NOTICE for 2.0

This mod will almost certainly break hard for 2.0. And fixing it is going to take time. OTOH, it looks like 2.0 will obviate the need for a lot of the little things (like allowing modules in your inventory) that were needed to make it work, so porting it may be simpler than I expect.

About

Brave New World is a RTS-like scenario where the player character is removed, and all construction must be done by construction bots. You start with a roboport, a radar, an active provider chest, a storage chest, some solar panels and some few items.

Usage

To start a new game with this scenario, go to Play -> Scenarios -> Brave New World. There's no predefined map for this scenario so you'll have to generate a new map after selecting the scenario. If you're new to the scenario it's recommended to use the default preset for the map generator.

Features

• No hand crafting.
• No manual mining.
• Placing structures results in them being inoperable and shortly after replaced by a ghost, and the structure will be built by a bot (assuming you have the item in storage).
• Exploration is restricted, you must use radars or explore with vehicles.
• Vehicles may be remote controlled (hover cursor above vehicle, press enter), but you can't use the vehicle weapons (game limitation, not mod limitation). You can probably still run over enemies, though.
• You may not carry any items, with some exceptions which you'll quickly learn.
• If the starting roboport is destroyed, you lose the game. There's currently no win condition in the scenario.
• Three oil wells are guaranteed to be near your starting location, but other resources must be provided by the map generator.

Upgrade planner

BNW comes with an built in upgrade planner. If you place entities to upgrade from on the second row of the deconstruction planner, and the entity it should be upgrade to directly below, on the third row, then entities will be upgraded upon deconstructing them with the deconstruction planner.
See this video for an example on using it.

Tips

• The solar panels you start with is barely enough to keep your initial roboport and radar online through the night, and running out of power in this scenario is not recommended. Increasing your electricity production should be your first goal.
• You don't start with any defenses, and without this, even the smallest biters can cause serious havoc.
• Researching roboports should be high priority. This makes it easier to expand your factory.

Other mods that enhance the RTS aspect of this scenario

• RobotArmy by kyranzor adds assault robots which ease fighting enemy forces.
• Light Artillery by kizrak enables a way to deal with biter nests from afar in the early game with extremely long-range, but fairly weak artillery.
• Earendel made several AAI mods that adds assault vehicles and more, similar to RobotArmy, but more complex.
• There are numerous mods for adding equipment grids to vehicles, such as Vehicle Grid by Optera.

Multiplayer

Brave New World works in multiplayer games if all players are on the same force. Multiple forces is currently not supported in this scenario.

Issues

• Preventing items duplicating/disappearing is challenging with the hacks I had to do. I've had some issues with this in the past, and while I'm currently not aware of any ways to provoke this bug, it's possible it may happen.

Upgrading existing save game to new scenario

Any version of BNW after 4.0.2 should automatically upgrade saved games to use the version of the scenario in the current version of the mod. If you unload the mod, the special robots will go away, but the rest of the scenario should continue to function just fine.

The caveat regarding downgrades still holds. Between major revisions, downgrades will likely mess up your game. And since you now have no control over whether or not the scenario is updated, you should make a copy of a save if you think you might want to downgrade.

For prior versions of BNW...

Upgrading the mod will not upgrade your existing save games, only new games will have the upgraded scenario. There is a way to upgrade existing save games, but this is an advanced topic, and the approach differs between operating systems (different paths, see https://wiki.factorio.com/Application_directory/Changing_the_save_directory). Please try a bit on your own before asking for help.
1. Go to the factorio/saves directory and locate the save game (zip file). There should be a file called "control.lua" in the zip file. Make a backup of your save file before you modify it.
2. Go to the factorio/mods directory and locate the brave-new-world zip file. Inside this zip file you'll also find a "control.lua" file.
3. Copy the control.lua file from the mod zip file and into the save game zip file (overwriting the old control.lua). Some zip software allows you to directly update zip files, this is the easier approach. The alternative is to unzip, replace control.lua and zip the files again.

Do note that when BNW has a major upgrade (i.e. 1.x.x to 2.x.x), it may not be backwards compatible (i.e. the steps above will result in a broken game). When BNW has a minor (1.0.x to 1.1.x) or patch (1.0.0 to 1.0.1) upgrade, the intention is that it should be backwards compatible, but I offer no guarantees that this is the case.

Changelog

Changelog has been moved to the in-game changelog system.