Hi there yet again! Haha.
I've been testing the mod. I got a question (not moaning or something like that, I could always make my own patch if I got a problem):
Why is it that "better" tiers are "bigger" in the equipment grid? Isn't it counter intuitive when this mod would be highly beneficial to "early game"? (genuinely curious, this mod seems designed with early-midgame in mind).
As in, I've played plenty of overhauls, I've never seen a modded light&heavy armor with more than 2x4, and modular armor is 4x4. The first "arm" you unlock is 2x4, a whole half of a modular armor. Taking into account that you need means to power it too, you can only fit and use one of them, period, for that part of the game where you'd benefit the most.
The next upgrade is 2x5, so it won't even fit on a modular armor.
In my current save, I got a "rare" modular armor, with 6x6 capacity (as much as a power armor). Putting anything other than a basic arm basically "steals" an entire row of potential roboports or generators, batteries, etc, which would be worth more per slot compared to an arm (they are constrained to the player's physical body, their reach, and need to complete an animation) vs robots (long reach, multiple at the same time, can be upgraded to put multiple things per travel).
Also, seeing multiple arms would be kinda peak, as in a Doctor Octopus thing, which could only be achieved with a mech armor (a normal rarity power armor mk2 can't fit 8 arms + generators). At that point in the game, you are most likely not gonna play with your character anymore, but abuse the logistic network IMO.

I'd like to propose some changes, sorry if this is seen as rude, just my 2 cents:
First, standardize the size of all arms (same size for all 4 types) (maybe 1x2? 1x4?). Upgrading an arm comes with a minus too, needing more energy per arm. No one is gonna try to fit 8, 12, whatever early game, since you won't be able to power all of them, and most people would like to also use bots as they provide more QoL than Constructor Equipments as is.
Second, let all of the arms use either the "inserter capacity" science bonus (as in, tier 2 gives a "free" +1 capacity to all inserters) (I've seen that the T4 is considered as a bulk inserter and should use that science already but I don't have that one yet), or add a new technology that gives more passive range/capacity/speed/energy efficiency/multiarms (as in, 1 arm equipped accounts for 2 real arms when building) for all/certain Construction Equipments.

Lastly, I'd like to congrat you on your work. This mod is crazily unique, i LOVE the animations (they kinda look like those hooks from Terraria and look pretty in-character for the engineer) and the way you can see them build stuff. Thanks for your hard work!

Modular armor should be 5x5, uncommon 6x6, rare 7x7. Do you have a mod that's shrinking your equipment grids?

5x5 is big enough for two tier 1-2 arms and multiple solar panels and batteries.

The arms should already be respecting your inserter capacity bonus.

I understand that the constructor arms are rapidly eclipsed by a personal roboport in general. I am hoping they see most of their use before that point in the tech tree, especially in mods that push bots back farther. I also hope this mod (like nanobots and blueprint shotgun before it) make people more comfortable not rushing for construction bots as soon.

I probably will lower the size a bit. My current thinking is 2x2, 2x3, 2x4, 2x5, since each tier of arm is longer than the previous, and I don't want people putting 8 arms in the smallest armor.

PS: Have you tried putting them on a tank?

After some more playtesting, particularly with regular quality modular armor and vehicles, I am mostly convinced on the smaller size. The next release will have them sized 1x2 1x3 1x4 1x5. Those heights match their reach in tiles and I like the balance effects when you have to decide whether to have N long arms or 2*N short arms in a 5 or 6 tall equipment grid.

I'm probably going to increase the energy cost at every tier.

PS: Be sure to try the arms on a tank or spidertron (or modded locomotive or car)!

Hi! Yes I'll be sure to try them! Ty for the rebalance and your hard work, nice insights!

Hi, sorry, got another question. Is not being able to use these arms in a car intended behaviour? Or are there any equipment grids that are "banned" for them? (Just asking because I see that I can't use them on most of the vehicles that I got from mods, same in "vanilla" cars, but Idk if that's because of Krastorio).

They should have worked in cars before, and they very much should work in cars in the new version I just pushed since the test suite now includes various vehicle tests. Of course you need a mod that adds an equipment grid to cars; try the tank or spidertron in vanilla.

