I don't get it. I am killing bases with legendary spidertron very fast, it runs on steroids. But I need to travel far to get them because drop chance is not high.
When i get one data packet i am pretty far away from the base and the data packet has 10 seconds before expiry ! Even with insanely fast spidertron I cannot deliver to the science production. This is ridiculous. 10 seconds, c’mon man.

Ok I was running around for 5 minutes and managed to get a battlefield data with 30 seconds left, I ran back to base and had 5 seconds to spare to make a science pack! Woo Hoo! I made 10 packs.
Is this how this mod was intended to play or am I missing something?

Ok, so I installed 200 radars near enemy base. I waited 20 minutes, those data collectors sucked a lot of data (pollution). And now I expect them to drop more battlefield data disks, but they drop not more than before, they drop 1 disk every 10-20 data collectors killed. Is this a bug?

at 0.49 evolution they drop a one data disk at 25% chance. How am I supposed to get thousands of them? This is impossible. I get get 1 disk per 5 minutes of grind.

I wasn't too sure about how much should be explained in the mod or discovered, but you don't want to destroy the bases. The bases will drop the items once they collect enough Data pollution.
The 1 minute spoil timer is to force you to process it near an enemy base (also acts as a "packet loss" joke).
0.1.7 makes this mechanic clearer in the tips and tricks and descriptions now. I realized those used the term "drop" a lot.

I see. But I never saw the bases "drop" packets when they are alive. Even after 40 minutes of 200 radars working close to them.
Just nothing happens. They only spawn tanks and no data disks

Science pack cannot be inserted into biolab, is it purpose or bug?

@Dmitry8266, I think I saw the issue and have adjusted the logic for item spawning from the data collector. Let me know if you're still not seeing any appear. I may need a screenshot if it's still not resolved.

@DayDreamer, fixed for 0.1.8.

It works fine now. The data collectors spawns tanks. Tanks are killed by turrent set up Not to kill data collectors. Then stuff is dropped, after some time the stuff is automatically set for deconstruction and picked up by robots.
but now I think that it is too easy. After several hours I have over 20 thousand castra-science packs. I researched up to 100% ammo efficiency, this seems to overpowered. Now my ships produce twice as much rockets for the same price, insane.

Adjusted infinite scaling costs in 0.1.9 to be higher.
What was the highest science pack the enemy unlocked? Wondering if that needs to be made faster too.

Adjusted infinite scaling costs in 0.1.9 to be higher.
Haha, It is nice that I researched 100% productivity on ammo and rockets before the price went up :)

What was the highest science pack the enemy unlocked? Wondering if that needs to be made faster too.
Latest is Physical projectile damage 7. But I don't see any change in their strength. They are still pretty weak. They spawn weak tanks and sometimes Uncommon weak tanks. They have flamethrower turrets that don't work because no oil and tesla turret that dont work because not much power. Maybe add a tank filled with oil? and maybe a couple of legendary rocket turrets with no-nuclear rockets? Otherwise this is too easy. When I arrived to Castra I already had railgun, with it everything is one shot. The only thing that make is slightly challenging is mines that stop you for a couple of seconds and you cannot escape the nuke and die. But Spidetron is immune to stun from mines.
Maybe add laser resistance to tanks? Now they have 0%.

*Suggestion

although i understand that it is fairly balanced or down right easy now but, I also like the idea of just making science without depending on data collector like normal

would it be possible for the alternative battlefield science to be made independently?

EG. -from already present resource on this planet

at least togglable in Mod setting that would be nice .

I'll probably add a peaceful option in at some point, but not sure about alternative recipes outside of that. Part of the puzzle of the planet is having to deal with a dynamic "processing" step of collecting the data, especially considering the enemy can unlock quality.
That part especially would be difficult to translate to an alternative option.

Dmitry8266, I'll keep your suggestions in mind. Definitely going to double check resistances as I honestly didn't put much thought into those.
I thought I disabled flamethrowers for now since those are going to be trickier to generate. And I need to figure out a good way to have enemy artillery, haven't found a good way to target things with artillery yet.
As for power, it's a similar issue with flamethrowers where steam or fusion power require a bit more logic. Still figuring things out in the modding API :)

Dmitry8266, I'll keep your suggestions in mind. Definitely going to double check resistances as I honestly didn't put much thought into those.
I thought I disabled flamethrowers for now since those are going to be trickier to generate. And I need to figure out a good way to have enemy artillery, haven't found a good way to target things with artillery yet.
As for power, it's a similar issue with flamethrowers where steam or fusion power require a bit more logic. Still figuring things out in the modding API :)

Can you make a cheat version of flamethrower that has infinity supply of oil within itself? This way you don't need pipes, pipes a harder to program to connect etc.
The same for tesla turrents just copy the entity for it and change so it required 100 times less power to run.

Tanks now have 99% anti laser ! OMG. Now I need to redo all my defenses. I suggested adding laser resistance to tanks but did not expect 99%

Can you make a cheat version of flamethrower that has infinity supply of oil within itself? This way you don't need pipes, pipes a harder to program to connect etc.
The same for tesla turrents just copy the entity for it and change so it required 100 times less power to run.

Good idea, I'll do this at some point soon.

Tanks now have 99% anti laser ! OMG

I did go a bit overboard at first. Brought it down a little lol

I don't understand the idea of enemy research. Because nothing changes when they research stuff. The only thing changes is the quality of tanks go up but bases are the same. Something huge gonna happen when they research rocket silo?
This mode is pretty cool.
It adds two repeatable techs (rockets and ammo productivity) which have HUGE impact! They affect all space travel! explosive rocket productivity is big deal.
Great rewards must come with great cost otherwise this seems like a cheat. Right now this mod adds basicly a cheat. I now have 170% rocket productivity which makes promethium mining much easier. This mode is huge balance disruptor.
How to fix it? Since this mod is about military planet lets use that.
Maybe the evolution of the enemy must scale not with data or time but with the level of productivity research, because it gives huge advantage.
For example each time when you research explosive rocket productivity new level it triggers massive wave of tanks from all sides to your base as a punishment. Or maybe each 2 levels of rocket research they increase in quality and the chance of data disk decrease?

The research system has been a bit broken over the past few versions. it looks like it's currently getting stuck on infinite techs again, for example. so that could be why it seems to not be doing much.
over time though, you should be seeing the Data Collectors themselves upgrade quality (once they researched quality) and upgrade their defenses with quality turrets, etc.

So part of this reason this mod started was to help make space platforms smaller and/or easier - AKA less UPS intensive since space platforms are one of the laggiest parts at the moment (Wube is making it better though so that's exciting). I'm currently fixing up balancing for early game, but once I feel that's good I'll really focus on end game balancing. I'd still like to give them stuff artillery and spidertrons :)

I know you started this mod by the time you got railguns, so you got a massive time advantage over enemy research...it's designed to be a planet at a tier above Vulcanus, Gleba, Fulgora but below Aquilo. Your concerns are still very much valid, but I'd like to see if the threat can stay on Castra or if it really needs to go to space or other planets. That would be cool though. Ex: I've had the thought of the enemy dropping biter eggs on planets once they research it.