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I know this topic has been covered a few times, but I think a have a unique idea for water. As a player of Minecraft I am no stranger to infinite water, however at least I can remove small pools of water or build over it in that game, here water is infinite and immovable. We have players spawning on islands or locked on continents, surrounded by an impassable barrier for Biters and the Player alike, and most importantly it is the only infinite resource in a non-infinite map (aside from oil which becomes functionally useless once you get a patch to 0.1 per second). A little pool will last any factory forever no matter how much you draw from it with constant fracking, and running steam engines day and night.

So it fitting with the themes of this game (the use, and abuse of natural resources in order to stay alive, and the constant need to expand to gather more of said resources) water should drain. Here are my ideas for how this could be accomplished:

1. Maybe it works like oil where the "lake" or "ocean" it made up of nodes that can be harvested to a minimum amount (again making it functionally useless).

2. Maybe like the ores in the game where the offshore pump will "mine" an area of water nodes (each node having a "richness" to it) and once the nodes are empty they disappear, leaving land in its place.

3. My personal favorite however is the slow shrinking of a recursive program that seeks out water-land borders and works inwards from that. Seeing the body of water shrink as the outside edge is replaced by land and the water is sucked into a central point. This could use the "mining" version of water nodes that have a "richness"to them, so water doesn't drain too quickly unless it is in small pools. To prevent problems like the scrips lagging the game because of a massive water patch the offshore pumps could have a large-ish "mining" area, were the outside edge of the mining area is treated like "ground".

Some of my other ideas about water:

I have a fondness for the idea of bridges made from steel and stone. Stone bridges have a maximum of 16 tiles, steel has 32 and for both of them both ends of the bridge have to be on land. Steel Bridges will also be wide enough to have train tracks placed on them.

I have one last idea, This one is about the Biters and their interaction with water, seeing as Biters seem to mimic ants and bees (with a hive mentality and suicidal protection of nests) I can see no reason why Biters might try to do what ants do and make a bridge of "drowned" Biters across the water. Perhaps the bridge the Biters make could cause damage to the player (Acid like worm spit?) but not the Biters. It may be some more advance AI stuff, but I like the idea of seeing a horde of Biters running over the corpses of their fallen comrades in order to get at the "invader".

Once again I know this is a well covered topic but I think I have some unique ideas, and I think they fit really well with the themes of this game.

I like the bridge idea. I think it seems pretty obvious (though you never know!) that some way of working with water outside of piping it to stuff is intended to show up at some point - but I do hope it's fairly soon.

Apart from bridges (and possibly more importantly), I'd like some kind of water transport. It's not like we could end up with a worse boat than the Minecraft one.

robhol wrote:Apart from bridges (and possibly more importantly), I'd like some kind of water transport. It's not like we could end up with a worse boat than the Minecraft one.

Don't jinx it

robhol wrote: I'd like some kind of water transport. It's not like we could end up with a worse boat than the Minecraft one.

I don't know, the car is a little wonky, imagine trying to drive it down a river.

I waited a bit before I make some critics: this is the kind of mixed ideas, which are really difficulty to discuss.

The bridges and water depletion has already threads (some threads! Bridges: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 756#p27842 ).

The last idea is not bad, the best of that thread (because all the others have been already discussed), but you see on the reactions of the others, that they didn't recognize it.

I don't want to kill ideas of players, I want to help to make it better! Please have a look at this: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=3394

It is long, but especially the second post explains in detail all the mistakes you made and how to make it better...

... Next time, I hope.

I will admit it looks wide ranging, but I did keep it all on the topic of water. Most of my post is focused on water removal and depletion and different methods this can be achieved (3 being my favorite) and I freely admit it is a well covered topic (96 pages worth of hits for water alone). I felt maybe I had a good idea with the water draining away toward a central point.

The bridges are something that hit my train of thought, draining water away from an area would be slow, if you wanted to cross a larger body of water without removing it you need a bridge. Again I know it has been covered but I thought it was worth a mention.

The final point was a way to make it so water was no longer uncross-able for the Biters. I see Biters like hive-mind insects and ants have been know to cross water on the backs of their drowned comrades. I think a study of hive-mind insects could come up with a load of cool behaviors for Biters, but I want to Stick to water on this thread.

I see my biggest suggestion in that post was the changes that would be made to the water tiles themselves in-order to make it workable. (Eg. turning them into a resource tile like oil or coal, but still keeping the "you can't walk on this" bit)

Thank you for the advice, I will try to find more suitable threads in the future and give ideas their own posts under more specific topics.

This is my opinion, but i like your idea to an extent...

as far as the steam engine.. it's not difficult to imagine it is a closed cycle only needing water for cooling and then dumping overboard er back into the lake which the way it is modeled isn't wrong.. but only shows water going in, then heated, only to magically be "consumed"

but since i technically work with an operating steam plant that uses a closed loop (secondary fluid) and the only water we need is to "dump" the heat which we re-use.. only getting rid of water which goes back into the cycle the cities water treatment stuff..

as far as i've seen there are only a few areas that are

as far as the bridges.. all my yes! 100% agree

I think for water patches of like 10x10 or less should be be able to build on and "destroy" and not allowed to be used as sources. as it isn't difficult to imagine taking buckets or piping the water out.. but modeling that would be too much micro for this game so.. anyways that's my rant for the day!


honestly, I think biters should just be able to swim.. just move VERY slowly