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I can't say for ark's mods since I don't play that game but bob's mods are better compared to one of the "big" tech mods for minecraft instead of those massive packs that force together as many mods as possible.
It is one of the oldest of the "big" mods for factorio, built from the idea of a now long dead mod (dytech) that first started the idea of doing a big overhaul of the crafting chains to add complexity.
(dytech was a messy mod, both in the gameplay and in the code but it did popularize the idea)
A lot of people enjoy what bob's mods bring since it keeps a lot of the concepts from vanilla and increases the complexity of the crafting chains, without taking it to extremes, making it a decent first group of mods for those wanting more complexity than vanilla but not quite ready to jump into the more popular mixes of mods.
Since they overhaul nearly everything in some way but is made to be modular so that you are not forced to add the enemies and weapons for example, it is fairly balanced (in a different way than vanilla obviously).
Most people end up pairing it with angel's mods since they are more or less made to work together (you can play them individually but they complement each other and have built-in compatibility).
Bob+angel is one of the old "pack" and became one of the standard for mods that go for complexity since it makes full use of things like multiple outputs and loops on top of giving you an increasing variety on ways to process and produce even early products with a varied degree of complexity and efficiency (especially visible around angel's ore smelting that also applies to bob's materials).
The good thing is that unlike a few years ago we now have quite a bit of variety when it comes to "complexity" mods.
For example, Krastorio 2 goes for a different approach with a similar goal to bob and angel (meaning complexity but not to insane levels), Industrial revolution goes for an "ages" approach to make tech tiers a lot more distinct, 5 dims goes less for the complexity side of things and more towards making the faster machines from bob/angel available for much more productive factories without having to deal with the complex crafting chains to get to them.
Pyanodon's mods that take thing at least a step further in the complexity, for those that want to test the limits of their patience (and sanity).
Obviously none of those mods are for everybody, they are all made with a specific kind of player that feels that the vanilla factorio makes it too easy to get a fully working factory all the way to mega base and want the game to challenge their design skills after getting out of the spaghetti.
Ratios harder to balance perfectly, multiple outputs, unlocking potentially more efficient recipes for earlier items that require a full rebuild of the chain, a lot more items and fluids to have to worry about, along with new toys to play with.
There is at least one mod among bob's mods that you will have a very hard time taking out after getting a bit of experience with it, bob's adjustable inserters.
It is mostly a separate mod that allows you to decide where your inserters pickup and deposit, with a lot of the functions locked behind a few technologies by default.
90° inserters, inserting to the near side of a belt, picking/depositting anywhere from 1 to 3 tiles (with a full range of 7x7 centered around the inserter to pick from for each when everything is unlocked), for all types of inserters.
This means that long range stack inserters that put items on the near side of a belt are possible for example, giving you a lot more freedom when designing things since inserters are less of a limiting factor.
Maybe I am a bit subjective on bob's mods in particular because I was pretty active when they initially came out so there is probably a part that comes from remembering the many hours spent making tier 2 and 3 electronic circuits back when we were still figuring out layouts that can be expanded even for complex recipe chains like those.
This makes the game a lot more challenging and interesting, but also a lot less approachable - I can play an hour of Krastorio2 and get something done but I feel that this just isn't possible in angel+bob
However recently ive been stuck into a seablockplack which includes angels and bobs, and i finally get it. They are well put togther. The main difference between vanilla and bobs+angels is that in factorio you scale up, in order to maintain supply of higher tier research. But in bobs+angels you have to tech up with new processes in order to scale in order to walk the tech tree. It adds an element of easy cause hou can produce an assembler at 4x speed, in stead of 4 assemblers, but it adds difficulty because in order to make that high tier assembler you need to use a new proccess.
I would certainly recommend trying it out if youve got some vanilla experience. But I'm you consider yourself inexperienced i would save the idea for later. Alot of processes require 20+ components or processes which you need to determine how to stitch together.
I also dont get it why this mod is so hyped.
In my opinion Krastorio 2 currently is the best mod.
Bobs and also Angels might look interesting but imo they have too much complication in order to play factorio as it is intented: Scale everything up.
In Krastorio you CAN scale it up, in Bobs and Angels you have so much stuff, that scaling up is not really feasable.
It is definitely a different approach to vanilla and to other mods like krastorio 2 but this big shift in perspective you need is a big part of why those mods are hyped by many people.
For me it has a similar effect as the achievements, the lazy bastard forces you to automate things, logistics network embargo forces you to rethink the usage of mass robots for everything, solaris makes you rethink the rampant expansion, the timed ones are all about optimizing your setup and minimizing the times where you just wait without doing anything.
Bob and angel force you out of your comfort zone with a simple bus and infinitely expanding branches that require very little thinking once you get to that point.
Of course it means that it's not for everyone but thankfully there are alternatives that take very different approaches, expecially with the recently released krastorio 2 that keeps closer to vanilla in terms of concepts.
The first form is a zip download (usually outside of the mod portal because a lot of people have troubles with very large download on the mod portal) that you need to unzip in your mod folder, the other is in the form of a pseudo mod that can, have content or not depending on if they need to modify something from the mods they use and uses the "dependencies" system to make the game download the required mods individually.
Usually it's either for convenience since it's easy to forget the smaller QoL mods for example so having a pack makes it easier but some packs like the seablock that was mentionned add their own changes to the mods they use to bring a cohesive and "balanced" (at least following what the pack author wants as balance) experience that is usually meant to be quite different from the base game.
