;D

I figured this is about the right time. There are a few issues that are still bothering me (looking at you, rubber trees!), but I can't expect things to be perfect.

Something I was going to ask about in a new thread, but I'll do it here: The overlay icons for inserters are in exactly the same place as the Quality indicators. It's not a big deal because Quality always shows on top and there's a setting to turn the overlays off, but I wondered if you had a comment about that.

I don't think the overlays would look good if they were moved to another part of the icon.

EDIT: Also apparently "fuel leeching" is a feature on burner inserters? I haven't tested that.

Hi Shemp, since when I mod a bit of SA then you do it better in a moment, I decided to wait for you ;D I read in the change log of the inserters but I haven't looked yet, I went back to ONI a bit :D they are my 2 drugs.

I'll look tomorrow and tell you what I think! For the burner inserters yes they use fuel leeching, which means they steal fuel from the entity at their collection point, but I use a different mod that allows them to steal it at the delivery point as well.

I think my mod is in excellent condition and very enjoyable! Have you started playing it yet?

Hi Shemp, since when I mod a bit of SA then you do it better in a moment, I decided to wait for you ;D

Don't wait up for me, I'm going to wait until 2.1 is out where I'll need to fix the Patchset for that version, then I'll start thinking about Space Age. Most of the work I wanted to do for LSA is done now.

I think my mod is in excellent condition and very enjoyable! Have you started playing it yet?

The macca-addon? Not for my maiden world, but I decided to take a look in my test world. Did you know your oil boilers don't produce pollution? And there's no way to get the Big turbine.

I was really confused for a minute why you have Heavy boilers that just eat more fuel but output the same amount of steam. But it's hotter steam! :o

Have you considered publishing this as an add-on?

No, sorry, it wasn't referring to my mod, but yours patchset. Sometimes I use the translator and it writes whatever it wants. :D

I reassembled my mod a bit quickly to pass it to you,my version is full of junk, incomplete, maybe I did something wrong. Sorry. :D Pollution fixed, thanks!

The steam temperature, it's copied from Bob. It was his idea to vary the steam temperature to create different tiers of generators! Great idea in my opinion. The mod is for personal use, and I'll keep throwing it away and redoing it as needed. :D

The inserter overlay, it seems perfect to me. However, the quality also eliminates the original overlays, but it doesn't seem like a big problem to me. At that point, someone should have understood the function of the inserters in question. :D

For SA I will wait for you anyway because I don't have enough experience I never finished the DLC because I didn't like it

Something I was going to ask about in a new thread, but I'll do it here: The overlay icons for inserters are in exactly the same place as the Quality indicators. It's not a big deal because Quality always shows on top and there's a setting to turn the overlays off, but I wondered if you had a comment about that.

I can throw together a new burner inserter icons in my asset pack if that helps with the conflicting quality overlays

I can throw together a new burner inserter icons in my asset pack if that helps with the conflicting quality overlays

Thanks, but I don't think it'll be necessary. I might experiment with putting them in the top-right, but that would be a non-default setting.

I had an amusing thought. IR3 changes how bullets work, and you can't intentionally destroy your chests by Shift-Space targeting them. That means you can't delete items until you reach Military 2 and get grenades (or you could invite the local fauna to do it for you).

I'm using a mod which lets me delete items whenever I want. A little cheaty perhaps, but it probably won't matter until I reach Military 2 anyhow.

So you started ;D I never noticed about the bullets, but why don't you recycle them? or put them in a box waiting for the recycler?!O_o

I had an amusing thought. IR3 changes how bullets work, and you can't intentionally destroy your chests by Shift-Space targeting them. That means you can't delete items until you reach Military 2 and get grenades (or you could invite the local fauna to do it for you).

Yeahhhh, you should be using a scrapper to salvage all the materials you've sunk into obsolete machines (i.e. anything steam related), then melt them back into ingots.
You'll need all that copper for circuits after all! Would be a shame to waste it :/

There is a cheap craftble "bottomless pit" entity that destroys anything thrown into it, but it's disabled by default.
You can enable it in the settings, but I'd say managing secondary products and salvaging old machines and parts is a core part of the challenges of IR3.

(on my end, I've been doing a lot of math and chemistry to find fitting recipes to make thruster fuel/oxidizer/acid neutralization/etc that's still balanced around vanilla)

in my old 1.1 i ended up enabling the bottomless pit towards the end, to trash extra rubber wood so the greenhouses kept copnsuming polution, it was the only way to have pollution not kill the trees and i was to lazy to relocate them. It is indeed quite cheaty. and i would definitely recomend not using it to get rid of byproducts in processing lines.

I will try to be a good doggy and not delete things.

To give you a sense of my (very slow) pace, I'm just now getting into the Iron tier where I'm setting up electricity and production lines to make things like inserters automatically.

