I've been thinking a lot about this mod, specifically about the MW calculations.

I wanted to create a mod which would add interesting logistical choices. I was mainly inspired by Satisfactory, which does it in a really interesting way. The mechanics are somewhat esoteric how you get the recipes, but you can do things like use iron plates to make "iron wire", which is indistinguishable from copper wire.

I like the alternate recipes mod, but it's lacking Space Age. I think that a weakness of Space Age is that you can simply ship in anything that you might be missing. Trouble with blue chips on Gleba? Just load up 500 from Nauvis and carry them over. I started thinking of alternate recipes, maybe using bioflux to create some sort of biochip.

I've gone back and forth a few times, I had the idea to create a new type of research (innovation) to research alternate recipes, so they could have a natural discovery process for the player to uncover the recipes as they went. I found this mod, and I figured I would just wait for it to update. But it's taking a while and I started thinking a little more about it.

I saw the cost2.md file in the repo, and I think that it doesn't tell the whole story. Let's talk blue chips.
- On Nauvis, the MW follows the "gold standard". Sulfuric acid from sulfur, which is from petroleum, plastic comes from petroleum and coal, etc. It's easy to calculate, just add up those base ingredients.
- On Fulgora, it's way easier- just the cost of processing scrap divided by the probability of getting blue chips (which if scrap is 5 MW, that means blue chips are 250 MW - MUCH cheaper than normal). Neglecting the recycling energy required, technically recycling scrap takes 0.2 energy.
- On Gleba, it's a totally different beast. Plastic seems much easier to come by, or at least it's much fewer buildings. Getting iron and copper though, that's a challenge. I didn't even try to make bots on Gleba- it was obvious to me just by looking at the supply chain that I would rather import bots in from Nauvis.

With red chips, that can be even more complicated on Fulgora. There are a few ways you can get red chips:
- You have the scrap recipe, sure, which at 3% chance puts it at 167 MW versus 100 MW for the "gold standard".
- You can also recycle blue chips, which if on Fulgora those cost 250 MW, and they return 25% of the 2 red chips in the recipe, that puts it at 500 MW from only this source.
- You can also craft them from raw materials, I started to do the calculations but copper wire is pretty tough to get by recycling, and so this recipe puts it into the several hundreds easily. So I'll ignore this method for red chips.

Using a parallel circuit resistance equation (to simulate parallel production since scrap forces byproducts), with 167 MW and 250 MW recipes, that puts the resulting "resistance" aka MW cost, basically exactly at 100 MW, which is right on the money for the "gold standard" cost. So it's much much cheaper to make blue chips than normal, but just about the same cost for red chips. (1/R = 1/167 + 1/250)

So the production web is unique for each planet + space. Even stone "costs more" at Gleba since the patches are so scarce, and the cost for stone is essentially infinite in space since you can't get it from asteroids. Mentioning space, it's probably easiest to just drop the ore directly down to the planet to be processed there, where you can have as many electric furnaces as you want. It's actually free to drop those resources straight down, which ends up being the best thing to do for calcite/carbon/sulfur, and it's very useful to do that for ice to Fulgora as well. It's important to note dropping space resources especially for calcite, since I have a feeling the numbers will show it's crazy cheap to make iron gears from molten iron instead of the normal way, for example. Maybe not, maybe it's just faster but costs similar resources.

So then you have the production web for each planet, plus the space one is plugged in to any planet as well. But then you have to take into account the ability to ship from planet to planet! Which would mean that for each planet, shipping a stack of any given resource would be equal to the cost of producing that resource + the cost of a rocket (50 LDS, 50 blue chips, 50 rocket fuel). This MW cost could further be reduced by factoring in importing from other planets as well!

So, to summarize my problem, I know that there's a smart way to create this web of production to calculate the costs by inputting every vanilla recipe, but I haven't thought of it yet. Then, there would be a comprehensive table of each resource cost for each location. Only then would I be totally comfortable running calculations to create new balanced recipes with that method. And that's neglecting throwing away unneeded recipe outputs, the cost of travelling from location to location (but ship fuel is free basically), and the cost of infrastructure for each recipe.

