Basically after getting to purple science with 2x2 assemblers, with small inserters, a single lab, no circuits, you finally unlock those extremely basic technologies, but at the same time you also unlock the transportation network? Getting stuff like train signals (at last) feels so unrewarding at that point compared to drones.

I feel like up until that point the game does not present you with particularly hard challenges, but they become quite hard because of how little basic stuff you're given access to. It feels like you're being tasked to cook a fried egg, but you're not allowed to use your hands. And instead of unlocking basic stuff gradually, the game just dumps all unlocks at once: both stuff you needed a really long time ago and stuff that just feels too early and cheap at that point.

You don't need labs before that point. All the researches prior to that point are calibrated to have low research pack counts AND low time values per pack. There's nothing extremely basic about making an entire laboratory, it's just how vanilla does it. I don't believe research throughput is a factor in the challenges of the early game.

Likewise long inserters are very early in electrical engineering, and with the exponential growth of research costs you'll spend much more than double the total cost to research things at the end of the tech era compared to things at the beginning. There are lots of build patterns you can use to get the materials where they need to go. Long inserters help you to build rows of machines more compactly, but you don't need to build at scale for high throughput of anything yet prior to long inserters, and also the total number of items per recipe is less prior to that. There is some challenge I suppose to figuring out build patterns that are not a copy of the same design you've done in vanilla, but it's certainly not a big increase in difficulty compared to more unique challenges like figuring out energy storage for variable energy generation.

Trains and bots don't fill the same niche. Trains are way better at dealing with high volume. Tier 1 bots are slow. Trains still make sense for high volume intermediates, while bots are ideal for a mall. With no coal, nor oxygen to burn coal, supporting a full train network is complicated and there is more to it than just being able to build the signals. If it was much earlier then a lot of people would unlock it but then realize that by the time they're ready to build it out they're further along in the tech tree anyway. Unlike requester chests, rail signals actually have a limited chain of prerequisites, and those prerequisites are mostly on the cheaper side, so you can make a beeline for that tech and skip a lot of other stuff if trains are a priority to you. All of those prereqs are also immune to tech multipliers for people who are really trying to build at scale. You can't really make a similar beeline for requester chests without a bunch of other expensive research, so despite the position on the tree, it's effectively quite a bit more research cost to unlock requester chests if you're making targeted decisions about what to research.

With the new checkpoint system, just building electrical prototypes doesn't let you idly unlock the whole rest of the tech tier. You have to actually build out the new recipes, which takes some time to reach the end of the era.

I changed long inserters in the latest update to be available a bit earlier, in late mechanical engineering instead of early electrical engineering.

I personally found energy generation puzzles to be interesting, relatively easy and fun to solve, while weaving 5 belt lanes around 2x2 assembler (for stuff like motors) to be far more challenging, less rewarding and frustrating. Building electrical science itself is equally annoying.

Building a mall for anything more complicated that belts and inserters is next to impossible at that point. At least it provides far greater challenge than what's expected from early game.

I really wanted to build a mid-tier pre-drone mall based on circuits or at least long inserters, but since drones are unlocked practically at the same time where a pre-drone mall becomes possible, there's just no point as I can afk for an hour and just get to drones directly. This feels unrewarding. I'm glad that there are at least checkpoints that prevent me from literally going afk, but still they don't provide enough feeling of a progress in this case, I think, because I have automated electrical science(extremely innefficiently), so I might as well sit down and wait.

I understand perfectly well that trains and drones fill different roles in a working developed factory. However, drones can fulfill role of any solid transportation, their versatility is unmatched, even though in sub-optimal usecases their throughput is low. But also by the time you get to them, you don't have much throughput to sustain anyway.

As for train signals, they are unlocked after beacons and are literally adjacent to logistic drones in the tech tree. I felt like I needed them way earlier than that, because building any automated train system is just not feasible without signals. So what's even the point in unlocking trains relatively early if I can't use them without signals anyway? I tried to do a direct beeline towards train signals and found myself right next to drones by the time I got there.

While I agree that technically consumed-resources-wise logistic network is some distance away from train signals, progression-wise they're right next to each other, so there's a very high temptation to not even start scaling anything until I just get the drones. So I'm unlocking basic stuff like long inserters, labs and signals but I don't even feel like using any of it until I can build a proper drone mall so might as well just sit down and wait because time is literally the only thing that separates me from drones at this point.

PS I don't want to sound too negative about the mod because there are parts of it that I'm clearly enjoying a lot, particularly it's dealing with byproducts and doing checkpoints. Also the whole lore thing is great.

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I've changed rail signals and sensors to be earlier in electrical engineering, and a prereq for bots. I've also made robot frame 1 and 2 more expensive, so given the cost in addition to their slow speed, it's not a good plan to rely solely on tier 1 bots for more than just a mall. For intermediates, trains are a strong option. Or a classic belt bus for intermediates. You'll need a lot of stuff built if you want more than just a few bots, and it will take a lot of stuff to build that stuff. There's plenty to build out, and it's not a wasted effort since long term you're not really going to want tier 1 bots doing high volume processes. You can use bots more as you advance their tech, but it's a long road to that point.

Time is always the only thing that separates you from any tech. The checkpoint system requires you to build out some stuff to progress, like mini tech packs, so just being on the same tech tier doesn't mean that no further work is required to progress.

Thanks, I appreciate the changes. To me even the fact that bots require the same science packs as rail signals still feels wrong, but I guess you just have a different opinion on this one.

To reiterate, another bit of tech that feels really off is beacons: why do I need to unlock beacons to get to rail signals, if I need them nowhere near that point? At that point my main goal is to build a semi-functional mall, it's nowhere near the point of satisfying power and production demands of scaling up with beacons (and modules). And it also feels very strange that logistic technologies are gated behind beacons.

Have you built logistic bots 1? I think you may be way overestimating how versatile they are without upgrades.

Nullius beacons use less energy than vanilla beacons, and tier 1 modules are affordable and save you resources on stuff that may be even more expensive. For example efficiency modules can save you a lot of expensive energy production buildings. I think you're bringing a lot of pre-judgements from vanilla without even having tried how they're balanced in Nullius.

And you don't need to unlock beacons to get rail signals. The opposite. You do need to unlock beacons to get requester chests, because they're electronics that involve a wireless network coordinating efficient allocation of resources, not unlike a beacon. It seems like now you're arguing that requester chests should be available earlier with fewer prereqs, in contrast to your previous statements. That's not happening.

I've changed rail signals and sensors to be earlier in electrical engineering, and a prereq for bots.

Could you also consider removing the red belt as a requirement to sensors? I'm trying to play on Railworld settings and finding that it's quite tedious to rush to train signals. I thought I was almost done then noticed that signals requires red belts (and therefore lubricant) for seemingly no good reason.