Factorio Forums

One thing that has been irking me about the game is that your "tools" go from nothing -> iron axe -> steel axe and then thats it. So for the entirety of the late game, you've got power armor, lasers and then a steel axe.

So the suggestion is this:

Make a stockalike, stand alone mod that introduces sensible tools that suit the particular tech level of the player. Obviously Dytech and a few others have wide ranging equipment mods... But that's overkill for someone like me who likes to keep things as stock as possible and compliment the vanilla game as much as possible. I'm thinking the "tool tree" so to speak would look like this:

Nothing
Iron Axe
Steel Axe
Jackhammer
Laser Drill
Atomic Atomizer

Expanding:

Jackhammer

• - increased mining power over the axe
  - durability is perhaps less?
  - material cost: steel axe x2, engines x5, green circuits x10?
  - Tech Tree Placement: Later in green science? Around when you get trains. 100x Red Science. 100x Green Science

Laser Drill

• - increased mining power over the jackhammer
  - material cost: jackhammer x2, laser turrets x5, red circuits x10
  - Tech Tree Placement: Blue Science sometime

Atomic Atomizer

• - increased mining power over the laser drill
  - material cost: laser drill x2, processing units x5, level 3 speed modules x5
  - Tech Tree Placement: Alien Science sometime

Each level would require the tool from the previous level to increase the resource cost of each and to remove "obsolete" tools from the game. Also creates a production chain for tools that could get interesting. The above are suggestions only, I've tried to do as much thinking and flesh out the idea as much as possible. I don't possess the coding skills to do something like this, but it is something that I would personally use. I'd love to know what people think. Suggestions are welcome, the most important things would be to keep it as close to stock as possible (no mechanics that don't already exist) and to compliment the vanilla game as much as possible. Nothing too overpowered.

Hey i really think this is a good idea,

It's given me ideas about certain tools speeding up crafting speed, and how fast you can pickup, high processing of all materials required.The tools should be unique each in themselves, not one in a certain tech level being the best of the tools.

I will see what i can do about putting together some of the ideas

i'm glad you think so. sing out if you need a hand with any of the conceptual stuff. you can also count on my for testing/bug fixing I'm keen to see what you come up with.

actually, now i think about it, this mod would fit in with some of the stuff you already do like the big wooden power pole, the solar inserters etc.

I don't really see the point of having higher tier tools : what's the point of them when you can lay 50 mining drills down in no time ?
The only upgrades I'd like to see on tools is durability. But that's a personal opinion, ofc.

I like idea, i'll put in my to do list

Koub wrote:I don't really see the point of having higher tier tools : what's the point of them when you can lay 50 mining drills down in no time ?

Colonel Will and I were discussing this. Once you hit logistics/construction bots, tools in general become a little pointless. However there are times when you do have to pick things up etc in the late game and I find it irritating that tool strength doesn't scale like everything else in the game.

This mod is like any mod. Its user choice Some people will find it useful (like me) and some people wouldn't have a need (Colonel Will).

As there hasn't been any activity from McGuten in almost a month, I made a simple mod for this. I haven't done any fancy graphics. Just a re-tint of the steel axe icon.

• Engine unlock the Jackhammer
• Laser unlocks the Laser Drill
• Alien Technology unlocks the Atomic Disassembler

You can get the mod here: https://github.com/jpas/factorio-expand ... s/releases

I haven't done any balancing yet so if you think it is unbalanced let me know here or on the github issues.

awesome! just one question, I don't seem to be able to craft them? Is there some option I need to enable?

Sorry about that, should be fixed now. I forgot to add a migration from the base game to a modded version.

You can download the new version here!

The forum post for the mod is located here

awesome mate. really great stuff.

it feels about right. the step between each level is kinda small, but the top feels about the right power. Its certainly fast, but not ridiculously so. So very, very happy.

Hopefully someone will get keen and do up some sweet little sprites for it!