Deadlock989's classic overhaul IR3 with a unique art-style and age-based progression. This is a command-line script which installs additional code and patches into the original files to make them compatible with Factorio 2.0. Requires manual assembly.
Large total conversion mods.
Transportation of the player, be it vehicles or teleporters.
Augmented or new ways of transporting materials - belts, inserters, pipes!
Map generation and terrain modification.
New Ores and resources as well as machines.
Things related to oil and other fluids.
Furnaces, assembling machines, production chains.
Changes to power production and distribution.
Many of you have asked about getting the Patchset to work with Space Age, so let's grab the elephant in the room and put her in her own thread.
As I'm writing all of this out, it's becoming apparent how much work this will entail; it might not happen at all.
In order to implement this without turning the Patchset into a full-blown fork of IR3, I'd like to mainly focus on recipe changes, to be able to play through the vanilla Space Age experience with IR3's machines.
However, I don't know the IR3 recipes very well, so this will be a place to compile suggestions and notes from the community.
As you know, I crudely imported Space-Age, I moved the production of the space package to the platform, I added the cupric asteroids, I changed the fuel recipe with hydrogen, I greatly increased the water from the asteroids, I doubled the turret magazines otherwise it was impossible to advance in space, I changed the recipes of fulgora and vulvanos then I got bored and it was a huge job :D and in my opinion you "have" to play IR3, it's not the same thing to read the recipes and make them
The Space science pack's recipe on the on the space platform it's really ridiculous, we might as well make the technologies free and And the space platform is an infinite producer of resources, with 2 platforms you can turn off the drills
Space Age needs a complete makeover
Remember that you will have to set the weight for practically every object.....very boring :D
(1/3)
I'll try to answer most of your questions regarding what I think, but before that let me preface by saying this: IR3 does not need Space Age to work.
The challenge of progressing through the different stages of technology (from burners to steam to basic electricity to advanced processes) is already very self contained and tough. Again, this is a full overhaul mod, however instead of just expanding "upwards", it also expands "downwards" if that makes sense?
The whole "crashland on a new planet with nothing and still make it out" depends, but that means every planet needs copper, tin, iron, stone and a way to get coke (through oil/coal). Either way, if you have every tech unlocked once you land you'd need to craft up to your tech level.
If anything, I wish that some mechanics would see more use, such as geothermal power or gas furnaces which are so easy to overlook and forget about.
With that in mind, here are my organized thoughts.
In vanilla, the cost of a rocket is reduced to 1/20. Is this still sensible?
I'm inclined to say yes. Rockets in IR3 are very expensive, but technically you can build them with only blue science tech (the sole exception being blue circuits, which require purple science to unlock and producing electrum).
1/20th of the cost would make them pretty easy to make.
In any case, keep in mind space rockets need oxygen & hydrogen, NOT "high-octane fuel" (rocket fuel).
How will "Deep Space Mining" add-on work?
It's simple: "deep space mining probes" are just fully decked, mining-based space stations.
They basically cost as much as building a small nuclear powered space station. The add-on doesn't need to exist.
Maybe space station starter packs could see their cost increased...?
Are stackers redundant because of stack inserters?
Stackers only affect ingots/bricks, and the stacked items must be unstacked. By lategame, they're not very useful because you'll transport most of the metals, concrete and glass as fluids. They're only useful for plastic, circuits and nanoglass.
The stacking research would make them obsolete, especially if loaders can unload items as stacks (which means stacking anything would only use 2 loaders and a chest in between).
Should Transmats teleport between planets? To space platforms?
I'd say yes, but not cargo, only players. Maybe prevent them from teleporting you if you have things in your inventory (other than your armor and weapons).
Their energy requirements means you can't use them to build a new base.
Cargo transmats should be unlocked by ultra-lategame research (like aquilo). TPing items to stations or even between planets invalidate rockets (except for space platform creation). Maybe cargo transmats can only be used between a planet and its orbiting space stations? It could allow for logistic between stations.
Should Space science pack's recipe be the Space Age recipe, or the satellite recipe? It's possible to include both.
