First of all this mod's description is stated to work with angel/bobs as one of the tested setups, so with that assumption. This review is also being played with all the Amator's mods in my 0.17 mod pack in a fresh game.

This mod adds a Wood pellets recipe, but angel's already has wood pellets (which can be packed into wood bricks, which are like this mods wood briquette's, for more density but no real energy gain, Angel's wood pellets have a sole purpose, and that is for burning for power as a refined wood form, which can't really seem to be burned in anything useful with this mod now so that entire production chain seems useless... they really need to be able to be processed into a refined fuel to make all that work making them worth it).

This mod adds creosote, but there is another creosote already from some other mod I have that is built for Angels. That creosote can make a creosote antiseptic (think vasoline) for some minor healing (hugely useful with the stamina mod), it's used to mix with coke to make solid fuel, it can be cracked (with red metal catalyst) into naptha, phenol gas, and aranthracene (in an angels steam cracker, much more expensive processing than what this mods creosote cracks in to, which entirely nullifies it's more expensive processing if they became compatible), and making in to resin, compare to this mods creosote can so trivially be cracked into naptha, fuel oil, and methane gas, and is otherwise used to just make rail ties.

This mod replaces bob's insulator board with a cheaper wooden board from this mod (the bob's insulator board in this pack normally takes wood and stone both, though that might be a modification from AAI Industries, which this mod is also tested with based on other discussions, so that makes the circuits cheaper than they should be).

This mod adds tree seeds, which angels already has and has a whole fairly complex processing system around (where this mod seems to make wood way crazy cheap compared to angels, essentially nullifying angels entire wood processing system). Instead of making its own super cheap system it should instead just use angels when it exists, such as by not having its own super-cheap-to-run greenhouse, super-cheap-to-process seeds, etc..., but instead should perhaps make an alternate angel's soil recipe that uses ash (or just make it require it outright, soil already takes mud and compost, so making it take mud, compost, and ash would make sense, or perhaps at a higher yield, though I think it would be fine if it required it outright, you get too much ash as it is anyway).

On that note, there is sooo much ash with so few uses short of just making super-cheap wood (which feels so cheaty on this pack, it's the same reason Bio Industries is not installed here, I just can't bring myself to use it over angels because there is no puzzle to it or its logistics). The other uses of it just are not enough of a sink, and processing the wood into anything that could be remotely considered a refined fuel (this pack also has a wood -> (char)coal processing pipeline as well, so that's a bit duplicated too) just makes even more ash.

It's quite odd that processing cellulose from algae to make wooden pellets and bricks that you can then no longer burn seems quite odd (if they aren't already 'refined fuels' as-is- then they should probably all be processable 'into' refined fuels).

The new 'steelmaking' recipe is interesting. Currently the pack without it, prior to angels smelting (sooo much faster), making a single steel costs 10 iron and 60 seconds, so it is a great deal cheaper than that, which makes it obsolete before it is ever even gotten (it's from the angels smelting addon mod, it removes vanilla steel making, replacing it with that and otherwise forcing angel's smelting for steel), but I really like this steelmaking recipe, it's a great concept, though it still seems a touch cheap in crushed sapherite usage (I'd probably bump it up to 30 or 36 or so). The improved burner drill that it unlocks is awesome.

I'm really not a fan of the name of the Perpetual motion gear wheel, the "perpetual motion' bit sounds rather horrifying to me as if something really did exist with that property then we could get infinite energy... If anything it either should be called "Meteoritic Gear Wheel" or it should just be removed altogether as I'm not really sure why it's that different from normal iron gear wheels except it takes meteorite stuff (I'm guessing only when starfall is installed, otherwise how would it differ at all?), which is trivial to get from the beginning. I know that it was added for the purpose of explaining why belts move without power, but even that bugs me in factorio too... ^.^;

Also, the "perpetual motion gear wheel"'s being added to the offshore pump when AAI Industries has the offshore pump take power anyway seems superfluous.

