Factorio Forums

Water.
Water is the only one in-game resouce, that can not be over.
How you look at it, to change the concept of this? Make water liquid in-game resource, which may result in.

You can build large amount of Steam engines with one or more Offshore Pumps, are on the small puddle or in the lake is less than the average. It's not logical.

Make limited water. And at start phase of game you will need to build your base near a large lake or ocean. Or if you choose small one, prepare to build more pipes to your base from the nearest water source.

But after a lot of time, you will need to expand the base, or the construction of outposts for the extraction of water from other sources. As it is currently working with the Coal, Iron and Copper ores.

Do not make the water resource, which ends quickly (at least in the early stages of the game), but it should be a limited resource. And with infinitely generated map, no one should encounter problems with a lack of water.

If water could be used up we'd also need rain or rivers, for why would there be water somewhere in the first place otherwise? This could be simulated by making water tiles slowly regain water over time, but would it actually bring much gameplay wise?

Rivers could make for an interesting addition given that they could work as natural walls, but we'd really need bridges too, or rivers would break the game.

Rivers and Bridges it's a great idea!

But think about the small lake, from which the water is pumped continuously to your factory.

After a while, the water may end. And that's what I'm talking about.

And with a condesator you could pump it back (as a higher tech level machine).

Thinking about it, it could be used to cool your engines and machines... which in turn would heat the water like a boiler... and if hot enough, you could lead it back to your steam engine...

slowly draining water .. hmm.. could be interesting.

Wouldn't it then also make sense to pump water from one lake to another one?

how would such lake expand or shrink? Factorio, at least to my knowledge, doesn't have any relief or elevations.

I am totally against that idea, because it would just end up being a way to push players to rush solar power, not having much choices in the matter.
I personally like that you can choose to either use coal and pollute a lot, or go solar, for a higher base and space cost, but less pollution.
If you push players to abandon steam, because they need to find an other water/coal combo every once in a while, all you are doing is restricting the gameplay choices.

Also, apart from a few recipes (sulfur), water is used as steam, meaning it's released right around the place it's been pumped from.
After a bit, it cools down and goes back to the lake.
At least, that's how I see it, and it makes enough sense to me to not break it.

This could add an interesting new mechanic to the game, I'm all for it.

For the guys worried about lakes running dry, there is steam from the engines which when cooled would run back to nearby lakes.

You could also route unused water(That didn't turn to steam, for example) back to a lake with pipes to keep its levels up, maybe a little polluted to add another level to pollution levels? Also of course, if polluted water is used in steam engines it would add even more pollution to the air.

That would add another mechanic for people that like to keep pollution levels under control, so maybe they could build something like a water treatment centre to fix polluted water?

To conclude, I love this idea if done properly.

Big "against" from me here.
Water is not used up by steam engines, merely vaporized. It should come back eventually.
Also, we have enough totally-non-renewable resources that mandate expansion. So far water is unique as the only truly infinite resource.

Limited regenerating water could be nice, though. It could also result in self-regulating lake usage: shallow water would lower pump output, so water could reach an equilibrium.

More ideas to consider: aquifers (expensive aquifer pumps for more convenient base layout), air moisture (aggravates pollution if it already exists, but moist unpolluted = jungle), water purification plant (only makes sense with water pollution), salt water, pressure cutters (module for assembly that lets it eat water for better speed/efficiency/productivity).

AFAIK steam power plants use water from rivers/lakes only for cooling in those huge towers. The water that is actually turned into steam is in a closed circuit. I've heard that if you put this hot water back into the river, you would basically kill all life in it for several kilometers downstream.

Steam plants afaik use distilled water for steam. The Nuclear reactors require some fancy stuff between reactor core and heat exchanges where distilled water is used again.

cube and Garn are right:
Electric generators of all kind (but especially those in nuclear peer plants) work with a closed circuit cooling system (or actually several of them, to prevent contamination of the environment). The huge cooling towers where water from rivers etc. is vaporized are only the last station in the whole process. And yes, putting in the hot water directly would turn any river into a huge boiling soup, which happened at times (afaik a french power plant had to emergency-release hot water into the rhine in the 70s, killing the river almost down to Rotterdam). The huge amount of heat are also used to supply closer cities and towns with cheap heating.

cube wrote:AFAIK steam power plants use water from rivers/lakes only for cooling in those huge towers. The water that is actually turned into steam is in a closed circuit. I've heard that if you put this hot water back into the river, you would basically kill all life in it for several kilometers downstream.

Pfffffffft like I care.

Exactly one third of Chemical plants for the production uses water resources. Not only one Steam engine, which everyone here mentioned. Steam engines produces steam (dirty steam, that pollutes your base and attracts Biters, as main dev idea), which then turns into a water. And allows you to use this water again (it is not realized, but it means).

I'm just looking at this bit of logic, and endless water is not in this list.
For your huge base, you can use this smallest bottomless lake. But you can use oceans of water, for supply water to your base. With endless resources of water, it does not matter.