Factorio Forums

The intermediate Wood item serves no purpose and should be removed to reduce needless clutter/complexity.

There are 4 items in the game which use wood as a crafting ingredient: Wooden Box, Small Electric Pole, Shotgun, Combat Shotgun. All of these require converting 'Raw Wood' into 'Wood', and then using that wood for the final output. This conversion can be (and most commonly is) done by hand. Wood existing only makes automating Electric Poles more difficult (not necessary for an early-game item, especially when it already requires copper wire) and occasionally leaving extra junk in your inventory.

Thus, I suggest simply removing the intermediary Wood from the game and adjusting the recipes to work directly from Raw Wood. (Time could be increased to be the same as it is now, though I think having the time slightly reduced would be perfectly fine for these items anyway.) Renaming Raw Wood to Wood may then also be correct.

For logic/thematic concerns, I'd argue Raw Wood is about the game as an Iron Plate - an abstracted raw resource ready for conversion into many things. Especially considering the fact you do not need any outside tools to convert Raw Wood to Wood (while you need to smelt ore), the distinction between Wood and Raw Wood is fairly arbitrary.

The only remaining concern I can think of would be affecting existing games/mods. My understanding is that development of Factorio tends to focus on the best solution even if it's awkward short-term for existing players, so this would fall under that umbrella. It'd probably also be possible to at least temporarily leave Wood in the game internals, hidden, to reduce the potential for breaking mods that use it?

That's something I say to myself every time I start a new game and do craft things with wood - but at that moment, I'm too busy playing to post . But I totally agree, never understood the use of that wooden plank, and more especially, hated it because before shotgun became useless, I always had an extra wooden plank that annoyed me (all the crafts with planks use an even number of them except the shotgun, which you only need to craft one) the moment I crafted my shotgun.

The purpose of wooden planks is the same as with any intermediate: to make automation more complicated.

I use wooden chests for all my train-to-belt train stations, as well as any other place logistics chests aren't needed, so for me this intermediate stays relevant throughout the game.

I'd say get rid of raw wood, and just have wood.

However, from the perspective of my mods, I wouldn't want to remove it, because if there was just wood, then you could make tree seedlings out of my synthetic wood.

I'd say get rid of raw wood, and just have wood.

However, from the perspective of my mods, I wouldn't want to remove it, because if there was just wood, then you could make tree seedlings out of my synthetic wood.