Hi hello its very late for me so I might be a little incoherent but I wanted to express my feelings for this mod. Overall, I really like it! It provides a unique challenge that's not encountered anywhere else. The alternative way of obtaining resources is interesting and the metallic hydrogen production chain alongside the gemstones is rather well-made in terms of difficulty and complexity. However, I will try my best to be polite here, why, in the name of Bob the Shattered Planet, does critical metallic hydrogen explode with the force of a GODDAMN atomic bomb!?

Now this isn't just a personal gripe, I'm of the firm opinion it is potentially a major design flaw that creates an insidious and hard-to-tackle problem with downright INSANE consequences. As an example, in order to optimise my science production, I created a circuit abomination to regulate activated metallic hydrogen intake in a manner such that all machines are active at the same time and each have 1 piece of activated hydrogen for themselves, and then, I take my eyes off my baby for 5 minutes, and boom, all gone. Now I know autosaves are a thing, that's not the issue, the issue is that metallic hydrogen has to be treated with the same care one does Gleba crops and products, and part of that treatment process involves a lot of trial and error, and this mechanic makes this trial and error endlessly more frustrating than anything else the game can offer.

Additionally, Crucible as a planet is vastly more resource hungry per science than anything else I've really encountered, with cyclical chains of materials that must be managed properly, now this isn't a problem, but to be completely honest, this planet is too difficult, I'd say, to be accessible directly after going to space, it requires a good bit of Gleba thinking, and is hugely more punishing for it as is. Granted I do rather like that Crucible as a planet is more engaged with the base game than most modded planets I've played and actively inserts itself where it makes sense to. The gravitational mechanics are neat, too, and I really dig the idea, though, personally, I've had no issue escaping Crucible's gravity with a rather basic ship. I'm also somewhat... confused, as to the purpose of the doped thruster oxidizer and fuel recipes, as well as the ablative ammunition. Metallic hydrogen is such an expensive and time-consuming thing to make, and the consequences for mismanagement so severe, that using it on such mundane things feels utterly and profoundly wasteful and idiotically dangerous. Its a risk that isn't worth managing, is what I'm getting at. This, combined with the game's limitations when it comes to percentages means that even If used in such a manner, it might just void or duplicate the resultant unstable metallic hydrogen, and that might cascade into a problem.

I was also confused how to get off planet, because for my entire current playthrough of Crucible (roughly 6-7 hours) I have not seen a SINGLE coal patch, and I went as far as to get a space platform, Park it on top of Crucible, and have it drop down carbon and other materials down for me in order to actually progress.

All in all, I like Crucible and the concepts put on display, I don't mind the difficulty, but I do mind the obscene punishment a very small mistake can cause.

Hi, thanks for the feedback!

First off, yeah, the thruster fuel/oxidizer and ammunition unlocks are objectively useless lol. It's a major priority for the 1.0 release of the mod (some more details here), which will be released at some point between now and Factorio 2.1 being released as stable. The new versions of these rewards that I've got in development right now are (I believe) a major improvement. But they're definitely meant to be optional, and as you said, it's entirely manageable to bypass them.

Coal is relatively rare, and is the only resource absent from the starting area, but it should definitely be findable without too much trouble. You can send me your save file and I'll check for any map generation issues (could be some weird compatibility issue?).

Now, the hydrogen plate explosions. There is a mod setting that reduces their damage, and save-scumming is a completely legitimate strategy for Crucible (I've resorted to it a lot when playtesting lol). But yeah, it is very punishing, and I'm a bit conflicted about it. The fact that it's so expensive and the damage it causes when it spoils are meant to be mutually-reinforcing mechanics to encourage squeezing as much value out of each one as possible (and therefore activating as few as possible). I can't promise I'll decide to make them less punishing, but the balance and progression of metallic hydrogen processing is the thing I'm looking at most closely for the 1.0 version.

And since 1.0 of the mod will be for Factorio 2.1, it can take advantage of a bunch of the modding API improvements Wube made. One of them is more control over individual items' freshness in recipes that involve multiple spoilables: I.e. in 1.0, new unstable plates (from denatured hydrogen) will always be 100% fresh.

Anyway thanks for your thoughtful feedback! It's more helpful than you probably realize. Let me know any other thoughts you have.

