Speaking of playing the game the way you want ...

[SilentLight]

Still playing my 'default' settings free-build, got past my first rocket, and as I continue I really do not want to destroy a large forested area or cover up the water I need room but I just can bring myself to wipe out a large area of trees. I might be forced to only play games with less % of trees (and water) in the future. Thought someone might get a kick out of this.

[Nemo4809]

I kind of wish they would let us plant trees ... but I suppose that's kind of pointless since our pollution will cause them to wither anyway.

PS: Also not sure why they wouldn't let us remove landfill. Technical limitation?

[Hannu]

How about trainworld. You can find suitable smaller areas and build separate factories, like smelteries which take in ore and coal and produce plates, green circuit factory, which takes iron and copper plates and produces circuits, powerplants which takes in coal or nuclear fuel cells and some kind of headquarters or main base which takes in plates and intermediates and produce production and logistic entities. Then connect factories to one large train network.

I play always so, not to protect trees but in my opinion it is more realistic and interesting solution than single massive factory which takes ores in and produces science. However, it is hard to achieve extreme throughputs with train world. If you pursue high production rate, I recommend to increase wagon capacity (I usually triple or quadruple it) to get more realistic train traffic instead of toy like vanilla operations.

[planetmaker]

Still playing my 'default' settings free-build, got past my first rocket, and as I continue I really do not want to destroy a large forested area or cover up the water I need room but I just can bring myself to wipe out a large area of trees. I might be forced to only play games with less % of trees (and water) in the future. Thought someone might get a kick out of this.

Sounds like a lovely limitation on where and how to build - nothing wrong with that at all! You will need to expand into more extended areas - and you might want to consider many efficiency modules, or your precious wood will die quickly due to pollution whereever it is in the vicinity of your base.

I kind of wish they would let us plant trees ... but I suppose that's kind of pointless since our pollution will cause them to wither anyway.

PS: Also not sure why they wouldn't let us remove landfill. Technical limitation?

Tree planting: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/TreeSaplings
Digging canals: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/CanalBuilder

Allowing players to build canals is an too-easy defence against biters in default game: they cannot pass through and would allow to build undestroyable defences, if you build the canal far out so that no spitter can attack anything of value.

[Freddie Chopin]

Allowing players to build canals is an too-easy defence against biters in default game: they cannot pass through and would allow to build undestroyable defences, if you build the canal far out so that no spitter can attack anything of value.

That's a valid point, however I think that most of the requests to "remove landfill" are for cases like building nuclear reactors (where it's very good to have water input at very exact spots in the middle of it, but it's hard to measure up-front) or maybe fixing some previous mistakes (you filled something only to find 3 hours later that it would be much better if placed 2 tiles to the left). There's also a significant difference between "place water everywhere" and "remove landfill", which is more like "restore water".

It's hard to balance, as it would probably allow some "novel" defense tactics /;

[Nemo4809]

Allowing players to build canals is an too-easy defence against biters in default game: they cannot pass through and would allow to build undestroyable defences, if you build the canal far out so that no spitter can attack anything of value.

Well, what I meant was specifically landfill - i.e. land that the player added. So no removal of land placed by the map generator. It would allow us to fix mistakes.

PS: Landfill already has a different color, so the game clearly knows which ground tiles are landfill so identifying them for removal shouldn't be a problem.

[leadraven]

Allowing players to build canals is an too-easy defence against biters in default game: they cannot pass through and would allow to build undestroyable defences, if you build the canal far out so that no spitter can attack anything of value.

Well, what I meant was specifically landfill - i.e. land that the player added. So no removal of land placed by the map generator. It would allow us to fix mistakes.

PS: Landfill already has a different color, so the game clearly knows which ground tiles are landfill so identifying them for removal shouldn't be a problem.

Unfortunately, It will also allow player to create isolated islonds.

[Nemo4809]

Allowing players to build canals is an too-easy defence against biters in default game: they cannot pass through and would allow to build undestroyable defences, if you build the canal far out so that no spitter can attack anything of value.

Well, what I meant was specifically landfill - i.e. land that the player added. So no removal of land placed by the map generator. It would allow us to fix mistakes.

PS: Landfill already has a different color, so the game clearly knows which ground tiles are landfill so identifying them for removal shouldn't be a problem.

Unfortunately, It will also allow player to create isolated islonds.

True. But it will be islands with no resources though. You are still going to have to have external outpost for resource gathering.

Not to mention that you can kind of already do this leaving just a one tile opening that you can make the focus of all your firepower.

[Ringkeeper]

Allowing players to build canals is an too-easy defence against biters in default game: they cannot pass through and would allow to build undestroyable defences, if you build the canal far out so that no spitter can attack anything of value.

Well, what I meant was specifically landfill - i.e. land that the player added. So no removal of land placed by the map generator. It would allow us to fix mistakes.

PS: Landfill already has a different color, so the game clearly knows which ground tiles are landfill so identifying them for removal shouldn't be a problem.

