Hi all, i had a cool idea for a mod, and any thoughts or feedback is welcome...
Background Story:
Another fellow team has crashed here and needs assistance to form a colony before they get overrun. (we basically agree to help each other out, and we get prestige reward points)
How it works:
Once we have a logistics network in place, and more than a certain amount of mixed items inside it, the mod starts.
We get an icon that can pop up a window and be minimised again, a bit like the Status objectives from the spacex mod.
Insde it, appear random requests, like "need to send them a Package of Coal" (made from 3000 coal pieces),
or they need 2000 Speed Module 8's.
and later on, another random request appears, like "need to send them a Shipment of Oil Barrels" (made from 90000 crude oil barrels)
or something like this with an easily searchable word (like Package, or Shipment)
BUT, these missions will (optionally) time out and expire, (but still have plenty of time, maybe it lasts 2 weeks in game, or a month in game for larger requests)
Main Reasons for thinking up this mod:
- it could be fun
- also when you have a decent large base,
- and most of the research is completed
- and you are easily halfway through the spacex mod
- but still have tons of sodium hydroxide (courtesy of angels mods)
and lots and lots of other stuff like barrels of oil, or biocrude barrels, and light oil and plastic etc- then this gives us a way to randomly, try to fulfill particular request to help the colony, where we actually do have to start doing a bit more planning, in order to fulfill the requests,
for example, if we need to send them 50,000 bottled petroleum gas, we might need to do the following with our various resources:
1) optimise crude oil extractions further (maybe by making more beacons and modules to put in them)
2) crack more heavy or light oils to get more petroleum gas
3) if we have those synthhetic mods, we might have to build more greenhouses, to grow more trees, to get more wood, to get more planks, to get more biocrude oil, to mix and generate more crude oil, to get more petroleum gas.
4) we might have to expand to get more iron ore, to make iron powder, to get iron oxide, to get synthetic oil, to turn into even more crude oil to speed up crude oil production, for gas.
5) maybe some other things or other mods like caustic processing can help further...
.....and this is just for 1 particular quest of sending them a shipment of 50k petroleum gas bottles
another example could also be where you have a lot of unused items, from a lower level of technology, such as Electric Pole Mk1, or logistic robot flying frames mark1, which you have not needed to use, and if you suddenly have to send massive shipments of iron plates or something, it could encorage us to start using the Recycler mod and start turning 80% of the unused items back into basic plates or something similar.
also, if you have bin bims Black Market mod, you can even also use that to sell some spare extra stocks of items, to get pirate trader credits and use that to help you buy what you need if you dont have enough in stock. (in one of my games, ive been using it to bottle up and sell spare Oxygen red bottles,, once i get more than 500 in stock, plus a few other items, for months of in-game time, and only managed to get about 550 million trader credits.... which is very good for smaller items ,but is only about enough to get 2 of the spacex items for one of its objectives, as they cost about 250million each
that was my idea for a mod, to help us be able to use up excess stocks of items, while doing more quests
but i dont know how to code it lol
Things that probably would need doing to help make this mod:
- a dependency on the player activating the mod, by way of an easy to complete technology research entry.
- hooks into the games timer (to keep track of days or months that go by in game terms)
- an icon to click on, like "CQ" to toggle the Colony Quests window.
- a Colony Quests window that pops up with some text inside it. (maybe it can also show some in game small icons of items, like a Barrel of Crude oil, if that was a relevant quest)
- a way for the mod to access or identify each and every item that the player has access to, (maybe including those locked behind research too?)
- a way to pick out some of these items randomly and show them as quests.
- maybe a way for the game to calculate how many of those items we already have in the logistics network, and multiply it by 3 or something, so that it is challenging - or it can be progressively challenging)
- some new recipes for crafting all the particular quest items, into a Shipment Package, (maybe something in the Item Compression mods can help, like when they turn a larger amount of iron ore into a compressed bundle for later decompression? but i havent tried those yet)
- a way for the mod to keep track of how many quests are completed, a bit like the rocket score counting mod)
- a way to let the player choose to have quests expire more quickly, or last for much much longer
- and a way to keep track of rewards the player gets from quests. (maybe as an item in the shape of a yellow star or something?)
by the way, please can this also be done for version 0.14 of factorio? all of my mods and campaign is working nicely in this version and a lot of the mods are only for v0.14 too
Perhapse another aspect of the mod, could also be to establish mini colonies, but doing so would also require Regular Shipments of supplies, like a Colony Supply Pack (cps), where 1 CPS is made up of say Large amount of Metals, like Iron, Steel, Copper, and Gold etc, as well as a large batch of other materials like organics (Wood, Water etc, maybe even Biter Steaks if you play with alien waste-related mods, like Alien goop can make alien candy nutrient packs)
and then a mini game take place, where it is not only about launching as many rockets as you can, but also seeing how many Colonies can you set up, and also how many can you successfully sustain ?
If anyone is able and willing to give it a go please do feel free and i help out as much as i can too.