I'll have to think about it for longer, to be able to solve that math problem. I have a feeling that it will involve Dijkstra's Algorithm, mixed with that parallel resistance equation I was talking about.

I do have some ideas for recipes, mostly centered on Gleba though. Basically any material that it's easier to ship in from another planet instead of making it there, I think is a bug that needs to be fixed with a new recipe. I also really like recipes that solve other logistics like only taking one belt instead of two, eliminating the need for a material, using an extra fluid to make a recipe more efficient, etc.

First off, sorry for the late response! I am still working on this mod but I just don't check the home page a lot.. Changing now!

I like the alternate recipes mod, but it's lacking Space Age

I, together with the collective effort of the Factorio discord server, am currently hard at work with the space age recipes. (I'm also working on vanilla galore, as you may have seen in the github repo, but I'm waiting until I release space age before I bump it to the front page again.) Space Age Galore will be released in the near future :D

I figured I would just wait for it to update

Yeah I'm taking quite a while huh.. I didn't think someone was actively waiting for it but it makes me happy to know someone is :D

And about the fulgora calculations. They are very helpful and I wish I would've found this msg sooner.. Anyways, I did figure out the dividing part. (While I'm generally staying away from fulgora stuff, I did need to get the "worth" of the holmium stuff for Aquilo)

I do however need to look at using the resistance formula tho, making red circuits (fulgora) worth as much as red circuits on nauvis doesn't feel right, but I haven't yet run the calculations so the numbers may prove me wrong. I also want to note something that will be relevant for the worths; in the worths table I reduce item worth by an amount if the item (or fluid) can be seen as by-product. This does include all scrap results and spoilage.

So the production web is unique for each planet

I totally agree of course. In the "cost.md" file I now also have worths of some items/fluids in other environments.

Even stone "costs more" at Gleba since the patches are so scarce, and the cost for stone is essentially infinite in space since you can't get it from asteroids

I have taken some liberty with the so called resources with "infinite worth", examples are; indeed stone in space, crude-oil on gleba, ammonia on any planet that's not Aquilo, etc etc. Il not just dump all items here, you'll have to wait for Space Age Galore :D (I have for example added a recipe that using a foundry smelts metallic asteroids down to lava, and thus stone.)

But then you have to take into account the ability to ship from planet to planet! Which would mean that for each planet, shipping a stack of any given resource would be equal to the cost of producing that resource + the cost of a rocket (50 LDS, 50 blue chips, 50 rocket fuel). This MW cost could further be reduced by factoring in importing from other planets as well!

BEHOLD; THE FORMULA (Used to determine the costs of resources intended to be imported from other planets.)

ft83000/a+c

• Where f is the from coefficient (this basically defines how cheap/easy rockets are to make on planet.)
• Where t is the path coefficient (1.5 for aquilo<>any inner planet, others are just 1 and the scattered planet path is still undefined and unused.)
• Where a is the rocket capacity.
• Where c is the item cost/worth.

I sometimes mess around with the numbers a bit if the stack size is very high or low, but as they do not directly influence the costs of transport (in-space costs are ignored) I do not do this often.

But anyways I like to think I figured the interplanetary transport thingy out. Although I will gladly accept any improvements!

the cost of infrastructure for each recipe

This is just something I keep in mind when I make recipes, it does not really get reflected in the cost.md file. (Only excluding u235; it got a ~12% worth boost.)

I have a feeling that it will involve Dijkstra's Algorithm, mixed with that parallel resistance equation I was talking about

Il have a good look at both and how I can maybe use them before I publicize the Space Age recipes probably. (I really dont wanna break any factories with future updates..)

