Lakes get smaller if overworked

[British_Petroleum]

Idea is that every body of water has a threshold, depending on its size, and if you pump more water out than the threshold, then the body of water will start to get smaller. Pump out less than the threshold and it will gradually expand back to it's original size.

[quinor]

What gameplay value would it add? It's quite expensive to code, but I don't see the point except from "realism".

[Koub]

It will just make the option "water only at starting area" unplayable.

[ssilk]

To answer with a quote

Already discussed many times.

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 756#p27842

With many links to other threads.

This is a quite difficult complex, cause there are many other things to think about.

[bobingabout]

wait, this is a new one. wasn't there one about lakes going down when getting used a couple of weeks ago?

[MeduSalem]

Actually I would find it an interesting concept... at least if the lake refills and is not gone forever.

But as I see it, it would require quite some balancing to get the threshold as well as some other things right. It would have to be similar to how oil works. It is an infinite resource but the yield drops overtime so you have to hook up more oil wells. If water in ponds would work the same way you'd have to hook up a few more ponds/lakes to your water supply.

But there would need to be more to it anyways... like weather conditions influencing the yield of ponds and whatnot. But for huge lakes it wouldn't make much of a difference anyways.

Another problem I see is that at map generation the size of lakes/ponds is not known yet so how to calculate a threshold of something that doesn't yet exist until you explore it... and better yet some of the lakes are so huge that you virtually can't fully explore them.

So while it is strange that lakes give infinite water with no downside whatsoever even if the shores are overcrowded with pumps I guess the amount of problems that would have to be sorted out to implement a yield for lakes defeats the addition of the gameplay value.

It will just make the option "water only at starting area" unplayable.

It wouldn't. It just means you can't use Steam Engines forever. At some point you would have to view water as a scarce resource too and tone down the consumers.

But yeah it would probably prevent creating huge factories consuming tons of water in the various processes. It would be rather quite a challenge to get far on such a map.

[daniel34]

I think that OP means that the lake will actually physically get smaller. meaning less water tiles and more ground tiles.
Lakes are supposed to be (or expected to be) most deep at their center and the shorelines will give way to ground first.
Offshore pumps can only be placed between water and ground tiles, so how would this work?
The most naive implementation would be that the pump would run dry and you'd have to move it towards the water, which requires manual intervention and is against Factorio's principle of automation.

One way would be water resouces that are still the same size on the map (same tile count) but diminish in "richness", like oil, as MeduSalem mentioned.
Or a new kind of pump that can be placed in the center of a water body and uses that water, drying the edges of the water body at the same time.

However, I think this would be rather difficult to implement, because there is no concept of 'height' in the 2D land of Factorio as far as land/water is concerned and I don't see any added gameplay value by doing any of these.

[British_Petroleum]

What gameplay value would it add? It's quite expensive to code, but I don't see the point except from "realism".

It would mean you would have to search for new bodies of water, if you wanted to exceed the flow rate provided by your start area water. Rather than just spamming power plants when you need more power, it could encourage players to use their power more efficiently instead, or switch to other means of power generation.

It will just make the option "water only at starting area" unplayable.

Extra incentive to design factories that use power more efficiently. And if you really needed more power you could use solar + accumulators. But yeah this would be more challenging.

Lakes are supposed to be (or expected to be) most deep at their center and the shorelines will give way to ground first.
Offshore pumps can only be placed between water and ground tiles, so how would this work?

The most naive implementation would be that the pump would run dry and you'd have to move it towards the water, which requires manual intervention and is against Factorio's principle of automation.

This would work. Manual intervention would only be needed if the flow of water was too high. For a flow rate below the threshold, the lake will stay the same.

Just an idea I thought I'd throw out there to see what people thought.

[bobingabout]

Perhaps they could be like oil.

the more you use them, the flow goes down, untill it's just a trickle.

[Rakshasa]

Perhaps they could be like oil.

the more you use them, the flow goes down, untill it's just a trickle.

And to avoid messing with the landscape the dried out lakebed could be set as muddy tiles that do not allow crossing.