Factorio Forums

Well, it should be useful in couple with Hidden Ores.
A concept is simple: every material in recipes can be replaced to other material. That change a final result.

For example, we can use instead copper wires other wires: aluminium wires, gold wires, silver wires, and other material.

Machine properties could be depends from material, which used in parts.

I never liked one part in a craft system: every recipe require a strictly defined thing. It not give me a space to experiments.

Necoring.

The game-value for this is very questionable.

I tend to move this to won't implement. Opinions?

My opinion: Experimenting could be useful, but should be done differently.

[Edit] One big incoherent ramble. and like sslik said, done differently from the original posters idea.

One argument I can think of in favour of this:
It adds varation and therfore replayability to the game.

Currently you depend on the availability of all ressources, since there is just no way to manage without one. So you generate a map which suits you well, which then may be boring for exactly that reason. If you could manage without, but would manage better with a certain ressource, there might be more incentive to start on a unvarourable map and then explore and expand to find the better ressources. There should be more (meaningful) exploration in this game.

A spin on the idea: Substituting iron with copper seems stupid. But ores may differ in quality. A bad quality iron ore broduces a bad quality iron plate and so on. Also bad quality takes longer to process, you need more of it, you need more fuel/energy to process it and the smelting is much more harmfull to the environment. Later in the game you may build a preprocessing plant for ore beneficiation, where soil/rock/sulfur is separated from the bad quality coal and similar with other ores. This process may need chemicals and a considerable amount of energy. Before you have that building, you will eagerly search for the best quality deposits, thus adding an incentive to explore the map with you fancy car/plane.

I like the idea more and more the longer I think about it. Material quality is one additional number to every item and no need to change any recipe. Buildable items already have health points, material quality is basically the same. Also bad quality has a higher chance of failure. The inserter made of bad quality ore may simply break and needs to be replaced (only repairing may be too easy). The better the quality the lower the chances of failure. Your factory then needs maintenence, thank good for builder bots later in the game. Also maintenence may be a major new ressource sink, besides the science packs and war stuff, with the added bonus that it scales automatically with factory size. Also environmental strain has it's toll on your own infrastructure too. If you work too dirty, the needed maintenence might overwhelm you in late game. Oh I am rambling now. This definately has to be in the game.

Generally I'm not in favour of this. It complicates the game, and it already has a nice simplicity of materials so adding a large amount of ways to substitute one material for another would be bad.

The one exception is Wood, and only because it's gathered manually in the early phase of the game (and note that "early phase" lasts for several hours). I'd really like to see an alternative to normal Electric Poles, so that they can be made without Wood.

Other than that, *shrug*, no. Even if Sand, Aluminium and Uranium gets added to the game (and the devs seem to indicate that they will at most add Uranium). That still doesn't create a valid need for materials substitution. Factorio is all about getting the right materials to the right places in the right amounts, as a sort of "puzzle" element, and any degree of substitution (except that which removes the need to perform a bothersome chore, i.e. gather Wood) unpuzzles this puzzle.