Discussion about expensive infrastructure

[Hannu]

Infrastructure (miners, furnaces, assemblers, belts, inserters etc.) seems to be very cheap in Factorio, if their costs are compared to total material flows. At mid game most of the resources go to the research and at late game you can build quite a large base at the cost of couple of rockets. At least I have never had a situation in which I had to think resources when I expand something or build new things. Building of infrastructure is also very fast. I have made very large base so that I have just had one blue assembler to produce belts and inserters. I adjust machines to build entities into chests and then just take what I need. They produce everything faster than I can build things. If I make something very large (for example metal smeltery with 10 train stops, 576 steel furnaces, 1k blue belts, and 10 k concrete plates), I put couple of request chests near my work train stop, go to make something else and after that everything is ready.

I have played some building and resource management games in which building have needed more planning. Gathering of resources, allocating time for things etc. It have been somewhat annoying in some situations, but on the other hand it have been much more rewarding to get new or expanded part of my system to function. I have thought that maybe I should test how it would fit into Factorio by modding. For example blue assembler could need couple of thousands of resources and take 10 minutes to be made. That would force me to plan all expansion better.

Do anyone know such mods or have other experience or thoughts about this? I do not try to suggest that stock game should be changed to this direction. I just would like to test it personally at some game.

[MalcolmCooks]

I think what you're looking for is the Marathon Mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Afforess/marathon
I have never used it and I don't know by exactly how much it changes the game, but as far as I know it makes science and item recipes much more expensive. I think it wouldn't be difficult to adjust this mod to your own preferences either.

[Avezo]

You will probably like upcoming changes to power generation and nuclear power too, they seem to fit exactly into what you desire:
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-164

[Hannu]

I have to check that Marathon mod. If I remember, there was also a version for Bob's mods too.

I do not believe that coming updates will increase manufacturing times or resource costs of basic infrastructure entities by a factor of 100 to 1000. That would make most player's game styles impossible and most players would feel such a game very boring or annoying. But of course planned changes sound very interesting and I wait them impatiently.

[Boogieman14]

I have to check that Marathon mod. If I remember, there was also a version for Bob's mods too.

Not sure about a specific bob's marathon mod, but I'm in a game right now that combines bob's with regular marathon and that so far works pretty well. Marathon increases amounts needed on science packs 1-3, bob's replaces some of the items, so bob-specific resource consumption also gets increased.

This is a flow chart for basic electronic board at a rate of 378/min. Consumes nearly 2k copper ore per minute:

[Ohz]

I only play in Marathon, and the burning age already is few hours of gameplay before you reach a decent electric mining and little green circuit production. It is incredibly time consuming and slow, and you will make green circuits factory bigger than your classic factory.

This is 135 hours of gameplay, but I play very slowly, and rebuilt my factory few times, to try different things. I am not producing blue circuits, or even approaching the rocket stuff yet. You can reach this in 50 hours I would say. I have 12 outposts of each raw materials.

[Deadly-Bagel]

This is why I prefer Bob's Mods, it greatly increases the amount of time you spend in each phase of the game but without most of it being setting up outposts, and it's still pretty easy to get those first electric miners going. Electric furnaces on the other hand, hoo boy.

I totally redesigned my circuits module (each module is connected by trains) to make use of my electronics module, both utilise a bus approach and are both about as long as an average game bus (without the smelting). I haven't even started on t5 circuits yet because I'm yet to start making science pack 4. I've actually hit a problem where two of the components are used in high quantities and I'm not loading or supplying them quickly enough, so I need to improve train loading at the electronics module and I think try to provide a second belt of each to the circuit module.

IMO this complexity is more fun than just stamping down a bunch more of the same blueprint I've been stamping in my previous 8 games then hauling out again to take on more biters and build outposts. I could see the appeal with infinite ores I guess if I wasn't in a frame of mind for such a jump in difficulty but I usually play Halo or Path of Exile in those cases =P