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When I saw the exoskeleton, I thought to myself "If you can increase your speed, why not your placement range?" Mods such as Long Reach and Double Reach sought to address this, but I felt that they were not well-integrated into game-play progression in that the player had done nothing to earn it, as well as being somewhat immersion-breaking. While construction roboports address this problem well late-game, this mod is better suited for mid-game construction convenience.

What does this mod do?
It adds a "grabber" recipe to the exoskeleton technology, which when placed in your equipment slots, each grabber adds 4 units (meters?) of range to the player's reach and build distance. These stack so the player can reach pretty far.

Known Bugs
For any version of factorio prior to 0.13.7, the grabber needs to be placed manually in the equipment grid to function, as the on_player_placed_equipment event does not detect when the player control-clicks to add multiple things at once to the equipment grid. If you do control-click, remove all grabbers from your equipment grid to reset the reach bonus counter.

This mod is largely untested, specifically on multiplayer, so I welcome any feedback when it comes to balance or bugs.

Download via Factorio Mods
Source Code

This is one of those things that is so bluntly obvious that no one has thought of it before. Love the idea but i dont think it would work well in multiplayer for the same reason Crafting equipment doesnt. the Reach values are global and would work for people that dont have them on (I really dont know im just blurting stuff out to look smart even though im probably wrong)

sporefreak wrote:This is one of those things that is so bluntly obvious that no one has thought of it before. Love the idea but i dont think it would work well in multiplayer for the same reason Crafting equipment doesnt. the Reach values are global and would work for people that dont have them on (I really dont know im just blurting stuff out to look smart even though im probably wrong)

It seemed obvious to some, but the modding API lacked some of the functionality to make it possible. The 0.13 update added character_reach_distance_bonus which allows each player to have a bonus to their reach distance, and also added on_player_placed_equipment which allows a mod to detect when equipment is used. Previously, mods that extended the players reach just modified data.raw.player.player.reach_distance, which indeed is global and affects all players.

Is this mod going to be updated to 0.14?

You can use the Long Reach mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/jamesaguilar/long-reach

This mod has a "pick stick" to reach longer - sounds like similar sort of thing to extendo-reach. https://mods.factorio.com/mods/binbinhfr/BigBags

To update extendo-reach for 0.14, it looks like all that's needed is to change factorio version to 0.14 in its `info.json`

You possibly also need to remove the `require "util"` from first line of `control.lua` but not sure.

aubergine18 wrote:This mod has a "pick stick" to reach longer - sounds like similar sort of thing to extendo-reach. https://mods.factorio.com/mods/binbinhfr/BigBags

That mod seems to do a lot of things. I prefer smaller mods that each do one thing, so that I can create exactly the experience that I want, for myself and for the other players.

aubergine18 wrote:To update extendo-reach for 0.14, it looks like all that's needed is to change factorio version to 0.14 in its `info.json`

You possibly also need to remove the `require "util"` from first line of `control.lua` but not sure.

I did try to update the "version" to "0.14", but the mod still didn't work. I can try to remove the "require" thing too, to see if that helps.

aubergine18 wrote:To update extendo-reach for 0.14, it looks like all that's needed is to change factorio version to 0.14 in its `info.json`

You possibly also need to remove the `require "util"` from first line of `control.lua` but not sure.

Thanks, but after removing the "require util" line, I get this error msg when trying to start Factorio:
Error

Error while loading equipment prototype "grabber-equipment"
(movement-bonus-equipment): No such node (categories
Modifications: Extendoreach > Modular-Armor

I have no idea what this means.

It means there's now a mandatory categories property in the prototype definition for `grabber-equipment`. So you'll need to add in categpries = { 'something' } to that prototype, where 'something' is a relevant category name (string).

aubergine18 wrote:It means there's now a mandatory categories property in the prototype definition for `grabber-equipment`. So you'll need to add in categpries = { 'something' } to that prototype, where 'something' is a relevant category name (string).

Thanks, but I have no idea how to do that.

Also, it seems that even though this mod is no longer enabled, my character still has a larger reach than normal. I used to wear 2xExtendo-Reach modules in my armour. That's a bit strange...

Can someone please update this mod to 0.15?

I think I managed to update it for 0.17+ :
(currently 1.1, but compatibility with other 0.17+ should be as easy as changing factorio_version in info.json ?)