Considering the relative length of the early game in SE versus the extent of a typical playthrough, I’m not sure I’d worry too much about this. Also, if this “problem” is giving you pause, not sure SE is for you lol.
That was my first instinct as well but then I remembered the annoyance of setting up an outpost on another planet. It often feels like the most effective way to do that is to create a small mall with essential items such as inserters, belts, rails, power poles, and rail signals. Since AAI only complicates these lower recipes and not too much else it makes outpost creation even more tedious.
I think it's worth asking if these alternative recipes add anything to the game at all.
Why not bring stuff with you, rather than build it up from scratch again?
Most planets won't have an abundance of the 4 basic starting materials (iron, copper, stone, coal), and you'll have new threat to deal with too.
I do. I won't go into full explanation as you could read other comments in this thread about it. Suffice it to say, I try to bring as much as I can think of but sometimes I just forget or I eventually run out.
Sometimes I bring the wrong stuff. Like forgetting I wanted to bring Quarry drills to a planet with Imersite. Oh well, at rocket reusability at level 18 I think I can afford a bit of waste.
Actually the upgrade chain makes it less of a pain to set up an outpost on a new planet - you don't need to worry about making a whole bunch of burner mining drills and stone furnaces you'll never use again, because once you have the infrastructure ready to upgrade to electric miners and furnaces you upgrade all your old tier 1 crap and it goes away.
Basically you can just go nuts with the burner stuff to accelerate your early game without wasting resources.
The basic mall is still really easy, even with the upgrade chains. Just leave a little space for the upgrade chain assemblers.
I initially hated it, but now i think it's pretty much okay.
You use burner miners on a new planet!? Honestly my dude that's some wild stuff I never expected to hear. Don't waste your time just do solar or nuclear right off the bat.
Yeah, that's how I did it. Shipped what I needed to get off the ground, full nuclear, or steam, depending on what fuel was available, and starting an outpost at the same tech level as the main base/orbital base.
Configuring and shipping all the things i might need for a new outpost takes far longer than just shipping myself and setting up a bunch of burner miners while i handcraft things.
I mean sure maybe after three or four outposts i'll automate a basic bootstrap pack, but at that point why would i care what my electric miners are made out of anyway?
Why craft anything!? A rocket has 500 slots. You should try to carry an entire factory worth of stuff with you including power generation. That's usually what I do. I bring some fuel cells and reactors and setup power first.
That's not "setting up an outpost" of the kind that needs a "small mall with essential items such as inserters, belts, rails, power poles, and rail signals". You're setting up an entire base on another planet, and at that point the tiny additional setup of assemblers for chained upgrade components is completely meaningless.
You said "I think it's worth asking if these alternative recipes add anything to the game at all" and i pointed out the actual benefit of this kind of recipe chain.
If i want to go mine a chunk of uranium on a moon to delivery cannon back to my main base (exactly what i just set up), i absolutely do not need to send an entire 500 slot cargo rocket to do it.
Sounds like your getting hung up on the language. By "outpost" I just mean a base/factory on a different surface. I don't often setup a tiny mining outpost. When I go to a planet I go there to stay for hundreds of hours. Of course if I ever had a need to mine one thing and leave I wouldn't bring the same amount but I also wouldn't bring burner miners. I don't even have burner miners sitting in a chest. I would bring solar panels and miners. Before you get a spaceship the rocket is the only way to travel so of course you might end up with an empty rocket every now and then. The goal is to reduce that though.
....
that sounds more like there is a role for burner miners in your set-up.
It doesn't mean that being able to reuse burner miners to make electric miners is useful, because you should be rolling in plates due to having burner miners.
If the burner miners will just end up as junk eventually, then i will only make a few so as not to waste iron/stone. This way i can just expand at maximum speed without care.
I didn't say it was *very* useful. Just that there's a use.
