No more building plopping, no more building crafting

[mp0011]

TL;DR

As an addition to increased recipe cost option...

Why?

Idea is, that assembling 200 assemblers/reactors/raffineries in one little factory is silly.
Building it in advance to chest, for later use - is silly too, and also impractical - Who build "reactor factory" to build few reactors ever?
Most build it in inventory anyway...

What?

New option at game start:
[ ] No building assembling/crafting

How about You can only place manually "foundations" for building (9-15 tiles of concrete/bricks/new kind of bricks designed as foundations)? Then You place building ghost on it. Now, You can either manually (according to game settings?) or with bots (I hope for new slow ground bots for that for early game) insert required materials (according to recipe costs) into that ghost. You can place ghost first, then build foundations, so bots would not start until You are ready. Then, You can watch progress of constructions from foundations, through scaffolding raising up (2-3 steps), then building appearing (2-3 steps).
Let it take as long, as building recipe specifies, with pauses if materials is not delivered on time.

If You deconstruct building, it's converted to its original materials (instantly, or in reverse process sa above).
You can also demolish it quicker with tank/pickaxe and get SOME of materials back.

So, for example, if You want to build Nuclear plant, You do not need to build reactors/centrifuges earlier.
You gather required materials in chest or car, or build temporary rail line to construction site. You send trains with required supplies and bots builds it for You.

[RenScorch]

Perhaps this will be better as a mod, cause I personally only see this as additional tedium.

[mp0011]

Maybe, for me it's just another difficulty level, just like optional expensive recipes.

[5thHorseman]

If you want this for yourself, check out Brave New World. I've not tried it yet, but it's on my short list.

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/canidae/brave-new-world

And yes, I agree it'd be nice to have something like this in stock.

[olafthecat]

Looks interesting...
This is pretty much the opposite to what most bot nerfers want, but it is pretty cool!
I am probably going to download this

[5thHorseman]

I played it for a couple hours and it's very different than normal Factorio. I'm not 100% sure I'll take it much farther, but I didn't hate it

[olafthecat]

Cheers for the advice.

[Hannu]

So, for example, if You want to build Nuclear plant, You do not need to build reactors/centrifuges earlier.
You gather required materials in chest or car, or build temporary rail line to construction site. You send trains with required supplies and bots builds it for You.

In my opinion it would not fit very well in current game. Time has practically no meaning in Factorio, because there are practically no maintenance costs or other things where time could affect. So it would not change anything but forced waiting and tedious work to build things. It would be interesting if there were seasons so that you should time building to spring or summer, maintenance costs which would make waiting cost resources, buildings and infrastructure would cost something and so on. But it would be much more complicated game and I think than big majority of players would think it is too tedious and needs micromanagement. They want just run straightforwardly to rocket launch or simple but huge bot based megabases or get simple perfect mathematical ratios between assemblers and belts. It would also be a major change in the game so I do not believe it is very realistic to expect any development to that direction.

[eradicator]

This is basically what every RTS/village management game does. Order construction, wait for workers to deliver resources and build the building. Let's ignore the "building something takes time" aspect, and focus on only "resource delivery to building site", how would gameplay change?

• You need fewer assemblers because you no longer have to construct placement items, as all buildings are crafted "in-place".
• You need more bots to deliver the materials to the construction sites.

So while the idea sounds nice, i don't think it makes the game more fun. Requiring more construction bots only means you have to spam more bots, that is you have to wait longer until you can build blueprints with the same speed as before. And requiring fewer assemblers kinda goes against the main idea of building a large factory. Also as we don't have ground based bots there is no path planning required for the delivery of construction materials, essentially every "construction site" would just be another temporary requester chest.

As a mod i think there's still some value to this if it's used only for some buildings. For example in the some games of the ANNO series only large monuments require material delivery while small things that you build a lot of are placed instantly. That way it adds a mechanic (fun! more stuff!) instead of replacing an existing one with a simpler one.

From a personal roboport perspective it would be a huge blessing though. As you don't have to carry around 30 different types of building anymore. Only ~10 ish types of construction material...

[mp0011]

Maybe You are right...

Building each Assembler, Furnaces and Chemical Plants in such way is not very fun, but "big projects", that You place once in a gameplay (Rocket Silo, Nuclear Plant with Centrifuges, Refineries) is. Now, to build reactor, I just go to chest, pick 500 of everything, wait few seconds and - PUFF - 4 reactors in my pocket. Who build assembler for it? I just plop it, delete, place somewhere else etc, and I have no feeling of achievement.

How cool it could be, if You need to go to the site, place fundations, organize materials delivery and roboports, maybe build rail for materials (I would increase cost then). And You must be sure that design must be flawless before placing it, because deconstructing also require lot of bots and some logistics (or loosing some materials).

To be honest, for me, funniest part of the game is when I build a Silo, and components are delivered, one by one, slowly, progressively...

[eradicator]

Speaking of the rocket silo...it actually has that kind of percentage build progress. So you could abuse it in a mod to simulate construction progress. You'd just have to spawn in a new one from time to time to simulate graphical progress.