The new space age recipe would be good, but the asteroid processing might need to be different.
In comparison, the satellite requires a small amount of a lot of lategame resources.
An interesting middle ground would be to make the satellite needed to craft the packs in space, but it only has a 1% (or 0.1%?) chance of being consumed.
(2/3)
Asteroid processing recipes would need new products.
What materials would you need to effectively supply turrets in space?
Should we keep platform restrictions, such as burner machines not working?
Yeah that seems fair. Burner machines are low tech anyway...
Although, blast furnaces might count as a burner machine. But it's not like you'll find compressed air in space!
Water to steam has a 1:1 ratio, should ice chunks give more water?
Doesn't seem likely, water based recipes don't cost x10 times less.
Instead, steam consumers consume x10 times more.
New molten metal from lava recipes.
If you want, but maybe you can't extract ore washing metals that way. Not until further research.
Also, tungsten crushing and ore washing.
Are coal and sulfuric acid enough to make all of the oil products?
Need to change Steam condensation to give more water.
Sour gas produces water when making sulfur. Perhaps you could add a bunch of steam vents to Vulcanus's surface.
Dirty steam vents could be interesting, but the heat exchange loop consumes water so maybe not a good idea.
Final word on Vulcanus.
If you want my two cents, the issue with Vulcanus is that foundries invalidate arc furnaces.
And arc furnaces require oxygen, which lorewise vulcanus might not have much of so it could influence the compressed air recipe.
Also, turbo belts means adding turbo loaders and stackers... I've made some graphics for that if you'd like. I'm not smart enough to code them in-game...
(3/3)
Scrap recycling needs a new recipe. I don't want to go over 12 products.
If you want to keep the vanilla style scrapping (aka scrap into already made components), it should be fine too. The only thing you can't make through scrapping is plastic.
A new tier of advanced IR3 scrapper could be interesting too.
Should the oceans produce another resource, like Fossil gas?
Nah, heavy oil is fine. However, fossil gas fissures would be REALLY useful, since electronics require helium/nitrogen.
With heavy oil, you can make every kind of oil products.
An interesting alternative would be to make Fulgora's ocean give petroleum gas, which you can either turn into plastic with enough water or need to mix with bitumen for oil products (including sour gas).
Final word
Fulgora is an interesting case. Scrapping is already a mechanics in IR3, but it's very different from Space Age's approach.
EM plants fit right in with IR3's lineup of machines. Maybe they're better Laser Assemblers.
Another thing: fulgora needs rails, rails need wood. But Fulgora has no trees. Perhaps there could be a recipe to turn wood chips (obtained from scrapping) into wood beams once you're on fulgora?
New bacteria recipes will be needed. Perhaps breeding the bacteria to make hybrid types.
Stone isn't used too much in vanilla. Maybe increase the amount of stone and make it more useful.
Maybe. Stone is integral to IR3 because of glass and concrete.
However, washing dirty water also gives you gravel and sand. Perhaps Gleba could have a bunch of polluted steam vents?
Then you'd need to properly set up geothermal plants to produce dirty water for sand and gravel.
Final Words on Gleba.
Agricultural towers are made useless by forestries, IF you decide to make forestries able to interact with Jellynuts/Yumako.
Perhaps they could make rubber aswell...
Already reliant on imports. Is it okay to just leave Aquilo alone?
It should be ok. Maybe streamline the lithium refining process to be similar to ore washing for the other ores?
Although one thing: Cryogenic plants are already a thing in IR3. And they're required for rockets since blue circuits can't be made without nitrogen/helium.
Should base techs like Cliff explosives be relocated, or should they all stay on Nauvis?
That would suck so much... But maybe. Elevated rails are available, after all.
ALSO please make elevated rails use concrete bricks instead of refined concrete floor, thank you very much.
Conversely, should any IR3 techs be relocated to other planets?
Maybe cargo transmats at Aquilo. For the rest, I'm not really sure...
My thoughts on this, point by point. This is all theorycrafting but:
Recipes
Cutting down the rocket cost as in vanilla makes sense. since the same problem of needing more rockets will still be a thing.