I do have some ideas for recipes, mostly centered on Gleba though

I would love to hear them! As an Angels Bioprocessing enjoyer im absolutely going insane templating gleba recipes but that does not mean I have enough XD
(If you dont mind sharing them)

I started thinking of alternate recipes, maybe using bioflux to create some sort of biochip

Nice idea! Living electronics are probably less far fetched than the analog ones at this point anyways. I will add them as soon as I make up my mind about if I want to go full bioprocessing and add ammonia as a gleba resource :D

I also really like recipes that solve other logistics like only taking one belt instead of two, eliminating the need for a material, using an extra fluid to make a recipe more efficient

Okok il be sure to add some recipes with this in mind. I already have some ideas :D

I had the idea to create a new type of research (innovation) to research alternate recipes, so they could have a natural discovery process for the player to uncover the recipes as they went

This sounds really cool btw :D

If you make the mod I'll be the first one to download it :)

(...and again sry for late response..) (‘’❛ ؂ - „)ᕗ

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response!!! I went back and looked at my post a couple times after posting it and kept cringing... I can really ramble. Even then, it's clear that you really gave what I said careful consideration and I really appreciate it! Also, forgive me for saying "it's taking a while", I'm just armchair modding at the moment and I appreciate all the work you're doing for the modding community. I could have joined the discord and pinged you about this post, but it's pretty low priority and I'm not trying to push you for deadlines.

I think I got too "in the weeds" about the equations. I am a huge fan of your shipping formula, I think that you really stripped it down to its necessities, something that I have trouble doing sometimes. One piece of feedback I have is about the paths, Vulcanis<-->Fulgora should maybe be a little higher than 1 because it takes two hops, and if Aquilo<-->Gleba is 1.5, that maybe Aquilo<-->any planet besides Gleba would be a little higher than 1.5, just since it takes two hops to make the trek.

I never played Angels Bioprocessing or Space Exploration (from what I've heard there are some pretty crazy recipes), although I did beat Krastorio2. I really loved that there were 3 paths for making rocket fuel. In case you aren't familiar, one path for rocket fuel was the regular one using oil processing, one was using chlorine gas and sand, and the last was by collecting nitrogen from the atmosphere and making nitric acid. Each one had its pros and cons, though the tradeoff for the atmosphere one was size since the condensers were so big, but I play with Factorissimo so that was negligible 😂 Also I did set up a working base on Aquilo, but I didn't get fusion working in space or railguns, so I might be missing some balance knowledge there. All my ships used landmines to be battering rams and when they changed it to damage your ship too... I booted it up one day and all my ships were immediately destroyed 😣

So I chose to restart, but what really pushed me to look into mods with alternate recipes was the fact that the solution to most logistics problems is to just import goods from another planet... I hate that the easiest way to get blue chips on most planets is to just import from Fulgora 😥 that's not fun, there's no fun little puzzle there. It's just galaxy trucker simulator, lol

So here are some interesting things I found / thoughts I had. Feel free to ignore any of my ideas, steal any of them, modify any of them, or use them as inspiration for other ideas. Hopefully I inspire some cool recipes.

