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OK so I started a new game and as we know the first thing you need is fuel, so we start cutting down some trees.

This can be tedious, which is a problem. Sooner or later I won't start a new game simply because it would pain me to have to cut down trees manually again.

Opportunity!

I had a think along the lines of: what would I do as a lone, mad genius inventor to solve this problem?

I would build a robot to do it for me, it's obvious.

But the problem is this is the *first* action the player takes. So what if you started with this robot? It could be a kind of "robot pet". I imagine it would be burner powered, accept simple orders "eat the trees over there". And would be a general dogsbody for you throughout the game.

Pet Bot
Enters the game by your side.
Burner powered, generous fuel capacity same as car.
Modest inventory (less than yours)
Click on it to select it - probably the biggest change
Starts with ability to deconstruct entities and add to its inventory. Right click or right click and drag to deconstruct area.

As the game progresses there could be opportunities to upgrade Pet Bot:
Turrets for combat
Solar power, nuclear fusion reactor - faster
Ability to construct items in its inventory
Integration into logistics network:
Request slots, trash slots, bots deliver to it same as player
Module slots

I'm sure we could think of more.

These would be a mix of additional perks to existing research and new dedicated research. All requiring material construction somehow.

Now, clearly this won't make it into the base game any time soon, if ever. It needs to be a mod first. Unfortunately I'm not in a position to make this but I imagine it would be some heavily modified combination of car, player and construction Bot.

If anyone is up for this monstrous challenge, post below and ping me a message and let's talk about it. I'll help however I can.

The far less ambitious approach would be to "queue" deconstruction by right click drag selecting an area and then sitting back to wait whilst your character hacks away at them trees...

Thanks for reading. Any ideas, improvements, corrections? Think "I could mod that!" Please post below

Great.
Maybe it could speak and look like K9 - The Doctors pet.

Greetings steinio

It sure could!
I hope that's not a burn

I always thought of slavel aliens to do the tree cutting! Or maybe be able to hatch your stolen alien eggs into submissive tree chopping ones !!

I know what you're talking about when it comes to chopping wood, it takes so much time, but I never realy used it for fuel...
I mostly only chopchop when I need space to build, or to craft powerpoles in the beginning. First fuel is made with one burnerminer feeding the stonefurnace. Afterwards I go smelt some iron and build 2-6 burnerminer for mining coal wich are feeding themselves.

Meh. I remain of the opinion that the best weapon against trees... Is a simple match.
Forest in the way? Burn. It. Down.

An early incendiary weapon (short range) would be useful. A "flaming stick" 'nade would work. Not like you don't know how to set things on fire early in the game - burner drill and furnace are your starting buildings.

[Edit] That said, I recently tried some of Bobs mods, the Vehicles one has a nice miner vehicle which can chomp through forests like nobodies business... Neat for rail laying through dense forest. It even fuels itself with the wood. You even start the game with it.

Some nice ideas here! I'd love an early flame weapon, the big spike in pollution that early on would be a fun challenge.

I also did not realise Bob's mods had such a vehicle! Thanks for that. I think that is the final push i needed to finally brave Bob's mods.

And if slave aliens are ever a thing, chopping wood is easily the most ironic, satisfying use for them. Burning them for electricity, and making pollution being a close second

Yyea, that miner vehicle I mentioned is an early spike in pollution too. I got destroyed the first time I tried using the mining vehicle as an auxiliary mine without defenses... biters did not like the black clouds it was belching while chewing coal. Chewing wood doesn't seem to cause too much pollution though...

Hmm, the busy mad inventor would tend to make a task easier, to start with. AT the point in the game to which you refer, the player has -no- automation, at all. While it's one of the first researches done, low-level automation means only electric inserters, and stage-one assemblers, not an AI-assisted robot.

The forestry industry responded to underproduction by human cutters by inventing big crosscut saws, and later chainsaws. Keeping to the low technology level of the starting game, i wonder if a wire saw could be justified, given the sorts of motions exemplified in the burner miner and burner inserter. While wire saws are mostly used for sawing rock out of the ground, it works perfectly well on trees. (very simplified, think barbed wire. rock saws use carbide or diamond cutters.) The application might be a powered wheel to drive the wire, and incorporating a self-retracting mechanism to put tension on the cutting wire. The player would run the wire out to the wire limit (additional crafting increments it's length, or join multiple sections like copper cable), loop it around the endmost tree, then draw the end back to the engine, hook it up, and start it. the wire rotates through the loop, gradually shortening, the thus mowing down all the trees (and maybe rocks!) encompassed within the loop.

again keeping in the factorio model, the cut-down trees become the wood resource, to be picked up (or not!) just like any other resource lying on the group, via the "F" key.

Aeternus wrote: That said, I recently tried some of Bobs mods, the Vehicles one has a nice miner vehicle which can chomp through forests like nobodies business... Neat for rail laying through dense forest. It even fuels itself with the wood. You even start the game with it.

That miner vehicle you were talking about has nothing to do with Bob's mods.

Ah, you're right. I'm new to mods and got a bit confused with them. Tacked on a bunch of Bobs mods for a new game recently (damn, those mods are Factorio on steroids resource wise...) and the miner was within, so I assumed it was part of it. I guess it's not. Nevertheless, very handy vehicle to have early in the game. Best tree grazer I've seen yet until you get a personal roboport with deconstruction planner.