Factorio Forums

Gears are iconic and in the logo of the game, and it's so satisfying to see stuff moving around the the factory. But in the game the gears are only recipe items.
So I propose an mod that ad gears and drive shafts as "buildings" that transmit torque and rotation. We could for example make electricity production a little bit more complicated with an Boiler -> pipe -> Steam engine -> drive shaft -> electric generator. It's a little strange that you get electricity direct from steam engines.
Where does the gears get into the picture? If the drive shafts have both Torque and speed we could make it so you need to gear up or down the speed of the drive shafts for the contraption to be effective, or use gears for 90° turns for the drive shaft.

I agree. It would be neat to have gears and drive shafts in the base game or an expansion somehow. Plus air with pneumatic power. I think you'd need a new and unique set of buildings to power with these energy forms, though. What can you do with drive shaft or pneumatic power that isn't better done with electricity?

I believe the Youki Industries mod adds the concept of shafts.

Having a mechanical power system isn't a new idea. Even breaking the steam engine into two, Steam engine = steam to mechanical energy -> Generator = mechanical energy to electricity has been suggested before.

It's not something that can easily be added to a mod without better support in the base game, and that would need support from the devs.

I was just thinking along a similar line to this but with the idea of electricity completely removed on place of mechanical energy.

But.... coming back up after writing all of this makes me think... parts 1-3 would just be replacing power poles with animated shafts and gears that actually just conduct electricity invisibly...

1. Power generation is replaced with turbines that drive a shaft.
1a. A difficult difference would be they are full speed when no load and slow as there is more load. (?)
2. Shafts are prepared similar to pipes without liquid. Bends are gears. They rotate always at the speed of the turbines.
2a. One or two shared variable across of all machines connected to a single shaft, like electricity is.
3. Building that used electricity now use energy off the shaft at the same rate as they would use electricity.
4. (optional) If a shaft has too much load then, unlike electricity, it just stops rotating. Oh no!

Now the difficult part:
5. Modules are completely replaced also. With Gears on the shaft!
5a. Speed up the exit shaft for more speed on the users. Gear up to double speed uses double energy on drive shaft.
5b. More powerful mining might be a speed down/power up case?
5c. Not sure about the rest.