A better idea for belts being 'magically moving' might be just having them take a "mainspring", which is the centrally 'charged' (as in wound up, it's a spiral torsion spring) piece of a clockwork device that supplies power to the rest. You could build it via just iron plates and then 'wind' it up in a mainspring winding building (which can have a few tiers, burner, steam, and finally electricity) that returns a 'Charged Mainspring', that is then used in recipes like the basic belt (since in bobs all later belts uses the prior belts in it) and the offshore pump (when AAI Industries is not installed). We can just guess that they run efficiently enough and the player 'charges' them otherwise later via some implicit method or whatever, at least it is easier to handwave away then magically moving belts or perpetual motion machines. ^.^;

But a mainspring along with aai industries motor in the basic belt recipe is at least sensible. :-)

Also, speaking of, the meteorite patches that appear really would be nice if they avoided chunks that contain player built entities. Suddenly having one in the middle of my (now less healthy) iron smelting was not so fun... ^.^;

The meteorite stuff also seems to have no use beyond those gears and as fuel (well of course the byproducts, but with angels infinite centers of its patches that's not really terribly useful either, I'll probably leave out starfall of my next test game as it seems to add just something to chase after because so much requires it as a basic component, and I like to stay at base).

I'm still not a fan of the cheaper bob's electronics + aai industries insulation boards, it's a decent stone sink, especially as I have multiple angel's warehouses full of stone at this point with not much to do with them but grind up into sand, then wash that sand, then sluice that sand into a modicum of ores (which takes soooo many sluicers, I have 50 so far with a belt-maze-horror and it's still not even remotely close to keeping up).

On that note, this mod really needs to not add it's own crushers when angel's crushers exist. Angel's has a burner crusher that this mod could enable much sooner. In addition this mod could make a steam crusher as well that uses the angels recipe set too. Right now having multiple crusher types with distinct recipe sets is confusing (it wouldn't be as bad if they used the same recipe set, but then there'd be duplicates with the burner and initial electric stages). I know this mods crusher supports (at least most of) angels crusher recipes, but the inverse is not true. I so love the graphics though (could use a touch of anti-aliasing though), so angels' could definitely be replaced there. ^.^

Right now AAI's stone tablet has no use because the basic insulator board recipe was removed and replaced with the significantly cheaper wooden (chip)board recipe... Now that wooden board would be a great replacement of the wood itself in the insulation board recipe though, so it would then take this mods wooden board as well as a stone tablet.

This mods wood pellets and wood briquettes still doesn't quite sit right with me because it is duplicating the items from angels (wood pellets and wood bricks) but are significantly cheaper in research and fuel costs/values and a bit cheaper in material inputs. Having it exist is fine but it really needs to not duplicate items especially when the items are significantly different in both processing and fuel values. For comparison:

Wood Briquettes/Bricks: Amator: 4 wood pellets -> 1 briquette at 8.7 MJ, Angels: 8 wood pellets -> 4 bricks at 25 MJ, requiring green research
Wood Pellets: Amator: 1 wood -> 3 wood pellets at 2.1 MJ, Angels: 12 cellulose fiber -> 2 wood pellets at 12 MJ, requiring red research
Angel's Cellulose Fiber: 1 wood makes 4, 20 tianaton makes 22, 10 green algae makes 5, 20 okarinome makes 10, 20 zelosquash makes 14, or 20 kendallion makes 8

Thus assuming the wood path then Amator's increases the MJ of each wood by ((1*8.7)/(4*2.1))*((3*2.1)/(2*2.5)) -> ~30.5%, where Angel's increases by ((4*25)/(8*12))*((2*12)/(12*1))*((4*1)/(1*2.5)) -> ~333%, this is not counting the energy costs of running the machines to do this processing, which becomes significant when algae is used (as is most common, especially since wood from tree processing line also incurs a SIGNIFICANT energy cost from the running of the arboretums to soil/mud/etc processing and getting the right kind of water and all), which brings angel's processing down quite a lot from that 333%.

Having this mod use angel's items and adjust it's costs to those ratio's would help a lot, plus getting rid of the way cheap wood production (greenhouse) would go a lot to make angel's processing useful again instead of just completely bypassing the algae/worldtrees/soil/farms production lines for those in Angel's mods.