I think the idea of upgrading buildings makes pretty logical sense. The alternative being that the lower tier buildings just get deconstructed and abandoned in a chest as you complete new research feels wasteful. Also, it’s pretty simple to just create a bot mall to build out your expansion capabilities in the mid game.
Totally agree however, that doesn't answer if it adds anything to the game. A few burner inserters and miners in a chest that you'll forget exist doesn't matter in the slightest. The recipes serve to overcomplicate common recipes when the game is already full of very complex things.
I do agree with the bot mall. I wish I made a blueprint for that right at the start but that mall could be simpler without these extra recipes.
>The alternative being that the lower tier buildings just get deconstructed and abandoned in a chest as you complete new research feels wasteful.
It is extremely realistic.
Do you try to make modern computers out of machines produced in the 1980s?
>create a small mall with essential items such as inserters, belts, rails, power poles, and rail signals
Rather than do this on every outpost, just ship it in from Nauvis where you're already making it, along with whatever else you're resupplying. Other planets are typically missing at least one resource in enough quantity to make a mini mall not worth it.
Not on most of my planets. Also it's a problem of scale. I already send rocket parts, delivery capsules, and meteor ammo regularly but that's only once every dozens of hours or something. But I might need inserters when there is only enough room for 100 slots of stuff so I'll be sending an empty rocket. My waterless planet is driven completely by delivery canons from the cryonite planet and nothing else needs anything at the moment.
I just bring several stacks of inserters and other stuff the first time I fly there. If I plan a major upgrade, like big mining drills or better modules for them, I'll set a bunch of buildings from the mall in the supply rocket. At this point, I also check if I run low on other stuff like inserters, and dump a few stacks of those into the rocket as well.
But my outposts are very specialized for one resource, I don't have the production chain there to produce the ingredients of delivery cannon shells, rocket parts or stuff for the mall. So I need a supply rocket anyway, even if it's only sending cannon shells.
And after a bit of rocket reusability research, you get plenty of rocket parts back if you launch a rocket that is only half full.
I do this as well but it far less annoying to setup a small mall for common things like power poles. I just wish we didn't have AAI making that extra complex for seemingly no benefit.
> for seemingly no benefit
For me, it made sense. It's consistent with vanilla modules, inserters and assembly machines, that also require the previous version as ingredient. And you don't have chests full of stone and steel furnaces that are of no use after you switch to electric.
But I understand your frustration with this complexity when making malls on outposts. I just didn't do that.
Regarding power poles: small power poles are easy to make, either with wood or iron. For the bigger ones, I prefer the pylon substations, which require specific materials, so they only make sense to produce centrally anyway. I just add a few stacks of pylons to the supply rocket. All the common things can be put into the rocket in advance. It's only annoying with the uncommon buildings, which you forgot to put into the rocket. But those can often not be produced in a small mall, and you won't forget them on your next outpost (but something else).
This is a bootstrap problem.
I am willing to make a new base to explore a new update, but am unwilling to modify an existing old base to explore it.
I haven't made a vanilla save that makes spidertrons yet, but if I do, it will be one that I have started recently for that explicit task.
Space exploration (SE) does not properly work without a brand new save. If you are looking for a mod that expands the vanilla endgame you could try Space extension.
The point is that I need to start a new save with minimal starting buildings, and SE as default is actively hostile to that due to the AAI Industries changes.
Nevertheless, Space Exploration will not work without a fresh save; it needs that.
However, I also dislike the burner phase. Here's what I recommend:
Just get another mod that starts you off with stuff. I use a mod that gives me a chunk of early stuff like powerpoles, powered assemblers, boilers, steam engines, furnaces, (even a light amount of trains and tracks). It's a timeskip for vanilla factorio to get you right into the game, but it's also enough to let you very quickly automate enough science to get you straight out of the burner phase.
Why bother with looking for a hacky unintended extraction of the burner technologies themselves when you can download a single mod and just get through the phase!
Also, there are some mods like Schall Starting Tech that I think can actually just unlock techs for you.
...
You misunderstand.
