Factorio Forums

Super-early release of a rebalancing mod which, in my humble opinion, improves a bunch of stuff.
The mod is nowhere near complete or well-balanced. Mostly the early game is affected right now.
Thoughts, opinions and criticism on this "proof-of-concept release" is very much welcome.
The mod overrides a bunch of base entities and recipes, probably not very compatible with other mods.

In brief, this mod:
- Adds the Burner Generator from KS Power (requires no water, burns fuel for power, inefficient). This is the only power source early-game, as the steam engine now requires research (1 tech) to unlock.
- Removes the Burner Inserter. It serves no purpose when the Burner Generator exists. Likewise, burner mining drill now uses electricity. No more running around in circles putting coal into everything.
- Adds a 1-tile (electric) "Automated Workbench" which crafts 1-ingredient items. They craft faster than handcrafting (see below).
- Nerfs handcrafting a bit to favour use of the new workbenches. Handcrafting is still possible, this mod does not disable handcrafting. The nerf only applies to early-game items so far (assembling machines are not updated either, need to tweak a whole lot of values for this).
- Adds a Stone Axe, for a lot quicker no-item early game or when one loses their items and needs an axe for mining iron. Axes are slightly improved in mining speed and durability.
- Adjusts resources a bit. Among other things stone is not smelted now but cut (hint: workbenches). Stone can also be "cut" by hand, just like wood.
- Two "scenarios" are included; A 0-item start (helped immensely by the stone axe), and a power-start, a slightly buffed Vanilla regular start for those who want to get mining and assembling directly.

All fine but the burner inserter near the boiler now disapears? This was a backup if enery wents out and you should keep it.

Burner inserters are ESSENTIAL to allow your steam generators to maintain functionality when you accidentally overdraw the power supply. Mod is worthless without them.

seronis wrote:Burner inserters are ESSENTIAL to allow your steam generators to maintain functionality when you accidentally overdraw the power supply. Mod is worthless without them.

Worthless is a little strong but I'd definitely agree that keeping burner inserters would be advantageous.

Ratzap wrote: Worthless is a little strong but I'd definitely agree that keeping burner inserters would be advantageous.

The mod is good otherwise. But anything that breaks the game isnt usable so I dont think it was too strong at all. Removing burner inserters is just about on par with removing belts or pipes.

Well, the whole point of removing burner inserts is that burner generators are now *the* backup energy source. I don't see what this "breaks" when you can simply have a burner generator or two near the boilers to get the steam power going?

Edit: See image for example

TheOneFreeManikin wrote:Well, the whole point of removing burner inserts is that burner generators are now *the* backup energy source. I don't see what this "breaks" when you can simply have a burner generator or two near the boilers to get the steam power going?

Edit: See image for example

factorioexample.jpg

But, can you easily set it up so that the burner generator is off unless power fails?

NoriSilverrage wrote:

TheOneFreeManikin wrote:Well, the whole point of removing burner inserts is that burner generators are now *the* backup energy source. I don't see what this "breaks" when you can simply have a burner generator or two near the boilers to get the steam power going?

Edit: See image for example

factorioexample.jpg

But, can you easily set it up so that the burner generator is off unless power fails?

I very much want to make this possible, as well as custom priority settings for electricity (so that inserters involved in coal-to-boiler can be prioritized the highest), but currently I don't see how to do it in a straightforward way. Factorio is a bit lacking in the modability for electricity overall. But yes, such functionality is defnitely on my list, may find a way to script it in. Until then the next-best is to erect/tear down the power line to the burner generator if needed.

Just because you cant see it doesnt mean its not an issue. I use the burner generators from where you stole them. I use burner inserters to feed them their coal. I use burner inserters to feed the boilers on steam engines. This is so that DURING POWER FAILURE the things that can start generating power again are GUARANTEED to be able to get fuel. If you use powered inserters this is not a GUARANTEE.

Again mod is worthless currently because of this one flaw. It would be good otherwise. Hell on general merits you dont remove things unless they are broken. Just because you dont want to use them does not mean they are not essential. The goal in modding is to INCREASE options for play and remove flaws. Burner inserters are not a flaw and they have a very important use case.

seronis wrote:Just because you cant see it doesnt mean its not an issue. I use the burner generators from where you stole them. I use burner inserters to feed them their coal. I use burner inserters to feed the boilers on steam engines. This is so that DURING POWER FAILURE the things that can start generating power again are GUARANTEED to be able to get fuel. If you use powered inserters this is not a GUARANTEE.

Again mod is worthless currently because of this one flaw. It would be good otherwise. Hell on general merits you dont remove things unless they are broken. Just because you dont want to use them does not mean they are not essential. The goal in modding is to INCREASE options for play and remove flaws. Burner inserters are not a flaw and they have a very important use case.

But the inserters in my example are guaranteed to always have power?

What about when your generators temporarily ran out of fuel? You need non powered inserters to supply that fuel that just arrived on the belts.

seronis wrote:What about when your generators temporarily ran out of fuel? You need non powered inserters to supply that fuel that just arrived on the belts.

