For the last few days I have been checking the Spidertron technology's requirements constantly, and I think I don't get the AI core technology requirement for it. It does not use any AI cores in the crafting recipe, and I think it does not do anything that would imply that it "uses AI".
If the player is using Space Exploration, that means that the AI core tech will have the top tier of all 5 space science technologies, and at the time they are all researched the game is almost over.

I think that the Spidertron tech's prerequisites are too late game. I agree that Factorio devs wanted Spidertron to be late game, but at 260 hours I have everything that's available in late game vanilla and more, including power armor mk2 with lasers, space rockets, and even nuclear reactors if I wanted, and I don't see how I'll be able to research Spidertron in another 200 hours, while it would still be useful. I just started my first satellite (wanted to automate all of it, but ended up just partially doing it, because copper is so rare on Nauvis that if I go for that then all of the accessible copper will be used up for when I want to go to space), read up on what's next in SE, and it's A LOT until that

It DOES require an AI core in the crafting recipe!

Sounds to me like a compatibility "issue" between Krastorio 2 and Space Exploration.
It was announced that the development of Krastorio 2 was finished, so I would direct any compatibility issues to the Space Exploration team. I would recommend taking a look at #se-k2-compatibility on their discord for any further compatibility related topics before starting a discussion here.

The fact that with Space Exploration installed quite a few late and endgame Krastorio 2 things are gated behind the AI core technology is a known fact. Maybe the Space Exploration will change it at some point, but I personally do not think this is required. You could always make a patch yourself.

About the Spidertron technology with ONLY Krastorio 2 installed, I think it is the opposite from what you described. It is not late game enough!
The science cost is too low. It requires red, green, military, blue, purple and yellow science. The Spidertron is a late game feature. In the late game, you do not have any red, green, military or blue science. I already removed all my production lines and had to rebuild them just for the Spidertron technology after release.

It DOES require an AI core in the crafting recipe!

Could you point it out where? I don't see them in the recipe, and after taking a quick look I haven't found components that need one either - though I haven't checked it in every level, like what is needed to be able to produce iridium plates for the heavy girder

so I would direct any compatibility issues to the Space Exploration team

Well , that's a little problematic. The dev refuses to communicate anywhere other than that 2nd popular data harvesting chat service, so I can't really reach out to them :/ . The main problem - that I can't fix with browser plugins - is that it requires me to give my phone number for registering, which I won't give.
Hopefully I didn't have any problems with their mod earlier, so it wasn't really a problem until now

You could always make a patch yourself.

Yes, but I would need to make that patch at every update that I install, and to deal with problems that would source from the code assuming that those tech science requirements are there.

About the Spidertron technology with ONLY Krastorio 2 installed, I think it is the opposite from what you described. It is not late game enough!
The science cost is too low.

From what you describe, I think it would do if it would require 2k-4k of the now used + advanced tech cards. I mean, the advanced tech card by it's description is for advanced equipment and other things, and also with SE it would require space tech for imersite, but just a little (imersium is only available on other planets, but it's there on the first one), so it requires more effort, but not as much as currently with SE. Maybe only half of the advanced one, though, but that could a be setting

[EDITING MISTAKE]

Here is an image of the recipe:

What I meant was that the problem is that Space Exploration overwrites the Krastorio 2 changes, but does not remove the technology prerequisite AI Core.
The SE team will probably fix this at some point. Until then, I just made a patch that fixes that:

Spidertron K2+SE Tech Prerequisites Fix

Here is an image of the recipe:

What I meant was that the problem is that Space Exploration overwrites the Krastorio 2 changes, but does not remove the technology prerequisite AI Core.
The SE team will probably fix this at some point. Until then, I just made a patch that fixes that:

Spidertron K2+SE Tech Prerequisites Fix

Thank you, but do they know about the problem? I mean, it would be adding one line of code in the Krastorio compatibility script file, and it's at most a few minutes to do.
Also, yeah, it seems SE changes the Spidertron recipe, so it's really a bug on their side (that they are not removing the AI tech prerequisite)

It seems the SE devs fixed it in the postprocess mod, thank you! :)

Yea, fixed in Space Exploration Postprocess (Required) Version 0.3.23, except that the Spidertron technology is still missing the Rocket science pack and the Material science pack 1 as ingredients (are overwritten by K2)

@Kythblood bit off topic, but do you know if there's any other way to contact SE devs than using discord? I want to contact them about the electronic circuit recipe change, but they really aren't making it easy

I never tried any other method besides discord.
Maybe try the forum?

