Factorio Forums

Hi, and sorry if this is not the right place to post this.
Me and my friend some times ago tried to mess around with science after we had an idea. What if science do not depend by packs but by times.
The basic idea was to have 1 lab that could be upgraded and various chip. Chips had various tiers. Higher the Tier higher the chance for the Chip to not burn and the faster the Lab works. Also cooling. We would love for the Lab to have a water or coolant intake to work.

The problem was that, while looking into the Modding guides and development tools we didn't find a way to rework labs to have different inputs or to accepts something different that normal item.

Now my question is: It is possible to change how the Lab works in the game? And to what extreme?

There are a number of mods which use a reskinned chest, and have a script do "stuff" with what is inside. This and I presume a dummy pipe/tank may allow the interface to function.

It is possible for a script to unlock a technology, and probably see what science is being researched.

You could try changing the power source for the lab. You can make it use solid fuels, liquid fuels or heat iirc. You can place entities around or below the lab to convert things around.

For example you can have an assembler there that has a recipe that takes a chip as ingredient and outputs a chip with 90% probability as well as a bit of fuel. The fuel you dump into the lab to make it run and the chip you stuff back into the ingredient slot (using hidden inserters). Make it a furnace and you can have recipes for different tires of chips and the game will pick the right recipe for you.