Make the fusion reactor perform a thermonucular explosion with atomic bomb radius and strength on player death. Creating a nuclear blast is pretty hard, even in the middle of a nuclear reactor. It's not even a matter of the reactors being made that way, you really have to go out of your way to crea...

In early versions, water was gradually heated by passing through a series of 1x1 boilers. The boilers were replaced with the current 2x3 boilers, which gave a fixed 165C output. Nuclear power came, and the 165C boiler water could still be mixed with the 500C nuclear water to create some medium hot w...

Don't let pollution reach nests! If you can, kill the nest. Extra land space is always good. If not, tone the factory down a bit. Bullet weapons are simply awful and should not be depended upon. The cost of pollution in producing ammo is higher than the biter penalty if that pollution ever reaches a...

Don't forget to check out the FFFs. The devs have talked about many of the obstacles they have overcome in game development. You may find some things on keeping random number generation not so random. I don't know enough about factorio under the hood to say how they did it, but I imagine the answer ...

The PLD definitely gets incredibly powerful towards the end game. I'd much rather see that kind of power growth happen with combat robots. With combat drones it's much easier to tweak balance in terms of cost:value, and drones fit in better with the strong "automation" themes of the game. ...

I think you'll have more success in the Gameplay Help forum. All the existing tools in the game make detecting daylight possible, if not necessarily easy.

Kudos to the devs for trying to fix some oddball cases, but sometimes the problem is between the chair and keyboard.
That junction breaks the golden rule of signaling; every rail crossing needs a signal. The north/south crossing doesn't have signals when it should.

But nuclear IS viable for the late game and beyond. You're probably not using it properly. One of the most important traits of nuclear reactors (which probably isn't explained very well) is that adjacent reactors boost each other. So a 2x2 block of reactors will produce 480MW of power, while a solo ...

Should the rules for filling chests be different from the rules for emptying them? When it comes to filling chests, there is an expectation that items get moved around in some kind of priority. When it comes to emptying chests, bots should probably grab from the most convenient spot. But different r...

Machine modules only boost one machine. Beacon modules boost 8-12 machines. It's a good way of getting more mileage out of the very expensive T3 modules.

There's no need to use beacons for T1 speed modules. A pile of machines will work fine.

Adding randomization is a divisive decision. Some people will like it, some won't. I think (but I might be wrong) that the majority of the player base prefers predictability over unpredictability. If I'm right, adding some way to make the solar panels inadequate would be a bad move from a design st...

map coordinates are defined in milimeters and microtiles and unit health pools are 330000/330000. Well. A computer's internal value and a game's display output are by no means required to be the same value. 330000 internal can just as easily be 330 with a hidden decimal on the output. A float's goi...

Pure speculation: Smooth animations for arbitrary angles. Example: with single degree precision you couldn't rotate 90° over 60 ticks smoothly. Then your smallest unit isn't tiny enough. A good 64 bit integer can map every millimeter from the core of the sun out to Pluto and an ordinary clock has 4...

Weather really make zero difference. It simply shifts the balance a bit towards more accumulators and makes the math harder. So the blueprint on the internet will simply have more accumultors and people still just place them with no brain. A single day without solar power means you need colossal en...

Why let the PLD attack enemies anyway? Remove the attack portion, have it shoot down biter acid (maybe tank shells/rockets too) and now it's an actual DEFENSE. Without PLDs melting everything in their path, combat robots can fill in as the player assist they're meant to be. Plus a point defense PLD ...

It may also offend some people actually working in a chemical plant.

Placing opinions in other people's mouths is certainly more offensive. Don't assume outrage out of a video game, that's a job for XBox live kids.

Just looking at the new chem plant gave me sympathetic lung cancer. I like the idea of knowing what your factory is building without keeping alt-mode permanently on.

I haven't played with pollution reducing modules in a while. The reduce how much pollution per kW a structure produces. Last I remember they had the same 20% cap as eco modules, and the benefits multiply with eco to give .2*.2 = 4% pollution output. That's as close to 0 as you will need for any norm...

All buildings stop polluting when they have stalled. So there's no need to pull the plug on your miners. They'll stop well enough, just don't go too crazy on buffer storage. Eco modules are your biggest early game bang for the buck when it comes to reducing pollution. They will clean up miners, and ...

Buffing the charge rate will dramatically change the average logistic behavior of the roboport. That will change base layouts, as a few upgraded robos will be able to handle the same logistic demands as many low tier versions. It'd be the same thing if belts had a speed upgrade. Bot speed doesn't do...