Easy solution for that (there is a mod for it even): Let pumps be build anywhere.... done. Which make other things then trivial. Guess there is no easy solution.

[planetmaker]

Allowing players to build canals is an too-easy defence against biters in default game: they cannot pass through and would allow to build undestroyable defences, if you build the canal far out so that no spitter can attack anything of value.

Well, what I meant was specifically landfill - i.e. land that the player added. So no removal of land placed by the map generator. It would allow us to fix mistakes.

PS: Landfill already has a different color, so the game clearly knows which ground tiles are landfill so identifying them for removal shouldn't be a problem.

Unfortunately, It will also allow player to create isolated islonds.

That is possible to do right now, too. Honestly I don't see how the possibility to remove landfill allows for creations which you cannot end up with otherwise: also now it is possible to build islands within water and placing whatever stuff on it - having it built by bots. You will need to supply them with either bots - or with belts which exercise a kind of island-hopping. Do I miss anything obvious?

It's already possible to create blueprints which contain the ground tiles, that is include the landfill for tiles where landfill has been used. Thus in essence you can create blueprints which build perfectly-shaped islands for whatever you want to place on water. I recently spent quite some time in creating such blueprints to extend my roboport network seamlessly over water, while retaining as much water as possible (thus only building the tiles for roboport + adjacent power pole)

[leadraven]

Allowing players to build canals is an too-easy defence against biters in default game: they cannot pass through and would allow to build undestroyable defences, if you build the canal far out so that no spitter can attack anything of value.

Well, what I meant was specifically landfill - i.e. land that the player added. So no removal of land placed by the map generator. It would allow us to fix mistakes.

PS: Landfill already has a different color, so the game clearly knows which ground tiles are landfill so identifying them for removal shouldn't be a problem.

Unfortunately, It will also allow player to create isolated islonds.

That is possible to do right now, too. Honestly I don't see how the possibility to remove landfill allows for creations which you cannot end up with otherwise: also now it is possible to build islands within water and placing whatever stuff on it - having it built by bots. You will need to supply them with either bots - or with belts which exercise a kind of island-hopping. Do I miss anything obvious?

It's already possible to create blueprints which contain the ground tiles, that is include the landfill for tiles where landfill has been used. Thus in essence you can create blueprints which build perfectly-shaped islands for whatever you want to place on water. I recently spent quite some time in creating such blueprints to extend my roboport network seamlessly over water, while retaining as much water as possible (thus only building the tiles for roboport + adjacent power pole)

Wow, you are right! I didn't realize that player can create fully-functional islands with robots

[Hannu]

Easy solution for that (there is a mod for it even): Let pumps be build anywhere.... done. Which make other things then trivial. Guess there is no easy solution.

Water channels make powerplants and oil refineries much more nice and natural looking. I would suggest (this is old suggestion made by others before me) that biters could swim over shallow water with slow speed. Cost and speed of digging and slowing factor could be balanced so that trench digging would be one option to strengthen the defense lines. You could save in turrets and ammo by using resources to dig trench.

[Beamup]

Wow, you are right! I didn't realize that player can create fully-functional islands with robots

Or even without, as long as you're willing to work within the engineer's reach. Can't make very BIG islands this way, true, but they can be plenty big enough for, oh, say, turrets. And a supply line for them running far enough around the edge of a lake to be secure.

As for canals, well, shallow water is already implemented. My thought would be to allow placement (probably a costly explosives-based item representing blasting out the canal) of it, but only adjacent to existing water... and if it ceases to be connected to deep water, it dries up. That'd preclude abuses pretty well, I think. You couldn't just plop it down anywhere, nor could you make it isolated to only the tiles you want. But you can, with work, make water available where you want it. And the drying up bit would probably be the only thing that needs any interesting amount of new coding.

[Shadowhenge]

I would like this but would suggest the ability to create any of the normal creative mode tiles and tree type entities. It would have to have some steep requirements, however. Call it terraforming and provide a tool for it that can only be obtained at a cost of 10,000 space science. That way it's far enough out so as not to provide much of an advantage compared to the biter management required to get to it. (10k space science isn't something you can just bee-line at the beginning.) Also put in other requirements like you can build a canal, but you have to pump in the water to fill it from another body of water and it takes time and REALLY pisses off the biters. Same for trees. You have to build a greenhouse to produce saplings but it has to be in an area with 0 pollution or the delicate plants die off. It therefore needs to be farther from your base and likely less defended. It won't aggro nearby biters, either unless you get too close and stir them up. Maybe even research multiple levels that require military research and whole terraforming gameplay can emerge such as lush growth bombs and even a star trek nod in "genesis" artillery shells that make entire areas lush and forested while destroying biters in the process. You have to admit... that late in the game biters are just annoying and not really a threat anymore (as they shouldn't be). Having entertaining new ways of dispatching them may encourage more people to leave them on.