TL;DR
Make lava byproduct handling more involved and interestingWhat?
Here's my rough draft of something that could work:Lava processing recipes will have their stone outputs replaced by a new fluid, slag. Slag, being a fluid, can’t be immediately thrown into lava or into recyclers. There is the recipe switching fluid void trick, but that’s a borderline bug/exploit, so I’ll ignore it. Instead, slag first has to be processed. This recipe would require water, and a smaller amount of carbon. It would output stone, which can then be reused or disposed of as usual, as well as trace amounts of iron and copper ore. So you would actually get to use ore melting on Vulcanus, interestingly.
Why?
Obviously, I know that such a thing will never be implemented. But I’m making this post anyway, because I really think the game needs something similar to this. Specifically, Vulcanus needs it. Because you see: Gleba has spoilage and nutrient-fed machines, Fulgora has scrap sorting and irregular building space, Aquilo has heating and imports, even Nauvis has biter defense. But what does Vulcanus have? Try to think for a moment. Does Vulcanus gameplay offer anything that wasn’t present in 1.1? Fluid handling isn’t a new concept, and neither is coal liquefaction’s heavy oil loop. Fighting demolishers for space is even easier than clearing biter nests, not to mention completely detached from factory building itself.Factorio is a game about solving problems, and Vulcanus simply doesn’t offer any new problems to solve. It’s just a collection of “combine resouces A and B into item C, then combine item C with resource D into item E”. There’s nothing new, nothing to “sink one’s teeth into”. It’s a waterless planet, but that doesn’t mean its gameplay has to be so dry. My slag idea is definitely far from perfect, but even in this state it would be better than nothing.
I understand that not all planets have to be of the same difficulty. It’s ok for Vulcanus to be “the easy planet”. But easy an unique aren’t mutually exclusive. Fulora can be simplified somewhat by using bots, and choosing not to use the excess materials. But it has the potential to be interesting. Those who want to challenge themselves have the opportunity to do it. But Vulcanus simply has nothing to offer, no matter what angle you look at it from. Even tungsten processing is done in a single step. Imagine if the only holmium items were plate and electrolyte, that’s how that feels to me.
I don’t know, is this board even the right place to post something like this? Oh well, either way, I hope it was thought provoking or whatever.