• I don't think "build billions of accumulators" is interesting for the Fulgora energy issue. You can just drop down infinite ice from space instead, to burn with the very cheap solid fuel that comes from recycling. I'm neutral about "drop from space" recipes, since it at least requires you to set up a dedicated resource platform for the planet. I got this big accumulator mod, which is sort of a cop-out. I did have an idea of using the electrolyte solution on Fulgora, maybe similar to cold/hot fleuroketone, where you can turn "electrolyte solution" into "charged electrolyte solution" with a very fast recipe, so it could absorb lightning strikes. Then a reverse recipe which releases energy that you can set up with circuits to run when your energy grid is getting low. The downside to that would be it would need a new liquid, which doesn't follow this mod's philosophy of not adding new materials. Unfortunately using fleuroketone heating/cooling somehow as a Fulgora power solution wouldn't be very good, since you have to basically finish building your grid before you can get to Aquilo in the first place. Fulgora Extended seems like it might add some similar functionality, but I didn't download it so idk if it's worth it or not to try to incorporate any ideas from it.
• The planet Corrundum seems cool, my laptop ran out of RAM and I had to cut that mod so I can't try it out at the moment, rip. Looks like it adds a few recipes with platinum. Again, it uses a new material so that's probably out of the scope of this mod. Although, skimming over the mod page for it, I'm wondering if there could be more usage for spaceship fuel? Maybe there could be a way to stabilize it in space into something that could be sent down to planets as rocket fuel. It would need to be pretty inefficient/slow because spaceship fuel is SO cheap in space after you get advanced asteroid processing.
• I saw a post on reddit where someone made a mobile quantum chip factory that flew to each planet to gather the necessary resources, maybe it would be cool to have a recipe limited to zero-atmosphere which would encourage quantum chips in space, I can't think of a tradeoff right now except something like more chips output.
• Arcospheres are insanely interesting, but if anything would break the "no new materials" philosophy it would be this one, 😂 Trying to tie this to a usable idea though, maybe there's a use for science packs, maybe you can recycle science packs down into something cool. It seems like a nightmare to balance something like that so it wouldn't result in infinite science packs somehow, though.
• Extended Vanilla: Refining is one of the best ones out there, you probably know all about it because you mention it in this mod's info tab. I'm a huge fan of how you can break stone down into gravel and later sand, and boost landfill productivity on Gleba like crazy. Also passing around coal dust, iron dust, making steel dust to get a huge steel productivity boost, it's all good stuff. In this mod, Krastorio, and Satisfactory, there's a recipe to use sulfuric acid to purify ore to increase output, which I like a lot. The enrichment chamber is a little weird because I feel like one of the other existing machines would work for it, but it's fine.
• Foundry Expanded and Electromagnetic Plant are also fantastic mods, I'm a HUGE fan of using the new factory buildings for making stuff, especially with those dank production bonuses. Also the I Cast Bullets mod, for similarly making bullets way less of a pain to make in space.
• I installed the Maraxsis planet mod, but I haven't gotten there yet in my current game. Seems like some pretty cool content additions, and some cool recipes in there too. One that I found is called "Fish Rendering" where you take a fish, take a piercing round, and you get jelly and microplastics (which can be cooked into plastic) 😲 Unfortunately it's complicated to try to get a good sense of the mod and its reciipes before I actually go there and solve it.
• I also installed the Muluna planet mod, but I also haven't travelled there yet (I put Factorio down for a couple weeks, don't judge). It adds some recipes with aluminum, but it has a recipe I find really cool which is a "Carbon-lubricated electric engine unit", it's 1 carbon + 2 green chips + 1 engine unit + 10 seconds = 1 electric engine. I think that recipe is genius, I had forgotten that graphite dry lubricant exists in real life.
• Alternate Recipes is actually the closest to what I was looking for in a mod, and I actually used it in my first Space Age run. I didn't find a repo for it so I just downloaded it and cracked open the zip file to look at the recipes. There's all kinds of great stuff in there:
  • Concrete from stone bricks and iron plates
  • Piercing rounds from steel and copper plates but it's way quicker
  • Inserters from chips and gears and stuff instead of requiring a basic inserter, which is pretty convenient especially before robots.
  • Electronic circuits from iron plates and copper plates, so you don't have to belt copper wire. Same deal for red chips too. I thought it was kind of weird, but convenient for the copper wire belt throughput thing. I feel like recipes should have at least an inkling of realism though, and mashing iron plates and copper plates together to make a circuit doesn't make sense to me.
  • Processing units from 6 advanced circuits and sulfuric acid (no green chips), this one was a good tradeoff because I didn't need to belt green chips around as much, but green chips are so easy to make that it's better to just use the vanilla recipe when I'm only making a little bit of blue chips.
  • Probably my favorite recipe is a combo recipe which makes 4 red and 4 green science from 1 assembling machine, 1 fast inserter, and 44 energy required. The raw material cost is roughly the same and so is the number of machines, but hot dang it feels cool to make 2 different science with 1 recipe.
  • Pipes and ground pipes from steel, idk pipes aren't a big problem, I hella miss steel pipes from Krastorio2 though because they reached so far.
  • Tier 2 modules from just red/blue chips, I liked these recipes because I don't like belting tier 1 modules everywhere and tbh I don't use tier 1 modules in the first place.

