Overhaul of the basic game concept.
"In the age of advanced technologies, intergalactic travel and space-wide economy, the freelancing individuals started to claim the entire planets for their business needs."
We start as one of those individual entrepreneurs who just landed on Nauvis. The player spawns near the Spaceport with basic startup items, as usual, to build up the factory. Some technologies are unlocked from the start (like automation, walls, gun turrets, e.t.c).
The Spaceport is a key structure of this mod: it is quite large, can not be built or removed, but can be repaired if damaged, and if it is destructed - game is over.
The Spaceport acts as a big chest accumulating items. The gui has two grids: "Items for sale" and "Requested items". From time to time cargo ships visit the Spaceport for pickup and delivery. Sold items generate credits (each in-game item has a standard price), while requested items subtract from the credit counter and are delivered only if there is enough credits.
As for the prices, obviously, low-end products like iron plates are cheap to sell, while smg like Rocket Control Unit are much more expensive. On the other side, requesting low-end items to be delivered is extremely inefficient, since the ratio of buy/sell prices is too significant for low-end products due to the major part of it being a delivery cost included in price.
The technologies unlocking new recipes, buildings and items are not researched any more. They act more like permits and licenses which has to be bought in exchange for significant amount of credits. Shortly saying, labs and flasks begone.
IMO the concept of creating the factory to generate stuff for sale better suits for mods adding a large variety of resources and new technologies, since there will be no mandatory steps to take to progress further in the game - any of the production chains are optional to dig in, in search for more profitable sales.
Could be a good mod to turn Factorio into an economy game. The only thing I can't think of is what is the goal to aim at? A certain amount of credits? Or a certain income per month rate?
Space Magnate game mode
Re: Space Magnate game mode
There is a mod called "Black Market", which is somewhat close to the thing proposed (too bad the author dropped it). Anyway, the way the trading works in Black Market is through the magic chests, tanks and accums, exchanging contents with some sort of "trading realm", I guess. If, instead of those, there would be a centralized single Spaceport, maintaining a traffic of spaceships and the exchanges made upon landings, then it all would be much more believable.