Tungsten Space Age compatibility#579
Conversation
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My biggest problem with this approach is how it splits tier 4. Most of tier 4 remains on Nauvis, with only the tungsten part split off onto Vulcanus. It doesn't feel right to have part of the tier delayed like that. Here are some more specific issues that I see with this.
And I really don't think dividing the rest of tier 4 among the other planets would work well either.
In short, I introduced Chromium and Stainless Steel because they solve most of these issues quite handily. They keep tier 4 all on Nauvis, and Stainless Steel, which is used in high-temperature applications, is an accurate lower-tier substitute for Tungsten. The preferred recipe, with Sodium Carbonate, even has Calcium Chloride as a byproduct (through Ammonium Chloride Reprocessing) the same as Tungstic Acid, in order to reduce the cost of making Titanium in the same way. |
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Bob's has a ton of different materials. Probably too many. I don't think we need to be adding any additional. Most of Bob's materials become available quite early game. Out of the 24 materials I list below, 18 are available before the end of green science! A full 75%. The tables I have compiled here are for a regular Bob's game, without Space Age.
There is definitely space to push some of these materials later in the tech tree. I think that this might address most of your concerns. Can we try work on a tier table? Here is one suggestion. Feel free to suggest additional categories.
I do see this tungsten fix as just one more step towards Space Age integration, not the full way there. Moving Advanced Processing Units to Fulgora would make sense to me for example, but that is a discussion for another day. |
I think this addresses all the issues you raised @Qatavin . Do you have any outstanding concerns? |
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At the very least, Heat Shield Tiles should use Invar instead of Titanium. I never suggested moving Tungsten to T5 in non-Space Age, and I emphatically do not think it's a good idea to do so. At least, not if that's the only material change. T4 was already way too Titanium-dominant. And where T3 has Aluminium, Brass, Cobalt Steel, Invar, and Plastic, T4 only had Titanium, Tungsten, and Ceramic. Removing one of those three is going in the wrong direction in terms of complexity. The intention of adding Chromite to the game is not to increase the number of materials, but rather to keep them the same. Furthermore, by increasing demand for Titanium and Ceramic, you're going to upset the chlorine-sodium balance in a big way. Even more so in Space Age where you've got Tungsten moved to another planet entirely, making its Calcium Chloride byproduct inconvenient to rely on. Yes, we have the Sodium Hydroxide sink now, but I like that as an emergency outlet, not a "you must make large-scale use of this because we balanced things poorly." That, incidentally, is another way that Chromite fits into Tungsten's spot nicely. It uses Sodium Carbonate, and when you make that, you get an Ammonium Chloride byproduct which is reprocessed into Calcium Chloride. Rather than the above table, I tend to think of materials in Bob's like this:
See what I mean about the T3/T4 issue? There are, of course, other materials, but electronics aside, these make up the overwhelming bulk of most recipes. Most of the others have limited uses, but I think that's mostly fine Whereas in Space Age without Chromium it looks like this:
And with Chromium, like this:
Personally, I think that looks a lot better. And given that Space Age is an expansion, I always took it as a given that we would be expanding. I don't understand the position that we should add nothing. I believe if we find a way to adjust to correct old issues, we should do so. I strongly feel that the course of action you've decided on will have a significant negative impact on the play experience. But, I've made my case. If your decision is final, I won't argue against it any further. |
If you want to pare down Bob’s material breadth, how about removing cobalt and/or nickel? In real life, both are quite similar to iron and to each other, and in Bob’s, both are pretty much exclusively used in alloys (which would of course also go), with the notable exception of lithium-ion batteries, but those can be made from other materials. |
I don't see any problem with alloys. Especially since they can have distinct properties from their base materials - Invar, Brass, Tungsten Carbide, Copper Tungsten. Hell, Zinc is almost unused except for Brass. And alloys are everywhere in real world industry, so their presence adds verisimilitude. Besides, what would you replace Cobalt Steel with? It may be one of only a couple things Cobalt is used in, but you use it to make a ton of stuff, and no other tier 3 material has the real-world properties to be a reasonable substitute. As for Nickel, if any material could go, it's probably this one, but it certainly gets its day in the sun in tier 5! To the point that I'd consider Nitinol to be THE Nickel material. More importantly, I feel like Tungsten production would become rather disappointing in comparison to the difficulty of Titanium and Ceramic if not for the added factor of needing Nickel. Plus, removing it messes with your Sulfur economy. |
Sure. I'll change that next. No strong feelings either way. I chose Titanium by default as it is the T4 material.