Deep space mining is hard to place. How do you make it only provide planet resources on each planet. Otherwise it makes space age redundant, giving access to all resources in all planets. Either cut it completely or make it generate resources only based on target planet without an in-game reason and make it require prometheum sicence.
Stackers could be maybe removed and loaders modified to also stack once stacking is researched? Same with the bigger minning drills, make them stack as the space age ones.
Transmats shouldn't teleport to platforms, and if they teleport to planets, make the research need prometheum sicence.
The recipe for space science should only use materials from the asteroids, but need more complex intermediates. For example, make it require either reinforced iron or steel plates and coal coke rather than just iron plates and coal.
Space
Asteroid processing serves two purposes. Make ammo and make space science. for the ammo, without new resources and by setting ore washing on platform you could get up to chromium plated ammo, while steel shotgun ammo would also take plastic. setting up coal liquefaction on platform seems a bit too much. Rockets would also be covered by removing the green circuit like vanilla did. Otherwise you need tin and stone for making glass. Coke and coal should be able to be made out of the current asteroid materials. Balancing of ore washing is unnecesary due to being able to trash items in space.
Definitely keep burner machines needing an atmopsphere.
And i would bite the bullet and apply the vanilla changes to the water to steam ratios. Then adjust steam requirements for the different oil processing recipes and fissures.
Vulcanus
This one is a bit tricky, you not only need the molten metals, you also need the pure crystals for making the electrum crystals for some of the recipes. So some alternate recipes should be made there. Maybe some way to slowly crystalize molten metal into a pure ore crytal rather than a regular ingot.
Coal liquefaction should work as in vanilla to provide all oil products without any major issue. Only difference is you have to first crush the coal with smoe crushers. If you add enough tin to the stone deposits in vulcanus for the circuits, you should be able to manually crafting the circuits for it all.
Since everything takes way more resources to build, maybe the stone deposits should have bigger ammounts of resources than in vanilla.
Steam, just keep a consistent ratio, if you have to go bigger, you have to go bigger. You don't want a situation where you can condense steam into water and boil it into more steam that you started with.
You need either an alternate source of wood for furnaces and rails (assuming no supply crashlanding) or an alternate recipe for them.
There's a need for helium and nitrogen. Either keep the cryo separation recipe as is or make different ones for each planets.
Fulgora
This one is, i think, the one that needs the more rebalance, since IR3 scrapping wouldn't really match that well with vanilla recycling. I see two options here. leaving the two and keeoping fulgura working similarly or remove the vanilla recicler and make the scrap separate into the various IR3 metal scraps in different ratios. player can build up from there. I don't play with quality (ignored it in space age) so i don't really know how removing the recycler would affect that style and it could need something else to balance it.
Fosil gas from the seas would mean no coal coke (unless provided by the scrap) and no pretoleum for high octane fuel. I would leave the oil as is.
Gleba
Yeah, other than new bacteria for gold and tin, i can't think of anything else needed. Also gleba products recipe for rubber, and the recipe for rocket fuel should be changed into a recipe for high octane fuel that produces the fluid rather than the item, or need an empty canister in the recipe.
Aquilo
pretty much leave as is. Coal coke will take the place of solid fuel in recipes and can be made from oil with advanced oil processing and venting the extra natural gas.
Portable fusion reactors should use fuel as the other equipent generators.
For all of them, some of the new machines are kind of redundant with the ones in IR3. The arc furnace with the foundry, the big miners... maybe they should be unified, removing the vanilla ones when there's a IR3 counterpart that takes the same place. New machines should have recipes similar to the IR3 ones. (using the frames, motors, engines, etc...)
New metals (titanium, holmite, lithium...) should start as ingots and have intermediates, Green belt recipes should be made from scratch from intermediates and not use the previous tier, Ores should have a crushed and washed version...
There is quite the thematic clash between the 2 and it won't really ever get completely fixed. But maybe it can be somewhat meshed together.
