Player Itemization, Motivation, Support

Goals

Every item added needs to have some broad, recognizable, patterned reason to exist.

Items needs to also exist around the power fantasy of players and the core idea of theory-crafting player builds.

Items are 1 of 2 core ways to reduce tension and promote player growth. So they are essential to the pacing of content.


Overview

Items in Factorio are currently broken up into a few core groups. Along with the internally added systems and features. Each of these categories work to provide some semi specific tools to the player.

1. Weapons

2. Companions

3. Consumables

4. Armor

5. Equipment

6. Artifacts


Integration

Integrating content properly into factorio one of the highest priorities.

This is currently done in a few ways, depending on the item type:

Unlocking recipes is core to the progression of factorio. We've currently provided 2 main ways of unlocking item recipes.

The idea is to have most things be unlocked through either path. Personal research is for providing faster, more specific, early unlocks of a specific type/item. Tech tree is a more generalized format, and easier to manage, but slower.

Technology

A few technology paths, and patterns have been added to help generalize and support progression for all the new content. These are subject to change as it is the lowest priority in the progression loop.

Personal Research

These are highly specialized, tied to their thematic research. The vague pattern is:

Research[Tier + Archetype + Theme] -> Item(s)[Tier + Archetype + Theme]


Resource Loop

Resource gathering, bus lines, and storage management are core to factorio. We introduce a few new items to expand this loop further.

Overview

We follow a similar pattern to factorio. Drill, smelt, process, craft...

[Material Ore] -> [Material Item] -> [Intermediate Item] -> [Crafting]

These are broken into 3 stages, each containing a dedicated research machine.

Each stage is mined from ore, smelted into items, sent into a research machine, producing a specific intermediate item.


Weapon System

Weapons follow some broad archetypes to compliment the progression system and boss system archetypes. Some weapons will excel at clearing smaller enemies, some with penetration, far range, close range, etc...

Integrations

Each subgroup/archetype and respective tier contains a core intermediate item. These follow through with companions, for the same of each tier/type:

NOTE: Typically, subsequent tiers will also require the previous tiers material

Weapons

Suppressive

Excels at clearing low hp enemies and providing consistent engagement with enemies.

Piercing

Pierces armor at the cost of either damage or fire rate or both

Burst

High damage, low fire rate, varying pierce. Focused on instant damage and large radiuses

Attachments

Attachments serve to enhance guns by either improving existing capabilities, or altering the gun to improve their weaknesses. We prioritize quantity over quality here. Although there can exist some attachments that fully alter a weapons mechanics...

Integrations

Attachment(and supply) recipes will be fairly consistent between categories/types/archetypes. Each tier will follow some pattern, and each type of attachment/supply will have similar costs. Supplies follow the same process

Barrels

Scopes

Magazines

Grips

Triggers

Stocks


Companion System

Companions follow the player around, providing combat support in a variety of ways.

Companions are usually some snapshot of ammo_type that is equivalent to a weapon or equipment. The baseline companions are all simple combat focused ai. The legendary companions may have unique attacks, healing, or their own summons, etc...

NOTE: This will be partially expanded for non combat focused companions at a later date

Companions

Follows the same archetypes as weapons.

Suppressive

Piercing

Burst

Non Combat

Supplies

Same as attachments, but for the companion system. This will apply upgrades and prototype changes to companions. This is for all the same reasons as implementing attachments. Each supply type has some pattern of benefits...

System

Systems typically contain some unique change or additional mechanic. Healing, movement speed, range, ammo types, etc...

Helmet

Helmets are much simpler, and serve to just increase hp or resistances at the cost of speed.

Chest(To redo, too much overlap with armor)


Supporting Gear

Supporting gear servers to compliment further the progression archetypes and broader weapon types. Close range weapons paired with move speed supporting gear, or slower weapons and armor improving gear.

Armor

Integrations

General pattern of recipes are based on tiers, and the themes of armor. Less specific compared to other item types.

FrontLine

Explorer

Support

Architect

Equipment

Equipment is broken up into two groups. The first being indirect equipment, these contain either stat bonuses or sticker based effects that are applied periodically to the player. These stickers be provide some benefits or protection for the player at all times. The second group are combat based equipment. These typically provide some weapon/companion equivalent combat capability during combat. They may also provide healing or support benefits when near enemies.

Integrations

Same idea as armor, less specific and less structured.

Stat/Sticker

FrontLine

Explorer

Support

Architect

Combat

These will follow the groupings of weapons/companions, not player/character archetypes.

Suppression

Burst

Piercing

Support

Artifacts

Artifacts are tied directly to bosses and special conditions, rather then tiers and traditional recipes. These scale less directly through tier x archetypes(like weapons or armor) and more like legendary/rare items. They typically follow the pattern of providing either strong attribute/talent buffs or some form of sticker/effect.

Integrations

Artifacts are a mod only set of items. They are typically only earned via boss fights, and are meant to be fairly powerful/game-changing. This means the recipes are very expensive, less 1-1 structured on tiers, and tied in with mod introduced intermediate items.

Anything outside of research is thematically decided, rather then through a structured list. So recipes can heavily vary

FrontLine

Explorer

Support

Architect

Consumables

Healing

Experience

Other


Unique Items

Specific items that can only be found via boss drops or very specific events and tasks. They differ from their respective item groups. These items will have no:

There are a lot of unique items, for all item types

They may, or may not, contain unique mechanics not found anywhere else.

Easter Eggs

Random easter egg reference items that can exist for any number of tiers/archetypes/etc... Can be armor, or weapon, or any item really... These should built in the same places as unique items to keep things consistent... They can be anything from useless random references, to challenge rewards that are the most powerful items available. The patterns for unlocks depends on the item, reference, and use-case.


Base Building

Note

This was dropped in priority. Will fill this out, once we expand content in this direction.

Turrets

Traps

Walls