Really like this mod concept. Always thought meta-progression in games is super fun and it's interesting to see how it'd work in Factorio.

Here's a handful of my thoughts and ideas after gathering a little over 100 points:
- Running to all the ore patches after each prestige, although small, can get somewhat tedious. I saw the compatibility for QoL research, but perhaps have an option to make the upgrades point-based instead? The "Endless" tab is looking a little barren and something like run speed, reach, or mining speed would be good additions.

• The challenges "Smaller Start" and "Bigger & Faster Expansions" are a bit too powerful in my opinion. It's incredibly easy to get a couple points, max expansions for a +150% point bonus, and get a lot of points relatively quickly doing nothing but steel and red and green science. I wouldn't consider myself very advanced or fast as a factorio player, but I was able to make 11 pts every 7 minutes or so after those initial upgrades without any real threat from the bugs. My brain thinks "this is optimal, this is the ideal way to gain points" and it makes it hard to want to go further than that. Some ideas I had that might help with that if you consider it a problem is to make the later-game researches give even more points based on how hard they are compared to the previous science pack, make early game milestones gives less, add a minimum milestone requirement to prestiges, or to just increase the scaling price of those two challenges.

• I feel like having the Prestige Stack Inserter be better than the default one along with being cheaper to make and not very expensive points-wise makes the default stack inserter pretty useless. I'm all for having an early-game stack inserter, but perhaps it should be toned down a bit? Maybe give it rotation on par with the default inserter or with decreased hand stack size? At the same time though I don't want to completely nerf it either. I think if you do that then it would be good to also add upgrades to the prestige stack inserter as well. Maybe you could spend more points to unlock new recipes that are more expensive but make improved versions of the stack inserter? Or perhaps keep the inserter the same, but make it more expensive by default and make it cheaper through upgrades?

• Aside from the normal challenges I think it would be cool to have challenges that are significantly harder, but give a permanent upgrade of some kind. For example you'd start a run where it forces you to get the Lazy Bastard achievement, but once you complete it you permanently gain mech armor on start of something like that. You could even have multi-leveled or endless ones where the challenges get increasingly harder or the goal gets increasingly further in the game.

• Not sure how feasible it is, but unlockable technologies in the tech tree would also be really cool. I like that this mod gives the player a lot of advantages early game with the kits as well as general stat buffs to make progression easier, but aside from challenges making bugs more threatening there isn't much spicing up the way you actually go about building your factory, and it feels somewhat detached from actual gameplay apart from the milestones. Having things like new recipes, buildings, or even just plain stat buffs tied to research would give more interest towards reaching a little later in the game, especially if those new recipes add new production chains that are easier, more efficient, earlier in the game, or just previously inaccessible for certain items.

• Lignumis' Rudimentary Bots kit is a little redundant considering that the first milestone on Lignumis is the Steam science giving 2 points, which is enough to just get the Personal Roboport Package. It's not really a bad thing since you could just buy that along with another 1-point item, but I thought I should point it out. You also cannot refund the kits after buying them and prestiging, so if you buy both (or all 3) personal roboport packages your starting inventory would seemingly be very cluttered with some not very useful items. Perhaps consider making it an upgradeable kit, or make them refundable in some way?

• Allowing frequency, richness, and size to be able to go beyond their default cap would be very fun and cool. I'm not sure if it's even possible, but if it is I would greatly appreciate it as a config option.

again, really cool mod! Can't wait to see what you add next!

Lot's of good idea's, awesome to see such interest in my mod, very very cool

Yes, I agree you can currently get too much from short run's and in general are disguraged from going to far. At a certain point, I do imagine that it would start to suck to restart many many hours into a run, I'm guessing the sweet spot is somewhere around entering space.

Smaller start & bigger faster expansion. Yes they are a bit too strong. I'm considering that if you take these, a few of the earlier milestones don't reset, as to force a player to go further, and face the difficulty of the curse. I'm also thinking smaller start to go something more like -60%,-75%,-90%, as starting at -30% isn't a huge issue.

Regardless, your idea to scall rewards differently is also another good thought. I'm trying to strike a balance between making earlier resets not useless, and later one's being worthwhile. I do think I will scall later rewards more, alongside certain upgrades not reseting some milestones

Yes, I was concered the prestige stack inserter can be unlocked way before you would naturally unlock it. I have some more balancing around it to do, and I like the idea of having a regular and fast stack inserter. Also gives way to the idea of a long-handed stack inserter.

I am planning on adding more things that change the flow of the game, like the teleportation belts do. Current idea's are new recipies, infinite of one item chests, new recipies, and linking up with a mod that let's you liquify products and put them in pipes for more throughput and different designs around pipes. I'll have to think about whether doing this through technologies instead of straight unlocks is a good idea. Could also do something around this with extended productivity as well. And yes more stats and other boosts are coming as well, but I'm also being considerate of how much all these different things can stack, but who doesn't like silly numbers anyway?

Yeah, I need to do some more balancing around Lignumis and the bots kit, good point

For frewquency, rishcness, and size, I have no problem with allowing silly numbers, I'll have a look to see what's possible

Thank for playing the mod!

Yo vulcanus start is peak

Three things though;

How does it work with the any planet start mod? (I haven't tried it out so I'm curious to see if I should)

With the Vulcanus starter pack and utility package you can immediately craft red science, green science, steel, and a solar panel for their milestones. Should probably disable those with the Vulcanus start.

The Electric Package says "red science milestone does not reset on prestige", though that doesn't seem to be the case since I can still earn it every time.

Also including a furnace or two in the utility package would be nice

Is it possible to save the map settings before prestige?
I Like to play with this Mod.
(I'm playing with Bob's Mods where I have several different ores, and when I prestige, the map settings are lost.)