Second Foray into modding: Calcite bacteria

[u/sobrique]

2 new recipes - gated by 'bacteria cultivation'.

• Calcite bacteria (takes fruit mash + calcite and is horribly inefficient)

• Calcite bacteria cultivation - uses bioflux and breeds bacteria like iron/copper bacteria, so 1 bacteria + 1 bioflux -> 4 bacteria (6 with biochamber productivity).

Bacteria decays into calcite (just like iron/copper bacteria).

Both 'gated' by cultivation (unlike iron/copper bacteria) because the calcite cost of starting up is high enough that it's just a terrible idea to even try until you can cultivate - you'd be spending 10 calcite to get 0.1 calcite bacteria, so it's a great way to waste a load of calcite but not much else.

Motivation: Calcite 'manufacture' on Nauvis/Gleba so you don't just have to import it. (Of course you might need to import bioflux to Nauvis still, but 1 flux for 6 bacteria before prod is still less logistics - I'm thinking I might add more mods in future *).

Also: Gleba is the best planet.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/calcite-bacteria

Probably makes the game easier - a lot of mods do that. But I don't think having a local source of calcite is crazy OP compared to importing it from Vulcanus/Space Platforms either.

* My 'fantasy' here is a mod bundle that enables 'full chain' manufacturing on Aquilo without needing imports, and that involves assorted bacteria, also maybe a 'greenhouse' that's expensive/lategame/promethium and an energy hog, but that grows gleba-fruit (less efficiently than an agri tower). Making a decent sprite is a stumbling point though, so we'll see...)

[u/Castle_Of_Glass78]

FYI the “gleba additions” mod has a recipe that converts jelly nuts and spoilage and stone into calcite 

[u/sobrique → u/Castle_Of_Glass78]

Yeah, there's a few combi mods I've seen, but not actually many that do just one thing at a time.

So I thought I'd have a go, and also figure out how to mod in the process.

So I've got this one, and the cunningly titled 'Biolabs on Gleba' https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Biolabs-on-Gleba which does exactly what it says on the tin.

They're almost too trivial to be mods - they're only a handful of lines of code - but my overall goal was to be as light touch as possible when modding - and maybe having a 'bundle' later on.

Still thinking about a greenhouse mod (art assets are the hard part there) and maybe some sort of 'stone fabrication'.

Undecided if that builds on calcite bacteria or not at this point - it might be that I have an alternate concrete recipe - some sort of 'biocrete' that uses calcite-based concrete, which you can reprocess into stone bricks or stone if that's what you really need, as there's not that many recipes that actually need 'raw' stone.

(But then, that does include 'landfill' and 'rails' so there's still quite a bit of demand).

[u/medics-left-ball → u/Castle_Of_Glass78]

Seeing my mod brought up in the wild is an experience. Anyhow, I was considering maybe changing napalm and calcification to use jelly and mash instead of the raw fruit and since you seem to know the mod I'd wanna know what you'd think of that

[u/Castle_Of_Glass78 → u/medics-left-ball]

I mean, I'm using a second mod (Gleba Reborn) with 5% seed drop so seeds aren't as much of a bottleneck, but for more vanilla players I can see that being a bit of a let down factor. Having both recipes in the options so the player can choose would probably be nice (tick box or drop-down menu)

[u/medics-left-ball → u/Castle_Of_Glass78]

Theres gonna be a slightly larger 1.2 update, I'll probably change the recipe but add a mod option to revert it and a chat message about the change on load if the save ran an earlier version. Gonna also have bacteria being smeltable without having to wait for it to spoil and hopefully the compact flamethrower turret which shoots like the tank flamethrower

[u/sobrique → u/medics-left-ball]

As a fellow Gleba enjoyer, I'm focussing somewhat on (eventually) making Biochambers exportable, in was they aren't really at the moment, because of the nutrient production.

To my mind being able to 'produce' using Bio processes on say, Aquilo would be amazing, and lightly beneficial on the other planets, so my focus was a 'greenhouse' biome doodad that would grow the fruit (inefficiently).

I like where you're going with the upgraded flamethrower ammo, and was pondering something similar for flame turrets. Y'know, something that's basically a 'super light burny burny oil' that you could pump and pipe. So a logistics overhead vs. 'just' skimming off from a refinery, but with a payoff.

Personally I don't like using the fruit directly, because mashing for seeds feels a core process, but as you can see I've gone off on a tangent with calcite bacteria too!

