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I made a search but could not find anything.

BOATS!
Ship goods across water.

That's it
/Marcus

I think this has been suggested multiple times, and most people seem to like stuff like boats and other things to interact with water.

Im fully supporting the idea of boats.

There is a legitimate need for players and their goods to cross the water. How players gain the option is up to interpretation.

Boats are pretty cool because they let you cross MAJOR bodies of water. They also give you more fishing opportunity. But map generation tends to favor connected land over connected water, so boats can never really go far.

Planes/copters let you cross water and unsightly terrain. They are the superior travel option all around.

There have been requests for water crossing conveyors, power lines, pipelines, and all sorts of stuff. IMO the most directly useful would be elevated rail. It can perform a two-fold function of letting players create railroad crossings that don't collide, and allow paths across a river instead of around it. Any way you crack it a water crossing option should be fairly expensive and at least blue tech.

At the moment there is no real need to build IN the water. There's no such thing as offshore oil, there are no waterbound enemies, and there are no waterbound resources to contend with. Players don't need that much water, so it frequently ends up more as an obstacle than a boon.

5Dim's mod include in vehicles module boats and other things (when is released) ^^

All in all this is a difficult subject, cause it is a side-effect of the map-generator (see viewtopic.php?f=80&t=13022 World Generation / Map Generator / Game Modes ). Whoever just says "We need boats" or "We need bridges" doesn't had a look over the whole complex of dependend topics (which is also mainly the reason, why there isn't something implemented yet).

I think the most important question is: For what usage is a crossing of water needed?

There are some reasons:
- Because you landed on a very, very small island (at the game start)
- Because you landed on a medium sized island (cannot be seen at the game start) - this is also more or less a gameplay-bug... (again: see World Generation)
- Because you want to go to another island (cause of resources, or other reasons). Therefore you need a boat/hovercraft device.
- Because you want to transport your cargo over water (Ships).
- Because you want to transport your cargo by belt/train/pipeline over water (bridges)
- Because you want to have more gameplay in or around the water. (For example viewtopic.php?f=80&t=262 Water as limited resource)
- Because you want to connect two coasts together with "land".
- Because you want to have more native live in the seas (not only fish).
- Because you want to bring in water as a new game-element (for example rivers to produce power, or water to divide two continents (multiplayer))

Depending on that targets, there is different stuff needed. The problem with the current suggestions is, that the most of them mix the reasons together: A ship can be used to go to another island, but also to transport items over water. But the programming approach for just a simple movement over water is simple. The programming of ship-routes and autorouting of ships from harbor to harbor (dock to dock) is much bigger.

What this topic should NOT be about:

- Bridges over or tunnels under the factory.
- Buildings on/in/under the water
- Walkways over the factory/over pipes; see viewtopic.php?f=80&t=21378 Footbridges (over pipes, rails, water...)

The reason is, that the usage-reasons here are completely different.

Dependend topics:

viewtopic.php?f=80&t=262 Water as limited resource
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=739 Stone Bridges/Filling In Lakes
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1095 Bridges [conceptual ideas]
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3756 Filling water with land
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3778 Water uses, abuses, and removal.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4692 Map generation changes
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4720 New to Factorio and Suggestive ideas
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13117&hilit=boat%2A A Few Suggestions For Factorio [mentions boats]
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=13022 World Generation / Map Generator / Game Modes
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=14121 Planes
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=17734 New types of vehicles (train, tank, car, plane, ship...) [Very much overlapping with this subject]
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19985 Expand Early Game (Buildings - Rebalance - Energy)
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20146 Terrain types

Mixed suggestions (Boats, Bridges ...)

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=583 Crank Bridges
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=739 Stone Bridges/Filling In Lakes
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1095 Bridges
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2037 bridges, boats, oceans, depleting water
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3114 wood, more uses , light bridges, weak walls
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3115 Building train bridge
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3521 Ships
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3383 multiple planets,bridges,vehicles and more recources
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=3548 Using stone for land reclamation
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3722 New Vehicles
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3756 Filling water with land
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3791 Ideas [Some ideas around water]
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4410 New Improves/ Atomic Energy /Gold/Boat...etc [Such a mixed suggestion]
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4544 Want to buy Tunnels for Trains / Railway Tunnels
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5027 The Water!
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5034 Boats and Ships
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5281 Bridges for Trains
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5419 Cargo ship
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6086 Building brigdges in Factorio
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6120 Bridges
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7421 Make bridge
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7618 Common Issue [Water Travel]
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8483 way to get to other islands
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9392 Airplanes or helicopters or even ships
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13324 Continents
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13665 Floor Tiles to cover water
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13901 Water working
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16902 From an engineering perspective [quite interesting ideas]
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17198 New Train wagons and boats
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18107 Bridges
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18636 two idea - Sea work and 3d pics
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20442 Boats & Islands
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21000 Bridge
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=22395 Rail tunnels
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23494 Thoughts on boats.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24884 Water: BECAUSE IT DOES NOTHING
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24956 Bridges - Boats - Water mobs
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=25135 Boats
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=25616 Seaports
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=32106 Artificial structure instead of landfill
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=35733 Underground rails
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=41239 Escape island
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=41748 Make the water usefull?
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44338 Underground rails



Other/Related

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4120 Water platforms
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9276 More things to do with water
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13310 Cargo planes [well not really boats, but it's also about crossing water]
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=40522 [Terrain] Water

Mods

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4973 Landfill
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=13553 F.A.R.L.
viewtopic.php?f=94&t=14437 Roadworks

