output amounts of wood/wood pulp will be increased. We've come to the conclusion that the amounts should be multiplied by 4.

I'll try to update this weekend/early next week. So, please be patient for a while! :-)

Thank you !!!! ♥

Thank you! I'm glad you were able to work something out.

Please try version 0.18.5! I changed the amount of wood/wood pulp in recipes that have these as ingredient or product. Also, the amount of seeds, saplings, and water has been increased in the recipes for wood production (wouldn't have made sense if you'd suddenly gain more wood from the same amount of seeds/saplings. Does that work as expected?

In addition to the above changes with trees, Krastorio also has its own way of making Nitrogen. When BI is used with K2, the Liquid Air and Nitrogen recipes from BI should be hidden, as they're entirely unneeded.

In addition to the above changes with trees, Krastorio also has its own way of making Nitrogen.

How is it made? Nitrogen is required for ammonia, and I see a recipe for that. But even without BI, I can't see a recipe for nitrogen.

When BI is used with K2, the Liquid Air and Nitrogen recipes from BI should be hidden, as they're entirely unneeded.

I removed them, and now I don't see how I should make the nitrogen needed to make fertilizer. Do I miss something?

Nitrogen is made in the Atmospheric Condenser in K2.

Liquid air is also not needed, since it's just used to make Nitrogen, which is made in K2 in a single step, by condensing it out of the atmosphere with the condenser. K2's method is a lot 'cleaner' in implementation, as it makes a lot more sense thematically, as getting Nitrogen should be fairly simple with just condensing air, and K2 has a unique building specifically for this task, rather than a somewhat clunky 2-step thing that just uses the chemical plants again. Looking at the building sprites, the chemical plants don't really look like they should be condensing air anyway, so dropping that recipe from BI in favor of K2's recipe seems to make the most sense.

Thanks, found it! So you'll get no liquid air and no nitrogen with the next update. :-D

Liquid air is also not needed, since it's just used to make Nitrogen,

Turns out this isn't true: Algae biomass 2 and 3 use liquid air as well! So it's still needed, but on the other hand, it really doesn't make sense to keep it for just one purpose (the two recipes are just variations). Any suggestions for a replacement from "Krastorio 2"? It would be great if this replacement were also available for "Krastorio Legacy" as K2 isn't available for Factorio 0.17.

What's 'liquid air' supposed to be in BI? K2 Atmospheric condensers can output Nitrogen, Oxygen or Hydrogen. Maybe use Oxygen instead of liquid air for those 2?

No idea about K1, I never played it back in 0.17. That said, I don't think a lot of modders are concerned with 0.17 at this point, as it's not like 0.17 is even the littlest bit more 'stable' than 0.18, because, well, it's Factorio and 'experimental' is still very solid. I think most modders are just targeting 0.18 for the most part. Plus, this is just about compatibility with K2 anyway, so this is about K2 + BI which means 0.18 as well. Not sure if it's worth even exploring K1 + BI + 0.17.

What's 'liquid air' supposed to be in BI? K2 Atmospheric condensers can output Nitrogen, Oxygen or Hydrogen. Maybe use Oxygen instead of liquid air for those 2?

Done.

That said, I don't think a lot of modders are concerned with 0.17 at this point, as it's not like 0.17 is even the littlest bit more 'stable' than 0.18, because, well, it's Factorio and 'experimental' is still very solid. I think most modders are just targeting 0.18 for the most part.

Factorio 0.18 is very stable unless there is a breaking change, which happens sometimes. Have a look at the downloads: 3548 (for 0.18.16) vs. 2994 (for 0.17.48). If other modders think they can ignore Factorio 0.17, they are free to do so. But if I can accommodate about 45% of my users by keeping the 0.17 branch up to date, then that's exactly what I'm gonna do.

Plus, this is just about compatibility with K2 anyway, so this is about K2 + BI which means 0.18 as well. Not sure if it's worth even exploring K1 + BI + 0.17.

About 45% of the downloads were for 0.17. K2 doesn't run on Factorio 0.17, but "Krastorio Legacy" does. I just changed some logic to the code of 0.17.49/0.18.17 so that it will run with both versions. This way, I need to maintain only one version and can reuse everything except changelog.txt and info.json. So it's not only about K2/Factorio 0.18!

I'll probably remove a lot of redundant code once Factorio 1.0 is out. Until then, the redundant code will make my life easier. :-)

Awesome work. I didn't know so many people were still running 0.17... Tho I guess you do have to go a bit out of your way to get Steam to use 0.18 or tick the box in the game settings for "experimental" if using the standalone, which I guess a lot of people must not be doing.

Thanks! There may be other reasons to continue on 0.17, like continuing old factories were some mods haven't been updated to 0.18, or modders who download other mods to check compatibility.
It would be interesting to see the figures Wube gets. They should be able to see what version is used when people play on steam (which wouldn't account for people playing the directly downloaded version on private servers, or in singleplayer).