Factorio Forums

Hello,

-edit: fixed some typos, added the lowest part-
-this is my first post, please excuse if some formating is wrong-

After playing factorio with dozens of mods, for hours and hours and hours, it always came to an very fast end. All Research is done, the rockets are flying out hourly, you are basicly not needed anymore.
I've put some thought into a big change I wanted to test myself with, having "Contracts" with our home planet, for example, delivering 1k ammo every 10 minutes. This concept might be intereseting for a mod:
Let me explain the principle via an example:
Pre-Requierements:
You have finished green/red science. (Blue is deactivated from crafting)
You have researched the technologie to communicate and deliver/recieve from your home world (For example, via an antenna)
You have build the antenna, the delivery "cannon" (totally not stolen from Terratech, google "delivery cannon, terratech" and you will see what I mean) and a com-terminal

Contract example:
Contractor: Homeworld Bureau of Expansion
Description: We need Walls for our new outposts in troubling regions.
Item(s): Walls , 1000
Time: 60 minutes
Continous, until contract ended//maximum reached OR One Time delivery
Award: Blue Science Packs, 100 | Alien Science Packs, 10

The plan is, that a player now finds a stone outpost and builds a productionline for this contract. Everytime the contract is fulfilled, the Awards are transfered to a award chest, so advanced technologies can be researched. These advanced technologies lead to more advanced and harder contracts. Maybe there also could be a penality when a contract is not fullfilled and after x failed contracts your reputation sinks and you get "worse" contracts/conditions or lose points ect.
-
This mod would basicly change the whole game from the mid era to the endgame. This might could also be used as an alternative for people who want a peaceful world without killing biters, since you could receive alien packages from the contracts. I am not entirely sure how much of this idea is possible.
-
Opinions/improvements/ideas?
Sadly I am not fully capable of doing all this myself, but I am interested in working with a few people on this.
So if you are interested, write me a message/reply here.

The homeworld and galactic trade mods (both hosted in these forums) cover basically what you want, although without the science pak changes. You could adjust the contracts in the Homeworld mod to give science pack rewards with minor tweaking. I recommend both of them but they still fall a little short of my own Ideal game setup so I've been considering either modding them or making my own from scratch.

Suggestions / Ideas:

Where im most unsatisfied is with Galactic Trade. This is a pure buy/sell mod where all base items (those that have no construction recipe) are assigned initial values and all items with a recipe have a cost assigned based on the sum of the ingredients plus an adjustment for how many technologies are needed to unlock crafting it and how many steps are required in its production. I those price adjustments dont make intermediate and finished goods expensive enough in my opinion. With a the base mod the price of ore is barely less than the price of the smelted plates. Also the purchase price for an item only has about a 30% tax rate for the value you get from selling.

Id like a SIGNIFICANTLY larger tax rate, probably closer to having the purchase price of an item be double or triple the selling price (transportation of goods from off-world should be expensive). Id also like a SIGNIFICANTLY higher value calculated for intermediate and finished products. This would prevent people having 'sell chests' placed in front of all their electric miners and then just have 'buy chests' located right at their factories supplying already smelted metals without there being a cost involved. The increase in value for intermediate and goods would also encourage the player to actually build more of those factories themself to improve overall cost.

Another change I want is to track recent sales/purchases and use that to adjust the prices further. The more you supply a given thing the less you will get paid for it as the demand is being met. The more you buy items the more expensive they will become as you are diminishing he supply in an economy that is already scarce on resources. This still rewards a player for doing more things themself while making late game items available at a balanced cost. Id like the prices that the player pays for finished goods to take into account if the player has been selling the resources needed to construct it. If you've never sold copper then the market will have higher prices for anything requiring it.

Contracts from the homeworld I see as a resource sink that gives a bit more Purpose to the game other than 'launch a rocket'. By my reasoning you are on this planet in the first place because the homeworld desperately needs resources. I like how the 'homeworld' mod itself starts you with the homeworld having very basic initial contracts and as you meet them the population grows and they start requiring more complex things. The growth is way too fast for my tastes though and needs serious balancing. Also id have the primary reward for fulfilling contracts be a paycheck in Credits (usable for market purchases). If the homeworld starts small (maybe its a new colony) then things you can buy from them could be limited too and more advanced things only become available as the homeworld grows. More advanced things should still be available at a seriously taxed rate (low supply).

Anyways those are the adjustments that I think would combine those two mods and get the game closer to MY ideal game experience.