Continuing in new post as I've hit the limit here. ^.^

The offshore pump that AAI Industries made electricity required for, this mod seems to somehow undo that, we get free water from it again, which is very very not what I was wanting or expecting. On a side note, the generation that AAI Industries gives you via research that is a super inefficient and extremely dirty way to make electricity without water to power this initial setup is not accessible by the time this mod gives the player the offshore pump and first boiler. Perhaps this mod should add a steam-powered offshore pump (entirely doable in the modding entity api without ticking scripts) and a way to scoop up water into a bucket for putting into an initial water boiler to jumpstart everything (so a 'water boiler' that's actually a burner assembler entity that takes a water bucket and returns an empty bucket and steam to jumpstart everything)? I'm really not liking that the offshore pump works without electricity though...

Also, this mod really exceptionally needs to not be adding yet more crafting tabs. All of it's things could fit very well into angels or bobs crafting tabs. Having things like inserters and the improved mining drill not with the other inserters and mining drills is definitely irritating, and all the intermediate products could and should easily go into the appropriate other crafting tabs where appropriate. The industrial science pack not being in the science tab was also quite confusing.

The icons for the machines in the recipes with the letter, though clear, do not fit the style of factorio's icons. Instead each building really should be uniquely styled to make it obvious that it is different from the others. Each icon just being a gray block with a letter does not fit in at all, though I'm guessing that this is probably just stand-in temporary graphics. A good example is bob's or angel's or madclown's buildings, each are distinct and unique and easily identifiable at a glance from any other building or icon.

I love all the steam powered buildings before electronics comes about!

The assemblers from this mod seem to have mis-set crafting values. The burner assembler is 0.5, the steam assembler is 0.75. However the assembler mk1 is 0.5 and the assembler mk2 is 0.75, so already the steam assembler is as fast as a mk1. If anything I'd say the burner assembler should be 0.25 or 0.4 or so, and the steam assembler should be 0.5. In addition Bob's mods adds the (with the option enabled) tiering of restricted count of items in the assemblers, so the mk1 only handles recipes with 2 ingrediants and the mk2 only handles recipes with 3 or 4 ingrediants or whatever it was. As far as I can see in this mod there is no ingredient limits, they should be restricted, perhaps the burner should be restricted to 1 and the steam restricted to 2 (of which they could both be 0.5 speed), or both should just be 2 ingredients with the burner speed at 0.25 or 0.4 and the steam at 0.5 or so.

I'm not so sure about the mk1 burner mining drill having a 4x4 range, it makes upgrading to the mk2 less important since it's not a huge speed bump and we get to electric pretty quickly. If anything I'd say the mk1 burner miner should still be 2x2 and the mk2 should be 4x4 to make upgrading to it far more valuable, though for that to work better then electric miners need to be pushed a touch further down the tech tree or the mk2 burner miner needs to be moved up a little bit in the tech tree, or both.

Earlier rails are super useful! And I like that signals is still gated behind electricity, it encourages making a few single line rails before branching out into a hub system, if anything having signals pushed back 1 or two more researches would be nice.

For some reason, the fluid compressor recipe (from the Pressurized Fluids mod) only costs some industrial science packs, even though it's gated behind green research. I'm wonder why this mod is editing it as such, especially since building the compressor takes a mk2 assembling machine in its recipe, it's very odd...

I'm wondering if it might be worth adding the industrial science pack to every research that uses red science in the same amounts (or double?). It would make research more expensive (though not by much) but it would be an awesome stone sink! Perhaps as an option? If so it should be added to Bob's Gold Science Pack (as it's a combination of red/green/blue/military 1 of each, science-pack-gold is the item name) too.

Bob's lab Mk2 is not able to hold the Industrial Science pack from this mod, that should be added since Bob's Mk2 lab should be able to hold all prior science-pack-based-lab's science packs.