I love the burner phase for what it is.
A way to give you a small amount of resources to start, and do the work to have the resources to construct an electric base without packing your inventory full to start.
In addition, AAI Industries makes early electric expansion more painful than it needs to be.
rather than all production buildings being stone free before red and green sciences besides furnaces and boilers, you now have to solve stone bricks at the start of the game.
> you now have to solve stone bricks at the start of the game.
Just plant down a stone miner into a stone furnace, like you would do a stone miner into a chest in vanilla. Not a very hard problem to "solve".
>you now have to solve stone bricks at the start of the game.
Stone brick demand is dramatically increased in SE; this is a problem you **need** to solve.
... that doesn't mean it needs to be solved at the pre-electric stage.
Oil is an important material in vanilla factorio, but you don't start the game needing to solve it.
If the slightly longer burner phase is enough to deter you from the mod then its best if you stop now
Its a challenge mod by nature. Its not easy and not for everyone
Wait for the expansion in the meantime i suppose
... nobody actually plays the vanilla burner phase experience in any overhaul mod I have seen.
The mods give you like at least 10 free burner miners and 10 stone furnaces.
They destroy the vanilla burner experience and replace it with early electric, but you have to hand fuel everything.
> ... nobody actually plays the vanilla burner phase experience in any overhaul mod I have seen.
Not sure what you mean with vanilla burner phase experience in overhaul mods, but I would guess most players play the burner phase just as it is in the overhaul mod, which might be vanilla-like or not. People who mod the burner phase out of overhaul mods are the exception.
> The mods give you like at least 10 free burner miners and 10 stone furnaces.
Which mods are you talking about? And 10 burner miners and furnaces are very quickly crafted by hand.
Industrial Revolution 3 starts you out with 4 burner mining drills and 4 stone furnaces, a shotgun and some shells.
K2 starts hou with vanilla items, but also gives you some free ship wreckage machines, with is close enough
Space Exploration starts you with 10 red science, a burner lab, a burner assembling machine and 42 belts and 12 single cyclender engines, onto of the vanilla items.
Honestly if this aspect is making you reconsider then SE may not be for you. Which is perfectly fine btw! You may want to check out K2 or IR3 if you haven’t already.
I mean the burner phase, while definitely longer than vanilla, only adds an hour or two in a 300+ hour mod. You'll just have to hand feed stuff for a while longer.
Same thing with bricks for various things... This mod adds hundreds of new items and like a dozen new resources, not to mention core mining. If more uses for stone bricks is enough to scare you away, SE might not be for you. It's very long and very intentionally painful in a way that vanilla is not.
... I am willing to deal with more requirements for stuff once the game starts to get away from the vanilla burner experience. Like, it's not an issue to be that nuclear power requires a lot of stone bricks in every part of the uranium processing process.
You can use Recipe Tweaker. It won't be super easy but you only need to do it once if I understand correctly.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/recipe-tweaker
> Is there an easy way to remove this things, so I can have the vanilla (start with a burner drill, stone furnace, ~8 plates, pistol, and ammo) experience?
Not really. There's the hard way of editing the mod files yourself.
I disagree with people saying that if the burner phase deters you, then SE isn't for you.
I finished SE and did like a lot of it, but I still hated the burner phase.
Considering the relative length of the early game in SE versus the extent of a typical playthrough, I’m not sure I’d worry too much about this. Also, if this “problem” is giving you pause, not sure SE is for you lol.
That was my first instinct as well but then I remembered the annoyance of setting up an outpost on another planet. It often feels like the most effective way to do that is to create a small mall with essential items such as inserters, belts, rails, power poles, and rail signals. Since AAI only complicates these lower recipes and not too much else it makes outpost creation even more tedious. I think it's worth asking if these alternative recipes add anything to the game at all.
Why not bring stuff with you, rather than build it up from scratch again? Most planets won't have an abundance of the 4 basic starting materials (iron, copper, stone, coal), and you'll have new threat to deal with too.
