Make use of bodies of water

[Jon8RFC]

Water is a useless area, aside from the shores for pumps, and then it can be land filled after pumps are placed.
Land can contain resources, provide for travel, and allow base development--it's always useful. I don't count "free walls" as a use for bodies of water. That's just a side-effect, exactly like cliffs. There isn't any actual use for bodies of water...yet

I initially thought offshore oil rigs could have a higher minimum for a depleted output, but that's just a cheap approach of the same old thing of oil production. Something may be better than nothing, though.

Maybe some kind of port that is built onto the shore, like pumps are built, but requires much more shore real estate than a pump. It very slowly produces (for free) and sends out a barge to an oil-field type thing (a blob in the water?), but brings back a new resource, like stuff to be used for a new science pack, or required for an existing science pack. One barge per port, and only one barge can mine from a blob concurrently. It can have a small pump built in to the port, and the barge deploys a temporary offshore rig for pumping out from the blob, then travels back. No need to worry about collision boxes, similarly to robots. If a barge is destroyed by aliens, then the port rebuilds a barge (after you've manually instructed it to), slowly, and sends it back out. You can end up gaining nothing if you don't protect the barges, and the resources it contained are permanently lost just like when trains get destroyed.

That's what I have come up with so far. Making some type of use of the water seems like a big gap, waiting for exploitation. If it's land filled after offshore pumps are placed, then water is entirely pointless, and I think it could be made better use of.

[Buzzec]

I think it would be kind of cool to add in a shipping system (similar to trains) to add use to water. By allowing access to the ocean in the form of boats, offshore oil and other water resources could easily spawn off of that! Also, related to this, a continents type map could be added to allow for some interesting shipping methods. If nothing else I think an addition to the modding api to allow for these addition would be cool too! Looks like you already can (albeit with a bit of work ) https://mods.factorio.com/mod/OceanLiners

[Ghoulish]

I think the boat has sailed already for this idea - it's just too late in the development cycle to start adding major new features. So unless they've been working on this for some time already, I can't see it getting into v1.0. The devs did release cliffs out of the blue, so who really knows?

Having said that shipping / water based resource gathering / biters in water etc etc is a solid idea, and would be an excellent candidate as one feature for DLC. Automated fighting (robots) Heavy industry and new biter additions + AI would be 3 other features I would love to see added down the line.

[thriem]

I had this idea too - along with the -map-style-approach- AKA Continents, etc...

I think it would be both, rather quick to implement and huge gain in content & fun - specially when you can make drilling rigs to pump high quantity of oil and set up automated ships at harbors and docks. And there again, you would need enemies tho, since it would be rather boring if you can escape and evade biters at sea, and there you'd need battle-ships or other mechanics and this would be the rather bothersome part. And there is the energy part - does the sea-buildings need electricity or any kind of fuel (myby fuel itself?)

Nevertheless, I think this would be an awesome idea and content even without the enemies - maybe even a way to create your own water-paths for shipping (an inverted landfill) so you can make use of the (maybe) greater cargo size, but lower speeds of ships...

[Tekky]

I agree that it would be nice if water were more useful.

Related threads:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=60787 Boats, Bridges, Island builds, Rail bridges?
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=52686 Cargo ships
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=58795 Underwater Nodes
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=14024 Travel over Water: Boats, Ships, Canus / Bridges / Tunnels
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5419 Cargo ship
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=45546 Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2037 bridges, boats, oceans, depleting water
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=61342 Adding rivers to the map generation
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=60781 Introduce flooding or droughts
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5027 The Water!
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3521 Ships