I really like how the electric car works with the batteries, though having the batteries not last as long and take longer to 'recharge' would be much better for balance I'd think, in addition it would be nice to be able to use Bob's other higher tier batteries as well and recharge them. Also instead of taking 10 and returning 9 with a 50% chance of one more, it might be better to just take 1 and have a 95% chance of returning it directly, in addition the recharging time of 5 seconds makes more sense for a single battery, though I'm thinking that maybe 10 seconds worth of power usage in the assembler might be better, I'd might even go as high as 30 but that might seem too much then I think, 375kw in bob's mk3 at 5 second recipes means 1.875mw of 'power' per battery, roughly, which makes sense for a vehicle, so perhaps 5 seconds for each individual one is fine, which would be 900kw total in a bob's mk2 assembler (each assembler speed costs a lot more to run so...).

Haven't gone fully through nuclear yet, it does have a lot of overlap with madclown's nuclear but it seems to do it in an entirely different way (and it's significantly less lossy than madclown's centrifuging, which is hugely lossy in comparison, like MASSIVELY lossy in comparison to this mod).

Overall I'm loving this mod, it might be a great addition to my next server. However, the biggest actual Issue that means that I won't be able to run this mod as it currently stands: The UPS cost is substantial. Just at this point in this test game it's eating over a milliseconds in apm_lib, by far the heaviest mod I have installed and I have a lot of mods. So that definitely needs some refining.

I love the work so far!

Thanks! - for the huge report :D
First thing: Please do not be angry if I do not answer to the same extent.

You have listed some points that I already have on my todo list. A few are new to me and have landed there as well :)

Just at this point in this test game it's eating over a milliseconds in apm_lib, by far the heaviest mod I have installed and I have a lot of mods. So that definitely needs some refining.

Yeah, there is really nothing at the moment I can do against this but it should not eating over a milliseconds. On my testmap I and my friends have a peak that is around ~0.9ms and an average of ~0.65ms for this script: Like this But that doesn't mean I no longer work on this!

The assemblers from this mod seem to have mis-set crafting values. The burner assembler is 0.5, the steam assembler is 0.75. However the assembler mk1 is 0.5 and the assembler mk2 is 0.75, so already the steam assembler is as fast as a mk1.

That's intended, because electricity is easier to distribute to the machine as steam, especially in bigger produktion blocks.

I'm wondering if it might be worth adding the industrial science pack to every research that uses red science in the same amounts (or double?). It would make research more expensive (though not by much) but it would be an awesome stone sink!

Nice idea, in connection with Angels Mods, have it on my list!

The icons for the machines in the recipes with the letter, though clear, do not fit the style of factorio's icons.

Unfortunately, I do not think that I will change this fast, making these mini icons is beyond my artistic ability, they allways look ugly.

The offshore pump that AAI Industries...

Thats restored in the newestversion, but the inefficient and extremely dirty way to make electricity without water to power this initial setup will stay not accessible, it makes no sense in the pack because you allready have steam.

Right now AAI's stone tablet has no use because the basic insulator board recipe was removed and replaced with the significantly cheaper wooden (chip)board recipe..

That was a bug :) If AAI is installed the stone-table should go into the wooden board (There will be some new recipes in the future to replace the wooden-board for chips... soon(tm))

On that note, this mod really needs to not add it's own crushers when angel's crushers exist. Angel's has a burner crusher that this mod could enable much sooner. In addition this mod could make a steam crusher as well that uses the angels recipe set too. Right now having multiple crusher types with distinct recipe sets is confusing (it wouldn't be as bad if they used the same recipe set, but then there'd be duplicates with the burner and initial electric stages). I know this mods crusher supports (at least most of) angels crusher recipes, but the inverse is not true. I so love the graphics though (could use a touch of anti-aliasing though), so angels' could definitely be replaced there. ^.^

The crusher thing is the next step on my list, the newest version already replaced the burner crusher from Angel, and i will cross add the recipe-categories

The new 'steelmaking' recipe is interesting. Currently the pack without it, prior to angels smelting (sooo much faster), making a single steel costs 10 iron and 60 seconds, so it is a great deal cheaper than that, which makes it obsolete before it is ever even gotten (it's from the angels smelting addon mod, it removes vanilla steel making, replacing it with that and otherwise forcing angel's smelting for steel), but I really like this steelmaking recipe, it's a great concept, though it still seems a touch cheap in crushed sapherite usage (I'd probably bump it up to 30 or 36 or so). The improved burner drill that it unlocks is awesome.

