Hey guys, I've been using a couple of Bob's simpler mods (Mining, Logistics, Assemblers, and Inserters) with SE for a while now. In the recent update though the ultimate belts got insanely expensive. I don't really object to the idea of them being a bit more expensive than they were before, but the new values are too much. Primarily, when you compare them to SE's native deep space belts, they cost basically the same in beryllium, but more holmium, more iridium, more vulcanite, and more Nauvis resources too. And it's true that deep space belts cost some Naquium and Vita but these are very low. However the deep space belts are fundamentally way better than Ultimate belts as Ultimate belts cannot be used in space, so the player has considerably simplified logistics for only using deep space belts.
The ultimate and turbo belts no longer have anywhere near enough benefit to justify their price. At the absolute minimum for this cost, the player should also be able to use them in space. Requiring Ultimate Belts which are now so expensive means that deep space belts themselves are crazy expensive; 130 iridium/100 holmium/220 beryllium plates for 100 belts by default, compared to 2000/900/440. I'm also unclear on the motivation for making the rest of the recipe so much more expensive; Heavy Assembly rather than Heavy Girder and Aeroframe Bulkhead rather than Aeroframe Scaffold drastically increases the cost of these items. The player doesn't receive any extra benefits for these investments.
For assemblers, things are a bit more nuanced. When the player is using high-tier prod modules, a few assemblers for the best productivity may be justified, otherwise the player will basically always be kept to Assembler 3 to avoid having to pay a ton of Iridium. I'm not necessarily opposed to this state of affairs as it does make it a bit more interesting of a choice what tier of assembler to use instead of always using Assembler 6. However tier 4 and tier 5 seem pretty pointless as they are now quite expensive but you won't have good enough modules to justify using them. This is not just due to technology but also the fact that the player won't be able to afford enough good modules due to the number of assemblers still needed.
For miners, the normal area drills are now total junk, having a way smaller area than the large area drills but the same speed and a barely registerable cost decrease. The tiers before 5 are highly questionable in usage with the giant throughput decrease they seem to have received, with 5 being an interesting possible for use with Naquium/Iridium if the tooltip is now accurate that it can mine all ores, but mining drill 5s are so ludicrously expensive compared to big mining drills even with the footprint decrease, it seems like the strategy should generally be to never use any higher tier of miner until maybe miner 5 with very high modules.
Looking at inserters, the higher tier inserters are obviously no longer worth spamming everywhere but could be useful in high-throughput situations, such as when you're applying the fast and productive Assembler 6s. It feels like an overall good change where it's now worth considering what inserter you want to use.
I feel like the construction robot changes are fair, the higher tier robots are very good and were possibly too cheap before, and similar for roboports. The changes for logistics bots though are very painful considering the impacts of robot attrition. It feels like it will never be worth using the higher tier logistic bots as they do not have a lower chance to crash doing any given task, so the player pays an enormous premium for using them, especially the fusion-powered bots.
Finally, there's also the question of other costs, like the yellow belts being considerably more expensive than base AAI, and yellow inserters also being expensive. These slowed down the early game quite a bit and made early direct insertion builds complicated. However I broadly accepted this as the price to be paid for the nice toys I got later in the game. However with the new costs of the lategame instruments I'm definitely thinking that there's a pain at the start of the game but it's not really worth what I'm getting later for it.
So in summary, belts, miners and logistic bots seem pretty wrecked by this change, assembler 4/5 need work and inserters look like they should work well.