As far as Bob mods goes... I feel that the modules are broken. The god-modules are stupidly overpowered... but even the regular modules allow you to power a megabase with 2 miners on iron, 2 on copper, etc. It's a bit ridiculous.
Other than that, the modpack is very solid and introduces the player to some nice complex production chains which add variety to the familiar vanilla ones. It's a decent mid-level pack, not as complicated as Pyanodon's, (which is AMAZING), but a step up from other conversion mods.
So I went to check back on it and sure enough it looks like dytech, with the exception that the code is no longer all over the place and un-maintainable.
I used to love the liquid metals so I'm kind of glad that this still exists but I'm not too sure how I feel about playing it since stands in a similar spot to bob and angel.
There was a time when all there was was Dytech and (OR) Bobs.
Bobingabout is a very dedicated and long term modder so respect to that.
Nowadays there are a ton of big and great mods.
Pyanodons if you want to go crazy or if you have a bunch of friends to play together with (there is enough content thats enough for multiple people in parallel playing for dozens of hours).
Bobs + Angels is well known by many, its complexity does not lie in scale (because modules), but in figuring out the right logistical chain (and Angel tried to create processes that are close to real life so there is some educational factor too). So you have to prototype your solution for every new chain (its just easier than trying to do everything all at once).
Personally I disable god modules.
Krastorio2 seems like the big new player in town thats popular, I havent played Factorio actively in a while so i dont know whats up with the cool new kids.
Well, Factorio community is formed from people that would not really like "bad" quality or cheap effort. So the popular mods are well done (by popular i mean number of downloads). Trending is tricky, you might find a lot of "cheap cheat garbage" there because a certain group of people like to copy paste other people's mods, tweak some values by x1000 and make them ridiculous (because the same certain group for some reason find that fun).
-Getting wood is the biggest pain in the ass and way too much work. Especially since its such an basic component you require very early on.
-More than often it would be nice if there were some BASIC informations about certain items. Like where the hell do I get Solder mixture from?
-You often unlock buildings components far before you could even use them, which comes off as a bit clunky
-Generally speaking, I like the way ore plates are made using the ingot system
-I also love how easy the early sciences are to make EXCEPT FOR THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ WOOD
Might try other mods
That information is not more hidden than in vanilla, you have a search button both in the recipe list and in the tech tree to help you figure things out, or you can go for QoL mods to help you a bit, helmod, "what is it really used for" or fnei are among your best bets whn trying to figure out crafting chains, especially when most chains have branching paths.
It's definitely a bit weird at first to be able to research a set of buildings without getting basic recipes for them.
A counter argument is that those researches tend to be a lot cheaper to account for the fact that you need to research multiple things.
It also allows you to only unlock what you need and not a monstrous list of recipes that would make you even more lost on what to do.
It also allows you to start crafting the buildings while you unlock the recipes.
Vanilla did something similar with the component for the rocket in 0.17, it's not buildings but you unlock intermediate items without having any use for them until you research the technologies that unlock the recipe that have them as ingredients.
Jumping into any of the "complexity" mods (especially bob+angel or pyanodon) blind without QoL tools is going to have a similar effect of you wanting to tear your hair off from having a hard time figuring out how you are supposed to use the various recipes and machines that you have at disposal.
It is possibly their biggest flaw (that it shares with vanilla to some extent) but also the very reason why a lot of people turn to them since it is all about figuring things out once more, an aspect of factorio that quite a few people really like.
You unlock the sniper turret 1 as early as research 1/2, and all you need is a half-solid line of them along your walls (they're cheap to build) and your defenses are set past large biters (maybe even further).
Because they do so much damage in a single shot they completely ignore the flat damage reduction that makes deathworld marathon runs challenging. I'm running one now and it's trivial, the only real hassle is getting all the invividual chains automated for each next circuit/tech/whatever you end up researching.
Ratios are easier to balance than vanilla if you get them set up right to begin with (with say, 1 fully operational building per circuit, and however many multiples of ingredient-crafters it takes). Because factorys upgrade VERY often and they EACH introduce another module-slot, once you get modules going you can just throw 4-5 speed modules PER high-level factory (which is already boosted to begin with). If your belts are too slow you just upgrade your belt which have just as many upgrades as the factories.
You'll have far more fuss learning the chains in the first place than ever having to optimize them, which is/isn't fun for certain people. With 12 ingredients to dig through that refine and combine into other metals with 3-4 different 'smelters' before being made into ingredients which are made into ingredients which are made into ingredients just to get a basic item (ie: circuit boards).
I'm still playing through a deathworld marathon run, but I'm rather bored of it already. There's no encouragement to optimize anything when you can just chuck ridiculously high % speed modules into everything. I wish i had gone with whatever the super slow space-based mod was instead so i could focus on scaling rather than setting up new production chains faster that will be basically useless knowledge after I discard and move onto the next mod.
Around blue-tech you'll have Assembly machine 3 (1.25 craft speed) with 4 slots for speed 2 modules (40% each +160% speed total).
If you have trouble with balancing assemblers when you can basically triple the craft speed anywhere you desire as early as midgame, then god help you.
This isn't even counting how broken beacons will be, since they researched earlier now too (as soon as you unlock blues (packs 1, 2, military, and blue).