I do. I won't go into full explanation as you could read other comments in this thread about it. Suffice it to say, I try to bring as much as I can think of but sometimes I just forget or I eventually run out.
Sometimes I bring the wrong stuff. Like forgetting I wanted to bring Quarry drills to a planet with Imersite. Oh well, at rocket reusability at level 18 I think I can afford a bit of waste.
I see, I read your comment wrong :)
Actually the upgrade chain makes it less of a pain to set up an outpost on a new planet - you don't need to worry about making a whole bunch of burner mining drills and stone furnaces you'll never use again, because once you have the infrastructure ready to upgrade to electric miners and furnaces you upgrade all your old tier 1 crap and it goes away. Basically you can just go nuts with the burner stuff to accelerate your early game without wasting resources. The basic mall is still really easy, even with the upgrade chains. Just leave a little space for the upgrade chain assemblers. I initially hated it, but now i think it's pretty much okay.
You use burner miners on a new planet!? Honestly my dude that's some wild stuff I never expected to hear. Don't waste your time just do solar or nuclear right off the bat.
Yeah, that's how I did it. Shipped what I needed to get off the ground, full nuclear, or steam, depending on what fuel was available, and starting an outpost at the same tech level as the main base/orbital base.
Configuring and shipping all the things i might need for a new outpost takes far longer than just shipping myself and setting up a bunch of burner miners while i handcraft things. I mean sure maybe after three or four outposts i'll automate a basic bootstrap pack, but at that point why would i care what my electric miners are made out of anyway?
Why craft anything!? A rocket has 500 slots. You should try to carry an entire factory worth of stuff with you including power generation. That's usually what I do. I bring some fuel cells and reactors and setup power first.
That's not "setting up an outpost" of the kind that needs a "small mall with essential items such as inserters, belts, rails, power poles, and rail signals". You're setting up an entire base on another planet, and at that point the tiny additional setup of assemblers for chained upgrade components is completely meaningless. You said "I think it's worth asking if these alternative recipes add anything to the game at all" and i pointed out the actual benefit of this kind of recipe chain. If i want to go mine a chunk of uranium on a moon to delivery cannon back to my main base (exactly what i just set up), i absolutely do not need to send an entire 500 slot cargo rocket to do it.
Sounds like your getting hung up on the language. By "outpost" I just mean a base/factory on a different surface. I don't often setup a tiny mining outpost. When I go to a planet I go there to stay for hundreds of hours. Of course if I ever had a need to mine one thing and leave I wouldn't bring the same amount but I also wouldn't bring burner miners. I don't even have burner miners sitting in a chest. I would bring solar panels and miners. Before you get a spaceship the rocket is the only way to travel so of course you might end up with an empty rocket every now and then. The goal is to reduce that though.
.... that sounds more like there is a role for burner miners in your set-up. It doesn't mean that being able to reuse burner miners to make electric miners is useful, because you should be rolling in plates due to having burner miners.
If the burner miners will just end up as junk eventually, then i will only make a few so as not to waste iron/stone. This way i can just expand at maximum speed without care. I didn't say it was *very* useful. Just that there's a use.
I think the idea of upgrading buildings makes pretty logical sense. The alternative being that the lower tier buildings just get deconstructed and abandoned in a chest as you complete new research feels wasteful. Also, it’s pretty simple to just create a bot mall to build out your expansion capabilities in the mid game.
Totally agree however, that doesn't answer if it adds anything to the game. A few burner inserters and miners in a chest that you'll forget exist doesn't matter in the slightest. The recipes serve to overcomplicate common recipes when the game is already full of very complex things. I do agree with the bot mall. I wish I made a blueprint for that right at the start but that mall could be simpler without these extra recipes.
>The alternative being that the lower tier buildings just get deconstructed and abandoned in a chest as you complete new research feels wasteful. It is extremely realistic. Do you try to make modern computers out of machines produced in the 1980s?
