Networking labs

[nyspace1]

getting to the point.

I would like someone to make a mod that allows labs to be interconnected (like roboports are now in the game) and each interconnected group can be researching something independently instead of all labs researching one thing no matter how far away from each other.

I understand if no one wants to take up this idea. I am still unsure how to even start and at that I know that if two groups are working on the same research I do not know how that would work out. Or anything about how to do the interface. I had thoughts about maybe only while you are close to the network that you could interact with it though I am unsure how that could turn out. I also thought about having a way to disconnect a network and have labs researching multiple items close to each other.

[Ranakastrasz]

I'm not sure why you would bother. I can't think of any reason you would want to research two things at once. It would result in you getting one of them later, and the other would take just as long. Or something like that. It is purely a disadvantage.

The exception being the ability to pause a research and work on another, in case you realized that you started one that was less important, and don't want to lose resource progress.

[Adil]

Hmm...
With some liberal force proliferation and switching it may be possible to have standard labs working on that.
or a custom assembling machine with a bunch of special recipes can be used as a lab. It is possible to have them be connectable by wires and track whether they're connected, the recipe can be set through script. Though the progress of research (actually crafting) would have to be explicitly monitored by script and the recipe crafting progress would have to be recalculated into some internal value which would stand for the research progress. After the recipe is performed, the script would be used to mark a research as done.
(I'm simply dumping the ideas, I won't be working on that anytime soon. Good luck, whomever is going to do that.)

As for interface (and the rest of connecting\disconnecting) stuff, lurk around a bit. There are examples in other mods. Usually, custom building settings are done via custom items, which allow raising events like on_built_entity or on_trigger_created_entity(forgot where's this one) or on_marked_for_deconstruction. Also, there's that mod which tries to do part of the work for you.

I'm not sure why you would bother. I can't think of any reason you would want to research two things at once. It would result in you getting one of them later, and the other would take just as long. Or something like that. It is purely a disadvantage.

The exception being the ability to pause a research and work on another, in case you realized that you started one that was less important, and don't want to lose resource progress.

Well, that could be a part of research system overhaul. Like those dozens science pack types in dytech or bob's mods. You could have techs that require resources different enough to make separate facilities reasonable. Or researches that aren't guaranteed to succeed. (Still, not going to work on this)

[nyspace1]

This idea was for the most part, for the begging of the game when there is a few items you could easily research at the same time, or you could use it for multiplayer and have people working on separate research trees instead of everyone working on researching the same thing and arguing over what gets researched next