Pavement deterioration

[Kryptos]

TL;DR:

Over time, pavement deteriorates randomly, depending on amount of pavement around it.

Idea:

What if pavement could deteriorate over time? This would have to take a while, but it would give my concrete makers and brick smelters something to do between factory expansions. It would also give a much better atmospheric vibe to older multiplayer servers, where the occasional player may have left behind abandoned ruins half eaten by biters. I imagine it being based on two factors: distance to regular dirt and walls, and traffic. Ideally. I imagine something like nature/biters encroaching on your factory unchecked, so walls would slow down pavement decay. However, that many calculations for that much concrete is gonna slow everything down, so, I figure you could add this on to the pollution mechanic: since every chunk knows how much of it is paved to calculate ground pollution absorption, you could have a clock that randomly decays a certain amount of paved areas to dirt depending on how much of the chunk is paved. I figure give it a high chance to decay a small percent for chunks that are relatively unpaved, and gradually go to low chance for larger percent of the pavement to decay, to simulate traffic. Robots will then of course hop off to repave the area.

I think it'd be cool at least. Maybe have it be a difficulty setting of sorts, and expand decay to built structures as well, but only by a small amount of hp, to cycle repair packs.

[ssilk]

We had this several times, suggestions about things, that needs repair.
The community opinion is not clear, but a large number of members thinks that detoriation is just another resource sink, cause if an item needs repair it can be done by construction bots, so the whole process is automatable then.

This case is a little bit different, cause I assume, this needs to be replaced by hand.

And you brought in a good new argument: "older multiplayer worlds". That would makes sense, if things would detoriate until there is nothing left, indeed.

[Kryptos]

I definitely think this should be a candidate for automation, as almost everything in Factorio already is. Heck, I have circuits in all my mid-late game factories that add/remove robots to logistic networks based on demand (keep x in system depending on size of system, when less than 10% robots are available, dump x more robots into the system, when 90% are available, start removing excess, etc.) Everything should be automateable, except maybe factory expansions. You should still have to click down blueprints.

So yeah, I see this as being a fully automated resource sink. Based on my experience with Factorio, that seems to be a good deal of the point. Exploit resources, and then build something to do the exploitation for you. If mindless and wasteful overconsumption of resources without regard to the surrounding area wasn't the point, there would be pollution scrubbers and recyclers and an eco research and a whole lot more sprites would be colored green.

I guess it wouldn't be a very noticeable mechanic as long as your factory is fairly well regulated and maintained. I imagine it being something along the lines of more things that will go wrong when the weak link in the chain breaks, whether you run out of robots, ore, power, or whatever. It would also probably not be as noticeable in single player outside of badly supplied outposts, since the game pauses when you do, but I really do think it would shine in multiplayer servers. Could even work as an abandonment alarm of sorts-if a majority of the pavement has deteriorated, then the player is likely not coming back. Depending on server rules, maybe its time for the scrappers to visit. Or if you leave a server and come back too late, you'll end up having to do some sort of maintenance. Seems a bit unrealistic that an abandoned factory that runs out of resources to maintain itself happily roars back to life at 100% as soon as you hook up a fresh ore vein.

Edit:
Maybe change the deterioration, so buildings that deteriorate like this become, like, "[building name] scrap heap" or something, and the scrap can then be quickly removed by deconstruction at a large loss to resources (I imagine pulling a few plates, maybe a gear or three, basic stuff), or, there could be a scrap miner, or like a scrap collection robot, which will take longer to clean up scrap but return more resources. Maybe if the scrap robot does the cleanup, it drops a building blueprint when it is done cleaning up, so your factory can "heal" itself without you having to meticulously check all your belt lines to figure out which single belt/inserter/pipe deteriorated and stopped your entire circuit production.

This could also be expanded to a catastrophic failure of sorts, where a building just spontaneously (rarely) gets scrapped randomly due to, like, manufacturing defect or something. Then your happy scrapper bot goes to replace it, and gives you back some of the materials. Might work well with nuclear power, if meltdowns are planned (which would of course probably flatten half your base). This would incentivize producing every single standing building, instead of just kind of forgetting your old steam power block as soon as you start making solar panels.

[MalcolmCooks]

you know I quite like this idea. I would propose that everything would gradually wear out over time, but only if it remains unused. The way I am thinking about it is, while things are connected to the power but turned off, most machines drain a small amount of power, and you have an audible hum emitting from assembly machines. So it is like they are in standby, keeping themselves ready to start working at a moment's notice. If they have some capacity for self-maintainence then I think it's arguable that machines would stay in perfect working order while you use them, but begin to decay if you abandon them. I think that would add a bit of flavour to the game. And it will prevent maintainence from becoming an annoyance or an unmanagable resource sink.

[Deadly-Bagel]

I do like these little touches in games, grass growing around stuff and machines slowly becoming worn (aesthetic only). It's fun to come back to an old hut or something you made early in a Minecraft to find it covered in weeds and flowers.

Factorio on the other hand dedicates 100% of everything to technical features. Outposts don't stop working because you walked away and there is a massive amount of stuff going on even in a standard base, I'm constantly impressed how well the game performs doing all this. These little features are a nice touch but honestly if they are done at all it needs to be right at the end of development. Get all the technical stuff out of the way, if the game is so efficient with power to spare (and the devs have time to spare) then start on these features but I don't think there's any point entertaining any eye candy ideas until then.