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So there are maps you can create on Factorio that are mostly islands with tiny land bridges between them and sometimes no land connecting them at all. You can get one of these worlds by generating a new regular world and tweaking the terrain settings of only water to be very low in frequency but very big in size. If you play on this world, you will discover that sometimes you just need to generate thousands of landfills and create massive landfill bridges to get to other islands. (It is actually neat to see these bridges and use them once you have them.) You would then use railways on the landfill to transport resources back to your base. It is pretty standard stuff. However, what if the game had research involved that allowed for barges or boats of some kind? You could go fishing in them. You could transport resources with them. But how would you automate the boat movements? Ports, Buoys, and Barges. There is already a system in real life that Factorio could use. The barges run just like trains, except that they require water to move instead of rails. They must be guided with a series of buoys that have the standard red/green system (directional paths). You could use the planner to make the buoys just like the rails. The ports would work just like train stations do now. The inserters would be able to insert things into/onto the barge. The barge would then transport itself and the items to the next port, just as a train would with train stations. This would allow for worlds with lots of water to be able to transport things easily. There could be two types of boats: Personal boats and Barges. Personal boats could be the equivalent of the Car. The Barge could be the water equivalent of a train. There could even be research to put Artillery and Guns on the barges to make Gunships (that works similar to tanks and trains).

However, this system has one issue. It is entirely dependent on the concept that the body of water is connected all the way back to your base. If there is a section of land that splits the water, we could always unload the barge at a port, conveyor/train the items to another port across the land, and then continue barging the items. However, I have a simple solution that would drastically help this issue: Shovels. At first, shovels might only be used to pick up ground near water so that the water would fill the hole. This would be used to make canals for barges. However, this would lead to one final issue: not being able to cross the canal without landfills. I have another solution here: Bridges and Bridge Posts. Bridges would literally be bridges that trains and other things (including enemies) could cross. Bridge Posts would be a support for bridges that allows bridges to be longer (similar to how power poles allow longer power lines). These bridges would allow barges underneath them as long as they do not hit the Bridge Posts.

The game could also implement a preset similar to the Train World preset but now a Barge World (or Ocean World) where there is a lot of water with the spread out resources. This would make good use of the barge system I have described.

Let me know if you all in the community think this is a good idea or if you think it needs something more to work right. I will be happy to answer replies.

There are all sorts of mods that cover what you're talking about.

After a quick search, I found these:

• Cargo Ships - cargo ships (actually trains on water)
• Beautiful Bridge Railway - trains over water
• Land Mover - shovels to dig up land and put it down elsewhere
• Platforms - platforms to allow you to build on top of water, but are also easily removed - could be used to build a moveable bridge over the river with a little circuit network magic and Recursive Blueprints
• Canal Builder - A man a plan a canal - Panama! =)

Perhaps if there is a train station at each end of the moveable bridge, so that a train or cargo ship (train that travels only on water) can reserve the bridge, it might work well.

Edit: clarify.

Also, if you spend a little time searching the Ideas and Suggestions subforum, you'll see dozens of suggestion threads on these topics.

Thank you for your replies!

Thanks for this!

mrudat wrote: Sat Apr 20, 2019 11:46 pm There are all sorts of mods that cover what you're talking about.

After a quick search, I found these:

• Cargo Ships - cargo ships (actually trains on water)
• Beautiful Bridge Railway - trains over water
• Land Mover - shovels to dig up land and put it down elsewhere
• Platforms - platforms to allow you to build on top of water, but are also easily removed - could be used to build a moveable bridge over the river with a little circuit network magic and Recursive Blueprints
• Canal Builder - A man a plan a canal - Panama! =)

Perhaps if there is a train station at each end of the moveable bridge, so that a train or cargo ship (train that travels only on water) can reserve the bridge, it might work well.

Edit: clarify.

The Dectorio mod also includes waterfill, if you turn it on. I tried Canal Building, which is definitely a fairer model for waterfill than anything else: it allows biters to swim enough to cross your moat, if a bit slower. Unfortunately, it also allows them to swim across every other bit of shallow water, so you can no longer defend any water-based chokepoint: you need to wall the outside of, eg, the isthmus all the way until there is no shallow water at the edge. Which is approximately equal to "all the way around"

That may only apply if you use Alien Biomes, now I come to think of it, and I never checked vanilla also places shallow water at the edge of the ocean, but I bet it does. I was sad about that.

Cargo Ships, Platforms, and the Railway Bridges mods are highly recommended. Technically you can just bridge across *any* amount of water with the last, but it doesn't seem fair to me, so I restrict that to "damp patches inland, on on shallow water at the shore, and then build boats for longer distance stuff.

slippycheeze wrote: Mon Jul 08, 2019 9:34 pm That may only apply if you use Alien Biomes, now I come to think of it, and I never checked vanilla also places shallow water at the edge of the ocean, but I bet it does. I was sad about that.

You may wish to look into "Waterfill" mod which has a few flavours of water to fill with, some shallow, some deep.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Waterfill_v17