As for the relocations, of tech, they should happen. For the machines that have thematic counterparts, move their tech to that planet. Things like cliff explosives and logistic chests, same change as in vanilla. If you leave all the powerful machines in nauvis, there's no point in visiting space. Elevated rails already make for a way to bypass cliffs until cliff explosives finall allow to delete them.
IR3 exclusive tech, would be nice to move, but there's also a lot of material requirements to them. All the electrum analysis pack techs (other than the rocket themselves) are good candidates for moving to other planets.
ALSO please make elevated rails use concrete bricks instead of refined concrete floor, thank you very much.
I feel like refined concrete is meaningful though, they're one of the only vanilla recipes that uses it. Tell you what, I've made them a bit cheaper, and refined is only needed for the ramps now.
I feel like refined concrete is meaningful though, they're one of the only vanilla recipes that uses it. Tell you what, I've made them a bit cheaper, and refined is only needed for the ramps now.
I do understand why it would be so in vanilla factorio. But in IR3, any recipe that would've used concrete slabs in Vanilla uses concrete bricks. (For instance: refineries, chemical plants)
The concept is that the concrete bricks are crafting materials, while concrete slabs are not.
You could replace refined concrete slabs in elevated rails by concrete bricks & steel beams instead...?
The concept is that the concrete bricks are crafting materials, while concrete slabs are not.
You could replace refined concrete slabs in elevated rails by concrete bricks & steel beams instead...?
Trouble is, refined concrete doesn't have a brick version. And one of the key features of Elevated Rails is that they force you to go out of your way to make a new intermediate, and they're not strictly an IR3 item, so I'm inclined to stick with it.
P.S. Thank you for your detailed write-up, by the way.
Supershadow30 I read in the previous post that you have graphic skills, could you create some graphics for a refined brick version, inserting it as an object in the game is really simple
P.S. Thank you for your detailed write-up, by the way.
Glad it helped. If you have a google doc or discord or something else to organize all this, I'm down for contributing more.
I'm invested in finding more ways to expand on IR3 itself. Coding isn't my forte, but I can read lua and make up a few sprites.
I really really like IR3, so I'm just glad someone is trying to keep it alive.
[...] could you create some graphics for a refined brick version, inserting it as an object in the game is really simple
Macca75, I could do that but their only use would be for elevated rails... although, refined concrete is used in so many recipes in Space Age, it might be worth it.
Here's my vision of what space age IR3 looks like
Maybe rockets could be unlocked in the chromium age, which currently doesnt unlock much. Electrum science could be pushed back to after the first three planets' science packs are developed. Rocket control units could use red circuits in stead of blue to accomodate this, and that's pretty much all the change you will need. Doing this will make a nice, long time where
i think stackers are useless once you have stack inserters.
Quality
Quality really messes up how recycling in IR3 works, as well as one of the main themes of IR3, which is "make high-tech stuff from high-tech materials, not by sticking a bunch of primitive stuff together". I feel like quality shouldnt be a thing in IR3. It just doesnt have a place here. And if the IR3 recycling recipes could be implemented in the space age recycler, and the IR3 recycler itself removed, that would be great
Volcanus
I think the sulphuric acid vents should be replaced with the sulphuric gas, steam, and polluted steam vents you see on Nauvis, but a lot more of them to provide the factories with water and sulphur.
Cryogenic distillation of compressed air on volcanus could make 15 liquid carbon dioxide, 12.5 fossil gas, and 2.5 (water, liquid oxygen, sulphuric acid, whatever feels right)
I love muluna's method of using carbon dioxide in closed greenhouses and liquefacting it into oil products. maybe in this mod metallurgical/agricultural science could unlock greenhouses (if youre willing to use hurricaine graphics) that make wood and oxygen, both of which are useful on volcanus, but they wont replace the need for coal.
Tungsten carbide is unlocked on volcanus. maybe it could be needed to make the cubic compressors, which will be useful in making rubies and maybe diamonds and holmium/electrum crystals(after unlocking electromagnetic science packs), but you might want to choose between mining drills needing diamonds or tungsten carbide.
