Rimworld/Dwarf Fortress depth

[Refaim]

TL:DR I suggest something nearly impossible, yet the greatest thing ever. Animals, Named armor, Other survivors of crash landing. Scavenging your own wreck.

So, Where to begin with this idea? I love the idea of Dwarf Fortress. I love the idea of named people with a made up story who may or may not do what you ask them. Add in the complexity of Factorio and by golly nothing will ever get done. But If, by chance your little ai dwarfs build a factorio factory, the glory is yours.

Now, There are a million and one reasons why this mod/total conversion will never, and i mean never actually happen. I know it's probably been brought up by many.

First thing that makes a Rimworld/Dwarf Fortress game is the individual characters, and the player is "god". We already kind of have the basis for this with "creative" mode, and we already have a blue print system/queue system available. We also have bots, which do thine own bidding when asked. Lets ignore the construction bots for a moment.

Lets also stop and think about animals, food, and survival. I would love to have betsy the cow, who is fed by an automated farm (player laid food ore or like tree farms) and watered by a pump/trough. The UI of factorio doesn't seem to have the ability to convey all that extra information, like age of cow, gender, etc. etc.

Temperment/HP/Hit chance if attacked by bugs... I mean this goes on forever, these dwarf fortress style games.

How could any of this ever be done in LUA? Where would I even start, or should I wait until Factorio 2 comes out in 2035?

[Mendel]

This suggestion is pretty much a new game.
Something in between df and factorio, combining their best features, would certainly destroy our lives. Automated dwarf maintained factory! what could possibly go wrong! just don´t dig too deep...

Factorio is a little bit similarish, but I would still say its completely different genre than Dwarf Fortress/Rimworld.

Actually, I have suggested on Rimworld forums about if they would add conveyor belts, it might be easier to do from that direction

But yea, I think this would almost be better to start a completely new project, now we only need developer, funds, and customers.

[Tekky]

Actually, I have suggested on Rimworld forums about if they would add conveyor belts, it might be easier to do from that direction

When playing RimWorld, I actually had exactly the same idea. I had the idea of how nice it would be for the cook in the kitchen to simply be able to place his items on a conveyor belt and let that belt transport all the produced items to the refridgerated storage area.

[Selvek]

Actually, I have suggested on Rimworld forums about if they would add conveyor belts, it might be easier to do from that direction

When playing RimWorld, I actually had exactly the same idea. I had the idea of how nice it would be for the cook in the kitchen to simply be able to place his items on a conveyor belt and let that belt transport all the produced items to the refridgerated storage area.

I have seen at least one mod that does this, although I don't know if it's been kept up to date with the latest Rimworld updates.

[Lubricus]

I have played a little with the Industrial roller mod in Rimworld. It get's a little bit tedious and tricky to build stuff when you can't do it yourself or don't have any blueprint. Fooling around with minecart's and get the dwarfs killed in DF is fun...
I think the biggest fundamental difference between those games and Factorio is that you play as character in Factorio and is some sort of invisible commander in DF and Rimworld. DF and Rimworld is more focused on creating (random) stories when you play. And the quarrels and often grim fate's of the characters. Factorio is more about automation and optimization and an excuse to build complex things. So I think the reason I like Factorio so much is that it's easy to build complex stuff and the endless optimization problems. I am impressed how more and more different optimization problems pops up when I play.

So the game-play questions is about the role of your character and how to "command" AI characters/animals in the game. The second is not to lose the automation/optimization depth in Factorio when introducing new elements.

I don't like the combat/biters in Factorio and think Rimworld have more success in an interesting combat that is affected of the design of your base in an interesting way. In Rimworld you have to come up with a layout of your base to optimize your combat engagement so the enemies is forced to engage your pawns when they in cover and your enemies is in the open.