Hi,

first off, thanks for making the mod.

Your stated objective in the description is:

"Allows the first Spidertron to be crafted much earlier (basic tier is available just after vanilla tank); while tier MK2 roughly corresponds to vanilla Spidertron."

I have checked the recipes for "regular Spidertron" and "MK1 Spidertron" chassis in the mod in sandbox mode.

I noticed that the MK1 upgrade requires Blue circuits and Electric engine units, which is good! That roughly corresponds to the difficulty behind obtaining Exoskeletons for the vanilla Spidertron.

Your MK2 upgrade is also good, as that requires modules, which roughly corresponds to requiring Rocket control units in the Vanilla spidertron. So far so good.

However, my problem is that the base Spidertron chassis in your mod requires Exoskeletons. These need Blue circuits and Electric engine units. Therefore, the cost of the MK1 chassis upgrade is kind of irrelevant when it comes to technology progression, as "basic" and "MK1" will require the factory to be at the same level of progress, while the Exoskeletons clearly distance the basic Spidertron chassis of your mod from the vanilla tank recipe in terms of difficulty.

So, in short, the basic Spidertron isn't actually available "just after vanilla tank" at all, and it's still rather difficult and late to obtain. I feel like this goes against the mod's advertised purpose.

I was hoping to use this mod to make a significantly weaker Spidertron available significantly earlier, so I was wondering if this is an oversight in the recipes.

My suggestion would be to remove the Exoskeletons from the basic recipe, and to replace the cost of the MK1 with the Exoskeletons, which would basically be the same, except also needing a few more Steel plates.

Thanks,
ivi

Thanks for the post. I really appreciate users taking detailed feedback about my settings. I am just one person, so additional eyes can be helpful to ensure I have not overlooked things.

This is the case of conflict between different considerations.
Yes, your observations are valid, and your suggestion is good for the basic chassis.
By then the problem will shifts to the upgrade cost of MK1 chassis. It would cost too much, as the improvements from basic to MK1 is not as much to verify that. On medium chassis, 40 Processing unit reflects to the larger grid, 15 Electric engine unit reflects to the slightly improved speed. The shift of ingredient will make the MK1 significantly more expensive than the basic one.
The 4 Exoskeletons as ingredient actually represents the eight legs of the Spidertron. That is why I have placed it in the recipe of basic chassis, and do not want to change that... (And the vanilla Spidertron recipe also has them, for the same representation.)
So now you can see the struggle I was facing, when I have to make the settings somewhat fitting with vanilla ones, while balanced with basic chassis and various upgrades...

I do not yet have a solution that would fit all aspects. Maybe one alternative would be to change the recipe of Exoskeletons instead? An option to change those 10 Processing units to 10 (or more?) Advanced circuits. What do you think?