Factorio Forums

Hello everyone, today I would like to present to you an idea that I had thought of while playing the game, wood mills. The idea came to me when I noticed I'm constantly having to walk myself over to a bunch of tree's and having to cut them down myself. After the constant hassle of doing so, I thought to myself what could this game use, and that's when it hit me, wood mills! This is when I began thinking how would this fit within the game, well wood I feel at the moment doesn't have many uses. Though I feel wood is one of the most important resources in the real world, though I know it's not directly based off real life, I feel that it has some affect within the game. Do to this, I think the game could have some more added features to make this new "machine" a high priority on your list of things to make. Now, more into the wood mill itself, I feel it should be a fairly large machine, as it does take in whole tree's to trim and process. As every machine does, it requires a fuel source to run, and I was thinking electric.

Below I want to summarize some of the basics to a machine ( Recipe, Power, Etc ) -

Recipe - I feel this should not be simple, and should be rather costly.
Gears - Not sure what type
New Items called Blades - They are within the machine to cut and proccess the logs.
Conveyor belts - Used to move the logs in and out
Metal Plates - To construct the structure of the machines

Power - I feel this machines should use a fair amount of power, due to the things it is doing. Such as running a conveyor belt, and an array of blades.

I hope this idea helps to pop some idea's into your head, and I hope I explained myself well enough for you to understand. Thanks, hope you like this idea!

I know as a player I love this idea and would love to see it implemented into the game

But there are already logs and woodden planks in the game, the latter can be constructed at a regular assembling machine, making the wood mill useless.
And you'd still have to cut the logs yourself.

Wood processing is planned, but we would keep our style.

There definitely wouldn't be one-for-all machine that would do everything.
There would be way to place trees (some general way, that can be used for other stuff as well, like placing some parts of the factory).
There would be some machine gathering trees that are grown up nearby.
There would probably be some machine that would accelerate the grow (using manure) etc.
We would let the player to have lots of different setups with different properties.

kovarex wrote:Wood processing is planned, but we would keep our style.

There definitely wouldn't be one-for-all machine that would do everything.
There would be way to place trees (some general way, that can be used for other stuff as well, like placing some parts of the factory).
There would be some machine gathering trees that are grown up nearby.
There would probably be some machine that would accelerate the grow (using manure) etc.
We would let the player to have lots of different setups with different properties.

I wish I could have wen't more into detail of what I meant by this machine, but basically it was going to be an all around machine, that could do everything. Basically I hope by adding this into the game, wood itself would have more uses then what it has right now, and make it a resource that you actually need to worry about.

Shocker wrote: Basically I hope by adding this into the game, wood itself would have more uses then what it has right now, and make it a resource that you actually need to worry about.

The main reason of the fact that wood is not resource you need to worry about is, that it can't be automated. When we automate it, it will change.

The main reason of the fact that wood is not resource you need to worry about is, that it can't be automated. When we automated it, it will change.

Sounds good to me, that is what I was hoping for.

I like the idea but trees don't take that long to mine so setting up large machines to do it for you only to take them down later would be more of a hassle (although making the mining time longer might work) Instead maybe have a vehicle that does it for you, sort of like a wheat combine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CaseC ... vester.jpg) but for trees.

kovarex wrote:Wood processing is planned, but we would keep our style.

There definitely wouldn't be one-for-all machine that would do everything.
There would be way to place trees (some general way, that can be used for other stuff as well, like placing some parts of the factory).
There would be some machine gathering trees that are grown up nearby.
There would probably be some machine that would accelerate the grow (using manure) etc.
We would let the player to have lots of different setups with different properties.

On the topic of manure, why not multipurpose the science packs for it? They look like flasks of chemicals, and it would give the packs a meaning when the research is finished, as well as a competing resource sink if the trees become important enough. Also on the topic of chemicals and trees, another use for the science packs could be as an ingredient for PLASTICS (which could be used as an alternate building material, perhaps for tech variations (which I would very much like to see)). It would be nice to have a super fast but lower durability car made out of plastics, or perhaps a plastic version of logistic drones that has a speed increase, stuff like that. It would also make trees (plus science packs) a new, highly valuable resource, as they would be used to create lighter, faster machines when harvested in large quantities. This would also tie in well with the polution concept.

Maybe log-chopping robots? It would be a more realistic way to go around chopping trees.

Wood automation needs to be done

ficolas wrote:Wood automation needs to be done

Well hopefully soon enough, this will be put into "Accepted Suggestions"

Wood is something that you don't need consistent large quantities of in the game so i think it wouldn't server much purpose. But what if later down the line u can build robots to harvest forests for you? maybe they have a way to get something alien from the trees that can turn it into a new type of resource too

Wood is not used in large quantities in the moment, because there is no automatic way of getting it. If this mill was implemented, there would be more use of wood.

Nova wrote:Wood is not used in large quantities in the moment, because there is no automatic way of getting it. If this mill was implemented, there would be more use of wood.

exactly

Nova wrote:Wood is not used in large quantities in the moment, because there is no automatic way of getting it. If this mill was implemented, there would be more use of wood.

Xisuma wrote:Wood is something that you don't need consistent large quantities of in the game so i think it wouldn't server much purpose. But what if later down the line u can build robots to harvest forests for you? maybe they have a way to get something alien from the trees that can turn it into a new type of resource too

if there was a way to harvest trees automatically then the creators could implement plastic and rubber(not scientifically sound but yea sure.....) this could add quite a bit of use for wood, which is something I'd like very much in this game, ideally by the end you should have plenty of use for coal, iron, copper. stone AND wood! thats what i want, not tonnes of more base resources but to see the creators finding more ways to use what they have already.

and just maybe a wood mill could convert wood at a higher efficiency, or give a useful byproduct etc. the question for me is,

would it be an exploiter style ->place it and it will harvest from trees within a radius
OR
would it be more like sustainable horticulture -> place it and it will start growing trees which will be harvest-able in time, while it harvests other nearby trees.....

while writing this i got the image of tree growers, a 1x1 factory that grows and harvests trees , then puts them onto an conveyor which would lead to a tree mill to make wood.
you place the grower on an empty spot (possibly on grass) and have a source of water sent to them through a pipe/ sprinkler system. the growers could use ailen artifacts to to be upgraded for more wood per hour (ailens grow creepers REALLY FAST after all), while the grower IS automated it would also be very slow because of balancing and logic.

each grower would be fairly cheap to make, but to achieve a decent rate of tree production would require heaps of space and resources. i would also think that it needs its own research and possibly something to act as fertilizer

Please note that they are some that hate the ways of IC2 and (in this case especially) Forestry while implementing the wood mills.
Thus having something for harvesting nearby wood (maybe only a chainsaw, which would be able to, say, chop down a 4x4 area) would be nice.
Having a way of planting and growing trees, also nice.

"We are planning some form of wood processing"
-Factorio devs in 2013

Plans can change...

Is this idea in people's minds at all you need to have trees do something else or plant them otherwise I feel it's pointless to have them in the game