I'm quite enjoying the mod, thank you for making it.

Although I'm not very far in my playthrough of Void Block, I have a question about the balance of the Electrification technology and Voidworks vs. Voidforges. Electrification is one of the more expensive first-tier void technologies and gives the ability to build Voidworks, which are basically electric Voidforges. However, no matter how I try to look at it, at that point in the tech-tree (no runes), using Voidforges seems more efficient than using Voidworks in every way. Voidforges do require using an additional inserter per Voidforge to insert fuel and an additional fuel lane, but the fuel lane and the Voidforge output lane can be placed on the same circular belt, so the added complexity in base design is minimal. Especially if the base at the point when Electrification is researched has already been build using Voidforges, the fuel-line already exists, so rebuilding it to make optimal use of Voidworks seems to offer no benefits while incurring costs.

Did I miss something?
In case my analysis is correct, would it make sense to either change the balance to make using Voidworks without runes have a clearer advantage or to make the electrification technology a lot cheaper since it seems to be only a sidegrade at the point when it is available?

Thanks.

I mean, it's the same thing with electric furnaces.

Just because the burner version is more fuel efficient doesn't mean it isn't worth it to upgrade and remove the fuel logistics.

The only situation where it's better to use a voidforge than a voidwork is if you're trying to save on power.

I mean you aren't complaining that steel furnaces get replaced by electric furnaces, or that assemblers 1s get replaced by assemblers 2s. So why would you complain that there's an upgrade to the voidforge that uses electricity?

I mean, it's the same thing with electric furnaces.

Well, without having done a full comparison of electric vs. steel furnaces, I'd like to point out that Electric Furnaces are unlocked by a blue science research, whereas modules are unlocked by a green science research, so by the time electric furnaces are unlocked, one can already have modules, and electric furnaces with modules do offer advantages over steel furnaces. Having Voidworks unlocked after or at the same time as runes could offer similar base-design choices (haven't gotten there yet, so haven't done that analysis yet).

Just because the burner version is more fuel efficient doesn't mean it isn't worth it to upgrade and remove the fuel logistics.

I assume you mean "Just because the electric version is more fuel efficient...", and yes, that's true.

The only situation where it's better to use a Voidforge than a Voidwork is if you're trying to save on power.

You are right that Voidforges use less electricity than Voidworks, but that by itself means that using Voidforges requires less resources (iron+copper, stone bricks, landfill) even including the extra belts, inserters, and coal-making Voidforges than using Voidworks with the extra number of water-making stoneworks and steam engines + boilers Voidworks need. So without some cheaper way to produce power, the electrical power savings outweigh the other advantages of Voidworks I can see (at least before runes).

I mean you aren't complaining that steel furnaces get replaced by electric furnaces, or that assemblers 1s get replaced by assemblers 2s. So why would you complain that there's an upgrade to the Voidforge that uses electricity?

First, I'd like to stress that I'm not complaining, simply trying to find out if there's some trade-off I've missed and making a suggestion in case I'm not. Also, while it is true that many upgrade paths in vanilla Factorio often don't improve all aspects of a building by themselves, they do offer some kind of advantage depending on the situation. For example, Assembly Machine 2s reduce the pollution per item produced compared to Assembly Machine 1s, in exchange for the higher infrastructure cost. I'm just wondering if there is some similar trade-off for Voidworks vs. Voidforges.

Actually, without efficiency modules, electric smelters are less energy-efficient tham steel furnaces.

A steel furnace consumes 90kW of coal. An electric furnace consumes 180 kW of electricity.

Obviously that only applies if you're using burnable fuel to power your factory, and not solar or nuclear.

The trade-off of voidworks is that, pound for pound, they consume more energy than voidforges, even if I can't pull out the exact numbers.
The amount of fuel needed for a voidforge isn't enough to power a voidwork.

I thought Voidforges used 800kW (burnable) while Voidworks used 500kW + 16.7kW (drain) (electric). But, the burnable to electric energy conversion needs so much infrastructure (at this point in the tech tree... not sure what is available later), that (as far as I can tell) the total material cost of a Voidworks base outweighs that of a Voidforge base even with the higher total power use of Voidforges.

While the easiest way to get electricity is to summon voidfuel then use it in electricity, and voidworks & voidforges can produce more voidfuel than they consumes, I actually had an easier and better time summoning light oil and turning it into rocket fuels before eventually switching to nuclear much later. If you want, I could share a screenshot of it.