Tungsten steel beams could be used in large chromed frames in stead of chrome beams to make it necessary in late-game machines
Foundries can no longer melt ores. That's the arc furnace's job.
Gleba
Gleba's atmosphere could contain 20 liquid oxygen, 9.9 liquid nitrogen, and 0.1 liquid helium because it's pretty earthlike, but with a lot more oxygen like earth during the carboniferous era.
Carbon fiber could be replaced with graphene. The recipe for carbon fiber will make 10 graphene in stead.
The rotting biomass under the surface could probably cause a bunch of fossil gas veins to bubble up out of the ground like an irl swamp.
Gleba doesnt generally feel like it goes along with IR3's stuff, but maybe it could fit in. Maybe the recipe for space age's bioplastic could be replaced with IR3's bioplastic recipe if yumako could be fermented into ethanol. do note that you will need a way to get nickel for the IR3 bioplastic recipe.
Bacteria could exist for copper and iron and tin, all three of them making purified minerals. Maybe some plant like stingfronds could make chromium and nickel minerals, and the gleban sludge could be filtered in an electric filter for spoilage, platinum, and gold
To counterbalance the extremely useful arc furnace and virtually free stuff on volcanus, i think cliff explosives should be unlocked on gleba.
Fulgora
The atmosphere can be refined for 25 nitrogen, 4.5 oxygen, and 0.5 helium.
Recycling fulgoran scrap makes stone and metal/glass scrap half the time (this will need balancing), and all the other chances of getting most scrap results are halved (solid fuel is decreased more, the odds of getting circuits or ice isnt decreased at all).
Maybe there could be groundwater springs on fulgora that act like oil veins.
Arc furnaces and basic casting machines are unlocked on fulgora.
You might want islands to be twice as big to accomodate the increased space needed for recycling.
Aquilio
The cryogenic distillation of compressed air on aquilio could produce 20 liquid helium and 10 liquid fluorine
Cryogenic plants can craft cryogenic plant recipes, but faster and with more modules
30 ammoniacal solution can be distilled in an oil refinery (the heating distillery) into 50 nitrogen, 50 ammmonia, 20 oxygen, and 5 ice
Fluorine bubbling out of the ground feels weird to me, and IR3 provides a way to fix this by letting it come from cryogenic distillation.
Thanks to everyone for their detailed thoughts so far. I'm going to need some time to digest all of the information, and in fact, I may take a break and take the opportunity to play through IR3 and gain some insight into the recipes for myself.
My work on the Patchset so far has been unopinionated and straightforward, following the path that Deadlock laid out for me. But however I choose to implement Space Age compatibility is going to invite comment and criticism, and not everybody will be satisfied. So all of the meaningful "business logic" for Space Age is going to be an add-on: this may be written by me, or by somebody else. If you don't like mine, you could switch it for another.
The nice thing about using another mod is that I can handle dependencies naturally in a way that's obvious to the user. I could for instance forbid Deep Space Mining, and require Cupric Asteroids in the add-on.
The base Patchset can't have "!space-age" in its dependencies, or the add-on could never work. So if you load Space Age without the add-on, it's going to prepare the tech tree by keeping the unique Nauvis techs on Nauvis, and the Space Age techs stay untouched beyond the "Rocket silo" and "Space platform" techs. And you'll get a warning message telling you to change your mod setup. This is going to be the "null implementation" for an add-on to work from.
The beginning of my version of the add-on is here. All it does at the moment is change the SA science pack icons. It also declares itself to the Patchset that it is the Space Age add-on, and disables the warning message. When you do this, the Patchset will also call your add-on's "data-pre.lua" before IR3 makes its data declarations.
Awesome!
Your work so far has been amazing and i love having to make little islands of my steam grid in the early game and i cant wait to use elevated rails over my tree farms in the late game, and playing with all the mods like realistic reactors and cargo ships that feel like they go well with IR3. In the 1.1 version there was a problem with carbon dioxide and oxygen and water and compressed air falling victim to the old fluid algorithm, and thanks to you we'll never have that problem again!
