money...
i have thought about money in Factorio in the past and have come up with a few different ways to do this.
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item.
the obvious choice. belting the money around might be annoying.
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fluid.
needs the adding of pipe in/outputs to everything that requires money.
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electricity. instead of having physical money, the electric network can be used for "digital" currency.
power isn't the focus anyway. so modding all buildings to not take power is a possibility. also research could still take power to emulate using money.
caveat: electric-poles always interconnect. it doesn't matter what force they belong to. so playing with multiple (opposing) forces would be annoying. they'd have to block space so opponents are unable to connect to their wires.
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multiple/all of them
an additional money item and atm buildings would make the transfer from town to town easier.
liquid money inside towns would look interesting and be a choice to have town internal money that the player is unable to pick up. rotateable pumps could be added so the player can adjust where the money goes.
there's probably more but i need to go. nya~