I really enjoyed this mod and i'm giving it 4 stars and 5 asteroids. I would have given 5 stars if i found a way to use the advanced solenoid and to make the holographic galaxy on my own, but nope i couldnt find a way, also those alien beacon (off) are triggering me a little, i tried to give stacks of everything i could think of, odd plating, alien seed, gaus module, high energy crystal, fish , exotic ore and science ,but no they are always broken. It makes me feel i have not quite found everything even though i got the win screen. I explored the map for hours to find a working alien beacon, because i read about them on the internet, found 1, decided i wouldn't try to double the size of the map for another one, maybe i shouldn't have put the maximum water.
Sorry for all the little details first.
The induction matrices are super cool ! I found out too late how to use them, it would help if it was possible to read their charge with wires, like accumulators, to spare uranium. But they found their use in the late game challenges, completly overpowering my 15K accumulators and offering a nice minigame when trying to design one.
I was a bit sad to not need all my different nuclear power plants at the end, it was a lot of fun to try and understand the fusion reactors, the ratios of energy, the use for each gas and mineral. This part was very interesting to me. +1 for the nuclear fusion, the great thorium rocks. The neutron flux mechanics is very fun to play with but feel a bit weak in comparaison. I used a reactor with protium lithium at low temperature and high injection, so 8% efficency, and when it was not enough to recharge the neutrons containers, there was some thorium added in the mix ( but thorium is so easy to get that it felt too complex for too few reward to setup the neutron collectors). It looks very good to see the robots picking them up like bees on flowers. That's the main + for me :) All the containers being used to make more lithium to power 2 reactor with lithium protium for energy this time, and 4 with tritium tritium for energy too, never got to use helium before it was obsolete so i will have to try that next game:)
I have not played a lot of military, i put the starting area to the maximum , had a lot of water, and increased the absorbtion rate of the ground to make it easier for me. I was pleased to see that there was some surprising biters in the mod pack, and that i was "forced" to do some exploration. Not so much defense, but just enough to die a few times and test all the weapons. All good i didn't want to play with biters but didn't want to miss some cool things and i'm happy with how it turned out!
I had set richness to all things to 200% to balance out for the water, but it was not necessary given the module progression. Maybe for Uranium, because i didn't used thorium properly at first and i realized what to do with it when uranium became scarce.
I really like the oil part too, there are many ways to go from coal based product to other products of oil refining, and here most machines accept productivity modules unlike for some iron/copper related thing, which i understand is to avoid positive loop. All this, in my not very humble opinion, is great :).
I read that there are plans to develop the aliens biology and i like it , I was expecting a way to make wood since i saw the charcoal receipe ,but maybe later with alien based fertilizers ? :D
I really like the interaction with Spidertron Patrol, i played with the addition of Lex's Aicraft, and it was pretty cool to see the matching receipe and the fueling tower in action. I had less luck with some other vehicule that still needed iron gear . https://mods.factorio.com/mod/yacp-ei-drfaux I found out about this mod only later but it's not working for all vehicules like the lamborghini. I played with Cargo ships, and it was all good. I could also use https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Plopc and https://mods.factorio.com/mod/aai-vehicles-ironclad because i like vehicules but he research for stronger explosive 6 being locked in my game, maybe due to a compatibility problem, the ironclad became very weak over the course of the game.
I also played with Renai's transportation mods, and it worked just fine for me considering i may also have messed things up by trying to remove the milestone mod, and adding it back. That may have reset my age progression on the info menu. But didn't prevent me from getting the win screen.
Overall i found this mod a little more difficult than Krastorio2 due to the need to manage more byproducts and the lengh of the tech tree ( the risk of running out of uranium is real too /!. But less than Space exploration. The number of new things to learn is quite high, and i think the 150 hour mark for the first game is considering the player has a previous experience of modded factorio. And/ Or play with a lower difficulty settings regarding biters than the default one. I had both and it took me 120 hours or so while not procrastinating too much to get to the end. Otherwise i think it can be twice as much to learn all the details of the modpacks, with the ducts and different valves that i was already familiar with for example.
Thank you for making such great mod !