Voidworks consume 500kW of power, while voidforges use 800kW of fuel. However, as you've seen, early in the game you're probably not generating much electricity, so it can be worth it to burn that extra fuel rather than use the electricity. This is especially true in Void Block, where you don't have a ready source of fuel and self-sustaining blocks of 3 voidforges (one voidforge making void fuel can run itself + 2 others) are quite useful. In normal non-Void Block Voidcraft, there's more of a case for switching to electric earlier, because it's much easier to mine a lot of coal and get a pretty big power plant up and running.

Huh. I would have thought that voidworks would consume more power than voidforges...

No, voidforges are deliberately less energy efficient to provide an incentive to switch to voidworks. If you have good electric infrastructure then you get more voidcrafting done by generating electricity from fuel than you do putting the same amount of fuel in a voidforge.

As a somewhat extreme example, 10 voidforges making void fuel can run 20 additional voidforges. However, use those 10 voidforges to make fuel for a heating tower instead and you can generate enough electricity to power 80 voidworks.

To be fair, you ain't getting heating towers until you get to Gleba, and they have a 400% efficiency bonus or something.

Something more accurate would be to compare regular boiler using fuel made by voidforges/voidworks, and see how many extra you can power.

Sure. 9 voidforges making void fuel can either fuel 18 other voidforges, or fuel 8 boilers producing 14.4 MW of power, which is enough electricity to run ~29 voidworks. So the increase isn't quite as dramatic but it's definitely still a factor.

Hmm... if only considering boilers (which is the case for me since I don't have the Space Age DLC), yes, the overall number of Void[buildings] is lower if using Voidworks, but overall this advantage is outweighed by the electricity generation infrastructure.
To give an example (where for simplicity I only consider buildings, not logistics):

Let's assume I want to produce 200 Void flux per second.
(I chose this because this production has no other byproducts)

A. If I use Voidforges for this, I'll need:
20 Voidforges making Void flux
10 Voidforges making Void fuel
This is a total resource cost of
1800 iron+copper plates,
1200 bricks,
270 landfill (to place the buildings on),
and takes a total raw crafting time of 420s.

B. If I use Voidworks for everything, I'll need:
20 Voidworks making Void flux,
0.44 Voidworks making water,
5.59 Voidworks making Void fuel,
7.47 boilers
14.95 steam engines.
The total resource cost of this is:
2185 iron+copper plates,
1041 bricks,
503 landfill,
37 stone (for the boilers)
and takes a total raw crafting time of 661s.

So version B (using Voidworks) uses 159 bricks less, but needs 385 plates, 233 landfill, and 37 stone more, which is overall a greater resource burden.

Note that if we were to include logistics, the difference would be smaller (since the Voidforge version needs more inserters and more belts), but the Voidforge version could still be built for less resources total as far as I can tell.

It's definitely true that this is a "your mileage may vary" sort of situation, especially in Void Block. Due to having to voidcraft everything (even water!) you are probably going to have limited electrical infrastructure, which can make voidforges more desirable. In regular Factorio I tend to build bigger steam power plants and feed them coal.

In my own ongoing MP Void Block game, earlier in the game, we tended to build voidforges for major industrial areas and used voidworks more for little one-off factories where the logistics of feeding them fuel was too much trouble to bother with. We didn't really switch over to electricity broadly until runes were available, which somewhat matches your experience.

So... personally, I like having the option. To answer your initial question, in the next version of Voidcraft it'd probably be worth it to reduce the cost to 20 science packs, but I'm not really looking to make any big balance changes.

I found that 3 voidworks can fuel 4 boilers, which is close enough to 1-1 that a simple setup with 47.5 landfill + 2 boilers + 1 voidworks + 1 boiler + 1 inserter + 0.5 pipes + 1 electric pole (average) seemed worth it. Average 1.4MW net production per tile. A single water producing voidworks can power 17 boilers, so it's cost I deemed to be negligible. In terms of landfill, it seems to be 33.9 landfill and 79 iron per MW.

An equivalent tile with voidforges could get away with only 1 extra voidforge, 2 inserters, and 11 landfile per tile. In return it generates the exports the full 1.8 MW from the steam engines (not counting inserters). This costs about 32.5 landfill and 88 iron per MW. About 5% more efficient in terms of landfill, but 11% less efficient in terms of iron.

Pretty dang close if you ask me. If someone can think of a more landfill per MW efficient setup using either voidworks or voidforges, let me know. Either way, efficiency runes look very appealing, whether for the power station, or just any other voidworks scattered around.