Most of these mods are "make the middle game more complex". Nothing wrong with that! Krastorio is my favorite of the ones you mention. Space Exploration is unusual in creating an interesting game after the main game, taking you to completely new places and gameplay modes. Seablock is also a little like that, only it makes the beginning of the game totally different instead of the end.

It's great how many deep and interesting mods Factorio has allowed.

I'd love a mod that actually respected the true materials/engineering recipes in real life.

Obviously, you can't recreate the complete complexity of all global supply chains, but it would be nice for a mod to get a little closer.

Standard factorio glosses over way too much to be considered educational, which is what i need before I get my son addicted with me. (Yes, i know standard Factorio still has a lot to offer - i just want more detail)

Fair but id offer that having more "realistic" recipies and those details would still offer far less than understanding and practicing the engineering process. Finding efficient solutions to your problems and engineering them over and over again for efficiency teaches excellent problem solving and engineering skills that would be hugely beneficial, imo more important than learning the specific materials that make each item irl.

[delayed]

Most of the overhaul mods get closer, more or less depending on the mod :

https://youtu.be/dY2nxVNBHQs?&t=3m41s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyldichlorosilane

There are also mods that make it more realistic in a different way :

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/belt-overflow

There's Unfunny Science overhaul mod which is quite new ;)

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/un-science

Warptorio is to be noted, for the way it radically changes what the game is about, closer to the Factorio scenarios, and even somewhat compatible with the overhaul mods !

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/warptorio2

> Factorio but you build your factory in a restricted space that teleports yourself, the platform, and everything on it to a new and uncharted planet in an unknown corner of space, time and the universe while constantly under attack from enemies. This mod increases the difficulty of factorio by making construction harder and making biters a more significant threat, resulting in a unique experience of factorio'ing in a tight space and under pressure, almost like a tower defence game.

Speaking of scenarios, let's not forget that Factorio has a PvP mode ! (Better use a PvP balance mod though...)

https://youtu.be/DBn9IQTxIvY

So looking at /user/pyanodon, there doesn't even appear to be a mod named "Pyanodons", but rather he's made a whole bunch of different mods. Which one are you recommending? All of them at once?

See https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/567718271823118347/10... flowchart

4, 7, or all 9 mods depending on how long game you are looking for

Unless you are extremely experienced with Factorio and want a challenge that will last you close to another 1,000 hours (at least) ... don't even attempt Pyanodons.

It's for a very specific type of hardcore player and very few people have actually finished it.

This is the flowchart for ONE science (space) ... one. There are numerous sciences.

https://i.imgur.com/JCVVTjn.jpg

Angel+Bob & SeaBlock just seem masochistic to me. I have had the most fun with SE + K2.

I haven't tried pyanodon because it doesn't seem like it was made to be played as a game but rather shown off as a testimate to how far you can take things

I tried SeaBlock, but aborted my playthrough before long because it was too boring. I'm enjoying K2, though.

Don't think I'll want to try Space Exploration if it's even worse than SeaBlock.

> Don't think I'll want to try Space Exploration if it's even worse than SeaBlock.

I would really recommend SE above SeaBlock, IMO SeaBlock feels like it throws away almost all of the recipies you know & doesn't give you much new to reward you, I felt like it was more like some random fanfic. Where as SE felt like it was a poorly edited directors cut of the original movie. There's way too much & it's audience is really the people that wanted a 4h movie with 6 different subplots. Also lacking the polish of the original, but still very much in the spirit.

SE kind of has fantastic polish on its own - its new features like cargo rockets work flawlessly IMO, but sure, it has not been cut down to reasonable length.

Just having a lot of complexity or scale doesn’t mean a game or mod is good. In fact, just making something complex or “big” is the easy part. Designing something so it is actually fun, well designed and challenging while not being frustrating, tiresome, or simply just a giant time sink, is much much harder.

Pyanodons isn’t fun to play, it’s just too much, ridiculously complex recipes for the sake of it, quality of life features removed or pushed out late into the game just for artificial difficulty and pain. Most players never complete it and give up not even 10% into the game, which generally isn’t the sign of a well designed game.

What QoL did pY remove ??

Also for instance construction bots now come "earlier", in red science (though due to the extra complexity, probably still a bit "later" ?).

In recent versions you also get at the start filter inserters that do not require any power.

Red science (the first milestone) in py is quite a bit harder than launching a rocket (aka endgame) in vanilla/base.

Pyanodons is a unique experience. Everything has dozens of steps. In the base game, circuit boards are made from copper wire and iron plates, whereas in Pyanodons, you need formica for the PCB substrate, which requires tree nurseries to make wood and a full coal cracking facility to produce creosote, a glassworks, half a dozen different metals, not to mention pick and place machines and all other sorts of intermediates. And that's just baby steps.

But it's flawed in other ways. In particular, a lot of the Py building sprites hide what's behind them. In the base game, all the sprites aren't taller than their footprint, but they are in Py, which makes them unwieldy and easy to lose things. And what's fun is building these huge production lines, but there's no easy way to tear up your old base and reconfigure things until you hit bots, which is waaaay down the line.

In short, Py is wonderful and I've never played any sort of game like it before, but it has unnecessary rough edges from a game design perspective, aside from its masochism.

Construction bots are pushed earlier in red science, though getting there might be about the same challenge as the whole of vanilla !

Though I would recommend using at least Picker Extended for its semi-automatic filling of placed blueprints.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/PickerExtended

I love many aspects of SE, but I'd _love_ if most of them were stand-alone mods that were built up into a mod pack. For instance, all of the pylons are great! The condenser turbine I think is a much nicer solution for nuclear power.

Pyanodons is literally a joke. It's not designed to be finished.

There is no way Pyanodon's could be considered the "greatest" Factorio mod. 99% of Factorio players go "that looks like an awful time" when confronted with a single refining flow chart for a single mineral. I'd agree if you wanted to ask which factorio mod is the "most" that Pyanodon's is king and will never be dethroned.