Water Well

[J-H]

I don't recall what settings I have on my current playthrough, but there are HUGE areas with no water available. Piping it long distances is kind of boring, and in some cases impractical.

A "drill to aquifer" well that is large, consumes a substantial amount of power, and is at least midway up the tech tree (blue research?) would solve this issue while not being a solution that removes all challenge. If three guys and a truck can drill a 600' well on my property in 3 days...Factorio can do it.

Suggested well recipe:
Concrete 100
Pump 1 (a real well only takes 1 pump, with the pump getting bigger over time - but more recipes need pumps)
100 pipes
10 red circuits (VFD wells actually require a 3-phase converter and controller)

Max output of ~20% what an offshore pump requires. If you want to replace your offshore pumps, be prepared to build a lot of wells.

[dood]

You can just use trains you know.
And build things like nuclear reactors near water.

[Brathahn]

You could also use the waterfill mod.
Maybe it will make its way into vanilla someday when biters learn to swim.
Otherwise its super OP because you can make uncrossable barriers with it.

[ickputzdirwech]

I agree, you can use train.

But I had some interesting thoughts while reading this post:

1. Should lakes drain after some time if you pump water out of them?
2. Why don't get rid of offshore pumps entirely and make water work like oil?

[steinio]

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/WaterWell

[dood]

2. Why don't get rid of offshore pumps entirely and make water work like oil?

Try bobs, it comes with water wells.
Personally, they drive me nuts because they tend to replace oil wells.

[gsezz]

2. Why don't get rid of offshore pumps entirely and make water work like oil?

Nothings prevents you from handling water like oil in vanilla right now. Build an outpost with a lot of water pumps at a lake, and transport it by train.
I actually do that a lot, because I don't like lakes in or near my base.

[Hannu]

I agree, you can use train.

But I had some interesting thoughts while reading this post:

1. Should lakes drain after some time if you pump water out of them?

In my opinion no. One depleting resource more would be more annoyance than interesting addition. It is also not very realistic. Huge cities or agriculture watering systems can drain lakes but one man's rocket factory is quite small industry.

Maybe some small ponds could deplete, but after all it would be small change in the game and not be worth CPU cycles. Some kind of water pump from anywhere or from special wells would be nice add on for those who want to avoid mods and disable water from map (I can not understand why, because lakes force to build more natural bending rail lines which are more interesting to travel).

2. Why don't get rid of offshore pumps entirely and make water work like oil?

Why? Oil fields are quite annoying to build and it is very natural to expect that you get process water from lakes like real factories. At least I like diversity in production chains and not just copying same things with different names. Vanilla Factorio is already quite repetitive. Almost all recipes need 2 or 3 simple ingredients and maybe one liquid.

[ickputzdirwech]

Ok, you convinced me Hannu (wasn't that hard anyway )