Have fun getting to experience deadlock's masterpiece with the 2.0 improvements!
Have fun! At the end of all this work, this is what we're looking for!
Awesome to hear about that Space Age addon! I'm always down to help you out if I can, I've already started making a few graphics for fun.
I do understand what you mean regarding "comment and criticism" though. This is your patchset after all.
Thanks to everyone for their detailed thoughts so far. I'm going to need some time to digest all of the information, and in fact, I may take a break and take the opportunity to play through IR3 and gain some insight into the recipes for myself.
You should defginitely do a complete run of IR3 with your patchset before taclking space age. Need to know the systems before touching the systems. Play testing is not only important for detecting bugs. but also to try game ideas and balance. See what works and what doesn't. There's so much theorycrafting can do.
I've taken the time to make up a few more sprites derived from IR3's assets meant for space age cross-compatibility.
So far it's not much, I've been editing the sprites kind of how I felt might be good. I'm down to take requests as long as they're not too complicated.
I've uploaded them to the mod portal, that way they're ready to use in-game. Have a look here.
Feedback welcome. :)
Good Work!,congrat!
Very good, I can feel my imagination stirring! I don't think I have any complaints, you seem to have covered everything (although I am curious why you wanted to reskin Iron bacteria but not Copper).
I think my policy going forward is that the base Patchset stays as pure as possible, free of any derived assets. (That means keeping the current Quality module icons and Refined concrete tiles in the Rail ramp recipe.)
Add-on mods however, I don't have the same reservations about. It's a separate thing. They could be written by you, or me, or anyone else, and I was originally planning to have assets be in the Space Age add-on, but I have no problem depending on this new AssetsExtra mod (from the add-on).
Turbo loaders/stackers don't technically need to be in LSA, I could move them to be in the add-on only, then you wouldn't need to have them in Black Rubber Belts anymore.
EDIT: Scratch that. I remembered that the reason I put them in LSA (Lonely Space Age) is so add-on developers don't need to repeat the work of implementing them. LSA is the place for boring, agreeable changes, like assigning weights to all the items.
All of this is just speculation though. I won't be touching the add-on for quite a long time, while I work through playing IR3 to try to internalise its balance, and I suspect Factorio 2.1 may come along and shake things up in the Space Age department.
[...] (although I am curious why you wanted to reskin Iron bacteria but not Copper).
Oh, this is because IR3 makes iron ore grey and tin ore blue.
If I let the iron bacteria as they are in vanilla (blue-ish), one might confuse them with the new tin bacteria...
The copper and gold bacteria shouldn't have this issue, but I could edit/add the copper bacteria sprites aswell just to streamline coding.
I'm planning to add stromatolite sprites as well eventually, they're just harder to work with (and there are way more of them).
I think my policy going forward is that the base Patchset stays as pure as possible [...]
Add-on mods however, I don't have the same reservations about. [...] I have no problem depending on this new AssetsExtra mod (from the add-on).
Yep! That's exactly what I figured, hence why I made my little derived asset pack separate. :)
Feel free to depend on it whenever you resume development. On my end, I'll try to make whatever useful graphics come to mind. (and I'll try to post my ideas here too)
Now that i think about it, foundries and EM plants are going to have to have some kind of changes to how they work, as 50% productivity would mess with how recycling works and the same goes with belts and casting.
In IR3, there's a lot of opportunity to multiply ores before they're smelted, but once smelted any productivity will make an infinite loop. Reducing the recycling rate to 25% like in the base game feels like a waste and still wont fix the productivity issue in some cases.
Maybe electromagnetic plants could have base quality (if you want to have quality) or a lot of speed or take the role of the laser assembler
Foundries could be massively faster than casting machines and be able to cast more complicated things, like pipes, reinforced plates, rocket hulls, wires, tungsten pates, and heatsinks. Arc furnaces are intended to be the endgame smelter, so ore and lava smelting recipes might be better off replaced by arc furnace recipes, reducing foundries to being improved casting machines.
