Problem that it would make them obsolete from the beginning of the game
Well, I didn't specify which exact tech level they'd appear at. Kinda assuming things a bit here?
Whats more complex and mentally burdening? having 4 basic tools, that in different combinations do whatever you desire, or having 1 complex tool for each task?
I'm sorry, the tool proposed is complex?
Are we talking about the same thing here?
I thought I was talking about a splitter, that splits two sides of the belt in a simple fashion.
These kind of suggestions add more and more tools to the game which would eventually turn into same problem modded minecraft has now: theres literally tool for anything, but players end up keeping wikis always open to constantly refresh their memory about what this particular tool does.
My problem was never really knowing what a tool does, but rather the recipe to make it. I'm not in complete agreement with the recipe system in Minecraft, because it doesn't really seem to scale well.
Minecraft also suffers from a severe lack of in-game documentation - it does in fact bother me that you have to go to wikis and such to find crafting recipes.
Although I did leave Minecraft shortly after release - it didn't really keep my interest.
I really don't think Factorio's basic tools are anywhere near the level of having so many it's hard to keep track of, at least at the tech levels I've played.
You're playing the hyperbole / slippery slope card here. We're not asking for 100+ more machines to be added. You're being disingenuous with the request by drawing an artificial and arbitrary line where you're essentially saying "only what's already in should exist, and no more."
But we already have a hammer, and nail
I think we don't. And I really don't see how the entire metaphor you gave applies, sorry.
I do.
Then we make it cheap
.
You need to argue about something other than the price, because I am flexible either way. You don't have a valid point, because I never said I was gonna stand on a certain price. You invented that straw man to make me wrong somehow.
Any way you argue about the price, I can always argue "okay, we set a different price then." I have no vested interest in any particular price. Price is merely a straw man here.
problem is - the resources in this game are super cheap.
Cheap, but limited. Running out of ore in a field is, from what I can tell, a reality in this game.
Space is expensive!, even though you can expand the price of taking that space grows exponentially (walls turrets, cables, power plants, more belts, trains, avoiding obstacles, chopping trees) most of the game revolves around space management, while resources are merely a small setback.
Which makes the tool proposed actually make a lot of sense, since it is a way to manage space.
As mentioned before - you can't balance these two, they are apples and oranges of this game.
So if the relationship is a demonstrable straw man, why did you even bring it up? You're not being very coherent here.
Extra tools to simplify the process are nothing more than cheats to ease gameplay
False.
Trust me enjoyment from taking the problem and solving it yourself is much greater, than feeling when you craft another item in game, splitter or router.
I'm not suggesting we take the need to solve the problem at an earlier tech level away - we can, after all, place it at a higher tech level, where the focus is more on large scale design and optimization rather than designing individual components.
Look at KSP fr example. Docking is hard, but when you do dock for the first time you feel like king of the world...if KSP had integrated MechJeb with autodocking I' would've never experienced that feeling.
MechJeb is horrific at docking. I find it more reliable to dock manually. But that's kinda beside the point here.
With KSP now having a proper tech tree, in career mode you don't automatically have the entirety of MechJeb's functionality out of the box anymore.
In my own career mode, I haven't unlocked automated landing yet. So what do I do? I land my ships manually. Later in career mode, I'll want to focus on larger goals and objectives and not focus so much on the minutia.
Learning to dock for the first time gives great satisfaction. Docking for the 1000th time is mundane. After you've learned to dock, you've lost the "king of the world" feeling. I'm not sure what the problem is with opening up better tools if you design your tech tree carefully.