MrVSV
commented
1 year ago -
Greenhouses - cheat)
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Agriculture modules are cheaper than pure productivity ones
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Yes, petrochemicals need fewer entities, but they need a lot more raw materials, which complicates the logistics. as an example, the production of hydrazine:
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Bio-entities absorb pollution on a colossal scale
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Also, bio-processes are always a practically closed system that requires a minimum input of resources from outside
Disclaimer: I am using YAFC cost estimation, but it mostly seems to track with my experience.
Lots of the angel's bio-processing stuff is just pointless in my experience.
Trees: Bob's Greenhouse basic recipe is insanely better than Angel's T1 tree (roughly 30% better in raw costs) , and still better than T2 tree, with significantly less convoluted setup. Bob's Greenhouse + fertiliser beats any other Tree (and therefore wood). Since wood is the best and cheapest source of cellulose, its the best source of cellulose hands down. Only downside is having no pollution absorption (which is nice) .Tianaton, which literally provides nothing but cellulose, costs almost 25% more per unit, while also having extra complexity AND is unlocked significantly later than cellulose is desperately needed for research
Liquid Plastic is similar. Bio versions are more expensive AND higher tiers actually get more expensive that the basic versions of bioplastics, while petrochem ones also get CHEAPER vs basic petrochem ones as they tier up. Space, power, number of entities isn't even in the same league. Raw bio-plastic is just a joke. Even if you change the Advanced Swamp Tree Cultivation recipe from 7 raw bio-plastic a pop to 37 (!) bioplastic a pop (I changed the 3 basic trees produced into swamp trees) It still is worse than the T1 petrochem plastic (!), which you can produce infinite amounts of from cellulose (trees! But im actually lazy so I use Green Algae 2, feed some of produced cellulose to provide CO2 and have a stone generator for the mineral water)Raw bio-plastic is rougly over 200% more expensive than raw-bio rubber, mostly because it uses damn mud (~1.89 a unit) vs sand of bio-rubber, which is only ~0.88. The cost compounds because respective seeds also use mud/sand...
Recipes that require soil get the worst. Currently soil is roughly 4.20 and you mostly need 5 of it in the same class of recipes that also use 5 sand (0.88) in the same spot... And the "filler" is usually the biggest cost in the recipe, so some recipes are ~2x or ~4x as expensive (and annoying to produce) as othersAlso, some recipes need 5 and some need 10 units of "filler", which seems somewhat arbitrary and also puts some of the recipes, even for sand, somewhat above reasonable cost (as defined vs other ways to produce stuff)
The way mud is produced currently is just an annoyance most of the time, since even huge stone or sand generators do not produce enough to any farm, let alone a sizeable one so it just has to be liquefied into viscous mud.AND THEN you have to plop several hundred of washers and let them cycle insane amounts of waters, where most of it goes directly down the drain, to produce enough of the damn mud. It's just a pointless UPS black hole that is pretty annoying IMO.
That's another problem with the bio side of things. Tons of processes end up with a chokepoint or two, where you need an insane amount of entities to process the things, for not that much output. Even when then processes aren't too inefficient that alone severely limits the actual ability to use that part of the mod in a serious way.
Also, the way bio is set up it absolutely overwhelmes belts, where you need to move 100's of items per s for middling final output. I'd like to see less entity counts (where for example 60 farms doesn't result in needing 800 seed extractors...or assemblers to make enough soil), longer recipe run times, especially for farms, with denser inputs and outputs (sacks of seeds vs single seed units, bushels/bales/crates/etc instead of crop units)I always used bio-recipes as early replacement for gas and oil, which requires setting up railways, trains, and the early petrochem processes are extremely inefficient due to lack of capability of actually using them before Chem Science. I feel that once you have gas and oil outposts setup, there is very little reason to actually use bio part of the mod. And don't say modules, since agri modules are more expensive than basic modules production modules and by T2+ and beacons one has basically infinite oilI really like the farming aspect of it and i really hate how most of the time i am forced to relegate it to only necessary parts like farming fish or biters or puffers for the modulesI'd be totally okay if it was even 25% less efficient than a reasonable petrochem setup due to other benefits (like actually consuming pollution, low reliance on outside resources). But it makes no sense when it costs significantly more and is a total space and UPS hog...