Well, if anything, the only other issue I have is the Insane Steam requirement for making any appreciable SPM amount. I have about 16 Pressure Forges all decked out with Rigor modules and they can only produce enough diamonds to run some 2 or 3 Science machines. Granted, they're fully decked out with speed 3 modules, in order to maximise hydrogen utilisation, but even so. Steam on Crucible is needed for So many things, and in quite great amounts as Rigor modules eat up more energy, and metallic hydrogen production, with it's chance to nill itself, needs so much steam to make hydrogen you almost never have enough steam, repeated ad nauseum. Now, heating towers and heat exchangers, yes, they work, but that's tedious, and I'm not even sure heating towers are unlocked by going to Crucible, when they're absolutely a must, unless one plans to drop down with a goddamn nuclear reactor they have no way of refueling.

And with this issue I actually have an idea! There's lava all over, and with no calcite to turn it into molten metals naturally occurring, it could serve the purpose of powering some sort of Geothermal plant, or alternatively being used to sift through said lava for motes of rubies and diamonds, after all, it stands to reason that deeper in the planet, where lava comes from, pressure and heat are sufficient to create diamonds and rubies.

Nor to mention, mutually destroying lava and water to create steam could also have the byproduct of creating stone in a far more efficient manner than the pressure forge stone pulverisation recipe. Obviously such a feature should probably be locked behind a Crucible tech that needs high pressure science paces, but I'd say that'd help tremendously with making the mod more friendly to >60 SPM builds.

You can always mix in some efficiency modules, they will reduce your steam consumption. That's what i did. You should also use productivity modules in science and not just speed. Also, 5k SPM, not sure what is so unfriendly, once you figure out the production chain, it's quite scalable.

Now, the hydrogen plate explosions. There is a mod setting that reduces their damage, and save-scumming is a completely legitimate strategy for Crucible (I've resorted to it a lot when playtesting lol). But yeah, it is very punishing, and I'm a bit conflicted about it. The fact that it's so expensive and the damage it causes when it spoils are meant to be mutually-reinforcing mechanics to encourage squeezing as much value out of each one as possible (and therefore activating as few as possible). I can't promise I'll decide to make them less punishing, but the balance and progression of metallic hydrogen processing is the thing I'm looking at most closely for the 1.0 version.

I like boom, please don't take away the boom.

I like boom, please don't take away the boom.

In the end, I did not take the boom away. The biggest problem with the metallic hydrogen explosions was that it could occasionally be unfair if you got unlucky with the probabilistic recipe results. But with the modding API changes for Factorio 2.1, I was able to alleviate this particular problem without changing any of the core mechanics.

And with this issue I actually have an idea! There's lava all over, and with no calcite to turn it into molten metals naturally occurring, it could serve the purpose of powering some sort of Geothermal plant, or alternatively being used to sift through said lava for motes of rubies and diamonds, after all, it stands to reason that deeper in the planet, where lava comes from, pressure and heat are sufficient to create diamonds and rubies.

I did go through several iterations of geothermal power ideas early on, but I was never able to get it to a point I was happy with. To make electricity from heat still requires water to make the steam, which ends up making the problem of excess heavy oil from emulsion worse. Needing to turn heavy oil into solid fuel just to void it so that I could run my geothermal heaters drove me crazy. And that extra complexity didn't add anything more interesting than heating towers. Yeah, it may be a bit suspect thematically, but uniformly high temperatures are just as thermodynamically inert as uniformly low temperatures.

I have about 16 Pressure Forges all decked out with Rigor modules and they can only produce enough diamonds to run some 2 or 3 Science machines.

The fact that pressure forges can't use beacons does mean there is a potential shortfall trying to scale up production of the high-pressure science pack. This was basically the motivation for the science pack productivity and gemstone synthesis productivity infinite techs. I don't know how well that scales if you're going for megabase levels of production, but it does make an impact at most SPMs. The other best way to scale production is with higher-quality pressure forges; aside from the regular speed boost from quality, they also get an additional module slot for each quality level. And because pressure forges can craft pressure forges, it's actually pretty easy to upcycle pressure forges (a legendary pressure forge filled with legendary Q3 modules gets +62.5% quality). But given that plenty of players don't really enjoy quality, and especially since quality will no longer be required for Space Age, I am looking at balance without quality.

Nor to mention, mutually destroying lava and water to create steam could also have the byproduct of creating stone in a far more efficient manner than the pressure forge stone pulverisation recipe. Obviously such a feature should probably be locked behind a Crucible tech that needs high pressure science paces, but I'd say that'd help tremendously with making the mod more friendly to >60 SPM builds.

As I mentioned, I tried things like this but was never able to make them actually fun; but I do still have a soft spot for the idea, and I'm holding out hope that another mod comes along and implements a mechanic like this. I'd definitely take the opportunity to integrate that into Crucible (either as an optional or recommended mod, depending on the fit).