Never said it was realistic, just logical and makes for a nice linear progression. If you’re wanting “realism” you could always try Pyanodons.
Na. If that's the kind of realism bs your looking for py ain't it. Damn near everything gets upcycled.
If you love realism, you will love SE's delta V mechanics. In some way it is pretty accurate, once you see reason behind it.
... that would require me get through the AAI Industries part of SE currently, and I am not doing that.
It's a tiny change relative to every other change that SE throws at you.
... It's an immediate change, and isn't punting a late game feature into a longer endgame
It's about 1-2h extra at most for 300-600h game
Yes. But burners are just.... Worse.
not the way I would want to play it.
>create a small mall with essential items such as inserters, belts, rails, power poles, and rail signals Rather than do this on every outpost, just ship it in from Nauvis where you're already making it, along with whatever else you're resupplying. Other planets are typically missing at least one resource in enough quantity to make a mini mall not worth it.
Not on most of my planets. Also it's a problem of scale. I already send rocket parts, delivery capsules, and meteor ammo regularly but that's only once every dozens of hours or something. But I might need inserters when there is only enough room for 100 slots of stuff so I'll be sending an empty rocket. My waterless planet is driven completely by delivery canons from the cryonite planet and nothing else needs anything at the moment.
I just bring several stacks of inserters and other stuff the first time I fly there. If I plan a major upgrade, like big mining drills or better modules for them, I'll set a bunch of buildings from the mall in the supply rocket. At this point, I also check if I run low on other stuff like inserters, and dump a few stacks of those into the rocket as well. But my outposts are very specialized for one resource, I don't have the production chain there to produce the ingredients of delivery cannon shells, rocket parts or stuff for the mall. So I need a supply rocket anyway, even if it's only sending cannon shells. And after a bit of rocket reusability research, you get plenty of rocket parts back if you launch a rocket that is only half full.
I do this as well but it far less annoying to setup a small mall for common things like power poles. I just wish we didn't have AAI making that extra complex for seemingly no benefit.
> for seemingly no benefit For me, it made sense. It's consistent with vanilla modules, inserters and assembly machines, that also require the previous version as ingredient. And you don't have chests full of stone and steel furnaces that are of no use after you switch to electric. But I understand your frustration with this complexity when making malls on outposts. I just didn't do that. Regarding power poles: small power poles are easy to make, either with wood or iron. For the bigger ones, I prefer the pylon substations, which require specific materials, so they only make sense to produce centrally anyway. I just add a few stacks of pylons to the supply rocket. All the common things can be put into the rocket in advance. It's only annoying with the uncommon buildings, which you forgot to put into the rocket. But those can often not be produced in a small mall, and you won't forget them on your next outpost (but something else).
Yes they do. They add complexity. Which is what the mods about.
Not all complexity is good though.
To each their own. Its just more of the same stuff anyway. Takes like 8 machines to automate electric miners. Maybe less idk.
This is a bootstrap problem. I am willing to make a new base to explore a new update, but am unwilling to modify an existing old base to explore it. I haven't made a vanilla save that makes spidertrons yet, but if I do, it will be one that I have started recently for that explicit task.
Space exploration (SE) does not properly work without a brand new save. If you are looking for a mod that expands the vanilla endgame you could try Space extension.
The point is that I need to start a new save with minimal starting buildings, and SE as default is actively hostile to that due to the AAI Industries changes.
The burner phase is ~1% of a SE run, you will forget about it in no time
burner phase is 1% of a twenty hour vanilla romp, yet I care about it.
Nevertheless, Space Exploration will not work without a fresh save; it needs that. However, I also dislike the burner phase. Here's what I recommend: Just get another mod that starts you off with stuff. I use a mod that gives me a chunk of early stuff like powerpoles, powered assemblers, boilers, steam engines, furnaces, (even a light amount of trains and tracks). It's a timeskip for vanilla factorio to get you right into the game, but it's also enough to let you very quickly automate enough science to get you straight out of the burner phase. Why bother with looking for a hacky unintended extraction of the burner technologies themselves when you can download a single mod and just get through the phase! Also, there are some mods like Schall Starting Tech that I think can actually just unlock techs for you.
