Factorio Forums

Assembly machines have "ingredient" slots; you can't put anything in them until a recipe is specified. Laboratories have "input" slots; each slot is restricted to one item type but can always be inserted into.

What I want to do is have a lab that has both types of slots (probably). It will have one (or more) tiers of science pack slots, and an ingredient slot. Research for this lab will consist of science packs (as normal) and an item that will be specific to each research. Features that I would like but are optional: the generic item slot would only be available when a research has been selected, and the item would be used up as a percentage in the same manner as science packs.

My thoughts on this are: the second feature could be an issue, as I believe that would mean changing the prototype of every item that might be researched to have durability. If a prototype can be changed at runtime then it might be possible for the item "ingredient" slot to be a normal lab "input" slot, which is changed when a relevant research is started and is disabled (set to an item the player can't get?) when not researching. Or I could have an assember recipe that creates "generic item" science packs, the recipe for which changes when the research is started, and then the lab could just be all "input" slots. The problem with that is players could just stock up a crapton of the "generic item" science packs for something cheap and save them for the later expensive stuff.

Does anyone else have any thoughts or ideas?

I can answer one part of this: prototypes aren't changeable runtime - this a core part of how the Factorio engine works. Not even the base game supports changing the prototype runtime.