Assembly machines to be more flexible

[husky-cgn]

TL;DR

Have the assembly machines producing one of the "lower" products AND the desired final product.

What ?

I'm suggesting that the assembly machines could (by research) be enabled to produce one of the ingridients of desired products itself.
Take the electronic circuits for instance, instead of supplying the assembly machines with copper cables and iron plates you just insert iron plates and copper plates instead.

Why ?

Because it could be something worth researching in late game and eventually change the face of the whole big factory.

[Engimage]

I am sure this is never going to happen.

The point of Factorio is making complex things with simple blocks. Devs will never add features that can be done with existing elements without any downsides.

And I do support devs in this.

[Patashu]

You could probably make a mod that automatically made such recipes and locked them behind higher tier technologies.

[Loewchen]

That would remove big part of the gameplay, the "finding the best setup" minigame would become dull with that change.

[Deadly-Bagel]

It's been requested many times, and it's not going to happen. If for example it's just a simple "provide base components and it spits out final product" then it's eliminating much of the core gameplay, not to mention there are odd ratios like 1.5 Copper Plate per Electronic Circuit craft. This can get extremely complicated with mods.

If you want the option of swapping recipes via circuit network, there is a mod to do that and some people have made some pretty cool setups with it but it's just not something that 99.9% of players would ever (or could ever) make use of. It's a gimmick at best and very difficult to get right.

[Factoruser]

It's been requested many times, and it's not going to happen. If for example it's just a simple "provide base components and it spits out final product" then it's eliminating much of the core gameplay, not to mention there are odd ratios like 1.5 Copper Plate per Electronic Circuit craft. This can get extremely complicated with mods.

If you want the option of swapping recipes via circuit network, there is a mod to do that and some people have made some pretty cool setups with it but it's just not something that 99.9% of players would ever (or could ever) make use of. It's a gimmick at best and very difficult to get right.

Controlling assembling machines by the network would be nice... maybe also demanding the products to assemble. But not automatic complete-assembling.

Assuming you have to send a product as a signal to select the product, it would be rather tricky - you'll have to use combinators, because every cargo signal could set an assembling machine to produce this item.

Senseless ? Take a circuit board factory as an example. You would be able to balance the raw material usage effective and easier; if the copper supply goes down, you'll normally get more electronic circuits because they take all the copper wire until it reaches the advanced circuit assembling, and therefore the processing unit production stops...

[Rseding91]

Have the assembly machines producing one of the "lower" products AND the desired final product.

That's the entire point of the game: designing factories that produce and transfer all of these items.

So, I don't see that ever happening.

[bobingabout]

I play Empyrion sometimes. That has a factory in it that does what you're suggesting (Pick a product, it makes all the intermediates).

Difference here: Most of the ships that you get prefab have only 1 factory in them. Even a high end large ship that I built only had 3 in it. It works for the game. You also have no way to take items from one machine to another automatically.

Factorio is an entirely different beast, not only are assembling machines common place, and everywhere, but items and resources can easily be transferred from one to another. It works for the game, a single machine producing more doesn't.

Now what you COULD do is mod in an advanced assembling machine that has a unique recipe list (maybe even with dynamic recipe creation) that can product all these multi-tier products.

[husky-cgn]

Hey, thank you for reading my idea and responding.

It was just an idea I had to make the late game more interesting.
Point being is, that maybe ONE intermediate product could be made as well - maybe for higher cost and only for high research cost.

But I see your point, and the more I think about, I think you are right.