Fungibility

[AenAllAin]

1. Is adding more fungibility to Factorio a good idea?; and,
2. If so, how should it be structured?

(for those who didn't already Google' it, Fungibility is the ability to substitute one thing for another in a way)

Specifically, I am referring to resources. Each game instance is somewhat random and different; your resource distribution is never the same. So resource substitution is a nice way to compensate for a resource deficiency in one area. For example, I get one little patch of coal, but my oil field is pretty rich; so, I start using solid fuel in my boilers for my steam powered electricity. Or I get RNG shafted on both coal and oil, but there are trees everywhere I try to walk ...boom, into the furnace (suck on that nature!).

So, what about iron, copper, and oil?
(A) Should every use-case category have an alternative or hybrid recipe? And,
(B) what should the transfer ratios be? Is 50% a good basis?
(C) What would it even look like? How do you substitute Oil for Iron, for instance?

I'm not asking if it's possible; I am already working on some mods for it; it can be done. The only questions are, should it? and how would it make sense?

[Adil]

Well, I believe it'd be better to have not just some generic raw resource conversion between types, but alternative production chains that impose different resource and time and space requirements. Say producing plastic from oil, or farming resin trees.
Or making engines not out of a dozen steel bars, but from a single chunk of steel and a load of some carbon composite.
Or producing boilers (smekters-mk1) with steel or bricks instead of rocks.
Though it seems there's not enough resource types (or they're not complex enough) in vanilla for that system to shine.

As for the resource generation compensation, I don't really see it being an issue enough to drive such changes. A wide range of settings still provides quite a lot of everything and if player deliberately puts very-scarce very-low in genereator, well, he had been asking for that.

[AenAllAin]

Well, I believe it'd be better to have not just some generic raw resource conversion between types, but alternative production chains that impose different resource and time and space requirements. Say producing plastic from oil, or farming resin trees.
Or making engines not out of a dozen steel bars, but from a single chunk of steel and a load of some carbon composite.
Or producing boilers (smekters-mk1) with steel or bricks instead of rocks.
Though it seems there's not enough resource types (or they're not complex enough) in vanilla for that system to shine.

As for the resource generation compensation, I don't really see it being an issue enough to drive such changes. A wide range of settings still provides quite a lot of everything and if player deliberately puts very-scarce very-low in genereator, well, he had been asking for that.

I was sort of leaning that way myself, because it makes no sense to convert oil to iron or iron to copper. Alloys would seem to fit that view and would make some sense, but then you only have two basic metals in vanilla. I am reluctant to try and add any new resources to the basic game without some really good justification, because the game is really good like it is (at least I feel that way).

[mooklepticon]

Yes, I like this idea! There are some mods that do similar things, when it makes sense.

Convert coal to oil - Factorio Forums • View topic - [MOD 0.12.x] Bergius Process viewtopic.php?f=93&t=14699

Bob's has some. I know it has resin, which can come from trees or oil. I think it has hydrogen conversion stuff, but I'm not sure.

In general, I'm a fan of fungibility if it's highly lossy. (Example: 10 oil becomes 5 plastic, while 10 plastic could become 5 oil.) It adds another tool to our set, but it's not free/cheap.

I'm not sure how you'd do iron to copper, without involving atomic bombardment, lol.

[AenAllAin]

...
I'm not sure how you'd do iron to copper, without involving atomic bombardment, lol.

Ya know; I laughed with you when I first read it because atomic bombardment does seem far-fetched and crazy ...but what if Alien Artifacts were involved somehow; that could be a good use for them maybe.

[ssilk]

There are a lot of suggestions around conversion of the different oil types in all others, but I see especially that as an interesting game-element.