I kinda tried to skip past the steam phase as fast as I could without automating anything and I spend a lot of time hand-crafting. Hey, I never said I was any good at this game!

Some remarks so far:

• Lots of intermediates, lots of micro-crafting! I can see now the appeal of the 1x1 assemblers, and mods like Mini Machines.
• Infrastructure is expensive when you're just starting out, I better not let the biters wreck anything...
• Are small bronze electric poles just for cosmetics? They're identical to small wooden poles and they need bronze too...
• I enjoyed running steam pipes around everywhere, it reminds me a lot of building on Aquilo. Cleaning them up now that I have electricity is quite satisfying.
• Clockwork construction bots are amazing! They're quite efficient with their use of steam cells too. I almost wish I could nerf their mining speed to be the same as the player's. I'm used to using Picker Extended Reborn to place items onto ghosts for me, but I basically don't need it now.
• Transfer plates are also growing on me. It's quite annoying that if I want to make a slot filter near the top of my inventory, I have to turn off inventory sorting for a second so I can put it there.
• I don't think you guys stressed just how crucial farming rubber is. You need it for red belts! It's quite hard to get a farm going, because they don't tend to spawn in big clusters in the Patchset.
• Also, I learned that you can't cheat by putting multiple forestries in one chunk. The recipes of both will slow down accordingly. And they don't accept speed modules either!

You can try Autocraft as a help especially at the beginning,if you try to build everything by hand you die of old age

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/autocraft-logistics

I create lines for all intermediate products of each material, later in the game you need an exaggeration of them

for rubber trees in version 1.1 they were much more difficult to find but in groups, in yours they are easier but there are no groups, it seems like a good compromise to me

transfer plate are the best

• Lots of intermediates, lots of micro-crafting! I can see now the appeal of the 1x1 assemblers, and mods like Mini Machines.

Yeah, the point of all of that microcrafting was to push the player into automation as soon as posible. Both in my old 1.1 world and in my current patchset run I have built malls for every building, anything that can be done in a small assembler doesn't get bused. also, since some intermediates take 2 small assemblers to make and some only 1, since a long inserter into a small asembler into a macchine takes the same room as 3 insrters and 2 small assemblers in a row, that's the spacing i use between the lines and the final assembler.

The more complex intermediates i do bus (motors, pistons, engines) if they are used ennough. If they are only used in one or two machines, i craft them in the mall itself, next to the final assembler.

At the very start (and i'm playing with inspiration) it is vvery usefull to make a cople small assemblers and a big one to batch craft a few of the complex intermediates, to speed up setting up. Manually switching recipes and feeding the machines.

• Are small bronze electric poles just for cosmetics? They're identical to small wooden poles and they need bronze too...

Wooden, bronze and iron poles have different health. Other than that, it's just a visual thing. Personally I'm using iron because they look better with the iron machines.

• I don't think you guys stressed just how crucial farming rubber is. You need it for red belts! It's quite hard to get a farm going, because they don't tend to spawn in big clusters in the Patchset.

Yeah, farming is not really optional until later in the game. Youll need plenty of rubber for belts (both red and blue) and some of the intermediates (heavy copper wire) later tech let's you make rubber from petrochem, but you will still need regular wood for rails even in the end game. In my old 1.1 world this became a challenge due to the size of my pollution cloud.

Well, I'm glad you're enjoying the mod so far then!
Electricity will speed you up considerably.

Remember: automate components. If you don't, you are making it harder and harder on yourself. Especially as electricity rolls around and you suddenly can't handcraft everything. You can hand craft machines themselves though, almost all of them require a large frame and basic components.

I think the forestries system is pretty well balanced, but they require trees to be bunched up to work quickly. That's why rubber used to spawn scarcely in dense patches! The point was that you could plop down a forestry there, let it run and build up saplings, which you could relocate to new forestries.
The new way they spawn means it's harder to "build up" rubber trees :/

Some tips:

• Start programming efficiency modules now. A large scale electric base will require a lot of power and produce a lot of pollution.
• Remember to use the scrappers! Any salvaged copper, tin, glass or bronze can be dumped into research.
• If it can be crafted in a small assembler, don't worry about the ratios. Just plop one down directly inserting into a bigger machine!
• Once you start military science, do yourself a favor and find a sour gas fissure to extract its sulfur.
• Once you reach ore washing, do not neglect electroplating, otherwise your iron will be clogged by chrome.
• Save up your diamonds. Use a few diamonds for an advanced crusher, but keep the remaining ones for diamond duping.
• If you can find a natural gas fissure, pin it down. They're a great source of helium. (needed for blue circuits)

You can try Autocraft as a help especially at the beginning,if you try to build everything by hand

I purposely exclude mods like this so I have to manually hand-craft, to remind me that I shouldn't be doing it. (And I don't use Squeak Through either, to encourage me to think carefully about base layout.)