Well, if the generators ran out of coal it would mean the coal is out, and in this example that would shut off the steam engines too since the boilers don't have any coal either.

Or it means there was a break in the coal supply on the belts delivering coal. Either way you need burner inserters to have that automatically resolve itself. You gain NOTHING by removing them and actively cause problems The mod is worthless in its current state because of that.

seronis wrote:Or it means there was a break in the coal supply on the belts delivering coal. Either way you need burner inserters to have that automatically resolve itself. You gain NOTHING by removing them and actively cause problems The mod is worthless in its current state because of that.

Did you actually try the mod out?

Pointless to artificially increase the download count when its unusable. I already use the burner generator from KS Power. I already have my own tweaks that have a 1 ingredient assembly plant and stone axe though mine uses the iron axe icon since i got no art talent. And my assembly is 3x3, same size as the others for easy upgrading. I've considered adding a recipe to cut stone but never got around to it and I think cutting stone should have some lossiness in the process. Like 10 stone produces 8 or 9 stone brick. To be honest I just like smelting more because the the rehardened stone doesnt need to ignore those wasted bits.

So im already using pretty much every feature of this mod. Its why I said its generally a good idea. But needlessly removing essential items makes it worthless. Id rather just keep editing my files locally.

seronis wrote:Pointless to artificially increase the download count when its unusable. I already use the burner generator from KS Power. I already have my own tweaks that have a 1 ingredient assembly plant and stone axe though mine uses the iron axe icon since i got no art talent. And my assembly is 3x3, same size as the others for easy upgrading. I've considered adding a recipe to cut stone but never got around to it and I think cutting stone should have some lossiness in the process. Like 10 stone produces 8 or 9 stone brick. To be honest I just like smelting more because the the rehardened stone doesnt need to ignore those wasted bits.

So im already using pretty much every feature of this mod. Its why I said its generally a good idea. But needlessly removing essential items makes it worthless. Id rather just keep editing my files locally.

So you didn't try the mod, yet claim it is "broken". Interesting. Please don't post anything more unless you actually try it.

And you fail to read. Im already using mods or personal tweaks that do every feature included in this mod. Except for the utterly game breaking one which also happens to be pointless (removing burner inserters)

I agree with many comments here. I would not say the mod is worthless, but I would say it is broken. I would never use a mod that made it harder to automate any aspect of factorio, especially something as important as recovery from critical failures.

Let me give you an example. A train supplies coal to your power stations. You mis-configure your rails without realizing it, and one of your trains gridlocks the coal car, halting delivery. You can go and fix this problem, but in the meantime, power goes out - including your backup burner generator - while messing with rails and signals out in the hinterlands.

You can't restore order to your delivery of fuel and expect everything to be okay - you have to manually trek to your power station and put fuel in the burner generator with your hands. And probably several, because you may run out of fuel again before a miniscule power output properly gets the grabbers feeding your steam power loading again. *In other circumstances, adding one burner loader to the train unloading, and a couple burner loaders to your backup system, could have provided this redundancy.


Compare this to what you gain by eliminating the burner loader. Which is . . . refresh my memory? Elimination of perceived redundance?

Huh, that's interesting. I actually have a lot of the same ideas as this mod's creator, for my own "Factorio Gaiden" mod-in-the-works.

Up until the complete removal of the burner-inserter. That is too useful a tool to remove, however I do think that it does not make sense in vanilla, being easier to construct than a regular inserter despite being, functionally, more advanced.

In my vision of it, the player starts with "heat engine" technology, which is basically Stirling engines, referred to in-game as "burners". To start off, these handmade burners are large, only usable as separate structures. But, with the help of a small autolab - powered by such a freestanding "burner generator" - the design can be miniaturized, in order to integrate it into smaller devices, like inserters. The miniaturized heat engine research is a requirement for later "burner engine" research, which is what the regular "engines" are now in the vanilla game.

This way, the redundancy is preserved, but the burner inserter is properly relegated to its niche role of a backup, electricity-independent tool, along with the burner mining drill. You simply will not need the backup in the very early game, instead using burner generators to power whole clusters of regular inserters - but the burner-inserter will be just a small research away for when you do need it by the midgame.

Sean Mirrsen wrote:Huh, that's interesting. I actually have a lot of the same ideas as this mod's creator, for my own "Factorio Gaiden" mod-in-the-works.

The burner generator is actually borrowed from KS's power mods. If you want to use that without losing the burner inserter, you can grab KS Power. Commenting out a few things in the files, you can probably eliminate the mid/late game power options, too, if you choose.

I agree that the burner fills only a niche role, and almost no role in the mid/early game when you're upgrading your economy to electricity-based, and even less in the early game here with burner generators present. However, that niche is an overwhelmingly important niche. I agree with you it's useful, but I don't want its usefulness understressed either, because I like a lot of what the author's going for here, and would like to see this mod develop. Nothing, except nothing, can automate a recovery from a full energy collapse except burner inserters.