Factorio Forums

Biomes need more variation in their contents.

Think of Minecraft and hunting emeralds for example, you need to go to specific place and start digging and eventually you'll find what you came searching for, and you might uncover some hostile surprises underground while you're at it. Can we have something like that in Factorio?

Or think of Don't Starve, having to travel to swamps where it's dangerous to stand still (because tentacles spawn from ground and attack you). Yet you need to go there to gather some resources that don't appear elsewhere. Can we have something like that?

Biome specific resources could be needed for some optional things such as more efficient power generation, special modules, some other funny stuff that helps but isn't necessary.

Keep in mind Minecraft and Don't Starve are adventure games, Factorio only borrows some elements from them, but at the core it's a game about building factories.

Stranded on an unknown planet with unknown lifeforms is definitely an adventure!

Also, at times, minecraft feels like a survival horror game and definitely not adventure/sandbox ... anyway, there's a reason it's so popular, and stealing a bit more ideas from it wouldn't probably be a bad thing.

I concur.

While Factorio is not an adventure game per se it definitely would benefit from resource variation. Current resource distribution favour greatly turtle fortifications. Personally I`ve noticed quite a dramatic difference in how i develop my defenses simply due to introduction of oil wells, scarcity of which forced me to expand much further out.

My previous expansions were much milder and usually resulted in very temporary settlements in order to extract ores nearby.

Knowing a certain biome holds greater amount of specific resource would prompt players to establish more permanent satellite bases instead of quick mix of miners with 3-4 layers of turrets, which would be scrapped as soon as ore field is exhausted.

Some expansion of biomes is planned. The problem is to make it variable enough and still playable ... it will need some work

When i was talking about resource variation, I did not specifically meant iron and copper ore fields.

"Resources" could mean many different things in factorio:

- most obvious - areas with increased resource frequency: "oil fields", areas rich in copper etc.

- "environmental effects" - places, that would give bonuses to very specific part of the factory.
1. sunlight modifiers to solar panels
2. rain modifiers to coal burning pollution
3. temperature modifiers to speed of production or ability to overheat
4. aggression modifier and biter spawn rate

I believe the second type would cause much greater factory distribution across the world compared to simple resource presence. It would encourage (but not enforce) players to build very specific parts of their base apart from each other. Base separation would promote railroad construction in turn.

To further increase specialization energy network needs to be remade and distance loss of power should be introduced, but that is another topic.

@Garm

I like your idea. It definitely promotes the use of trains as well as the creation of several satellite bases (even if it's just a power plant) plus it promotes exploration. I would also like to see a few more resource types appearing in different biomes.

+1 I wouldn't mind having variations in the world instead of the same desert and grasslands.

Satellite base for a power plant?

This got me thinking... I want thermoelectric generators in the game. Pipe water through them and then back into the sea, they'll use the temperature difference between water and air (or the difference of two water inputs?) to generate electicity. We'd need various sources of heat and cold in different biomes to make this really fun.

- "environmental effects" - places, that would give bonuses to very specific part of the factory.
1. sunlight modifiers to solar panels
2. rain modifiers to coal burning pollution
3. temperature modifiers to speed of production or ability to overheat
4. aggression modifier and biter spawn rate

Those all sound great. I like the idea of having to spread out to far away corners of the map to have a more efficient setup. Those, besides biome-dependent resource occurence, would make for a much more interesting playstyle than turtling.
If we were to have temperatures worked upon, or could just have different base temperatures for different biomes (as opposed to 15°C everywhere) this could make for interesting base building.

It would actually be pretty neat with Biomes and then temperatues effecting your machines. So if you wanna make a factory in the desert you will have to cool your stuff down, water suddenly becomes important.

Where as say if you spawn in a snow area, suddenly it will be a challenge to keep machines running and not freezing.

And weather effects would be interesting as well not just for atmosphere but again to effect the factory in some way. No i dont want my factory to rust! never!.

and unique rare resources to each biome that would encourage exploration.

In other topics, devs were speaking about '"should be some reason to explore the map".
I do agree with it. In whole, a player should have much more motivation to explore around.
I'm writing this post using impressions from 0.15.37 version of the game.

1. Different biomes, like in Alien Biomes mod, are nice to see
2. New resources, should be necessary for high end production and research
3. Aliens should not pose such a threat for a tourist on foot or in a car.

