Tungsten

by brevven

Adds tungsten ore (wolframite), tungsten plates, tungsten carbide and rocket engine nozzles to the base game. Available after green science, tungsten and the various intermediates are used throughout the vanilla game. Compatible with RSO, Space Exploration and Krastorio 2, and several other mods. Part of BZ Mods.

Content
8 months ago
1.1
30.6K
Mining Manufacturing

g First feel and optimisations

3 years ago

Very nice addition, but I have (as usual) some suggestions.
1. Too small ore patches even I set for large. Sometimes production of wolframite is too low.
2. Too long time to process Tungsten carbide - for saving UPS - add more carbides per producing cycle
3. I think remove tungsten for assembler 2 and move it into heat pipes or centrifuges. Assembler 2 is most useful jump in game but lack of tungsten can't stop development because only assembler 2 can hold fluid in recipes.
4. Carbide is not bez solution because... No mods for for furnaces using fuel. Workaround - making compound with coal and this go into smelter?

Maybe some other things... can work better.

3 years ago

Thanks for the feedback. I'll increase ore patches a bit.

For 2 & 4 I'll think on ways to improve this. Perhaps adding an optional later tech that opens a faster version of steel furnaces or something. I did indeed play around with the idea of making a compound in assemblers and then smelting the carbon/tungsten compound. The extra unused intermediate didn't feel right, for this suite of mods. (I think Angel's and Pyanodons do these types of things better, I'd rather stay closer to Vanilla+ for these mods). As I mentioned in another thread, longer term, I might address this issue by giving furnaces the "Krastorio 2" treatment so they can take multiple ingredients, but that would probably be a new mod at a later date. But, in the meantime, I'll make sure to improve the overall late game issue with UPS & general need for higher production of Tungsten Carbide.

For 3, I'll think on it. I settled on having Tungsten enter the game after green science but before oil. Requiring it for the assembler upgrade and engines makes that point stick. Thematically it also makes a lot of sense that upgrading from the slower assembler to the faster assembler requires new tools made from tungsten carbide, so overall I'm leaning towards keeping it that way. But I will definitely think about it :)

3 years ago

Some more thinking - maybe add two type of ores? For example pure tungsten mined directly without fluid and in smelter products like lead - some as tungsten plates and some as iron ore. Tungsten mined with using petroleum or light oil output "coaled tungsten " then smelting in electrical furnace -> outpu carbide tungsten and some iron plates.

3 years ago

I've increased ore patch richness as you get farther from the starting point.

I've also added a mod setting for an optional furnace that, right now, only works for tungsten carbide. It's much faster and has a base productivity. (It will not work with Krastorio 2 enabled)

3 years ago
(updated 3 years ago)

With ore patch - a problem was not with richness but size - for example lead patches are much larger.
Faster furnace solved a problem with throughput. Now is OK!

P.S. Maybe add as 3x3 size?

FYI, it can use Nuclear Fuel to run it ;) ? Is nice way to use more uranium in game.

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