Describe the issue
While playing around with potential add-ons, I ran into a tech tree wrinkle. Electroplating, and therefore all of purple science, is currently dependent on brass, solely because of the presence of a brass gear in advanced engines - otherwise that doesn't seem right and it's a bit of a barrier, given that there is no brass in purple analysis packs. If the engines weren't in the tech, seven post-electroplating tech branches (four of them upgrade techs) are not otherwise dependent on brass and could all be a level earlier/cheaper. The only tech fully dependent on advanced engines is cubic presses, which is important because it gates electrum and therefore blue electronics and the entire endgame - if there were an advanced engine tech to be dependent on instead of electroplating, none of those endgame research costs would actually change. Every other tech that includes recipes with advanced engines is post blue electronics. Combustion engines (the vanilla engine unit, coloured red in IR3) have their own dedicated tech so there is a precedent for having engines in a tech all by themselves.
To do: break out advanced engines into their own tech. Migrate saved games which already unlocked electroplating to have the new tech unlocked as well.
Edited to add: seems my past brain had these thoughts already because localisation is already set up for an advanced engine tech.
Describe the issue While playing around with potential add-ons, I ran into a tech tree wrinkle. Electroplating, and therefore all of purple science, is currently dependent on brass, solely because of the presence of a brass gear in advanced engines - otherwise that doesn't seem right and it's a bit of a barrier, given that there is no brass in purple analysis packs. If the engines weren't in the tech, seven post-electroplating tech branches (four of them upgrade techs) are not otherwise dependent on brass and could all be a level earlier/cheaper. The only tech fully dependent on advanced engines is cubic presses, which is important because it gates electrum and therefore blue electronics and the entire endgame - if there were an advanced engine tech to be dependent on instead of electroplating, none of those endgame research costs would actually change. Every other tech that includes recipes with advanced engines is post blue electronics. Combustion engines (the vanilla engine unit, coloured red in IR3) have their own dedicated tech so there is a precedent for having engines in a tech all by themselves.
To do: break out advanced engines into their own tech. Migrate saved games which already unlocked electroplating to have the new tech unlocked as well.
Edited to add: seems my past brain had these thoughts already because localisation is already set up for an advanced engine tech.
Factorio version, IR version 1.1.94, 3.1.11
Other mods installed n/a