They write it in the first post that they don't check the forum post.
But I guess at that point there's no way they would change it back, it's been that way for several weeks because I forgot about it, and probably everyone changed their factories to work with the new version. In the end I'll need to make a custom version of it for myself, it seems

Just made an unclaimed account to see if anyone else asked about this problem, on one of Earendel's dc channels, and haha, I just noticed that I wouldn't be able to write there anyway. Earendel set their group up in a way that I can only write there if I give my phone number to discord. In no way will it happen that I give my phone number to a data hungry service like discord, who deactivates my account if I don't give them my number in 2 weeks anyways.. This dev isn't one who is interested in the opinion of the users of it's mods

Edit: been reading the se-general channel, and it seems like the dev hasn't only broke factories that were using the wood recipe, but they changed a lot of other stuff that has broken saves, like disabling features and marking mods as being incompatible, and then deleted discussions about how to revert these changes, which is by the way not forbidden by the license

It also requires DT fuel cell to function, which Space Engineering gated behind energy science 3 so really far into the game

Yeah, in the end I just went ahead and modified the files.
If you're annoyed too, and interested in what changes can be made to remedy this, feel free to ask

A few months ago we had a lot of bots spamming the server so we tried enabling higher verification levels (phone number) but that didn't help so we set the level back down. You don't need a phone number on my server.
Please bear in mind that I'm busy so it's difficult to prioritise mod compatibility work. If you want to suggest a solution great, if you provide code for me to paste in to post process even better.
The position of fusion in the tech tree is not likely to change, so the most obvious options are to make it nuclear powered, or let it accept multiple fuel types. I think multiple fuel types is the best option, what do you think?

Thank you for making this change on the server!

I think accepting multiple fuel types could be a good approach.
The difference in them could just be in their fuel values, or maybe the more advanced fuel types could have bonuses, though that's (probably) not possible as of 1.0*.

If you choose to have them apply bonuses, I don't have much idea about what could they be.
Moving speed would seem to be obvious, but I think it would either provide too much speed boost, or it in itself may wouldn't reflect how powerful an advanced fuel is.
If the game API and time allows, certain types could also give bonuses for energy shields and personal laser defenses equipped by the Spidertron.
Also, I haven't reached the deeper parts of SE, but if there already are special (non-vanilla) equipment compatible with the Spidertron, or if you have ideas of such, it could be bound to the type of fuel used (again, if the API and time allows)

*I guess the current API probably wouldn't make this possible, as other mods like Vehicle Wagons have problems with saving the fuel and some other data too, but they say there will be better API support for Spidertron data access/management in 1.1

Of course, providing bonuses is not a very important feature, but one that I think would seem to be logical if Spidertron could be powered with fuel types that differ much in tech(level). Also, bonuses might not be the only way to solve this, I'm just not too creative
What I would appreciate the most is if compatibility with other fuels wouldn't mean negative bonuses or other kind of nerfing with nuclear fuel.

Now, currently I can't provide code, first because there are undecided details, how-s and what-s, and secondly because I needed to put down Factorio for now (but hopefully I can soon continue!). Also, SE is a pretty big mod, and without a contributors guideline it would be very hard to see what conventions should I follow, but most importantly what utility and helper functions do you already have, which if I wouldn't use, could introduce bugs. So most importantly, like why I was hesitant to edit the mod myself at the beginning, is that I don't know what kind of assumptions have you used to build other parts of the mod.
But I'm fine if you just pin it to the backlog, maybe the simplest part (support for multiple kinds of fuels) to "planned". Until that, I can solve it manually, or maybe automate it a bit with git, so I could merge my changes with your updates.

I see that this does not fit much into the space tech theme, and I understand that there are a lot of things to do even in non-compatibility topics.

From my limited experience with trying to change spider bot stats they don't seem to use fuel speed, it seems mostly leg-based but maybe I'm missing something. Unfortunately Factorio 1.1 just dropped so I need to focus on that for a bit.

No worries! The bonuses are not important, I'm not even sure if it fits the theme of the mod. Just mentioned these because otherwise it might be a bit weird that different fuel types have no advantages over the other

The point would be to accept multiple fuel types, including nuclear fuel, without debuffs, if possible.

PS: in the message editor it didn't seem to be as much text as it is actually