Well, if anything, the only other issue I have is the Insane Steam requirement for making any appreciable SPM amount. I have about 16 Pressure Forges all decked out with Rigor modules and they can only produce enough diamonds to run some 2 or 3 Science machines. Granted, they're fully decked out with speed 3 modules, in order to maximise hydrogen utilisation, but even so. Steam on Crucible is needed for So many things, and in quite great amounts as Rigor modules eat up more energy, and metallic hydrogen production, with it's chance to nill itself, needs so much steam to make hydrogen you almost never have enough steam, repeated ad nauseum

I forgot to mention in earlier replies: Truly scaling up high-pressure science packs to high SPM values is greatly facilitated by the recipes unlocked with the "Advanced hydrogen metallization" tech unlocked with cryo science. The improved hydrogen plate stabilization recipe is more complex but can become effectively lossless. This also makes utilizing the metallic hydrogen space platform recipes less expensive (though not less dangerous).

If you play v1.0 of the planet (in Factorio 2.1), I'd be very interested to hear your opinions on how much (if at all) you find this version of the planet addresses the issues.

You can always mix in some efficiency modules, they will reduce your steam consumption. That's what i did. You should also use productivity modules in science and not just speed. Also, 5k SPM, not sure what is so unfriendly, once you figure out the production chain, it's quite scalable.

You see. You wrongly assume I am the type of Factorio player that believes in Efficiency modules. I do not, and, I've decided that this whole debacle is a non-problem when you put down a 2.24 GW nuclear reactor. Is my factory dying of thirst? Probably. How do I intend to fix it? Icy orbital platform. I was mostly annoyed with the nuclear explosions because, well, the damage is severe, but also because I'm playing with a mod that spawns lava wherever a nuke goes off, and seeing as I am pre-Aquilo, that creates a Permanent scar, which meant my Only option Was save scumming... Or opening the editor but meh, but that's not Crucible's fault so I didn't see a need to bring it up earlier.

I'm playing with a mod that spawns lava wherever a nuke goes off

Wait, what mod is this? The hydrogen plate explosions should not do this; that's way too severe a punishment for something that happens by accident. The explosion is not actually the same as an atomic bomb explosion, it just re-uses the graphics (it does also do less damage, if not that much less). So any modded effect of atomic bombs shouldn't be automatically carried over, I'd have thought.

That's the neat part. I have NO bloody idea which mod does that! The only things affecting the atomic bomb are Unlimited Productivity 2.0 Compat Fork, Extraplanetary Production, and the Rigor Module. I have No idea what's causing it, and my entire modlist has Nothing that says it does that. But it's evidently Clearly intentional because not only does it place lava in a large, predefined shape it also places ammoniacal solution for some god-forsaken reason.

Wait, no, I have an idea. Nukes on Vulcanus and Aquilo produce craters of lava respectively ammoniacal ocean. So maybe some weird modded interaction is somehow breaking this mechanic and causing it to take place on EVERY planet.

As an aside, I noticed Crucible buildings produce more pollution with greater quality, which is not something I've seen happening with other buildings from the base game, it's probably scaling up due to the increased energy consumption of said machines... which does seem a tad weird.

Wait, no, I have an idea. Nukes on Vulcanus and Aquilo produce craters of lava respectively ammoniacal ocean. So maybe some weird modded interaction is somehow breaking this mechanic and causing it to take place on EVERY planet.

Can you send me your mod-list.json? Unfortunately the tooltip showing which mods altered a prototype probably wouldn't show the mod causing this, because technically it's not part of the atomic bomb item prototype, but part of the atomic bomb projectile prototype (which is hidden).

As an aside, I noticed Crucible buildings produce more pollution with greater quality, which is not something I've seen happening with other buildings from the base game, it's probably scaling up due to the increased energy consumption of said machines... which does seem a tad weird.

This is just Factorio's 1-to-1 scaling of pollution with power consumption (same reason efficiency modules reduce pollution).

Can you send me your mod-list.json? Unfortunately the tooltip showing which mods altered a prototype probably wouldn't show the mod causing this, because technically it's not part of the atomic bomb item prototype, but part of the atomic bomb projectile prototype (which is hidden).

Sure... Uhmmm... Where should I do that?

mod-list.json in the mods folder in the user data directory

No no I know That I asked where should I Send you that, since, it's a file.

Hah, okay. You can just paste the text here, or a link to google drive or soektw, or send it on discord

https://gitlab.com/jfletcher94/factorio-mods/-/work_items/96

Fixed in v0.5.11 (Factorio 2.0) and v1.1.6 (Factorio 2.1).