So the idea is sort of like Earth 2160 vehicles where you can choose each of your vehicular unit's components including weapons, chassis, body, armor, power, and other tech to help boost certain aspects of the vehicle to your liking. So running with that idea, it would be a really nice step in the game to allow the player a more customized experience with the use of vehicles than the current standard car and train, and of course later the tank. It's understandable this modular idea wont happen soon but still it's worth noting for a later chance if the devs do take this idea into consideration.
Tech Tree
So to give the idea a better breakdown, the idea is each vehicle class has it's own sub-tier tech tree from the main research tree. One for the car, tank, train, and possibly boat and airplane if possible. The tech trees will consist of improvements from the base rinky-dink setups of crappy vehicles, i.e. instead of a fully fledged car we start with just a frame, motor, wheels, and thats it, no real protection, just something that gets you from A to B, much like most people's first car in real life
.Each tech could be researched possibly in a lab under it's own tab, or maybe have it's own separate engineering R&D lab. Each tech would be broken down as follows: Stronger Chassis to support more weight of components, storage, and weapons. The stronger the chassis, the more likely you can put that shiny new vehicle mounted weapon you just unlocked without going 2 miles an hour. Body upgrades can include both armor enhancements from thicker plated armor, that will trade off protection for additional weight ( which will slow the vehicle down ), to modular component slots. I.E. weapon slots, personal drone docks, portable solar panels, basically the stuff you unlock for your character's survival already, just for the vehicle. Engine upgrades to allow a stronger torque to vary with speed, pollution, fuel types, performance, and efficiency. Trunk space, much like chests but more portable. And of course the different styles of weapons ranging from small smg fire to hot searing lasers to explosive rockets.
Production
The idea's I've had running in production and automation of these vehicles basically revolve around either additional recipes for the current assembler setup, to their own dedicated garages, or docks/hangars ( fingers crossed ). Idea for the separate building types is to not only build the vehicles you preset, but also to store prior setups and layouts of your vehicles throughout gameplay. This would be to help avoid further adding to the current working systems of the assemblers and give the fresh perspective of the vehicular assembling without potentially having new players or still learning players from losing the use of assemblers to relearn how to use them, that they just learned how to use. ( which would suck )
Storage
Now another aspect that crossed my mind is if you manage to build a fleet of these modular vehicles, because we all know there will be those who will, a problem that could arise is where to keep them all. Sure we can just break it down and store it in a chest, but where's the fun in that? Instead why not just build a parking lot for your cars, tanks, even trains that aren't in use. Sure it may not play a vital role in gameplay, but aesthetically and completion bonus for realism, I'd say that would be a bonus. On top of that those too can be upgraded to include better walling, even their own recharging station for the vehicles stored inside.
So fellow factorians, thoughts?
