Factorio Forums

What I am doing (with mods):
I am working on a modular group of mods that will be changing or adding/implementing many different things.

I will try to update this post as things change and get improved and so on.

I will also when I feel it is ready for a first alpha test for people to try/play, post a link to download it I'm hoping sometime soon.

There will be a change-log kept below this post.

As I think of new types of posts to make I will make a new post and try to organize information there as well.

I will need a TON of help balancing things as well as people from the Factorio community helping to decide different directions of the mod s that it is playable and fun and not just ridiculous or too easy.

SOO now on to what the mods are about.

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First mod - Hunger/Food mod
This mod goes along with the core of my main mods that I am developing.
There will be a hunger mechanic that shows with a bar on the top left (maybe moved later at some point) that goes down as you get more hungry. If you eat, different types of foods will increase the bar by more.

At least for now, you will be required to enable it in game with a command, I'll include information about that command once I release it to play.

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Second mod - Age of Factorio
The bulk of why I want to develop mods for Factorio. This mod changes the way recipes/research and many things work in Factorio. I love the things that people have done with various mods I've tried many of them and gone through so many hours playing with them. This has gotten me to want to try to create a really big mod that really does what I'd love to see and play in Factorio. I hope you all like and enjoy this as much as I will when it is more finished/playable.

The concept is this: You start in a low tech level/age such as Wood Age (that is what it is for now but I'm thinking of how I might change/improve upon the idea). You then progress using that ages lab which uses materials based on that particular age. Then to research to the next age, you use items that you researched (not all just some that make sense) in that ages lab to research the next age.

This goes on to the Stone age, then iron, then steel then industrial then oil, then science, etc. However those ages and they work currently as I have them now I'm undecided if its the best way to do it or the best way to organize ages. I'm still deciding/figuring it out.

This is why the first mod I listed the food/hunger mod goes along with this well. People will not be required to use that mod but it will go along with the whole, survival aspect of the first part of the game. You can research weapons and for instance age 1 has Javelins (at current status of the mod) and you shoot them and it shoots in a direction, they fire slowly and the javelin bolts go slowly through the air and do not go far, also do not hold that many in the pouch.

Then they go to age 2 weapon the bow and arrow which are better and more damage. The idea is progression but things can get more and more expensive as you go through the ages, but will be getting more and more tools to automate and help you do the jobs you were starting out doing manually. Age 1 you do everything manually.

So as you can see this is a big project and will require lots of hours to balance and figure out what makes most sense for everything. I would love constructive criticism as well as ideas (that aren't just negative nonsense) towards the helping of improving this mod. I think of this project as a sort of community involvement project as people can contribute to various aspects of it, including simple things like shooting an idea across for new techs/items/entities and so on. To even giving new sounds/graphics and so on for help with the mod development process. None of that is required of course but it is simply encouraged by me for anyone who may want to contribute what they are able if they feel they want to contribute.

I have been working on this mod almost nonstop for over a week now and I think I am learning a whole lot about modding Factorio and getting pretty good progress.

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Modular mods
I plan on making the mods a part of some modular process, meaning you can add in certain aspects of the mod, and easily disable different parts that you do not like and only play the different kinds/parts that you do want to play with. This will also hopefully include compatibility mods that work with other mods out there developed by other people. So for example, Treefarm or Dytech or other mods I would love to add compatibility to them in the Age of Factorio. They would have to go along with the process and the way the research works so it'd be a big undertaking balancing and including different aspects of other mods from a modular mod to connect to my mods. Either way, it sounds like a good plan and possibility.

Changelog:

Quickstart manual:

Hello, I just saw this post and it's indeed very similar to my idea described in my "greg-tech for factorio" post. The concept is even much improved on what I had in mind. As for the suggested "stone age", I think an example of a machine for that age would be a pulley system to move items. This would be very limited because the player would have to be at one end of the pulley for the items to move along the rope that's linking one wheel to another. I think it would be easiest to have its placement similar to that of a power line (with the exception of it moving items instead of power and only doing so when the player is near a "pulley segment" and is using it). I believe this won't be very easy to code, so I'd try working on getting the basics down first. But it's a suggestion for an early form of automation if you're running low on ideas. But keep working on it and I believe it will be one of the best mods I've played.
P.S. One concern I have is with the aliens: I'm worried that they will be too strong and overpower the player while they're still in the wood age. I'd recommend severely limiting the aliens at least for the first few ages or so. I normally play on peaceful anyways because I'm still pretty new to Factorio, but if I decide that peaceful isn't challenging enough anymore, I don't want to become overwhelmed by biters before I even have a turret down.

Well, biters and so on will be changed over time I'm slowly working on things piece by piece haha. The thing is, the starting ages you wouldn't want to go around attacking or getting next to bases of aliens. And you wont really be polluting much of anything (if anything) in the wood age. So I do not even think they would come to attack your base when you're not polluting anything. I could be wrong, I'm still learning how all the code works .

Good idea on the pulley system thing. I'd have to enlist the help of others to try to tackle that kind of code, as I am still learning to code/script and so on with Factorio.

Also, if you have any other kinds of ideas please let me know. Or ways to improve/balance things.

Actually, I just thought of some more ideas for some early game water mechanics: a water tower that soaks up water from the atmosphere (or just makes it appear so by making water slowly accumulate in an internal storage) and can be used later as a low-capacity liquid storage tank as well as an idea for an aqueduct that has an internal storage worth half as much as the highest volume of all of the adjacent aqueducts (so for example: if an aqueduct is placed between 2 other aqueducts (one of which has 4 units of water) to connect them, then the newly placed aqueduct would have room for 2 units of water. If there are no aqueducts nearby, it should have a capacity of 0). The second idea would likely be very difficult to code while the first one would be much easier. If I have anymore ideas, I'll let you know.
By the way, would you rather me PM you my ideas or continue post them on here? There are some pros and cons to both, so I'll leave it up to you. Anyways, keep it up. I'll look forward to this mod's release.