Hoses to link smaller items with steam sources. For example, an Inserter could use steam power but must be hooked up to some sort of pylon or distributor on the ground that takes a pipe of steam and lets you hook up hoses to it. Connecting hoses could be just like connecting copper wire or circuit wire between power poles.

Hoses could have much less throughput but enough to power small things like inserters or if you wanna get really crazy belt lines.

And while we're on the topic of suggestions! A huge revamp of all game items and tech to involve steam in some way. Basically remove electricity production all together? Just an interesting thought. I like the idea of a steampunk Factorio!

Thanks for the suggestion! :D

I kinda like the idea of hoses, but I don't think that's possible to implement, at least not by modifying prototypes alone. It might be possible to replace these machines with custom ones and manage them inside the control.lua script, but I wouldn't know how to go about it.

Even without this limitation though, I don't think a huge revamp will happen within this mod either.

But for whomever may be interested in adding it, here's some technical information about why it's not possible with prototypes.

Electric energy is not distributed to machines through a cable, but just a coverage area around an electric pole. Most machines, including insertes, do have circuit network connections for attaching cables, but these are only for circuit network connection explicitly and not generic. So I can't add arbitrary cables like hoses.

Fluid energy sources require pipe connections. It's not possible to receive fluids by other means.

Without the hoses, it would need to work just the same as electric poles. So I checked if they can work in their own network as to not be part of the regular electric energy infrastructure, but that's also not possible. I thought these areas might be generic as roboports also offer 2 areas around themselves for a different mechanic, but nope.

https://wiki.factorio.com/Prototype/ElectricPole
https://wiki.factorio.com/Prototype/Inserter
https://wiki.factorio.com/Prototype/Roboport