I have no clue how else to contact you about this, so if there's a better place, sorry, I didn't know about it.
I've been a fan of Factorissimo for quite some time. If I'm playing with mods, it's one of my go-to downloads. What I really love about it is the ability to have sublevels that you can move materials through, and I recently had quite the idea to expand off this. May I present: caves.
There are scenarios abound that turn Factorio into a subterranean dream - or nightmare. You start in a cave and you can only expand your factory so far before having to deal with structural collapses or cave biters. However, all they use is in-game scripting, which means assets and textures have to be from the game too, and you're also stuck in the cave rather than it just being a sublevel.
Taking from Factorissimo, I propose a mod where there could be different cave entry/exit structures, some new tech buildings and a few new mechanics.
- Every entry hole has an exit hole, and vice-versa.
- Multiple sublevels. Holes that go down are dark, while holes that go up are light.
- Natural cave (hole) entrances are scattered across the regular game world. While technically invincible, certain factors could cause them to collapse, rendering them inoperable. This would change the texture/structure to fit.
- Natural shafts that act as deep ore veins. On their own, they can't be mined, nor can they be entered. They need unique mining structures.
- Artificial holes and shafts can be created using new, specific explosives. Both the hole and shaft texture is different than the natural textures. Artificial holes can still be affected by the same factors that would cause natural ones to collapse.
- Both the natural and artificial holes can have mineshaft buildings placed on top. This would limit certain factors to prevent collapses, and act as armour against those trying to force a factor.
- Both the natural and artificial shafts will need a task-specific mining structure placed on top in order to become operational. These will extract the shaft's given resource (iron, copper, coal, stone, uranium) indefinitely - but the better the miner, the faster it mines.
- Inside the cave sublevels, the cave walls are mostly made of light rock, which offer only a few bits of stone when mined. They act like military walls, where the textures will touch if there are adjacent cave walls.
- Resource walls exist, and drop many of their resource when mined. Heavy rock will drop more stone than light rock. More resources, and larger patches, exist the further down you go.
- Impenetrable stone exists in the sublayers to match where surface shafts exist, both for natural and artificial shafts.
- Factors that could contribute to the collapse of a hole or of a section of the cave itself:
1. Cave-In Explosives: craftable explosives like cliff explosives that can be used to collapse a natural or artificial hole.
2. Creation of Structurally-Unsound Portions of the Cave: if too open of an area is made in the particular sublevel, a collapse will eventually occur, but can be accelerated by other factors.
3. Further Excavation of Structurally-Unsound Portions of the Cave: continuing to mine further out in an unsound area will cause a collapse within the middle of the area.
4. Use of Explosives in Structurally-Unsound Portions of the Cave: any explosive used in an unsound area of a cave sublevel will result in a collapse.
5. Use of High Explosives Within Range of Cave Entrance: any high-yield explosive above explosive rockets within range (vanilla: artillery shell, nuclear rocket).
6. Surface Nest Disruptions: destroying a biter/spitter nest on the surface will cause collapses in small parts of caves directly below, if there is open space below.
7. Use of Vehicles: use of larger vehicles (vanilla: tank, trains) could trigger a collapse within the sublevel.
- Cave-ins will damage or destroy anything below them when they happen, and will kill the player or any biters below. You might be able to dodge them if you notice the signs - a cave-in sound will play and falling rock particles will happen in the area of the collapse before it happens. The middle-point of the collapse will fall first and spread to the outside, allowing speedy players the potential to outrun a collapse.
- Support poles can be crafted in order to increase the soundness of the cave roof structure. Higher-tier poles will protect a larger space.
- New sonar devices that act as radars/resource detectors. Radars don't work underground and sonar devices don't work above-ground.
- Artillery turrets and wagons will not fire underground.
- Mineshaft structures have inputs and outputs like Factorissimo buildings.
- Biters can move through holes, and can build bases within the sublevels. They see the cave walls as being like trees, and will only destroy them if necessary.
- Pollution spreads only within connected open areas of the cave, but spreads much faster. It can billow out of holes, but only upwards, not downwards.
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Compatibility for certain other mods, and potential for further mod creation:
- AAI Industry support for the mining machines it adds, which can be used in the sublevels. Larger machines contribute more to the vehicle-use factor.
- Factorissimo2 support, but with protections so that holes and shafts cannot be created in the buildings. Buildings can, however, be placed in the sublevels.
- "Support" for Aircraft, but really just a protection against their use in the sublevels.
- New AAI addon that adds smaller spider drones for surveying/scouting, a drill tank for mining, and a pole-placer drone for its namesake.
- New overhaul mod that removes surface ores, increases spawns for holes/shafts, and adds crystals in the sublevels necessary for the creation of science packs. The further underground you go, the better the crystals, and the more there are.
This should be everything, but I might have missed a few important details. If you're interested in this, please contact me via email at connoraidanmcleod@gmail.com since I'm less-likely to be active on the forum.