Hi! Ty so much for the grid change, they now look amazing working together!
But nope, can't equip them on most vehicles yet (I got equipment grids on all vehicles, IMO must be Krastorio, I'll try to learn which mod implements this change in my modlist).

What happens when you try to put them in your vehicle equipment grids? I'm using them in vanilla tanks and spidertrons and modded cars and trains.

Can confirm, the equipment grid is added by Krastorio 2, and it forces it to only use it's own specific categories...

The "best" solution, in case you want to add compatibility to it, it's to just add this to your prototypes/equipment.lua
local categories = {"armor"}

if mods["Krastorio2"] then
table.insert(categories, "kr-vehicle")
end

So, if this mod is ever installed among Krastorio, everything will run smoothly, as all the equipments would get the "kr-vehicle" category from Krastorio! (man it's been a while since the last time I patched anything, sorry If something is wrong). I might be able to try this myself a bit later on a local change, If you don't mind, I'll let you know. This would also make it easier to allow compatibility for other mods that use their own categories in the future, you would just need to copypaste code over and over for each category).

Just a FYI, Krastorio adds 3 categories: "kr-vehicle", "kr-vehicle-motor", "kr-vehicle-roboport". (vehicle, vehicle that should allow for boosters, and vehicle that allows roboports, I'd use the first one If I were you).

I made a patch myself and can confirm that it works wonders! I just changed equipment.lua so you can add multiple new categories whenever a compatible mod is added (afaik this should just be needed for Krastorio or other mods that add vehicles that got their own special categories).
I'll make a pull request later!

Also, question, I see that the equipments got all the info as plain text instead of showing their stats in "rows" (like the resistances on armors, range and shooting speed on turrets, speed on assemblers, etc). I'll try to take a look at that too! IMO that's cleaner.

Also, don't want to be giddy but, would you be up to adding quality for the mod too? Building/animation speed would be cool, but adding +1 reach per 2 tiers would be cool too! (1 per 2 tiers so +2 range is the top, as legendary is considered as tier 5, and giving even more range than that would be utterly overkill IMO: https://wiki.factorio.com/Quality). It could even be toggled on or off in the mod settings, if you don't feel like it's a good idea. I'll try my luck at this soonish too! Sorry for the spam haha.

I made a patch myself and can confirm that it works wonders! I just changed equipment.lua so you can add multiple new categories whenever a compatible mod is added (afaik this should just be needed for Krastorio or other mods that add vehicles that got their own special categories).
I'll make a pull request later!

Also, I see that the equipments got all the info as plain text (from the locale) instead of showing their stats in "rows" (like the resistances on armors, range and shooting speed on turrets, speed on assemblers, etc). I'll try to take a look at that too! IMO that's cleaner, but not like there's anything wrong with the way it is right now.

Also, don't want to be giddy but, would you be up to adding quality for the mod too? Building/animation speed would be cool, but adding +1 reach per 2 tiers would be cool too! (1 per 2 tiers so +2 range is the top, as legendary is considered as tier 5, and giving even more range than that would be utterly overkill IMO: https://wiki.factorio.com/Quality). It could even be toggled on or off in the mod settings, if you don't feel like it's a good idea. I'll try my luck at this soonish too! Sorry for the spam haha.

I'll consider quality. I covered krastorio vehicles in the other thread (please try not to post the same thing in two different threads).

Sure, I'll just use this one from now on, my bad. But I can't find what you said about Krastorio, sorry (used ctrl + F, don't know if you referred to it with other words.

Sorry, I lost my other reply.

Re Krastorio vehicles, I will look into a more robust solution. In the mean time, if you don't want to have to patch my mod, you could write your own mod that depends on k2 and my mod and has its own data-final-fixes.lua that updates the categories.

Latest version supports any mod that changes vanilla vehicle equipment grid categories. The constructor equipment gets the smallest set of categories that covers all the vanilla vehicles.

Latest version also adds quality, with quality constructor equipment having the same "moves faster and uses more power" as on regular inserters. I won't be adding more reach; 5 is already too far and makes the art and rotation/extension speeds imbalanced.

Omfg you work so fast, ty!