So those are some mods that I saw some neat ideas in. I guarantee I'm missing tons of recipes in other mods, and probably some in these mods too tbh. I actually ran out of space in this response, so I'll put my ideas in another one.

Here I go rambling again, but just spitballing some recipe ideas that are thought out to various levels:

• Cellulose Circuits: wood + copper wire --> green chips. I think this one might be in this mod already? Wood is definitely underused in vanilla, and there needs to be incentive to go back and do tree agriculture after Gleba, or it needs to be unlocked earlier so wood can be sprinkled into more recipes.
• Carburized Steel: carbon + iron --> steel. It's actually how I would have expected steel to be made in Factorio, not sure why it's not. It might need an earlier carbon recipe too in order to make it into the "setting up blue science phase" of Nauvis, or it can just be a better alt recipe for late game. Maybe work wood in here to turn wood into carbon, or turn coal into carbon.
• Steel-tipped Rounds: carbon + iron --> red bullets. Mainly so that I can make red bullets in space without it being a nightmare, although if there are any bullet-casting recipes, that's probably taken care of.
• Structured Steel via Polarization: iron bacteria --> steel, made in the electromagnetic plant. It sucks to make steel on Gleba in vanilla, this would have the tradeoff of needing fresh bacteria / dealing with spoil, but it would also incentivize bringing Fulgora technology to Gleba.
• Nutrition Pellet: 5 nutrients --> 1 pellet. This is out of place on this list since it would be a new item, but it would be nice to be able to pasteurize nutrients into something that spoils slower and it doesn't clog everything. Pentapod eggs take 30 nutrients and those inserters be struggling trying to keep the biochambers fed.
• Biological Processing Unit: plastic + copper wire + bioflux (or pentapod eggs)--> blue chips. It would be a way better way to make them, I think there needs to be less of a dependency at Gleba for iron and copper.
• Bioactive Battery: bioflux + plastic --> battery. Mainly because making robots sucks on Gleba.
• Resin Low Density Structure: carbon fiber + jelly --> low density structure. Again, just making it easier to live my life on Gleba.
• Fabric Belts: carbon fiber + iron rods --> red belt (maybe add lubricant to jump straight to blue belts)? At this point I'm just coming up with ideas for the things I remember being really annoying to make on Gleba. Green belts are, of course, reserved for being made on Vulcanis. According to the vanilla recipes, at least.
• Alternate Blue Science: explosives + battery + red chips --> blue science packs. Just a little bit less of a dependence on steel and iron, since it wouldn't require any engine units.
• Sandwiched Advanced Circuit --> (lots of) green chips + plastic --> red chips. It would be nice to have to have red chips come from just one belt, even if it costs more materials to make them.
• Dip-etched Processing Unit: Same as a regular processing unit, except everything is multiplied by 10, but instead of 50 sulfuric acid it would use a barrel of 50 sulfuric acid. I think that blue chip production would be a little more compact if everything was belted, might be cool 🤔

That's all I can think of for now, I'm great at building on others' ideas but I'm pretty terrible at generating new ideas 😅

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response!!!

No problem, also thank you for your message :)

Vulcanis<-->Fulgora should maybe be a little higher than 1 because it takes two hops

Oh yeah, I forgot to take that into account.. I'll assign that path a coefficient of 1.2. It may not be too large of a change, the reason behind this being the fact that I see time as not a huge factor in space travel. (The aquilo path has a higher value because it's harder and endgame - I think the player needs to have a bit more reasons importing stuff from there than from other places.)

