I think the player crafting speed is about right at the moment. You can craft a few items yourself without problem, but anything higher-tier that is really useful takes a long time and urges you to automate. I understand that some things do not need full automation; just build a chest with the neces...

I agree Nagshell, you can fix most of the problem with mods. However, I very much support the original case. The reason is that discussions about balancing are -to me- about the core game, that is, without any mods. The reason is that I think it is a desirable goal to build a game that is very well ...

I think we need to clarify what this suggestion is actually about. I first read it as a "generate random quests at random time intervals to keep the player busy" (like psorek did). I would oppose such a suggestion, as for me, Factorio is all about automation, so quests popping up that requ...

If you would like more things to be exposed in the modding API, then the recommended way to do this is by requesting this feature in the feature requests forum. This forum is about getting things to work within the given framework - which is probably the reason for the misunderstanding.

I fail to see how the work that happens during loading has anything to do with how suitable "lazy loading" is. I'll try to illustrate this, by showing a simplified process of what Factorio has to do for the player to start a game: load game data (may include complex operations) -- load UI ...

I think we need to distinguish between optimizing the loading itself (which is what you suggest) and the question about when the loading happens (which is what I suggest). These ideas do not conflict and could be implemented together (in fact, they profit from each other). The concern about invalid ...

I fully agree that especially in early game, chopping trees is one of the less enjoyable activities. I like the suggestion of auto-removal upon placing down items. Or have some kind of small, autonomous vehicle that cuts down trees (basically a miner for trees), fueled by coal it slowly cuts down an...

I agree mostly with ssilk that most of the behavior you describe can be solved with mods.
I think that the fine-granular options we already have are good to keep. I think it might be worthwhile for a steam release version to probably add in default settings that correspond to certain difficulties.

I am very much aware of that. What I am suggesting is basically to move the data.raw loading process from startup to right before game initialization/load. Thereby, the process itself can remain the same. As an optimization, if mods did not change and data.raw was loaded before, then there is no nee...

As an additional note: sprites/data could be loaded lazily, i.e. not at startup, but at the initialization of the actual game. The total loading time would be the same. If the selected mods do not change, she a second game can use the already loaded data. However, if the active mods did change, spri...

Well, anything script-related is reloaded when the map is loaded/generated, so that is fine. But anything that affects data.raw is not. For example, you have been playing with mods A, B and C but now want to join a friend's server, with a savegame that requires mods A,B and D. If D does changes to d...

I support this idea. It's a common way to handle notifications in games (Civ 5, Anno series).

Even with just combat/damage/destruction as it is at the moment, I think it might provide better visibility of problems.

This idea is about improving the usability for mods. When you create/use a mod that makes changes to data.raw (the things you'd typically place in a data.lua or data-updates.lua), you need to restart the game for the mod to take effect. This is somewhat cumbersome when you develop the mod, but also ...

Yeah, suggesting that you DON'T read ideas and suggestions is so great on the other hand :D Wow, seriously? I think the devs are doing an outstanding job in communicating with the community and Factorio would certainly not be the game it is if they weren't. However, at least I fully understand that...

Generally, everything that consumers energy produces pollution.
Steam engines produce pollution because they consume fuel. Solar panels themselves do not produce pollution (free energy!), but assembly machines and also the electric furnaces consume energy and thus produce pollution.

I personally never use more than 3 wagons. The simple reason is that station layout becomes complex to setup (not so much in terms of cost complexity, but in terms of clicking/fiddling)

It is a good thing that requester chests contents do not count towards the logistics system storage. Semantically, whatever is in these chests has been provisioned for use and is thus no longer available to the rest of the system (also, bots can't take items out of requester chests).

As implied by Kazinski, this isn't possible in the current version. However, you can use the following workaround: When your train enters the station, remove all its fuel with smart inserters. Have another smart inserter add fuel based on your condition (you may have to connect it to the remote ches...

I am not sure the answer is that simple, as the water from the middle could push up/down. I guess it depends on how the water flows are actually implemented. I do not have a definite answer though. @Donbo: in your setup, you could measure the efficiency create disconnected groups of steam engines an...

The mod keeps track of the regions it has spawned resources in. It will also only generate resources in chunks that have not yet been charted.