Factorio Forums

The underground level doesn't have to be viewable so separate z-planes are not required.
Like people said there could be various scanners and likelyhood of available minerals.
Information could appear on an overlay or radar or heatmap.

I quite like the way some games have resources that only appear in late game.
In Rise of Nations it was Oil and some Rare Resources like Aluminium, Rubber, Titanium, Uranium.
Similar for late game rares in Civ.

In fact I like the idea of rare resources in general; they give you a reason to explore and conquer different parts of the map.
In Factorio there is no desire to explore because everything is the same. Sure you may run low on copper and iron and be forced to find more, but that's it. There's nothing rare, different or exciting to find. There is no joy of discovery.

How are you going to mine those resources without separate Z level? Having sort of Dungeon Keeper in that extra Z level would be very cool

As for joy of discovery - there is actually such joy for oil. Sometimes good fields of 10-12 patches are very far away.

That questions are partially discussed in
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=12771 Terrain elevation, hills and mountains with fake cliffs

Stevepunk wrote:The underground level doesn't have to be viewable so separate z-planes are not required.
Like people said there could be various scanners and likelyhood of available minerals.
Information could appear on an overlay or radar or heatmap.

I quite like the way some games have resources that only appear in late game.
In Rise of Nations it was Oil and some Rare Resources like Aluminium, Rubber, Titanium, Uranium.
Similar for late game rares in Civ.

In fact I like the idea of rare resources in general; they give you a reason to explore and conquer different parts of the map.
In Factorio there is no desire to explore because everything is the same. Sure you may run low on copper and iron and be forced to find more, but that's it. There's nothing rare, different or exciting to find. There is no joy of discovery.

In Rise of Nations you start in the stone age (I think, been a long time), they wouldn't even know what oil is so wouldn't recognise it or be able to plan their civilisation around it. In Factorio the engineer knows exactly what he is doing from the word go (just needs those labs to iron out the details...) so should be able to plan his factory around late-game deposits.

If you don't set the map resources too high you do need to explore pretty far going late-game to keep that iron and copper coming in, and don't even get me started on oil. Did my Lazy Bastard run on default settings, oil was very painful, only ~50% yield on 3-4 deposits in any one place, and there were only two within radar distance of my base. Did find a bunch of 13 (still 50% though) but had to go pretty far for it. I think it alone almost got me the 1,000 tile train path achievement.

This isn't an exploration game, it's an automation and logistic game and maybe you could throw expansion in there too.

I think this feature might stifle some of the more interesting mod development. There are a lots of mods that offer additional ores, etc, plus mods such as surfaces and The Underground that are opening up the subterranean abyss.

tl;dr: Modders are already adding ores, underground, etc. Not sure base game needs to compete...

Image I posted in another thread:



Note the mine entrance in the cliff. You could add cliffs (add lot of value to gameplay) and they could double up as entry point to underground surfaces.

Player would need a special 'mine entrance' entity to place on cliff (much like water pump is placed at edge of river), there could be different kinds: basic path (for walking in/out), conveyor, track, pipe. Could even be a 'mine shaft lift' (like the elevators at coal mines).

Once inside (underground) they'd be in a cavernous surface; lighting would be important (with or without electricity), ventilation, removal of unwanted water, etc. Oh, and of course, the rare resources deep within the ground - mining them and getting them back to surface.

From a modding perspective, it would be nice to have a new 'teleporter' type entity - something that teleports, in a highly efficient manner, stuff (items, fluids, electricity, etc) from one surface to another. Sort of like an advanced underground belt or pipe, only these would go from surface A to surface B. Would also need some way to define surface hierarchy (optional parent/child relationship between surfaces)

The base game certainly needs an adaptive ore field system. Because on "normal" settings, you cannot advance to a big factory. In high end factories currently i find that the ore patches on normal settings can last less than 2 hours or meaybe even half an hour. And that all the while you have increased distance to your base, and increased biter aggression and population.

Sure there are mods for this, but this is so essential..

I use teh mod "ore expansion".

I don't see problems for Z levels as they are semi supported.(factorissimo mod and there is train mutator mod) Though dunno if it is necessary. Though if space level is planned for future as DLC it is good to know that tool kit is practically there.

aeros1 wrote: Though if space level is planned for future as DLC it is good to know that tool kit is practically there.

I agree that there should be space levels and i also think that we should be able to go under ground but please do not encourage the devs to make DLC because i do not want this game to end out how battlefront ended out: a DLC store front.

Why go deep when you can go up?

We are building a rocket as the goal. Why must that be (just) the goal? One could enter the rocket (like a car or train) and go up to the moon(s). Go and mine some helium-3 for a reactor.

Randomly clicked into this page. Want to bring in a random idea.

What about underwater?

Water doesn't have much use for now. Besides fish, steam energy and advanced oil refinery, it is just an obstacle, waiting to be filled with landfill. What if there are hidden ores under the sea and we need some advanced mining drill to mine them?
Though, this will require ships to be implemented first. I don't want to rely on landfill too heavily because it ruins the coastline.

