Bob's / Angel's Mods - what do they actually do?

[Mister Dawg]

I'm at 1900 hours or so. Getting bored without unlimited achievements lol. A rocket a minute is a lot of damn work without getting anything for it.

I've heard Bob's / Angel's mods make it more interesting. How?

[piccolo255]

I'm just throwing suggestions here, but have you considered going to the mod portal and reading the mod descriptions...?

You can also find a lot of information on the relevant subforums on the official forum:
Angel's[forums.factorio.com]
Bob's[forums.factorio.com]

The short version is, they add a bunch of stuff and make production chains more complex. They're both modular, so you can add only parts that you want.

[Mister Dawg]

Thanks. I didn't know about a 'mod portal', or the subforums... I'll go check them out.

[piccolo255]

You didn't know about those with almost 2000h played? Wow, you're focused! I've started digging through the mod portal before I even installed the game...

Here's the link, btw: https://mods.factorio.com/

Just search for "Bob" or "Angel", sorted by number of downloads.

[Mister Dawg]

Ha, 'focused', aka OCD. Yep!

Thanks for the link. :D

[Termak]

They basically change the whole game experience, i cant even play without them anymore. If you think teching goes too fast, also install "omniscience" mod, makes techcosts bit more interesting :D

[fractalgem]

Bobs adds several more ores to the game, makes circuits more complicated, and gives you better end-game gear (such as better miners, modules, and power armor), while angels makes gathering ores MUCH more complicated; you need to mine an ore, crush it, and while you *can* simply smelt the result, "sorting" the ore into vanilla-esque ores is necessary if you want anything more than 4 out of the 13 or so bobs ores you need.

And then there's what angels does to petrochems; be glad that there's a 'simple" way to turn wood into plastic, otherwise you'd be forced to deal with that mess BEFORE you have plenty of resources. (as it is, getting lubricant is fairly straightforward....if you void everything else you get.)

[Name Lips]

Bob's Mods changes the game. It subtracts existing recipes and replaces them with many, many more recipes. They get complicated. There are more liquids and gasses. There are more ores that are used to make more things. Factories turn into sprawling nightmares, even with well-organized busses. Bob's Mods add new enemies, new weapons, new armor and equipment, several tiers of robots, and lots of other goodies to play with.

Angel's Mods seem to be designed to work with Bob's. It feels like they'd be very weird on their own. They take things up yet another level in sprawling difficulty. Familiar ores like iron and copper are now locked behind weird, unfamiliar ores like Saphirite and Rubyte. These need crushing and processing to extract useful, smeltable ores. And installing Angel's Petrochem in particular is an exercise in masachism. Dozens of new chemicals, liquids, and gasses are added including a huge, impressive suite of chemical reactions to make even more. The amount of work you need to go through to refine oil (and natural gas) is ridiculous.

And byproducts... my god the byproducts. It seems like every item you want to make produces a byproduct that's a huge pain in the ass to get rid of. Some you just store until you have the tech to recycle them. Others build up hopelessly, and just finding storage for them is a nightmare.

But by God by the time you launch that rocket, you feel like you've EARNED it!

(Personally, I love these mods. The base game feels trivial and simplistic after using them. My favorite way to play is to build a main bus and tech up to robots... then slowly desconstruct my entire base, replacing it with robots-only. I make thousands of them. I try to reach the point where there isn't a single belt left anywhere, just logistics chests and robots. There are so many upgrades to robots and roboports it's actually a viable way to run things.)

[Name Lips]

For reference, here is my full mod list these days:

Advanced Logistics System - interface to search entire logistics network for things to see how many of them you have and where they are.
Alien Biomes - More interesting and varied terrain and trees.
Angel's Addons - Ore Silos - warehouses that hold massive amounts of ore
Angel's Addons - Petrochem Train - new train locomotive
Angel's Addons - Pressure Tanks - larger liquid storage tanks
Angel's Addons - Warehouses - huge warehouses to hold massive amounts of anything.
Angel's Bio Processing - Algea processing to get useful products.
Angel's Components and Tech - some basic changes. Forget what they do.
Angel's Exploration - doesn't add much yet. A heavy tank.
Angel's Infinite Ores - ore patches outside the starting area contain small patches of infinite ore that never runs out.
Angel's Logistics - new robots (large capacity, slow, cargo robots for example)
Angel's PetroChem Refining - because I hate myself and don't have anything better to do with my free time
Angel's Refining - Probably the classic, "core" Angel's mod. Adds the famous compound ores that need additional refining to get useful ores.
Angel's Smelting - Adds ways to turn ore into plates that are more efficient, but take up a bunch of resources and space to set up.
Angel's Smelting Patch - I disabled this. Makes the more efficient smelting from Angel's Smelting the ONLY way to get plates. Furnaces aren't used for much anymore.
Arumba's Viewer Lighting Boost - expands the lit up area around your character to make it easier to play at night. I have a dark monitor and without this mod I have a hard time playing the game at all.
Auto Research - picks your next research projects for you automatically.
Autofill - adds fuel to buildings when you put them down, adds ammo to turrets when you place them down, etc.
Base Mod - the base game that everybody has
Bob's Adjustable Inserters - the ability to make inserters pick up and drop off at different angles and from further distances
Bob's Assembling machines - more tiers of assembers
Bob's Electronics - More circuits, etc.
Bob's Electronics - Alternate Textures: better graphics for electronics
Bob's Enemies - better, more powerful enemies with elemental attacks, etc.
Bob's Fucntions Library mod - required for other Bob's Mods
Bob's Greenhouse Mod - adds a way to create wood, since Bob's Electronics actually needs wood for circuits.
Bob's Logistics Mod - More belts, robots, etc.
Bob's Metals, Chemicals, and Intermediates - more basic resources for making stuff.
Bob's Mining - More mining equipment/technology
Bob's Modules - an expansive module system. Using this to its fullest extent is awfully broken.
Bob's Ores - new ores. Lots of them. Lead, gold, tungsten, etc.
Bob's Power - more steam power plants, solar, etc.
Bob's Vehicle Equipment - more stuff to put in your vehicle's equipment slots to make them awesome.
Bob's Warfare - new turrets, ammunition, etc. Kind of required to fight the more advanced evolutions of Bob's Enemies.
Bottleneck - adds a light on assembers and other machines to let you know when they're running, backlogged, or not running.
Bullet Trails - makes bullets look cool by leaving tracers of where the bullets are shooting
BurnerLeech A15 fix - allows burner inserters to take fuel from anything that contains it, such as furnaces or ore crushers.
Concreep - automatically places concrete blueprints around your base. Once you have construction robots and available concrete, they start paving your base automatically.
Greedy Quickbar Filters - keeps items in your quickbar if they're anywhere in your inventory.
Helmod - allows advanced planning of production lines
Infinizoom - lets you zoom out further
Loader snapping - automatically orients loaders to the right direction so they work.
Long Reach research - research to let you reach, build, and mine further from your character
More_Floors - new floors to personalize your factory.
Rampant - makes enemies smarter
Resource Spawning Overhaul - the "RSO" mod you might have heard of. Rebalances resource spawning to make it better.
ShinyAngelGFX - better graphics for Angels.
ShinyBobGFX - better graphics for Bob's
Space Extension Mod - harder to win. You need to build an interstellar ship in orbit using multiple rocket launches, each carrying pieces of your ship. Makes "winning" take forever...
Squeak Through - allows your character to squeeze through narrow gaps. Easier to run through forests, between buildings, etc.
Text Plates - Lets you write notes in your factory using metalic floor plates shaped like letters.
Upgrade builder and planner - better, faster way to upgrade belts, buildings, etc to newer versions.
Vanilla Loaders - adds loaders to the game. Great way to get resources into and out of warehouses.
VehicleSnap - lets cars and other vehicles snap to line up with the grid instead of always being slightly off
Water Fix - needed for Alien Biomes. Makes water look correct with new terrain mods.
What is it used for? 0.15 allows you to search items to see what recipes use them. Very useful.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by Name Lips:

-snip-

And the game hasn't imploded? I'd never know what was going on with that list!

[Lady Naween]

Angel's Infinite Ores - ore patches outside the starting area contain small patches of infinite ore that never runs out.

Just to point out, you can disable the infinite ores but you NEED to install this mod to get the angel ores. Without it you are stuck with iron and copper like in vanilla. It seems to be the most common problem people have when installing angels and bobs.

[Saber^]

Originally posted by Linda Hartlen:

Angel's Infinite Ores - ore patches outside the starting area contain small patches of infinite ore that never runs out.

Just to point out, you can disable the infinite ores but you NEED to install this mod to get the angel ores. Without it you are stuck with iron and copper like in vanilla. It seems to be the most common problem people have when installing angels and bobs.

Yeah I will probably change that at one point, so that the mod does what it says and move the regular ores to refining.

[Name Lips]

Originally posted by Nailfoot:

Originally posted by Name Lips:

-snip-

And the game hasn't imploded? I'd never know what was going on with that list!

It's not so bad really... It's bob's and angel's and their graphics packs. After that the list is pretty short.

The rest tends to be "quality of life" mods. They don't make the game easier, necessarily, but they make PLAYING the game easier, if you catch my meaning. Like "What is it used for." Sure, I could scour all the recipes and find out what recipes need what ingredients, but it just saves me time to be able to do a search. That way when I make an obscure byproduct I know whether it's worth stockpiling or not.