Agreed, otherwise, we'll have to live with quitting the map and re-generating it, which is also fine. But some kind of fix, either a water or aircraft (at least one) somewhere in the game would solve the huge problem (for me at least) when I start on an island. I mean that would be cool because now there is the challenge of starting on an island, but then again, that is not really the subject of the game, whereas we are to build a factory, and normally, factories aren't built on islands. XD

This stuff isnt hard to code its just the graphics, will probably work on this kind of thing after my GCSEs

Here's what I think about having bridges:

With the new landfill, it might be easier to make bridges work. They would be like buildings, but you can walk and drive vehicles over them. But you can't place other buildings on them. That way you use the bridges to travel over water, and landfill if you want to build over water. Joining the bridge to land would not be difficult either: You can only place the bridge over wate, and then use landfill to make a short spur of land that joins onto the bridge.

Railway bridges could be made these ways:
1) You can place railway on bridges
2) There is a seperate railway bridge peice made with a bridge peice + railway, or with railway added to the recipe of the normal bridge

Power poles could be
1) placeable on bridges
2) integrated into bridges - for example, the bridge piece is a long span that includes a power pole in the middle and connects just like other power poles
3) not supported, and you have to make small islands with landfill alongside the bridge to carry power across the water


PS I think this would make a great mod too

So would two different types of bridges work with one having a powerpole sticking out?

I think either power poles are integrated into all bridges, or none - because otherwise you would end up with too many permutations
on the other hand
if you had two parralel railway bridges, one in each direction, you wouldn't want both to carry power poles
So I'm not sure really
Maybe a new kind of powerpole that can be placed on water?

Another idea is the bridges are really small power poles, or the pole bridges drop a bridge an a power pole

bobucles wrote:
Boats are pretty cool. There are no waterbound enemies, and there are no waterbound resources

While there are no water bound enemies it is an idea that they could add. Think of how they get major resources from one country to another. (Oil for example.) What if there was a big oil deposit on an island and you wanted to get it? What would be the best method to get it? Water bound enemies would be one of the enemies that you would have to fight to get to the island in the first place. And yes boats can start out as a red science research (Wooden boats) then go from there. It would also up the fishing opportunities.

This would allow for the creation of awesome continents based maps. Each continent could have some unique variation of a resource
example
sugar plants to produce power from (with extra processing) instead of coal.


This could allow the addition of archipelagos areas to mine rare resources off little islands (thus making boats important).

Continents can be a bases for rivers - hydro plants and power
Deep seas hide deep monsters. Assign patrol warships to protect your cargo transports.

And let's not forget, water water everywhere... needs a good fleet of planes (hello aluminium) to keep out of sea monsters way.

And all these awesome stuff could be a natural expansion of boats!

Now given all these (boats, planes, etc) should be very expensive to manufacture and burn lots of fuel, this could increase the gameplay time (before launching first rocket) tremendously.

When it comes to bridges and tunnels 2 quick dirty ways of doing it that might help a mod maker/factorio devs

tunnels: use the same principle of underground belts(if possible) or just make it so that a train enters a tunnel entrance and based on length and speed of travel a time is calculated and after which the train leaves said tunnel on the other side(really dirty way of doing it but hey tunnels)

bridges: again a dirty way to code it but you could make it so that when a train gets onto a bridge its collision is turned off for the duration of it being on the bridge as the game already overlaps graphics already based on where certain things are placed thus using that one could make a "bridge" of sorts all that would be needed then is to make some nice graphics to make it look like the train raises in elevation and lowers and there you go

both are not ideal by any means but they are dirty ways that could work the aircraft mod turns off collisions i think with all of its aircraft for example

We need tunnels because of throughput issues, we could have different recipies for different tunnel lengths and expensive research or something as this issue of thoughput will only arise in the late/end game. I currently have 130+ trains and I need something like this https://i.imgur.com/K8lpkEur.jpg?1 so that my trains can enter and exit the mainline quickly. I have already searched for mods, but found nothing. I imagine this will be very hard to write into the game, but I hope it happens anyway.

This is an ideal world and underestimates the needed space to "look good".


Some thoughts: One circle is 12 tiles, one rail is two tiles and you should leave 2 tile between them to set signals etc. The tunnel entry takes some length to look realistic, I think between 6 and 16 tiles.

So we have:
- 6 tiles for half a circle
- 6 for the entry/the other half of the circle
- for each track 4 tiles, which are 8 tracks times 4, which is 32 tiles
- and on the other side again 12 tiles.

In sum 56 tiles. Bigger than one chunk, half the size of a radar, more than a logistic network. Which is astonishing big, when you see it in Factorio.
And it is not clear, if that would not reduce gameplay-value - instead of increasing it. Cause the tunnel would make rails much simpler in some way. The "chaotic element" of Factorio would be reduced. Not that I don't want it, but it's not simply: "Add tunnels and Factorio is so much simpler and better than yet".

tigar wrote:bridges: again a dirty way to code it but you could make it so that when a train gets onto a bridge its collision is turned off for the duration of it being on the bridge as the game already overlaps graphics already based on where certain things are placed thus using that one could make a "bridge" of sorts all that would be needed then is to make some nice graphics to make it look like the train raises in elevation and lowers and there you go

Not exactly a "bridge" but FARL can get your trains across bodies of water, it will automatically landfill any water if you try to drive across it - assuming you have enough landfill in the cargo wagon. I am playing an island map and this fulfills the function of bridging islands.