I never played Angels Bioprocessing or Space Exploration

I haven't played space exploration myself but I can surely highly recommend all of angels mods if you are an alternate recipe enjoyer :) While I do not know any of the recipes from the top of my head I do know all the gasses have an average of 4 alternate recipes for each. I also really like the idea of purely getting oil products from bioprocessing and how it is done in that mod. Again, I highly recommend it. (In Angels Discord server is a link to the github of the 2.0 port btw :DD)

I hate that the easiest way to get blue chips on most planets is to just import from Fulgora that's not fun, there's no fun little puzzle there. It's just galaxy trucker simulator, lol

I totally agree. I'm happy to say vanilla galore fixes this for most planets; I'm still thinking if I want something like "castable analog circuits" for vulcanus but the biochips for gleba are certainly something that's planned. (And of course, there are a lot of endgame recipes planned that would make nauvis also a great place for them.)

The downside to that would be it would need a new liquid, which doesn't follow this mod's philosophy of not adding new materials.

Yeah I have kind of an oath going on.. while it sounds very cool I will indeed not be adding anything that's not a recipe to this mod.

The most I could do would probably be something like making it possible to source uranium on fulgora but as I'm not sure about that I'm not adding it for now. (And when/if I add it it will be a recipe that would default to being disabled.)

Maybe there could be a way to stabilize it in space into something that could be sent down to planets as rocket fuel. It would need to be pretty inefficient/slow because spaceship fuel is SO cheap in space after you get advanced asteroid processing.

Ah coincidentally I already have a rocket fuel from oxidizer/fuel recipe :D (I will rebalance it before release however, I think it's a bit too OP in its current state but I may be wrong, I shall give it a try to use it in a future playthrough. If I put the mod online before then (likely) I have it as an "unsure" recipe (defaults to disabled); [200 ox, 400 fuel, 1 solid fuel])

maybe there's a use for science packs, maybe you can recycle science packs down into something cool

Science packs as Arcospheres.. ( ´ཀ` )

While I do like the idea A LOT. I don't really like the idea of removing the need to make a certain science pack using its (or any of its) recipe(s). There are probably some ways I could find a nice middle ground but I would have to put some thought into it :)

Foundry Expanded and Electromagnetic Plant are also fantastic mods

Agree, although casting a full engine unit is just a bit too lazy in my opinion. I do have a lot of semi-casting recipes added, mostly seeking a middle ground between just putting a foundry down and having 100 engine assemblers. Like a recipe that uses a bit of tungsten as an ingredient for a more productively created engine unit. (Only craftable in foundry; so still nice 50% prod bonus + the prod bonus rewarded for using more advanced materials yay!)

Carbon-lubricated electric engine unit (..) had forgotten that graphite dry lubricant exists in real life.

Oh (again) coincidentally I already have a carbon + some other stuff = lubricant recipe and an engine unit recipe that uses a bit of lubricant :D (It's nice to know I'm on the right path with how I add the recipes :) )

but hot dang it feels cool to make 2 different science with 1 recipe.

I definitely agree, that sounds quite cool and unique :D (I'll add some of those recipes asap, I already have some (semi-devious) ideas :D)

and there needs to be incentive to go back and do tree agriculture after Gleba

While I do have that circuits from wood recipe, I haven't really added any more wood recipes. The reason is as follows; one fully operational tower creates at most 0.2 wood/s. (Not factoring in seed costs.) This would make wood a ridiculously hard-to-come-by resource as it would take 75 towers to fill a YELLOW belt. And because you can't put modules in trees there is no endgame upgrade. I do have other choices than defining the wood worth by calculations but they aren't all too good;

1. I could go with the what seems to be universal standard that is one wood ~= 2 ore I see in most mods. (Semi-used for the circuit recipe, I don't see any flaws beside making any recipe that requires wood very unattractive when playing without a mod that adds greenhouses.)
2. I could add a way better wood recipe centered around the biochamber. (I am not a fan of just adding a blatantly better recipe though)

carbon + iron --> steel. It's actually how I would have expected steel to be made in Factorio

Yeah same. It would be a crime to not add an alternative steel recipe from carbon XD. And thus, I have added one. I'm not sure if I want to balance it for use on planets like nauvis and gleba or if I want to balance it around use on space ships tho.

Pentapod eggs take 30 nutrients and those inserters be struggling trying to keep the biochambers fed.

Ah I see. This gave me the idea to maybe have a fluid/gas as an alternate nutrient source. Would be quite cool I think. (Looking at ammonia here.)

