Inserters should not chase items
I kind of like the fact that you have this requirement of having to upgrade inserters once you get higher belt speeds. It shows how much your factory has increased in technology which requires you to "go with the times".
Not sure how the current system works, but would it already help UPS wise if you
just change the way the fast and stack inserters work? Since they have no problem in picking up items from fast belts. Then players could manually switch out their earlygame inserters for lategame inserters in their megabase if they want that extra performance improvement.
Blueprint import/export should be a modded feature
I agree with the reasoning.
What about disableing importing/exporting on default, then have an
option in the settings you first have to tick, only then they are available to the player. This way it is A) hidden from new players and B) is required manual "confirmation" of the player in order to use the import/export and highlight that it is an "extra feature" and should be used with care.
Weapons shouldn't lock on
I like the fact that weapons are rather simple. But I think aiming manually at the direction of the biters will be too difficult (and kind of goes against the concept of everything being "precise [damage] throughput"
However, you could increase the player interaction if you let the
player aim in a direction and everything being in a +/-30 degrees cone in front of the player character is being automatically aimed at by the game. Then the player would still have to ruffly aim into the direction he wants to attack, but we still have the homing bullets we currently have. The best of both worlds!
Biters should be more aggressive, and probe your defenses
I would like smarter biters. Maybe their
AI could evolve with their evolution level? Then the the earlygame would be less punished, but the lategame
- when the player has the resources to defend everything - more. In general it will always be a difficult balance act between being annoying/distracting from the factory building and engaging.
Maybe having a better AI would make biter attacks and defending interesting enough. But with how simple the weaponry currently is, I dont think thats possible.
The weaponry would have to be more arcadey to be fun long term. Like a Tower Defense Game with some over the top weapons.
Clearing bases should not leave you safe
I kind of disagree. This gives the player an option: Does he invest time to clear the area and maintain the area in the future, or does he just make sure everything is defended correctly? In general, you still need to defend and wall off everything, even if you clear the area, in case they expand back in. And we already have biter expansion settings, no?
Miners shouldn't output directly to belts
Maybe for Electric Miners, but how do you do burner miners? You would have to let burner inserters pick up coal from the burner's fuel slot or upgrade to yellow inserters very early. While it would add more consistency throught the game, I feel like this also gives the miners a special attribute and... feeling(?) compared to the rest of the game, which I accually like. Not everything is the exact same (production building -> inserter -> belt).
Boilers shouldn't have a water output
Could be solved with two variations of boilers. You could introduces e.g. the 1x1 boiler again but without the water output and directly output the steam opposite to the water input. This way you cant stack them anymore, but you help the new player usability. Later on, you could research the current boilers, which do have a water output. New players would know by then how it works and then have the knowledge to deal with the extra water output. So you get the best of both worlds!
Pipes should work like electricity
I mean, you could always have it as an special option on the game creation screen which would swap out the algorithm. I am sure some people dont care and would always go for the more UPS friendly algorithm, so having the option would leave it to the user to decide. Just warn the player that this will have a large gameplay impact, so that people dont accidentally tick it and are later surprised. You could also have players change the currently used algorithm later via chat commands.
Adventure mode
I always felt like there should be something out there to explore. Maybe even some
special boss biter King or Queen monsters protecting items?! Ever since the alien artifacts were removed, the world felt kind of... empty. I wouldnt complain about some
rare items, maybe even
rare Tier 4 Modules far away.
Or recipes or technologies (*cough* spidertron *cough*) that could only be crafted/researched once you find specific alien items across the land. Imo, that could also make the lategame more interesting. I think this would make for
a good DLC mod for after Factorio's launch if planned out and designed correctly.
Robots should take up space and time
Maybe. It would definitly help balance lategame combat and production. But slowing down building with personal robots would be even more annoying. My batteries are already getting drained constantly and I have to wait, so waiting for bots to build the freaking entities, I dont know about that. Like many of these changes, people used to their convenience will definitly be upset, so make them now will probably not smoothly with the community
Power-user hotkeys
Definitly! I love me more hotkeys. I always found that Factorio's hotkeys were one of the best QoL features I have seen in a game like this.
You could
unset key bindings by default and suggest a key binding for it in case the player wants to try it out. Or just use his own button combintion instead.
Mining furnaces and assembling machines should return the ingredients for the in-progress recipe
Hm. Not sure about the inner workings of the code, but the exploit does not sound hard to deal with. Just dont apply the productivity bonus when you destroy an entity and get the items back is not an option? Again, not sure how the code worked, but this sounds like an easy problem to fix on first glance.