Factorio Forums

Basically just the title. Me and Lovely_Santa have been discussing developing our own mods that introduce more complexity and interesting mechanics around the rocket science in the game. If for example we want to create a small launch pad we have all the control over how we want to go about crafting the rocket itself.

But once the rocket is complete the payload slot is free for anyone to put anything in there. Generally this is good for other mods, adds some wacky production goals and challenges to the game but in the case where launching a small payload gives 1 space pack and launching a large payload gives 1000. We don't want you to launch the massive payload in the small rocket.

So therefore I'd like to request a payload_category so that we can filter what goes into various rockets. Also, the rocket payload input slot doesn't have a flag as far as I can tell so its limited to 1. If this could also be added it would allow putting multiple different payloads, which could be worked around with merged items but feels weird.

+1

I'm not seeing the utility of adding such a property. If the player puts something useless in the rocket it just does nothing - which itself discourages players from putting the "wrong" thing in the rocket.

It is about having different tiers of rockets.

A small rocket for example can lift only small payloads.

The bigger rocket for example (that costs more to produce) can lift big payloads and obviously also small payloads.

The way it is now, every rocket can shoot all items, for example the small rocket can also lift the large payload.
The reason for this, for example a small payload gives a small amount of space science packs, and a big payout gives a larger amount of space science packs.

Its about making rockets more costly, but giving more space science back, resulting in an increased efficiency.
So the reward of putting it in the rocket is indeed fixed on the item, but disabling the reward on the different tiers of rockets is impossible. Just like we have different tiers of assemblers for making thougher recipes (aka more ingredients) we want to make different rockets for thougher rewards. This feature would add the ability to disable to put higher tier items into easier rockets. (for example disable auto crafting of a rocket silo in a mk1 assembler thats not possible)

The other use I would use this for is for having specific rockets to shoot specific stuff into space, thinking about space extension, shooting stuff to different planets