You a right it was to cheap, is now set to 36 sapherite.

These were not all points, but I can not do more between coffee and cake :)

Thanks again fpr the huge report!

First thing: Please do not be angry if I do not answer to the same extent.

Lol, nothing of the sort, it was all just a brain dump as I remembered things and went through the tech tree again remembering things while looking over my test base, so it may not have been as 'coherent' as I would have preferred. ^.^;

Yeah, there is really nothing at the moment I can do against this but it should not eating over a milliseconds. On my testmap I and my friends have a peak that is around ~0.9ms and an average of ~0.65ms for this script: Like this But that doesn't mean I no longer work on this!

Likely have a more powerful system, but even 0.65ms is fairly huge for a factorio mod. In general if it's eating more than ~0.01ms than it is eating way too much. From a quick perusal over the code it looks like it's the inserter stuff. I'd honestly opt for that to not exist, if anything add a dedicated inserter type for grabbing out of the fuel-outputs instead. Parsing over ingame data rapidly like that is significantly bad for performance.

That's intended, because electricity is easier to distribute to the machine as steam, especially in bigger produktion blocks.

Makes sense. :-)

Unfortunately, I do not think that I will change this fast, making these mini icons is beyond my artistic ability, they allways look ugly.

You'd be surprised at how many mod authors like making models for other modders, even Angel does on occasion. Put out a call on the forums. :-)

Thats restored in the newestversion, but the inefficient and extremely dirty way to make electricity without water to power this initial setup will stay not accessible, it makes no sense in the pack because you allready have steam.

You 'could' have a burner offshore pump, and even a steam-powered offshore pump as well (put the steam attachments on the sides offset 'forward' onto ground tiles). ;-)

That was a bug :) If AAI is installed the stone-table should go into the wooden board (There will be some new recipes in the future to replace the wooden-board for chips... soon(tm))

Woot!

The crusher thing is the next step on my list, the newest version already replaced the burner crusher from Angel, and i will cross add the recipe-categories

Awesome!

You a right it was to cheap, is now set to 36 sapherite.

Also awesome!!

These were not all points, but I can not do more between coffee and cake :)

Heh, I relate, I don't have caffeine often but I think I had it before I played that session after a long workweek... ^.^;

Thanks again fpr the huge report!

I see a ton of promise with this mod, so I'm greatly looking forward to adding it to my next server pack when the current server is 'done' in however long (a bit after 0.17 stabilizes most likely). :-)

Likely have a more powerful system, but even 0.65ms is fairly huge for a factorio mod. In general if it's eating more than ~0.01ms than it is eating way too much. From a quick perusal over the code it looks like it's the inserter stuff. I'd honestly opt for that to not exist, if anything add a dedicated inserter type for grabbing out of the fuel-outputs instead. Parsing over ingame data rapidly like that is significantly bad for performance.

Unfortunately a dedicated inserter does not make it any different (only for the first 15 placed inserter), it's the same logic behind it, in the meantime I could shrink the average to ~0.350ms, but that's the end (I think... at the moment :D), I can't do anything anymore. Only a feature request to the devs to add the burnd_result_inventory and the output_inventory in one instance for entities.

Only a feature request to the devs to add the burnd_result_inventory and the output_inventory in one instance for entities.

Well sounds like that should be done! They are quite responsive. :-)

You 'could' have a burner offshore pump, and even a steam-powered offshore pump as well (put the steam attachments on the sides offset 'forward' onto ground tiles). ;-)

I would like, but the offshore-pump dosent accept a energy_source propperty,
And I can't use the trick from AAI with the normal pump entity because normal pump prototypes only accept: energy_source.type = 'electric' or 'void'.

