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oh god that's awful haha

Live long, and prosper.

[TL;DR]

Splitting won't be an option, due to the complexity. I could remove PAL entirely, although I think that'd be a shame. Maybe it can be made to work better instead.

I used this mod with Superior Crafting.

Some (hopefully) helpful criticism:

I will admit that I was also quite underwhelmed with PAL in regards to it's resource cost, space cost, and cost of cooling. By the time I got a good-sized computer running, it could only cover something like an eighth to a quarter of the mechanoids I had running around (3 cutters, 1 miner, 1 cook, and every crawler I could get my hands on to haul/clean).

I wouldn't build PAL again in its current state except as a resource sink and vanity item. Of course, at the point where building PAL becomes a priority, that just might be what this game needs...

Once I could reprogram mechs, I was looking forward to their raids even more than pirates, since I could repair every mech and they didn't have moods or need food like colonists. I had A LOT of fun putting out fires from Roombas short-circuiting and the occasional mech berserk was interesting. Perhaps these events (particularly the fires? I don't like the randomness of berserk damage...) could be made much more frequent for mechs not connected to PAL, and slightly more frequent even for PAL-controlled mechs. This would make PAL construction much more important and more valuable, as well as slightly decrease the value of mechs.

Crawlers are incredibly valuable, and abundant. Freeing up my colonists from those non-skilled jobs greatly increased my productivity. I used about 4-6 Scythers as plant cutters and a miner. It was a small map and I had some skilled miners, so I didn't need more than that. I never tried a doctor-bot because I had some very skilled doctors, and my colony was small so I only needed 1 cooking bot.

The raid makeup seems about right (a good, dangerous mix) and the jobs seem to fit thematically, so I'm not sure there's anything to do there. From a balance perspective, it seems a good idea to split the hauling and cleaning jobs to different mechs (at least one which is less abundant than the crawler type), but I enjoy seeing my army of ants hauling things and petting my hard-working Roombas... hopefully you won't find this necessary.

Perhaps the cost of reprogramming mechs should be increased? This may not apply to your mod, as I was using Superior Crafting and Abrexus may have changed the costs upon integration to use the resources at his disposal, or the costs he imported do not mesh well with other goods in the mod.

Is it possible to cause some mech corpses to be unrepairable? Maybe a chance to explode on death?

Perhaps there should be an intermediary step 'harvest mech parts.' It would then take several deceased mechs to create one reprogrammed one. 'Harvest mech parts' perhaps could give a different amount of parts for each mech type, possibly even based on the condition of the mech corpse (body parts destroyed decreases parts yielded... if that's even possible).

TL;DR
I like that PAL is a luxury good. Reducing number of reprogrammed mechs from each mech raid may help the pacing of PAL construction (meaning the player may have fewer mechs but will be able to keep most of them controlled by PAL). Increasing the cost of mechs may also help move toward that. More malfunctions will increase the cost of mechs and increase the value of building PAL (if PAL-control reduces malfunctions).

I realize that some of the suggestions above are quite ambitious and maybe outside the scope of what you had in mind for the mod. I just wanted to throw a bunch of ideas out there in the hopes that something would inspire =)

Thanks for all your work on this project!

I miss this mod so much.   

+1

[Crafting II is a prereq for Power III.]

Quote

    - Power III? I checked the tech tree, it simply IS NOT showing up.

Certain high-end tech levels have other requirements to be met before they appear (here i believe its construction and crafting III)

No for Power III you don't need anything other then Power II.
I only can think that you got other Mod which  block it, maybe change the mod order.
When SC is the first mod, maybe move it to the last and look if you can research it then.
But i never got any problems with the SC and i use many other mods together with SC.

The tech tree is incorrect when it comes to Power III. I had the same issue as the poster and finally I realized I'd better take a peek into the files to see if I could discern a prereq; Crafting II is a prereq for Power III.

It kinda makes sense anyway because Crafting II gives you the electric furnace which lets you smelt the Plasteel you'll need (though you could otherwise spend a small fortune buying bars).

Just came to see when I could look forward to using this mod in A10... I'll add my voice to the chorus of encouragement for an update!

I already mentioned Zombies and More Mechanoids (neither have been updated to A10 yet), and I will add that the traders from Misc Vanilla Enhanced are great (thanks for the tip and dl link!).

Is there any way to get more traders to visit? I've been playing Cassandra Rough and my current colony was stuck in limbo for awhile because I could not get a trader with Plasteel for sale to show up (and my devilstrand was taking too long to synthesize bars; thanks for that, btw!). Would I have better chances at trade and a similar overall experience if I switched to Phoebe and upped the difficulty (Phoebe was not challenging last time I tried)?

It seems the problem is exacerbated by the mod since there are more traders; it seems like there is a smaller chance to get the one you want when you get one (it seems to have a chance for trader, then a chance for each specific trader afterwards).

Do others feel there should be greater chances of traders appearing? I can see that maybe the current design is desirable, as it slows down colony transitions to higher levels of functioning and promotes diversifying industries (you could be sitting on stockpiles full of sculptures for a long time); it's just seems a bit random for my tastes. Three agricultural traders in a row can stunt growth for a long time!

This mod is a lot of fun! I thought at first that there was maybe a little too much going on, but all the extra crafting requires a larger colony of crafters, and I like to build up big colonies anyway, so it works well with my playstyle 

In A9 with all the xpacs, I particularly enjoyed the much more difficult and varied mechs. I also had fun with the change in gameplay when I could reprogram the mechs to do various basic tasks. I eventually had enough crawlers hauling zombie corpses that my colonists could focus on crafting and putting out fires when mechs short-circuited 

I patiently await these xpacs for A10. Hopefully zombie apocalypse updates to A10 soon so it can be used.

Is there a way to make your colonists use the organ vat like the crematorium? I seem to remember in vanilla that they would automatically burn bodies but I have not seen a colonist use the organ vat to dispose of bodies without me having to give them the command. Could you flag the organ vat as a crematorium so if you dont have one they would use that to get rid of bodies or is that not possible?

All worktables have a set priority order that is predetermined in the workgivers.xml - unfortunately the game does not let you modify the priority order (yet).  Make sure there are no other tables with active crafting orders that are preventing the colonists from working the organ vat, as it is low on the priority list.  You can manually go in and change the priority to a higher number if you prefer.

Assuming that you still have to set a priority order for the worktables you added in your mod, would it be a good idea to add Organ Vat at the top? I also have problems with bodies piling up while my colonists work endlessly on making mulch and sand 

Also, is it possible to apply to the Organ Vat the new vanilla mechanic whereby bodies are automatically stripped when being cremated?

First of all, thanks for the hard work! This mod is awesome, changes up the whole game, and for the better

Since you're in testing, there are a couple things I noticed with the A9 version (2g I believe)
- Sometimes (no clear pattern, appears to be random with do X times bills) they would start to construct the bionic arm, leg or spine from wood logs, which they can never finish. The work to make goes down to zero, then even into negative if you don't notice it in time. What this does is effectively halts the production for that bill - you have to delete the bill, haul away the unfinished wooden log bionic thing and start over. Does not seem to happen for bionic eyes though.

I've seen the same thing. Though in my case with a wooden bionic arm it was easy to fix. Just click on the "Unfinished XXXX" and click cancel. Somebody hauled away the wood and he started making an arm with correct materials.