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
10 days ago
1.1
24.0K
Mining Manufacturing

i vanilla feedback

1 year, 10 months ago
(updated 1 year, 10 months ago)

Hi!
Great mod. Now I play with it, Titanium, Silica, Zirconium (see my feedback in your other mod discussion) and bzfoundry. Really very-very good mods to add content without breaking everything like SE,K2,bob's do. Thank you!!
Here is my feedback for Tungsten. At first it didn't go well, so I had to make some fixes in my personal mod to integrate it into play. So I suppose you incorrectly list the order of your mods adding complexity. :-) I'd put them this way: Titanium < Zirconium < Silica & Silicon < Tungsten.
0. Starting wolframite patch is a must for a game with strong biters to survive. While Zircon starting patch is redundant due to abundance of rocks.
1. Foundry is a must here unlike previous mods. And your bzfoundry mod really makes sense here while adding important nice things to bzsilica too. I had to fork bzfoundry and make some considerable changes - I'll share if you're interested.
2. Tungsten demand is enormous (slow mining + plates double cost). To make game viable (Military science eats all starting wolframite way too fast and Rampant play is impossible without early military investing) and return copper to its 2nd factorio-vitality place after iron I had to change piercing ammo recipe: replaced 5 tungsten plates with combo of 2 tungsten plates + 2 copper plates. It looks very nice and balanced now.
3. As many other players I got frustrated with abnormal Electric Furnace recipe. At first I thought to combine two tungsten products ingredients (3 tungsten carbide instead of plates+carbide), but it breaks the spirit and your background real-life idea behind it, therefore I made more complicated change in recipes of two furnaces and technologies tree accordingly. Please take a look: https://imgur.com/a/T516emI . Yes, it makes steel furnace almost twice more expensive (but your Zirconium mod made it too cheap, so in total it's only 30% more expensive comparing to pure vanilla), but electric furnace production is not a pain anymore.
And there is no need to make some intermediate "furnace parts" item product (like I did for flamethrower products - had to add bztungsten-dependent intermediate product "flame blow torch parts" to make basic and advanced flamethrower turrets recipes viable in Rampant Arsenal game).

Smaller notes if you don't mind:
- Artillery shell shouldn't have rocket engines, it's not a rocket.
- I replaced 4 steel plates with 12 tungsten plates in vanilla laser turret. Yes, I know that you have other mods which do add similar complexity to laser turret already, but I don't use those mods due to very heavy changes in early game.

1 year, 10 months ago

Hello! Thank you for all this feedback, and for your kind words. Apologies for the delayed reply.

I will certainly take all this into account for the next round of updates. I will specifically think on the tungsten plate amount in the AP ammo recipe and play around with ratios.

I tested Wolframite spawning & AP ammo recipe out when first developing it to see if it was feasible in a death world game, and it was, but it was a close call and I likely had a really lucky spawn.

I have in fact added a "crucible" intermediate used in electric furnaces, in the Graphite & Diamonds mod. I could probably make that an optional intermediate for this mod as well, and even perhaps have your furnace chain as another option. I'll think through those.

1 year, 10 months ago

I tested Wolframite spawning & AP ammo recipe out when first developing it to see if it was feasible in a death world game, and it was, but it was a close call and I likely had a really lucky spawn.

Deathworld and Rampant are a little different. Real Deathworld is straight and simple about to be in time with oil processing or to die trying - nothing else, so your Tungsten mod is not a big changer here. While Rampant is more complex and it goes with paired mod - Rampant Arsenal, which provides military upgrades technologies -> it requires stable military science packs production in early game to survive.

1 year, 10 months ago

In general I got a feeling that your mods are under heavy influence of K2 players. K2 increases copper consumption a lot, so looks like your mods (Tungsten and Silica) are changing gameplay to shift player's focus away from copper. For vanilla it's not good in my humble opinion: it makes copper not the 2nd most important resource -> weird. That's why changing piercing ammo recipe fixes two problems with one shot. But it also means, that this change maybe is not needed for K2 integration. :-)

1 year, 9 months ago

I see, yeah that makes sense.

Indeed, K2 players tend to be a big source of input. People seeking out my mods already like playing with mods, and K2 is probably the most popular modern overhaul, so it's somewhat inevitable.

Incidentally, the Aluminum mod intentionally replace a bunch of copper with aluminum, so just fair warning that you might want to play without that one. But Tungsten was not necessary intended to do that (perhaps just a small amount).

I'll think through adding a mod setting, or perhaps making it so that if Rampant is enabled it's a little more forgiving on the wolframite needs for reseach.

1 year, 7 months ago

FYI I've made a few updates in 0.7.0 that address a bit more of this feedback.

1 year, 2 months ago

FYI I've made a few updates in 0.7.0 that address a bit more of this feedback.

Hi,
I took a quick look at bztungsten 0.7.6. Found copper-tungsten plates option there, but after turning it on, this new intermediate doesn't replace tungsten plates in piercing ammo. And ratio 3:1 to make 2 plates is weird. I expected 1:3 (1 tungsten plate + 3 or even 4 copper plates to make 2 copper-tungsten).
Therefore if not modified this mod is not playable for Rampant action games (Rampant NE 150%+/250%+ with Rampant Arsenal) - player won't survive to mid/end game, because of too huge tungsten demand and too small copper needs. While starting tungsten patch is too small comparing to Iron or Copper. Tungsten becomes 2nd resource in demand after iron when combining Tungsten and Rampant Arsenal mods. I suppose Tungsten can't be ahead of Copper, Coal, Stone and Oil. Game balance.
I'll keep playing with bztungsten 0.5.8 modified (piercing ammo demands 1 tungsten plate + 4 copper plates) and Foundry modified. Thank you for nice mods. I enjoy them a lot after patching.

1 year, 2 months ago
(updated 1 year, 2 months ago)

I agree with replacing steel instead of copper in piercing magazine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor-piercing_bullet

Armor-piercing bullets typically contain a hardened steel, tungsten, or tungsten carbide penetrator encased within a copper or cupronickel jacket

currently: 3 tungsten, 1 steel
proposed: 1 tungsten, 5 copper

edit: alternately: 1 tungsten carbide, 5 copper
this will only slightly decrease the tungsten ore needed from 6 to 5, but it's the most vanilla feeling

1 year, 2 months ago

Yes, probably this way is even better. Can't say if it's good for balance (to replace 4..5 iron ore by 2 wolframite ore - in late game it will be easier than vanilla), but definitely it's more realistic and also returns copper into play.

Balance is a difficult thing.
Just to remind this thread topic: I'm only about bztungsten mod in pure vanilla, without overhaul mods (most popular unfortunately have broken game balance). So my recipe suggestion is only for non K2/SE games.

1 year, 2 months ago

Thanks for this further feedback.

I'll consider that suggestion for the recipe.

11 months ago

I must inform that after adding bzlead mod I got a big change in starting location resources amounts with the same map seed and same resource density, size and frequency map settings: Wolframite greatly increased from ~50..70k to ~400k, Zircon reduced from 200k to 30k.
So... my complain about too small amount of tungsten for black and blue science becomes much less critical.

Besides starting resources areas changes I lost access to Titan and Zircon in nearby vicinity - for both minerals closest areas moved considerably farther away, into biters protected territories and became much smaller (from 1..2 million into 300..900k).

I don't know how game engine do calculate it, but that's a very strange change in behavior just because of just one more resource type added by one more BZ mod.
I don't use RSO.

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