I like "Alient Biomes" mod, that adds different kinds of trees and soils, it looks very awesome, and adds lots of variety to terrain.

It will be nice too see more types of natural resources. And some of them, that are needed closer to far end of a research tree (star port, rocket parts, satellite, and higher tiers of repeatable research), should be quite rare and distant from starting location. This will give us goals to explore the map.

I was looking for mod's that are adding more resource types and change some of designs in existing tech.tree, to use those resources. To my disappointments I've found nearly none. (Maybe I missed them? Link please!).

Angel's resource refine and chemistry adds much more complex ways to reprocess existing resources. Those methods are probably much closer to realistic ore refine methods and chemical reactions, but are too complex to be fun in a game. Their % gain by using more complex method is also do not fit in a game (water flotation refine method gives about 4.5% additional "ready to smelt" iron, while for a game it should be about +50%, I think)
Bob's mods, those that adds wooden electronic boards and so on, are probably closest idea, but they are changing the game too much, I afraid.
I think current technology tree, in vanilla is good enough, but it lucks resource variety.

What I propose (not an exact design yet, more like a glimpse now).
Add several resource types. Their deposits should appear only far from starting position, and be less frequent on a map.
Aluminium (or bauxite). Use it after some refine/reprocess in 'low density structure' and some higher tier improvements for flying robots.
Some mineral (quartz sand?) should be necessary for purple circuits, maybe another one for reds too, but for reds it should not be too distant and rare.
If those resources could be connected with particular biome, and each biome area will be big enough, then, this will give a player general idea, where to looks. Sample: If I saw very small deposit (like traces of ore) of aluminium in a blue forest on a gray sand, then in my travels, I should be looking for same biome, in hope to find bigger deposit of an aluminium.

Limiting nuclear energy would be too hard for game progress now, but making nuclear weapons "hard to get" by adding another distant resource is much better, then asking for 5000 science bottles.

Alien bases and biters need slower reaction time, so when I speed on a car near them, they should just look after me, (with surprised face), and not attack my car with dozen of poisonous spits on a way.
I feel, aliens are like cross breed between worms and termites. They can react offensive way to noise and smell, like they do it now, but making them slower, closer to worms side of their origin, will make them much less troublesome for exploration on foot or in a car.
Example: in a normal game, when I was looking for a new bigger ore deposits, I went out of my base into unexplored territory, in a tank, and found that it's dangerous to stop, when I'm getting chased by "train" of so may aliens. And their bases are located so close to each other that there are no free space to stop and kill only chasing me biters, without being too close to some other base, from where another biters starting to move in my direction.

As I think, most of mentioned above features are not so hard to implement as a mod, to see how well will it work. If it already exist - let me know, please. I'm just not sure, do I have enough time and skill to try it myself.

Um not a fan of rare resources in limited biomes

Imagine if Minecraft (DYAC) diamonds generated like emeralds, only in one biometric out of 30, only 1 in each chunk, and you needed them to do any of the end goals (beacons wither fighting Dragon fighting) they'd be so rare as to make the game not complete able for people without the time to waste hunting for them

Now remember that factorio is a puzzle game and that limiting resource generation might screw with the puzzle, that in factorio you don't actually do any real exploration in the same way as minecraft (you place radar and let them scan for you then look at the map rather than go out adventuring) and the whole thing looks a little pointless.

I like the idea of more variety some of alien biomes are nice but I also find its a little tedious when ice biomes slow you down but has no benefits and that really the purple forests are exactly the same as the normal ones but different assets. FFF with concrete had a way of being more versatile variety than the current system maybe that should be applied to biomes that already exist first (but then we're already getting high res art so maybe that's planned)

I agree that the player should have more of an incentive to explore the map and that you should not always be swarmed with biter attacks whenever you explore a new map area.

I like this idea, especially the parts where factories would receive bonuses in certain areas.

Mostly though, I would like to see some mid to end game ores that only occur in specific biomes. Imagine needed magmite from a lava biome, where cooler towers are required to keep the area from overheating. At any moment, to run out of power or water would be to risk catastrophic meltdown and the solid patch of crust you built on returning to magma. In the Jungle you need something else, but torrential down pours require constant flood mitigation to keep the factory from becoming inundated.

Natural disaster mitigation could be a key part of biomes and really push the logistics planning of supplies. It fits well with factorio by producing unique and varied supply demands.

[Koub] Merged new topic into older of same subject
And deleted one auto-quote that became superfluous