"Add ways to make your base self sustain" yet you have to hand-craft and babysit your stuff because there's no way to automate some things until you reach some research later in game... It doesn't seem to add up, to me.

I'm specifically talking about biocontainers in this post... why aren't they craftable in normal burner machines? But there were also other examples I've come across already of this kind of stuff... but mainly related to having to hand-craft machines because they are not buildable by the basic burner assemblers.

As a person that hates hand-crafting and would want to have everything basic I need automated and readily available without having to wait while hand-crafting finishes, that was annoying... but luckily, machines are quick to craft.

But this, you cannot even automate a basic production chain and have to hand feed it? Again, why?

" no way to automate some things until you reach some research later in game... " - you need to make it through until you can build "Automated Factory" - then you can craft with it what you want (including buildings) - and you dont need to supply fuel to them, and dont need to take ash from them (they just need electricity to work).

And trust me: "Automated factory" level is still very early game :) Things that come later are a lot more complicated.

Btw: do you also have https://mods.factorio.com/mod/pyalternativeenergy enabled?

Yeah I have the full suite installed, including Alien Life and Alternative Energy too. I needed the bio-containers to create the first Vrauks I needed to implement Py Science 1, I'm about a halfway done with that now... Rubber stops are on the way, only missing the basic substrate after that.

In order to do that I had to handcraft ~500 biocontainers so I could get about 24 or so Vrauks in order to boot up the production line that uses them, I was hoping I'd be able to create a mini set of machines that would do that automatically while I did other things, but oh well. But now that's done and Vrauks are working...

In such cases when you are forced to handcraft (not only in this mod but in others too) you can do like this:

1. Gather materials in boxes.
2. Start picking up materials and queue up the desired quantity of handcrafts (by shift+click or many right-clicks).
3. run console command: /c game.speed = 4
   • or you can try also 8 etc
4. Wait until crafts are completed
5. run command to revert game speed to normal: /c game.speed = 1

Its not cheating because you just increase game speed (game ticks per second) to wait shorter in real life time :)

Yeah thanks, good tip. I didn't think of that.
I had the idea of installing a mod that would let me control the tick rate/speed in game, at some point. I used to have one such mod installed in the past, though I never ever needed to use it... Perhaps if the issue arises again, I'll do that!

Thanks for your replies! Best wishes o/