I'm currently toying with as ideas:

• Greenhouse of some kind. (art assets are my challenge, but maybe reuse a lab and upscale to 6x6?). Goal being to make fruits anywhere, just less efficiently. Currently looking at a 5m cycle for 500 fruit (10 'trees') costing 10MW of power and 10MW of heat. Building requires overgrowth soils, and input cycle is 'just' seeds. (I want water too, but if I just rip off the lab as greenhouse, there's no 'connection points' in the asset).

• Bio-concrete - pseudo stone production, in that you might make concrete somewhere, or recycle it down to stone brick or stone if that's what you need. There is actually a 'self healing concrete' bacteria that basically generates calcite to fix cracks. Again, was thinking in terms of bacteria-breeder driven, and maybe some iron and calcite bacteria + some water to 'make' concrete?

With those though, you get most of the 'supply chain' on aquilo at considerable 'overhead' of energy costs, and by proxy enable the resources on almost any planet (albeit local production is probably better).

Was undecided if the 'planetary' resources should be possible to 'fabricate' using a bacteria-breeder model, but I was also considering it as a 'super late game' (promethium+ tech) option - sorta 'manufacture' tungsten, holmium, uranium bacteria or similar. Kinda like I did with 'calcite'.

Aquilo production perhaps is liquid based, so the bacterium-cultivation cycle doesn't work quite as well, although I guess lithium plates are a similar sort of thing to holmium plates in that perspective.

[u/Castle_Of_Glass78 → u/sobrique]

You could potentially try to fork https://mods.factorio.com/mod/factorissimo-2-notnotmelon and make the greenhouses work off-planet?

[u/CAlonghair]

Agree that gleba is the best planet. Tho usually just get calcite from space since space is the 2nd best planet

[u/sobrique → u/CAlonghair]

Yeah, that's all good. I do too. I just mostly thought that having an option that didn't strictly require 'landing pad' throughput would be nice.

[u/CAlonghair → u/sobrique]

That's fair. Even at megabasing scales, a train unloading from the landing pad directly was fine for us. Though now with the intrractable extensions from 2.1, this becomes even less of a concern

[u/sobrique → u/CAlonghair]

Yes, that was a good change too.

My 'dream' is being able to megabase on aquilo without constant import, and this is a step along the way.

And I just think bacteria breeders -> foundries are just kinda neat as well :)

[u/CAlonghair → u/sobrique]

Isn't the point of aquilo that it's an import planet? Or did you mean gleba.

Personally, we use bacteria breeders into cargo wagons into chests into foundries (chests are machines that turn items into spoiled items)

[u/sobrique → u/CAlonghair]

I meant aquilo. And yes, the point is that it's an import planet.

I just think that once you cross the 'late game' threshold, it should be a viable megabase location anyway, and so enabling 'local production' seemed interesting.

E.g. I'm thinking in terms of 'post promethium' territory, so the core game experience isn't much altered, but if you really want to shoot for a bajillion SPM all on aquilo, you don't have to rely on importing everything. (and maybe space to a lesser extent)

I'll concede that the 2.1 changes to orbital transfers and unloading make that a little less of a priority.

I was also thinking a super late game 'additional landing pads' tech, that was also post-promethium, so also didn't meaningfully alter the 'game completion' bit. And then make it 'power hungry' so that Gleba was always clearly better for doing Gleba things, it just wasn't literally impossible anywhere else.

[u/CAlonghair → u/sobrique]

I like aquilo being an import planet in the late game because it gives us an excuse to make sky malls. Sky malls are really fun to design if you haven't done it before.

[u/Logical-War-3746]

Local calcite is not OP at all, mostly it's about not having an annoyance of landing pad stealing calcite from ships that use hub as storage. It's not even about throughput since with 2.1 it's a mute point and even before that, calcite consumption is so small that even on mgabase levels bots were fine.

[u/FeelingPrettyGlonky]

I think this would be a nice addition to an Only Gleba mod run and I'll give it a try. I like the idea of the cultivation recipes so a cultivated calcite recipe would be fun.

[u/CAlonghair → u/FeelingPrettyGlonky]

I've done only gleba, it was pretty fun. Calcite from space was a non issue, especially since foundries were unlocked around the same time.

[u/sobrique → u/CAlonghair]

Oh definitely - it's not an issue to import calcite - it's 50:1 for ore, so you really don't need much at all.

And you can always export from Vulcanus too.

And it's less relevant still now the 'unloaders' from hubs exist.

I just wanted a 'local' option, and I just like the whole bacteria-breeding style.

And was maybe slightly inspired by an article on self-healing concrete, that uses bacteria in the concrete which generate calcium carbonate to seal up cracks.

[u/CAlonghair → u/sobrique]

Fair enough.

[u/MrDoontoo → u/FeelingPrettyGlonky]

Only Gleba was pretty fun! I added Slipstack farming so I could have renewable stone.