I think touchscreen support would be investment to the future, these tablets that are basically mouseless/keyboardless PC's are getting more and more common. Got one week ago (teclast tbook 11) and checked if Factorio works on it. It runs really nice but the UI is almost impossible to control in tab...

I suggested this earlier as game idea, but I think it rather would fit the mod-category better. Synopis: Introduce wear-level to the machines and stuff. Make unkept machines perform worser, stop working and misbehave. This would create games to be more active and contain lot more managing and backtr...

Added to https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=24090 Collection of End-Game-Ideas / Enhancing Endgame Well, its not only for the endgame, but rather constant thing that happens. Ofc. you would not run into durability problems on early game (unless you leave some structure heavily HP-...

OFC you could craft maintaince bots later that could take part of the maintaince work stress away. Wouldn't getting bots totally negate this though? 'Cos they'd do it all for you surely? With cost of lots of resources (and the neccesity to provide the resources because each upkeep-bot requires acce...

New gamemode / difficulty level where items and stuff has limited lifetime. Player is not fighting only against alien horde or building his machines, but also trying to upkeep his decaying system and decayed parts also create problems for the players - be that conveyor belts that drop their cargo so...