Modular research and crafting

[Elem01]

The basic idea is to make both the crafting and the research modular. Most machines already have different numerical values such as speed, energy consumption, pollution and durability(HP), but right now there are only a few recipes for each machines (inserter, fast inserter, smart inserter) which have the same basic functionality, but with different properties (speed, energy consumption).

The base of my suggestion is to only have the base item in each category, but make them customizable by the components they are made of.

Research

The research would also be more generic. Instead of the current research tree there would be a two kind of research: Material and item.

Material research would be for example metals such as copper and iron, fuel sources, such as coal and solid fuel, plastics (currently there is only a generic plastic), different alloys, and so on. Each material would have a set of properties , such as hardness, heat resistance, conductivity, etc.
For example iron has high hardness, medium heat resistance and good conductivity.
Plastic has medium hardness, low heat resistance and no conductivity.

Item research represents an item category. For example there would be a research for gears, wich would allow to make gears form every type of metal (iron, copper). Different items can have a different set of of properties (for example inserters have speed and power consumption, but furnaces have pollution too). Each item requires a set number of other items. The properties of the item would be calculated from the properties of it’s components. The generic material categories (metal, plastic, fuel, etc.) also count as items for the requirements (you can make gears from any metal).

You would start with a basic set of materials (iron, copper, coal, stone) and a few basic item templates (inserter, transport belt, miner, etc).

Crafting

The crafting could be essentially the same as it is now, except the recipes would require generic items instead of specific ones. For example gear instead of iron gear.

The more complex method could be the making of blueprints (not the same as the current blueprints used by construction robots). Blueprints would represent a specific version of a generic item. It would specify all required materials, and the properties of the finished item(s). They could be made by hand or in an assembling machine.

Multiplayer

With the blueprint crafting method there would be a way to steal other people’s blueprints, or give them to your buddies. They wouldn’t get the research, but could still craft the items.

What do you think?

[Garm]

It is very hard to balance just right.

For example we had 3 modules from the start - it took multiple iterations just to make these 3 somewhat balanced around, now imagine many more.

Without such balance we would end up with cookie cutter builds that would essentially dominate everything else, resulting in loss of real choice.

[ssilk]

For research there was also the idea to have different types of research labs.