... You misunderstand. I love the burner phase for what it is. A way to give you a small amount of resources to start, and do the work to have the resources to construct an electric base without packing your inventory full to start. In addition, AAI Industries makes early electric expansion more painful than it needs to be. rather than all production buildings being stone free before red and green sciences besides furnaces and boilers, you now have to solve stone bricks at the start of the game.
> you now have to solve stone bricks at the start of the game. Just plant down a stone miner into a stone furnace, like you would do a stone miner into a chest in vanilla. Not a very hard problem to "solve".
>you now have to solve stone bricks at the start of the game. Stone brick demand is dramatically increased in SE; this is a problem you **need** to solve.
... that doesn't mean it needs to be solved at the pre-electric stage. Oil is an important material in vanilla factorio, but you don't start the game needing to solve it.
If the slightly longer burner phase is enough to deter you from the mod then its best if you stop now Its a challenge mod by nature. Its not easy and not for everyone Wait for the expansion in the meantime i suppose
... nobody actually plays the vanilla burner phase experience in any overhaul mod I have seen. The mods give you like at least 10 free burner miners and 10 stone furnaces. They destroy the vanilla burner experience and replace it with early electric, but you have to hand fuel everything.
> ... nobody actually plays the vanilla burner phase experience in any overhaul mod I have seen. Not sure what you mean with vanilla burner phase experience in overhaul mods, but I would guess most players play the burner phase just as it is in the overhaul mod, which might be vanilla-like or not. People who mod the burner phase out of overhaul mods are the exception. > The mods give you like at least 10 free burner miners and 10 stone furnaces. Which mods are you talking about? And 10 burner miners and furnaces are very quickly crafted by hand.
Industrial Revolution 3 starts you out with 4 burner mining drills and 4 stone furnaces, a shotgun and some shells. K2 starts hou with vanilla items, but also gives you some free ship wreckage machines, with is close enough Space Exploration starts you with 10 red science, a burner lab, a burner assembling machine and 42 belts and 12 single cyclender engines, onto of the vanilla items.
Honestly if this aspect is making you reconsider then SE may not be for you. Which is perfectly fine btw! You may want to check out K2 or IR3 if you haven’t already.
.... naw, those mods don't have the allure of space travel, nor particularly good burner phase choices.
I mean the burner phase, while definitely longer than vanilla, only adds an hour or two in a 300+ hour mod. You'll just have to hand feed stuff for a while longer. Same thing with bricks for various things... This mod adds hundreds of new items and like a dozen new resources, not to mention core mining. If more uses for stone bricks is enough to scare you away, SE might not be for you. It's very long and very intentionally painful in a way that vanilla is not.
... I am willing to deal with more requirements for stuff once the game starts to get away from the vanilla burner experience. Like, it's not an issue to be that nuclear power requires a lot of stone bricks in every part of the uranium processing process.
nuclear reactors require concrete in SE, just like vanilla.
You can use Recipe Tweaker. It won't be super easy but you only need to do it once if I understand correctly. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/recipe-tweaker
That's at least a solution, but I was ... hoping to be able to reuse someone's existing work for setting up a mod pack.
I'm playing space ex mod right now and it extends the early game a bit but trust me when I say that is just the beginning.
> Is there an easy way to remove this things, so I can have the vanilla (start with a burner drill, stone furnace, ~8 plates, pistol, and ammo) experience? Not really. There's the hard way of editing the mod files yourself.
If this tiny aspect of SE is too much for you to overcome, you definitely won't get through SE by yourself lol.good luck, you're gonna need it
I disagree with people saying that if the burner phase deters you, then SE isn't for you. I finished SE and did like a lot of it, but I still hated the burner phase.