I thought, the logistic system (the requester chest, which is later in the game) is a really good thing to spare this running around. But what can be done earlier in the game? What would be challenging?
The question is: What's needed to link directly between the output of the factories and your inventory!
Sounds magic. We don't want to have "magic" in this game (I read it anywhere here). But chests are already some kind of magic! I mean: How crazy is it to have a 1x1 field big store, which can store so much stuff, which is much bigger? So I came to the idea of quantum portals, because how else should it be possible - without magic - to store so many stuff in a chest? There must be a quantum portal already inside them!
The next idea is pure logic: Connect the players inventory with the quantum portal of a chest. That's it.So this are the rules for such a portal chest:
- can be researched relatively early in the game (or from beginning).
- to build it, it needs wood and some red and green potion (?).
- to run it, it takes energy (e. g. 1-10 times the power an inserter needs?), every time you put something in our out.
Edit: Maybe it's better energy is only needed to put in/take out items from outside (via inserters), not internally.
- in the beginning only two chests can be build in total (more can be build when researched)
- the chest has only two stacks (more can be researched)
- only "small" things can be put into (no big stuff, like factories, steam engines, cars...). Bigger portals can be researched, so that bigger things can be put into (The size of a thing is inverse relative to the number of items that can be stored in a stack! And bigger portals needs more energy!)
- In the players inventory there are new stacks from every chest. They can be handled like normal, which means, that I can move stacks around but every operation takes energy (see above). Maybe the autoplacement needs some rethinking but this depends on how this "looks and feel".
- With this I'm not so sure: As long as the inventory is open, the portal chests are also open. Nothing can be put in/taken out from outside. (this is to avoid strange behavior, some stupid situations can happen otherwise). I mean also that - as long as the character builds something - nothing can be put into them, because when you stop building and your inventory is already full, where should the items be pulled back. Otherwise this can be used to trick that out.
I think this 2 chests with 2 stacks each makes this an interesting element, but it's not too powerful to change the game totally - as said, the target was just to make the first built-up-phase faster.
So what you can do with that:
- An inserter just puts in iron plates in one chest and copper plates into the other. As said, it spares some time in the beginning!
- With small tricks/more handling you can insert up to 4 different item-types into them.
- You need to make space, the forest is in the way. But where to put all the wood? Portal chest are the solution: Fire wood instead of coal.
Thinking more:
- The next idea, the next logic step is then, that you can link two portal chests, so what's inserted into one chest can be taken out from another. As said before: This makes only sense, if the number of portal chests/stacks inside is very limited, because otherwise it makes far transport irrelevant.
- You may need to see, where the chests are. Some kind of compass.
- Instead of destroying unused stuff: Put it into a "nirvana chest".
