Bio-based chemical feedstocks

[Thylacoloe]

The idea would be to have Bio-based chemical feed stocks from things like wood, starch, sugars, algae. Could be water farms, or land crops, or algal ponds. Could just chop trees down and ferment them. Aim is to grow biomass that can then be converted back into the basic chemical feed stocks that can then fit into the rest of the production system.

Just as solar panels (& nuclear power) would be alternatives to burning coal. I thought this would make a low pollution alternative to oil wells. An extension of this is if the evolution/aggression of the native life was linked to the level of pollution. then this could be a way of surviving more harmoniously with the wild life. There could be a trade off here between the low material cost and efficiency of oil based (with pollution/aggression cost) vs bigger investment lower efficiency bio processes (that have lower pollution and are better for the natives).

The only addition would be biomass and ethanol, everything could be produced from there.

Biomass --fermented--> ethanol & CO2
Ethanol --??--> polyethylene (plastic)
Ethanol --??--> bio diesel (light oil) + CO2
light oil --??--> heavy oil + C02 --??--> lubricant

It'd all produce a lot of CO2 as the O is stripped off and the carbon chains get longer, but that could be interesting trying to not vent that and add to pollution.

The only thing would be the source for sulfur, and that could be done by a bacterial digestion of coal. It would consume a decent amount of coal, so would be inefficient, but h would give you another use for it if the player went full solar and it wasn't being used for power generation.

Overall, the idea would be to have a less oil based approach to game play that while less efficient would provoke less of a response from the local environment.

[UberWaffe]

An interesting addition to this idea could be to make parts of this process consume pollution, and in fact produce more when pollution is higher.
Example: Faster feed stock growth in high pollution environments. Such as genetically modified pollution eating algae... that can't possibly run amock and consume the entire environment... No refunds.

Note: Unlike biter bases they should only 'eat' a small number + "a % of the total pollution in a chunk". So you can't just use them as total scrubbers and pollute as you wish anyway.

That could lead to some interesting choices between intentional pollution generation for high yield, or just additional pairing with things like efficiency modules for even more pollution reduction.
Or at the very least placement, in that you would want your feedstock farms as close to the parts of your factory that spit out the most pollution.

Sidenote: Rescaled evolution factor makes the alien's evolution more tied to total pollution, allowing you to reduce the alien's evolution by polluting less. As opposed to in the vanilla game where you cannot reduce evolution factor, just make is increase more slowly.

[ssilk]

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=14638 Producing food / Herbalism / Health

[Thylacoloe]

@ UberWaffe: That's exactly how I'm thinking too, having green options to give you control over the level of hostility through your actions. You currently can control how many spawners you kill, and how you generate power, but you can't minimise your pollution when it comes to plastic production. It'd be nice to bring down the hostility as you expand, and give you a way of co-existent playing. This could be particularly important if introduce the scaling the size of the deposits and the numbers/size of biters as you spread further from the starting location, as the mentioned in one of the dev reports recently. So this would give you a method of managing the large populations rather than just massacring them.
It you follow this line of thought, you could also consider non-leathal ways of managing attacks such as baits to lead them away or placate them. The downside to not killing them could be that they just accumulate, so if you do agro them later you are forced to face an even larger force.

Another thread to this is, biomass is biomass, sugars and cellulose are easy to generate and environmentally friendly, but you could use the biters themselves. It'd give you something to do with the mounds of bodies that accumulate out side your base. You could have the robots fly out to pick them up and throw them into a composter/digester to turn them into food for bacteria, that then feeds into your plastic and syn-gas production. (more infor look up the production of polyhydroxyalkanoates)
To me this could give the player an interesting turning point, where it takes some time to set up the digeters and the animal processing capabilities, but at that point you might deliberately aggravate the biters to that the player can use them as an incoming resource. Along with harvesting and growing forest materials for biomass, this could turn into a maximally exploitative approach to playing. Where not only do you pillage the planets mineral/fossel resources, but you also denude it of living resources. I imagine that taking this approach should attract an equally maximally hostile response from the environment. Which could be fun if you knew it was coming.

I like the high technology in the game particularly the robotics and suit modifications, but I think it's missing the biotechnology aspects of what might be possible for the same level of technological development. I don't think it has a place in the early game, as that's got its own thing happening. But there are so many late game directions you could take it if you unlocked advanced bio-tech. There's a whole late game tech tree that could come from 'researching soil biochemistry' to develop your own modified plants to grow in the native soil (similarly with water eccology if you had water farms). The hostile opposite of 'adapting' would be to 'terraform' the soils and water to your own plants.
For example, in addition to the processing biotech stuff that's been mentioned above. You could also research options to produce you're your own army of biters, spread them to replace the native population and act as a buffer to your facilities. Or grow your own static defenses, this could work well withe the bioprocessing if you had your own fast growing forests, acting to slow down attacks wile being a source of biomass.

So, I get that the game is massive already, which is why I was drawn to it. But now I've played a few maps the later stages of the game, I found I was looking for something. Biotech could be a really interesting late game mechanics, particularly if the story goes towards staying on the planet and either conquering it (terraform) or coexisting (adaption) rather than trying to escape it (space suttle).

[Kelidoskoped]

As long as I can pump a biter cow full of hormones and use it to fuel the Evil Factory of Abused Biters. Read: poop is good fuel. Feed biter mush, biter poops.

[Thylacoloe]

As long as I can pump a biter cow full of hormones and use it to fuel the Evil Factory of Abused Biters.

So long as for every goody-two-shoes method of playing is balanced by an unbalanced absolutely evil approach, I think it'll be ok. More options to play are usually a good thing provided they don't break the game.

As much as I like the idea of making use of all the bodies that pile up, I think I like the idea of bio-processing options even better. Particularly if you're trying to channel that buildcraft-esk oil management, bioprocessing fermentation/digesters/bioreactors plants would slot right into that.

[YasP]

I was thinking along those lines, so that became the BioTech mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/SlopppyE ... ng/BioTech