I know a workaround: with an offshore-pump, a normal-pump, an invisible electic pole and a generator entity... but... thats sound not really bluprint safe, and I don't like this... (at the moment...)

EDIT: Awesome ... forget this ... I'm dumb ... I found a solution :D

And I can't use the trick from AAI with the normal pump entity because normal pump prototypes only accept: energy_source.type = 'electric' or 'void'.

Wait really? That sounds like a bug... I thought they were unifying all energy source handling... o.O

I know a workaround: with an offshore-pump, a normal-pump, an invisible electic pole and a generator entity... but... thats sound not really bluprint safe, and I don't like this... (at the moment...)

It's easy to make blueprint safe, just have the invisible entities excepted from being blueprintable, then the script just creates/destroys them as normal. :-)

EDIT: Awesome ... forget this ... I'm dumb ... I found a solution :D

Ooo?

Agreed with OP on so many points. Though I didn't go through the whole mod, the inconsistencies with bobs/angels and AAI sadly made me toss it out. For example the altered circuit boards (steam clock?) in later recipes.

I look forward to the mod maturing a bit so I can add it with my list of mods (bobs/angels, AAI industries and clowns), and have it as yet another step, but not overwriting the existing ecosystem in bobs too much.

If the steam clock is in other recipes than my machines, this comes not from me. Can you give me a save file with your mods (even if it is a empty one) so I can sync and look why they end in higher recipes? (My mod dosen't distribute them dynamical, so they should stay in the steam area)

It's easy to make blueprint safe, just have the invisible entities excepted from being blueprintable, then the script just creates/destroys them as normal. :-)

Apparently it is possible, there is a mod that makes offshore pumps take fuel with no ticking or UPS hit: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BurnerOffshorePump
:-)

I look forward to the mod maturing a bit so I can add it with my list of mods (bobs/angels, AAI industries and clowns), and have it as yet another step, but not overwriting the existing ecosystem in bobs too much.

I don't really mind this mod overwriting some other recipes, as long as everything continues to work together very well while feeling cohesive and not tedius or feeling like it's replacing things that 'already' exist (like replacing circuits would be a no-go, but replacing things like the stone tablet from AAI in the circuit recipe with something that has 'more' on it is interesting as long as it makes 'conceptual' sense).

It's easy to make blueprint safe, just have the invisible entities excepted from being blueprintable, then the script just creates/destroys them as normal. :-)

Apparently it is possible, there is a mod that makes offshore pumps take fuel with no ticking or UPS hit: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BurnerOffshorePump
:-)

Yes, I have also made the offshore pumps according to the principle, disadvantage is they can not in blueprints and shortcut "Q" also does not work, these are not placed by the item. (But that works for the moment)
Found this some days ago https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=426442#p426442

I look forward to the mod maturing a bit so I can add it with my list of mods (bobs/angels, AAI industries and clowns), and have it as yet another step, but not overwriting the existing ecosystem in bobs too much.

I don't really mind this mod overwriting some other recipes, as long as everything continues to work together very well while feeling cohesive and not tedius or feeling like it's replacing things that 'already' exist (like replacing circuits would be a no-go, but replacing things like the stone tablet from AAI in the circuit recipe with something that has 'more' on it is interesting as long as it makes 'conceptual' sense).

replacing circuits, now way :) My so called "Steam relay" is only for my game-stage and dosen't replace the normal circuits or bob ones, only in one or two recipes. But some mods generate recipes or technologies dynamic and take things from a recipe before, that why I have allready seen mod combinations where my science pack goes up to the space-stage, or my "Steam relay" end up in high-tech tiers.

replacing things that 'already' exist

Yes there are a couple of things I overwrite with my own recipes/items/things:
1) its was easyer todo so
2) I have them because my mod have to work also standalone.

Compatibillity with Clown, is not at the list at the moment.
Only the few mods in my compatibillity list eat a bundge of time because I need to test every change against them all, then against everyone alone, and plausible combinations of them. - And even that does not always protect me from mistakes :D