Marwes
commented
6 months ago Tested these new changes a bit and I feel like the start became more annoying now. With algae plants being in a research behind automation, you end up needing at least 3 researches (steam power, automation, algae processing) before you can really start using steam power, though given the poor return of burning cellulose you kinda need wood processing as well (making it 4 researches before steam is useful)
Comparing this to before this change then steam power was useful immediately after researching and you could use the extra power to add more electrolyzers. Researching wood processing for charcoal was just a nice extra boost that wasn't crucial, but just a nice extra.
This might be excacerbated by me using https://mods.factorio.com/mod/brave-new-world, but I did a quick test without it and I did feel like the same issue of steam power being useless without additional researches was present there as well, Handcrafting wood doesn't really help either, between crafting everything else there seems to be barely enough time to feed the burner buildings. While the amount of power handcrafting wood seems to be the same as the cellulose recipe that existed before, you could also refine the cellulose before so handcrafting for power ends up with an indirect nerf as well.
So from this I think I would prefer some combinations of these changes
- Moving wood pellets (and bricks) to an earlier/free research again
- Making algae processing a "free research" again
- Alt Maybe removing the automation restriction, additonal power seems more useful than automation
- Or maybe something else, I just feel like the added slowness and weirdness of not being able to use steam immediately hurts the early game
Anyway, that is my 2 cents. It is probably excacerbated by my choice of extra mods and that I am trying to design a speedrun of sorts so I already know what I need to do, a new player to seablock wouldn't be as affected by this.
spacekitteh
KiwiHawk
Resolves #310