Creating Eras

[Pillow]

I was playing Marathon mod, and enjoying it, when an idea came to me.

i enjoy the early game part of the Marathon mod, having to use burner inserters, and figuring out new factory layouts. but it doesn't feel fleshed out to me. My idea is to create an early era of technology, before Electricity. Nothing overly fancy, but an added element to the beginning.

In order to research Electricity, you must build your factory relying on coal, and coal operated entities. In practice you would be using burner insterters, burner miners, burner assembly machines, and research centers. After you're able to research Electricity, the game resumes as normal. This would create an early era of coming up with ridiculous layouts that have to include coal for all your machines. just like i was doing for the Marathon mod. id like to try to balance it so that when you move on from Burner equipment, its viable to leave your Burner factory, contributing to another factory, or also just upgrade the entire thing.

additional thoughts are also enhancing efficiency of burner equipment after Electricity is researched, for plans of keeping your burner factory. I had another thing or two in mind, but i cant think of them right now.

for the modding side, its simple to copy and paste the assembly machine and research center entities and tell them to use Burner energy(coal). reconstructing the first few technologies, wouldn't be that terrible, but would take a little time for someone with no experience. just to add, it took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to make an assembly machine to use coal.

thoughts? concerns? comments?

[orzelek]

Please take a look at Steampunk mod:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... unk#p75340

It has all the basics needed to build coal fueled factory.

[Pillow]

right on! thanks orzelek