Somewhere I read a post from somebody saying they don't think overhaul mods are fun if it's not possible to get the Lazy Bastard achievement. I'm actually curious how many hand-crafts are required in IR3, and I might adjust the achievement prototype to match.

Start programming efficiency modules now

Ah yes, I forgot about these. I didn't really use Efficiency before Space Age, which taught me that they're very useful situationally.

The module system in IR3 is very interesting, in that they're effectively equivalent to "computer" items. But that means it won't really be possible to translate Space Age's Mk3 recipes.

The new way they spawn means it's harder to "build up" rubber trees :/

If this is a balance concern then I need to prioritise it. My goal has always been to preserve the IR3 playthrough experience and this is clearly not doing that.

The reason I hadn't is because the worldgen code is some of the most difficult to work with, and I'd hoped I could just leave things as they are.

What I aim to do with rubber trees is have them spawn in the old pattern, but roughly 3 or 4 times as frequently. For how early you need to get them, you should be practically guaranteed to see a good patch of rubber trees using a copper telescope.

Continue discussion of Rubber trees here

Also, it's a little strange how forestries (and I think Air purifiers too) align to world chunks. I guess it's entirely for ease of implementation, like the system to prevent multiple forestries working together. At least they show the chunk clearly on mouse hover.

I use Autocraft, yet I automate everything. Remember, you're a sentient being, and you can do both...

Squeak Through still causes problems with the mod, and it also caused them with the original mod. Now I use Jump for the same reason as above; one doesn't rule out the other.

Squeak Through still causes problems with the mod

I'm prepared to fix bugs with the original mod. Are these the sort of problems that I can fix?

Alternatively, I'm going to add a section on the Compatibility page called "Not Recommended, but works". Should I list Squeak Through in here?

In my gaming sessions I still encountered problems with the pipes disconnecting on the small 1x1 entities. After some detections I disabled the mod, I did not try to delve deeper also because we had already talked about this problem but it was difficult to recreate.

If no one else reports the problem to you, I would say do nothing, maybe it's my configuration that's causing it.

When we had that original discussion, I discovered that ST2 had code that was deliberately interfering with steel-vaporiser and steel-cleaner in the 1.1 version of IR3. It's commented out now because I asked them to remove it.

Considering that ST2 runs in final-fixes, it's probably better that they fix things from their side like they used to - I don't want to write code in final-fixes that "fights" with them.

On the Compatibility entry, I think I'll recommend users to use Jump or Jetpack instead (which I've written compatibility for in the upcoming version).

Also, it's a little strange how forestries (and I think Air purifiers too) align to world chunks. I guess it's entirely for ease of implementation, like the system to prevent multiple forestries working together. At least they show the chunk clearly on mouse hover.

Since pollutionis chunk based, it probably made the math easier. If the trees that are being monitored by a forestry are in 4 different chuncks. it's harder to keep track on the deadly pollution levels for the warnings. And there no need to calculate how much pollution to remove from a chunk, it all goes to the same one.

Also, it's a little strange how forestries (and I think Air purifiers too) align to world chunks. [...]

I believe this is for their pollution cleaning effect. Forestries and purifiers consume pollution instead of producing it. (also the whole forestry chunk diminishing returns is to prevent you from using them as pollution barriers)

Oh, also I believe Deadlock989 made squeakthrough explicitely incompatible with IR3. Because it messed up collision boxes, I think.

Oh, also I believe Deadlock989 made squeakthrough explicitely incompatible with IR3. Because it messed up collision boxes, I think.

He marked it incompatible because since IR3 changes the size of some of the vanilla machines (furnaces, for example) using it would break things.

What do you all think about the Car and Heavy roller? Do you ever use them?

For the Car:

• Monowheel is unlocked earlier in the Steam phase.
• Monowheel is slightly more fuel efficient and also slightly faster.
• Car has higher impact resistance, so it's more tolerant to crashing into things.
• Car has a much bigger trunk.
• Car has a gun, although when you're fighting in the early game I don't think it can ever beat the precision and power of using turrets.

For the Heavy roller:

• Apparently you're supposed to use it to build? I can't imagine how it could be useful when it's so slow and cumbersome to control, compared to your personal steambots.
• Collecting trees is nice, but personal steambots can already do this too.
• Would adding Remote driving (like I did with Heavy picket) and possibly even radar make it too powerful?

I was never a big fan of the car-type vehicles in Factorio, although I admit the Tank is very useful and it probably will be in IR3 when I get it.

On another subject, how do you deal with assigning filters in your inventory during the early game? If I want to add filters into the top rows, that isn't easy to do because the auto-sorting will always force items to occupy those slots.

