Tech tidy

[KiwiHawk]

Combine similar techs

Add migration where required

• Furnaces
  • https://discord.com/channels/546453368730681400/782726887188594689/893662795831324693
  • T1
    • Unlocked at game start
    • Stone furnace
    • Stone filtering furnace
  • T2
    • Advanced material processing tech
    • Steel furnace
    • Steel filtering furnace
  • T2a
    • Fluid burning furnace tech
    • Fluid burning furnace
    • Fluid burning filtering furnace
  • T3
    • Advanced material processing 2 tech
    • Electric furnace
    • Electric filtering furnace
  • T4
    • Advanced material processing 3 tech
    • Electric furnace 2
    • Electric filtering furnace 2
  • T5
    • Advanced material processing 4 tech
    • Electric furnace 3
    • Electric filtering furnace 3
• Electric poles/substations
• Boilers/fluid burning boilers/heat exchangers
• Steam engines/steam turbines
• Mining drills/large area mining drills
• Pumpjacks/water pumpjacks
• Assembling machines/electronics assembling machines
• Chemical plants/electrolyzers/oil refineries
• Modules/pure modules
• Personal equipmet/vehicle equipment

[Qatavin]

Personally, I don't see a need to consolidate techs too much. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. Like, for mining drills and large mining drills it makes sense. Their functions are essentially identical, and their recipes are different only in amounts. On the other side of the scale, you have chemical plants and electrolysers, which have significantly different recipes and while they are similar in-game, the way they work in the real world is very different.

In fact, in my opinion, most of these should remain separate. In the early to early-mid stages of the game, choosing which techs to grab first is part of the strategy for how you develop your factory. And if they start separate, does it really make sense from a flavor perspective to combine them later, when as they become more advanced their engineering should be more and more unique and specialized?

So, for another example from what was listed above, let's consider boilers, fluid burning boilers, and heat exchangers. The first two could be combined no problem, but heat exchangers require heat pipes. It feels bad from a design perspective to force players to waste time researching heat pipes first if you just want the boilers.

[Qatavin]

New idea: Heat exchanger 1, heat pipe 1, and tier 1 burner reactors could be consolidated into a single tech. It would be like the steam power tech which (at least in some configurations) unlocks the first tier of steam engine and boiler together.

Of course, there would need to be two different versions depending on whether burner heat sources are enabled or not.