Dip-etched Processing Unit

Oh nice, I might just add an option/make a mod that auto-generates barrel-using recipes for recipes like the processing unit and electric engine. Although I do highly recommend Assembler Pipe Passthrough, I can't play without anymore. (You might want to disable it for chem plants and refineries tho.)

That's all I can think of for now, I'm great at building on others' ideas but I'm pretty terrible at generating new ideas

Don't worry all these ideas are great! I'll certainly add a large amount of these with maybe a change here and there. (If I didn't write a response targeted at one it doesn't mean I don't like it btw. I just don't want to just say something like just "nice" XD)

Also, forgive me for saying "it's taking a while",

No problem I don't mind :). Btw, I'm currently focusing on making sure the mods goes online in the foreseeable future so if you don't see any of the by you inspired recipes in the public release it's because I'm currently putting more time into verifying and editing existing recipes than adding new ones. :)

And lastly, thanks for all the ideas. I have stored your messages somewhere so I can take them as inspiration anytime. If it fits I will pull a Kovarex and name one of the directly by you inspired recipes something like the "Robokoko (some fancy word) process" XD

Awesome! And that would be awesome if one of my recipes could make it to naming status! 😂

I agree with everything you're saying, it seems like you have this thought out really well, I'm excited for it!

I was trying to think of some more "classes" of recipes to add, and here are a few ideas that I had:

• Furnace-based recipes: A middle ground between the "cold" assembling and casting with the foundry, they would represent anything that you'd "bake", or maybe like if you wanted to smoosh something with plastic, instead of injection molding. Maybe red chips, representing more efficient soldering or sandwiching with malleable plastic

• Catalyst: This is already covered by a bunch of vanilla recipes, but I also love the idea of Arcospheres. There are already positive feedback loop recipes (coal cracking, pentapod egg production, kovarex, etc) and at least one negative feedback loop I can think of off the top of my head, I think that fleuroketone is net negative on Aquilo?

• Extra trash: Something that produces junk as a byproduct. It would be cool to make something produce scrap, but that might accidentally hand you a scrap source on an unexpected world or something. I did think of a really cool engine recipe I think though, but I'm going to post it in the discord after I think more about it.

• Low probability recipes: Maybe you could "attempt" to jump straight to blue chips, if you just use basic materials, but a low probability of success. One example might be iron plates + wire + sulfuric acid --> 5% chance at a blue chip, for Vulcanus. I also need to think about this one to make it feel more balanced. Maybe it would have like a medium probability for green chip, small probability for red chip, or tiny probability for blue chip.

I was trying to think of some other things that are a pain to make, and blue chips on Vulcanus are a pain, really anything that requires plastic or oil in general.

I agree with everything you're saying, it seems like you have this thought out really well, I'm excited for it!

Im really happy to know the though behind the recipes gets agreed upon, thank uuuu :D

Furnace-based recipes

Nice ideas although this will have to wait until I find a way to select recipes in furnaces. Also, I think making circuits in furnaces might scare away some people, so I'll put this as a low priority. It does sound cool, though-albeit maybe a bit un-vanilla-like.

Catalyst

When you mention catalyst-using recipes, do you mean ones like the sulfuric acid (iron plate) recipe and acid neutralization (calcite) recipe? I'm not sure if you're referring to those specifically since they aren't actually catalysts, but if so, I'll certainly add some catalyst-using recipes. While the chemistry in base Factorio is somewhat limited, I do have ideas involving the gases and liquids we've been given :)

(In the discord I send you a message about the "trash/junk" recipes)

Low probability recipes

Definitely adding this. This made me remember that IRL there's a process where circuits of different qualities are created in one process. I think it's related to how some circuit boards randomly turn out better quality than others, making them suited for more advanced circuits. I REALLY like this. Even though I planned to hold off on adding major recipes until after releasing the Space Age Galore mod (so I can get it out quicker), I'd happily make an exception for this. I'm sure I can come up with a nice name for the process (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