Mooncat wrote:Randomly clicked into this page. Want to bring in a random idea.

What about underwater?

Water doesn't have much use for now. Besides fish, steam energy and advanced oil refinery, it is just an obstacle, waiting to be filled with landfill. What if there are hidden ores under the sea and we need some advanced mining drill to mine them?
Though, this will require ships to be implemented first. I don't want to rely on landfill too heavily because it ruins the coastline.

FYI: The mod Ocean Liner tries to implement it. Didn't tried it yet.

Greetings steinio

steinio wrote:

Mooncat wrote:Randomly clicked into this page. Want to bring in a random idea.

What about underwater?

Water doesn't have much use for now. Besides fish, steam energy and advanced oil refinery, it is just an obstacle, waiting to be filled with landfill. What if there are hidden ores under the sea and we need some advanced mining drill to mine them?
Though, this will require ships to be implemented first. I don't want to rely on landfill too heavily because it ruins the coastline.

FYI: The mod Ocean Liner tries to implement it. Didn't tried it yet.

Greetings steinio

Yes, thanks. I saw that.
But based on its screenshots, I guess it just places some oil fields in water and lets players to get the oil with pipes.
What I thought was a little bit different: mine some ores -> uses ships to transfer the ores to factory. Similar to trains, ships can, and are needed to, be automated. I think this is too advanced for modding. It requires the devs to implement into the engine.

Mooncat wrote:

steinio wrote:

Mooncat wrote:Randomly clicked into this page. Want to bring in a random idea.

What about underwater?

Water doesn't have much use for now. Besides fish, steam energy and advanced oil refinery, it is just an obstacle, waiting to be filled with landfill. What if there are hidden ores under the sea and we need some advanced mining drill to mine them?
Though, this will require ships to be implemented first. I don't want to rely on landfill too heavily because it ruins the coastline.

FYI: The mod Ocean Liner tries to implement it. Didn't tried it yet.

Greetings steinio

Yes, thanks. I saw that.
But based on its screenshots, I guess it just places some oil fields in water and lets players to get the oil with pipes.
What I thought was a little bit different: mine some ores -> uses ships to transfer the ores to factory. Similar to trains, ships can, and are needed to, be automated. I think this is too advanced for modding. It requires the devs to implement into the engine.

Yes this would probably be nice.
Ships and air transport is maybe a topic for Factorio 2.

Mooncat wrote:Randomly clicked into this page. Want to bring in a random idea.

What about underwater?

Water doesn't have much use for now. Besides fish, steam energy and advanced oil refinery, it is just an obstacle, waiting to be filled with landfill. What if there are hidden ores under the sea and we need some advanced mining drill to mine them?
Though, this will require ships to be implemented first. I don't want to rely on landfill too heavily because it ruins the coastline.

Or maybe when you have an ore field that's cut off by water and you landfill there could be ore there.

mrvn wrote:Or maybe when you have an ore field that's cut off by water and you landfill there could be ore there.

But surely you've just buried that ore in landfill and thus wouldn't see it? It's not like the ore will float to the top of the landfill...?

aubergine18 wrote:

mrvn wrote:Or maybe when you have an ore field that's cut off by water and you landfill there could be ore there.

But surely you've just buried that ore in landfill and thus wouldn't see it? It's not like the ore will float to the top of the landfill...?

My miners dig deep.

kovarex wrote:Later in the game (advanced technologies would be needed for this), the player could start with underground mining, this would have 2 phases.

Searching for resources
Underground resources wouldn't be so easy to spot, the player would have to do special drills to scan the nearby underground, when he finds something there, specialised mining drills that mine underground could be used there.

Some of the resources could be found only in underground.

Sounds interesting. I would like to be the underground ores unlimeted, but giving a low value after a time like oil.
This will make outposts attracktive, because u can keep them.

Sacredd wrote:

kovarex wrote:Later in the game (advanced technologies would be needed for this), the player could start with underground mining, this would have 2 phases.

Searching for resources
Underground resources wouldn't be so easy to spot, the player would have to do special drills to scan the nearby underground, when he finds something there, specialised mining drills that mine underground could be used there.

Some of the resources could be found only in underground.

Sounds interesting. I would like to be the underground ores unlimeted, but giving a low value after a time like oil.
This will make outposts attracktive, because u can keep them.

But why have outposts at all if the ore is limitless?

mrvn wrote:

Sacredd wrote:

kovarex wrote:Later in the game (advanced technologies would be needed for this), the player could start with underground mining, this would have 2 phases.

Searching for resources
Underground resources wouldn't be so easy to spot, the player would have to do special drills to scan the nearby underground, when he finds something there, specialised mining drills that mine underground could be used there.

Some of the resources could be found only in underground.

Sounds interesting. I would like to be the underground ores unlimeted, but giving a low value after a time like oil.
This will make outposts attracktive, because u can keep them.

But why have outposts at all if the ore is limitless?

Do know rso and angel infinite ores mods? In starting area u have no infinite ores. With rso are the ores well spread and the infinite amount is too low, so have to look for more...