[Idea/Request] Force to train-expand

[SirRichie]

Hi,
I am playing around with ideas of how to provide more incentives to use trains.
In the current state, my experience is that there are not enough incentives to use trains, especially considering how expensive they are to setup and research. Furthermore, all the nice advanced controls with signals are rarely needed, unless you specifically design your rail network so it requires them.

Of course, you can set resources to be more sparse during map creation, but that will also make the game harder - what I am looking for is a way to incentivize building larger, train-connected expansions.

There are two mods that I have discovered that may help with that:

• Resource Spawner Overhaul It shares the same motivation, but is not working for 11+ and you will most likely not need that many expansions to finish the game
• Endless Resources It basically makes all resources work like oil. While this does not increase the need for expansions, it provided some ideas (see below)

What I envision is basically a mod which does the following to the game:

• Generally increase the size of resource fields
• Reduce the richness of resources to result in a significantly reduced total yield per resource field if resources were to deplete
• Like in Endless Resources, do not let resources deplete completely
• Increase the distance between individual resources (of the same kind) by a lot
• (maybe) size of resource fields increases by distance from starting point
• It should be multiplayer-compatible

These changes should lead to a gameplay which requires many, large expansions to maintain a steady income of resources, but at the same time makes expansions worth the cost as they do not run out of material too quickly. The challenge of the game would tip towards income management, rather than resource management (which it is mostly anyway).
The biter spawning/evolving speed probably needs to be adjusted as well

Other ideas that I have, but probably need even more changes: Have biters/spitters guard the resource fields

What I'd to know from this dedicated community:

1. Are there any mods out there which do this already? Or any other related mods I may have overlooked?
2. What do you generally think of this idea?
3. Are there requirements/considerations that I have overlooked? Or any other ideas which may work towards the initial goal even better?
4. I have not created any mods yet, but I am a Computer Scientist and quite willing to work on this. If any of you want to contribute to this mod, let me know, I like working in teams
5. What would I have to take into account to achieve interoperability with resource-introducing mods (e.g., DyTech etc.)?

Thank you very much already for reading the above and I am really looking forward to reading your opinions/suggestions!

[hoho]

[*]Endless Resources It basically makes all resources work like oil. While this does not increase the need for expansions, it provided some ideas (see below)

I once tried using it and it actually forced me to expand even faster than usual. Sure, the resources are endless but the production speed drops off FAST.



I'm almost certain that resource spawn overhaul mod can be configured to do pretty much everything you asked for. It also supports endless resources mod out-of-box.