Yes, I know. The point of the change is to make Tungsten and it's alloys the same tier. It has to be like that when Space Age is enabled so ideally it should be the same when Space Age is not enabled too. That kind of consistency will make our life easier.
Okay, so let's make more material changes!
I had already been considering what to do about this. I started moving Cobalt steel to T4 but gave up, thinking I could leave it for another day. Maybe now is the time for this change? The only complication I can see with this is it would leave us without a T3 Bearing. A simple solution to this would be to replace Cobalt bearings with Brass bearings?
Good point. I have heard people give feedback that sulfur feels scarce. That they need to run extra oil processing just to extract sulfur from the sour gas. Moving Cobalt-Steel to T4 will help reduce the Titanium demand. We could pair that with tweaks Alumina and Silver oxide to increase the demand for Sodium hydroxide.?
Yes, I see. We have a lot of materials at T3.
I disagree. Having materials which are barely used feels like poor design. Examples: Zinc, Nickel, Gunmetal. 
I have previously considered removing Nickel plate from the roboport antenna array recipes, leaving it as just an ingredient for alloys - like Cobalt plate. If we entirely removed Gunmetal I don't think many people would even notice! On the flip side, the material used in by far the most recipes is Steel. These are prime candidates for swapping out ingredients to increase the demand for other materials. 
Titanium is in second place with Nitinol in third. Redistributing some of these recipes would be good too! 
These screenshots are from the currently released versions of Bob's mods, without Space Age.
Space Age is an overhaul mod. Same as Bob's. We are working towards making the two overhauls compatible. But Bob's mods will never require Space Age. We can fit our content in to the tech framework supplied by Space Age. But we shouldn't be adding content only when Space Age is enabled.
I agree. I think the biggest "old issue" in Bob's mods is clutter. Too many tiers of machine / equipment / turret / plates that become available at the same time and don't feel meaningfully different from each other. I've been incrementally working to correct this. (Like reducing the number of module tiers from 8 down to 5). We have lots of different metal plates, mostly all becoming available at Green science. This is a good opportunity to improve the situation!
I am hopeful that we can keep working together to improve these mods. I do value your input!
I am set on not adding new alloys. However I am open to other changes! As much as possible, the changes should apply no matter if Space Age is enabled or not. |
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Cobalt Steel probably belongs right where it is, given its level of expense (not requiring electrolysis) and complexity. But what we could do is make Nickel and Zinc T3 materials for heat resistance and corrosion resistance respectively, then bump Invar and Brass up to T4, maybe. That would fit with Invar being on Heat Shield Tiles and second tier Electric Furnaces. This would notably make T4 have only Titanium as a truly new material, but that would be consistent with T5 only having Tungsten as a new material. Now, currently we have Nickel all the way down at SP1, but we only put it there so we could use it as a non-Oil Sulfur source. Moving it would probably not hurt anything. For the Sulfur problem, we could increase the H2S output of Petroleum Gas Sweetening from 10 to 15 or 20. As for Space Age, we're going to have to add some things for sure. Gleba is going to be the biggest problem; the rest we can fudge a solution mostly using only new recipes, in all likelihood. But in order to get off the other planets, we need to add a way to get Tin, Nickel, either Silver or Gold, Titanium, Aluminium, and Silicon, at a minimum. |
My point about the alloys was that removing just those two pure metals would drastically reduce the number of plates. |
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bob-tungsten-oretotungsten-orebob-tungsten-platetotungsten-platebob-tungsten-carbidetotungsten-carbideThis PR is an alternative to #575
Rocket Silo now no long requires Purple science prerequisites.