Science Assembers only on Biter Bases Challenge

[Radioactive Pretzels]

After you've played a few games and launched dozens of rockets, it's interesting to set other goals or styles for yourself, often by using a mod like Bob's Mods. Bentham (MangledPork on Youtube) is running THREE Let's Plays with different self-imposed rules to see how each game evolves. One rule is to use trains for anything possible, one is "Towns" must have a theme and then share materials between them, and "Living with Biters" is trying to make a working base in the middle of DENSE but nonaggressive biter bases. (Living with biters is particularly unique, and I'm waiting for more!)

I thought of a simple rule which cascades to a crazy way to play Factorio. It might be implemented a mod, but I just self-imposed the rules to see how it'd work.
The rule is simple: Green, Blue, and Purple science assembers can ONLY be built on top of dead Biter spawners.

That's it. But this changes the game quite a bit. You can't just line up a string of 30 red science factories in a row and feed them. Biter bases only give you 3-8 "locations" in a local region, and they're inconvieniently spaced! So you have to adapt your input belts and do a little spaghetti to make them all work, sort of like setting up oil well fields, but more tricky. And then once they're set up.. they aren't near your base! So now you have to run trains or a long belt out to them. And you have to bring materials TO the assembers as well as take the science packs BACK.

It's extemely fiddly logistics to make this work. But Factorio is pretty much all about the fun of fiddly logistics, and it's VERY DIFFERENT than usual Factorio problems. I first thought I'd run trains to each alien area, but you don't need THAT much throughput to them, so long belts seem to be easier. But then you want to run a mixed belt so you don't need multiple belts for the multiple items you need. So a single belt in a loop seems to be best, with the main base mixing the source materials onto the belt randomly, and the "excess" coming back to be recycled, along with the desired science packs. (use filter inserters or a robot network to resort the incoming used items)

But now you have belts extending out to these distant mini outposts everywhere so you have to defend them. So biter attacks are more annoying and common than usual. Well, put some ammo on the belt too, and have turrets! Works well and it's nice that the belts can "defend themselves" this way.

And biters are now both annoying (they're attacking your many outflung outposts) and crucial (I'm excited to flatten a new biter base that appears nearby.. I get a new science depot!).

I'm only 10 hours into my "test" game and I'm still unsure what the best rule may be. Requiring GREEN science to be on a biter base was really challenging.. no railroads researched yet! Yet that challenge was still fun. And if you start the requirement with blue science, you don't get anything but a regular Factorio game for the first few hours until you get to the blue science stage anyway.

I could imagine other similar rules, and they'd have interesting consequences too. Maybe only REFINERIES could be placed on ex-biter-bases. That's especially limiting even in rocket endgame after all research is done.
Or the ultimate challenge: ALL assembers can only be placed on ex biter bases. That game may not be playable, but it'd be very interesting to try.

Biter density likely changes the game flavor too. Dense biters may make it EASIER since you get a lot of local spawner spots to use.. but of course you need a solid wall defense. Sparse biters means your science outposts are really, really lonely and distant. Maybe trains would work best in that case. I used default density.

If this play rule is interesting to others, it could probably be turned into a mod that enforces the rule, but just for experimentation you can just limit yourself and get the same satisfaction challenge.

I wondered which subforum to put this post.. it's brainstorming a new mod, so I put it here in ideas. It certainly needs no changes to Factorio itself.

[ssilk]

Hm. Nice idea. For me this is a modding idea. Dunno, what others think, but I would move it to modding-suggestions. Better ideas?