It means that I need to go into Settings to turn the auto-sort off, move items out of the slots to make the filters, then turn the auto-sorting back on. I'm seriously considering writing a mod to help me deal with this.

What would I even call it? Filter Helper and Filter Assistant are both taken.

EDIT: Heh, I took the opportunity to fix some interactions between Transfer plates and remote-controlled vehicles.

I went ahead and added remote-control to Airships because you can already use the "Advanced vehicle remote" item on them. Do you think I should give them a radar too?

I won't give Airships logistic system support because Deadlock obviously wants you to use the Airship stations.

I'll give my opinions:

Regarding the Car:

• I use the car when I reach the iron phase.
• It's pretty useful to ferry large amounts of iron/rubber/gold to the base before long belt lines/trains are set up.
• It's also pretty good to explore, and it doesn't die in one hit like the monowheel.
• It has a gun, unlike the monowheel. So it's mildly better for combat.

Regarding the Heavy Roller:

• The heavy roller can also be used to move large quantities of items from A to B, but it's unlocked before the car.
• I mostly use the heavy roller to build repeatable blueprints faster, like for tiling the ground or building an outer wall, or to speed up mass deconstruction.
• The heavy roller can have way more clockwork roboports and steam generators than you, so it's just faster.
• Eventually, you can put actual roboports and battery dischargers in its equipment grid, and you can fuel it with petroleum gas so it runs faster. It's not locked to the steam age.
• I automatically replenish its inventory using filters and transfer plates. It's tremendously useful.
• Of course, the heavy roller is outclassed by both the Tank and Heavy Picket. Still, it's useful even deep in the steel age when you haven't unlocked either.

Regarding filters:

• For filters, personally I set my filters on the bottom rows instead cuz they're usually empty...*
• I also periodically remove useless filters, such as copper components once I enter the iron age.
• A filter helper mod to help set them in inventories would be really nice. You could call your filter helper mod the "IR3 Filter Wizard"...?

For airships:

• Maybe you shouldn't give them a radar? They're supposed to be like trains, a cargo transport network that works inside your base, not outside.
• Remote control is fine. With no radar, you've gotta be careful not to send your blimps outside of your base unsupervised.
• What you could do (if you haven't yet) is give the Heavy Picket a radar and remote control, since it's meant to be a flying tank used solely for expanding the base instead of direct combat. It's basically a spidertron without weapons.

I gave Heavy Picket access to radar and remote control many versions ago.

For the airships, I think I'll add radar to helium only. In my testing, the speed difference between the two is quite hard to notice, and helium seems like an otherwise disappointing upgrade, so this will make it a bit more interesting.

The car gun is great for when you accidentally get to close to a nest while exploring and get some biters following you.I upgrade from the monowheel
to the car just for that. For nest clearing while i build a turret batter to fall back into, i mostly use capsules. the clokwork scatterbots are great in the early game and the defenders are a big upgrade , specially after a few robot follower count researches.

I use the heavy roller extensively to build, specially railways. It has cappacity for 10 clockwork roboports, wich is ennough for 50 bots. Those are great when clearing forests and buidluing railways and train stations.

I haven't reached the tank in this playtrough, but i remember it being a very good combat upgrade too back in 1.1. I only used it for combat.

The picket is a direct upgrade of the roller, faster, can go over water... I expect it to be great for building elevated raiols over water bodies.

As for the filters, i only add a few at the bottom row, For things i want to keep track of like bots, or fuel for personal equipment. I don't really carry components arround since i'm heavily biasaed against inventory crafting and avoid it as much as i can in favor of making a mall/hub that can make everything.

Never got the airship addon, so can't add anything on them.

I do wonder. How feasible would it be to port inspiration to the new vanilla trigger technologies?

How feasible would it be to port inspiration to the new vanilla trigger technologies?

You mean defining the Inspiration techs to use TechnologyPrototype::research_trigger? It would be possible, but I have no plans to do this.

The current implementation isn't broken, and I don't want to add more patches or risk creating new bugs for almost no tangible benefit.

It was easier to make it work with Deadlock's custom system, than it would be to adapt the new triggers to use the flying text / sound effects.

In particular, I don't think the new triggers have a way to automatically unlock a tech after getting all prerequisites, so I would still need to run scripting for that. I made a suggestion here to make it a native type of trigger.

I made the filter mod! Now you can Filter Behind the Item.

Another thing i've seen playing, I have just reached cryogenics and it now has some redundant recipes. There's no longer need for the mirrored recpies now that the base game allows to mirror machines themselves.

Good spot, I'll hide them in the next version.

And i've finally finished my playtrough. 4 rockets sent at the same time for my first one. with satelites. Done some space science researches and i'm satisfied.

Thanks to Shemp for the patchset and many, many thanks to Deadlock989 for the original mod.