[Suggestion] Revisit early science pack recipes

[adoa]

(Angel+Bob for 2.0)

Maybe after taking care of other issues #1165 #1164 we can revisit early game science recipes.

Automation science pack only needs

• iron
• copper

Logistic science furthermore extend this list by

• wood
• tin

Then military science, adding

• lead
• steel
• coal
• stone brick

Chemical science however ramps up the requirements a lot:

• Solder
• Silver
• Silicon
• Phenolic board (paper+resin)
• Plastic
• Carbon
• Ferric chloride
• Sulfur
• Sodium hydroxide

A discussion in discord started somewhere here where ghorda suggested changing logistic science recipe. After all, Logistic science can be automated without the use of Sorting facilities or Blast furnaces.

Their idea was to make it use similar requirements as the Fast splitter. That would be

• steel
• bronze
• iron
• electronic circuit = wood + tin + copper + carbon + solder
  And since production of bronze has a silicon by-product, also some form of silicon requirement. Maybe glass.

This would reduce the added materials for chemical science to

• Silver
• Phenolic board (paper+resin)
• Plastic
• Ferric chloride
• Sulfur
• Sodium hydroxide

While making bronze used in science much earlier than Transport/Production science.

I personally like the idea of forcing the player to use Sorting and Ingots for Logistic science. However, this is not quite a concrete recipe suggestion, yet.

[adoa]

Toying around with this idea, I came up with a preliminary list of ingredients for such a new Logistic science recipe

• Splitter (item logistics!)
• Brass pipe (fluid logistics!)
• Electronic circuit
• Glass plate

Still, anything like this change will have massive impact on anyone playing with biters.

Additionally, forcing the player to automate large amounts of Electronic circuits this early, has side-effects: at this stage, solder can only be produce from lead+tin ore. Those need to be sorted, each has a secondary ore: nickel and silicon. There is no good use anywhere in the early game for nickel. All the use for nickel is unlocked after green science has been automated. But this also opens the possibility to make lead without the nickel by-product.

[edit1 & edit2:]
I start to dislike this recipe idea again. First of all, Splitter has too high a material requirement for this early in the game. Furthermore, I'm starting to see a massive problem with forcing early production of Bronze or Solder. This early in the game, these materials cannot be produced without a by-product, meaning silicon and nickel, but these by-product have pretty much no use yet. There is sorting of Crushed cupric mixture however. That provides tin with copper as by-product.

So if we are to force the players to use Sorting facilities and Blast furnaces for automating Logistic science, the only viable materials to use are either steel or bronze. Steel will be used in Military science anyways.

So if we are to change the Logistic science recipe I suggest rather something like

• Transport belt
• Inserter
• Bronze pipe

Thus the player has the choice to either

• stay with starting materials, producing (as of yet) useless silicon as by-product OR
• search for Crotinnium (without trains!) to produce the bronze without by-products

In any case, this change increases the early-game consumption of bobmonium and possibly stiratite+crotinnium

[adoa]

Furthermore, Automation science pack needs glass plate when playing Bob's mods without Angel's. Seeing Angel's mods making Automation science simpler feels wrong. Maybe also Automation science can be tweaked by requiring something like (crushed) stone or lead.
Silicon for glass is not available at this stage while playing Angel's mods, after all.

[fffxc2]

In regards to the ore byproducts, is it worth considering adding a new building for this?

Just brainstorming, but what about something like "Ore disposal pit"? Implementation wise, it could be a furnace prototype, that turns any ore into some % chance of stone to represent the quarrying necessary to make room for the disposed ore.

Worth noting, it'd probably make sense to ensure that it isn't possible discard stone in this building. This makes it possible to discard the extra ores and instead requires some extra effort to discard the stone to avoid making ore disposal too trivial.

It could also have a nice progression if/when space age support is added, that a more advanced recipe uses lava to turn the ores into a chance at slag instead of stone.