I've been thinking long and hard about concepts of progressions for each planet. I wanted to cook up some graphs to illustrate my points first, but Tritium Seeker's message reminds me I should share my concepts with you folks.
I think Foundries should lose the ability to make molten metals, that's the job of the Arc Furnace.
However, they are able to cast lava into ores and cast molten metals into complex components, as opposed to the simple casting molds.
As is, casting molds can only make plates, gears and rods. Foundries should be able to directly cast reinforced plates, beams, pistons, etc.
And of course, Foundries are the only way to cast tungsten steel parts (I'll come back to tungsten metallurgy once I've got a progression graph to show).
As for the EM Plant, I think it's fine if it's just a laser assembler with extra recipes for fulgora.
Regarding recycling, I think Space Age scrappers should be renamed "salvagers" and be the only thing able to salvage scrap into high end materials. IR3 scrappers can then be used to scrap these materials into basic resources.
Really the only Space Age machine that would conflict with IR3 is imo the Agricultural tower, because Forestries completely outshines them (if you give forestries the ability to farm yumako and jellynuts).
PS: New assets have been added to the extra asset pack.
So far, I made some forestry sprites for gleba, added a few tungsten and holmium components, and made up a few extra aquilo components.
How would you rebalance modules, since SA makes it pretty hard to get some tier 3 modules (such as prod3, which requires biter eggs)?
Very nice!
Agricultural towers might be easy to fit in with the progression of a forestry if you balance the recipe to make maybe 1 or 2 yumako/jellynut per craft rather than 40. or make the craft time take longer.
and how would you feel about replacing the advanced forestry with a hurricane greenhouse similar to muluna's that needs carbon dioxide and fertilizer? This could allow growing wood on other planets if players choose. or unlocking a greenhouse later on?
you might even be able to grow gleban plants in one of those greenhouses, but it will need a gleban import to do so, like gleban water, or seedless tree seeds (the fruits will be a seedless variant that doesnt have a chance to make seeds), or glebanic gas from distilling gleban air (shippable by high pressure canister). This will make it so you still need to grow stuff on gleba.
Oh speaking of Gleba, a thought my brother had was to "refine" spoilage into coke, natural gas, ammonia and sour gas (instead of just carbon).
This fits it with Gleba's production line, since Advanced Forestries require fertilizer (made from ammonia) for advanced forestries, and spoilage's role as a source of carbon.
Another idea was to make it so that ammonia (the IR3 fluid/gas) produces spores when vented.
Thus you have to choose between finding a way to use it (either in fertilizer or by separating it into hydrogen + nitrogen by electrolysis), or venting it at the risk of attracting pentapods.
I've been drafting a ton of ideas with him, I might try to code them in myself at some point ^^'
Guys, I’ve been closely following your work, and I’m incredibly happy that there are people willing to give a second life to IR3. Its one of my favorite mods, it’s one that originally inspired me to open Lua files and try to understand Deadlock989’s code for the first time.
I noticed the message from Supershadow30 with his graphics pack and ideas for SA, which reminded me of my own journey. A few years ago, I tried to create something myself by modifying mods and coming up with new ideas for an expansion, but I eventually burnt out because the lack of experience made it too difficult.
I’ve now uploaded a small pack of my own sprites. - https://mods.factorio.com/mod/ir3-community-graphics-assets
Maybe they’ll be useless, but perhaps they’ll spark some new ideas for you. In any case, I’ll keep following your updates and I can’t wait for the full IR3+SA release!
Best Regards
Skyweep
Just a small ping: I've updated my asset pack once again.
Please check it out if you feel like it!
I've made plenty of new icons for processes on other planets, mostly Gleba and Aquilo, new entity sprites for a tungsten drill and an upgraded battery charger, reskinned almost all of space age fluids to match IR3's style, made a whole slew of sprites for air separation, etc...
Eventually, I might attempt to code my own IR3 x Space Age addon. I've left an "Ideas" text file in the mod's files outlining my various concepts.
They're fairly different from vanilla. So I'd be happy to discuss about it on my asset pack's discussion page (to avoid flooding this thread)