Factorio has an incredibly talented modding community that's managed to produce over 1,700 various mods in the last couple of years. Unfortunately, many of them are already obsolete and can't be applied to the latest 0.15 version of the game.
However, new and better mods keep coming out -- and here we present you with the 11 best Factorio mods of 2017. You can be sure that these mods will be regularly updated throughout the year, and will actually make your gameplay more effective.
- Note: All the mods listed here require a legal Steam copy of Factorio. Otherwise you will not be able to download them.
Fully Automated Rail Layer
Railway transportation is one of the most important components of Factorio. This mod gives a huge advantage to those who use trains all the time.
The FARL mod provides all the necessary tools for a complete maintenance of the railways -- such as placing or removing rails, signals, electric poles, concrete, etc. Also, you can clear out the way for the railways by removing rocks, trees, and other obstacles.
Bottleneck
Things don't always go right in Factorio. Sometimes your assemblers or chemical plants may get bottlenecked, which will result in halted production.
This useful mod puts tiny light indicators on your buildings that show three different colors: green, yellow, and red. Green means that everything is alright. But if you see yellow or red, it means that there is something wrong either with your input or output -- so you can respond accordingly.
These simple lights will help you decide which of your production units require immediate maintenance.
Rail Tanker
The vanilla way of transporting oil requires you to use barrels or piping, which is not the most efficient way to do so.
This mod introduces a more convenient solution -- an oil tanker. Its capacity is half of the storage tanker (1.25), and its crafting cost is not too expensive. You can connect it to your train and transport huge amounts of oil in one go.
Resource Spawner Overhaul
By default, resources in Factorio spawn randomly, but with the help of the RSO mod specific resources will start spawning in certain regions. Also, the mod gives a bonus amount of resources if the spawning location is too far away from your initial point.
Additionally, there are settings for turning on/off specific ores in the area of your choice. For example, if you find that there isn’t enough oil on your territory, you can adjust the settings and make it spawn more frequently and in larger quantities.
Factorissimo 2
This is a complete rework of the original Factorissimo mod for the latest version of Factorio.
This mod includes three factory buildings of different sizes (30x30, 46x46, and 60x60) with new textures. Each of these three initial buildings can be upgraded with more connections and production sections.
You can also oversee the whole interior of your factory with things like lighting, solar panels, piping, etc.
Quarry
This mod provides you with an alternative way of mining any kinds of ores without the ore patch. Of course this entails certain drawbacks, such as longer mining and crafting times. But if you're located in an area that has very few resources, then this is the only way for you to get them at all.
On the other hand, it allows you to choose the type of ore you want to mine, including oil. In the latter case, this quarry will work even faster than the depleted oil well.
Aircraft
As the title suggests, the Aircraft mod adds four types of aircrafts (Cargo, Gunship, Flying Fortress, and Jet) to the game, including additional equipment to each of them.
The crafting cost of these aircrafts is quite expensive -- but as the developer of the mod suggested, these were designed for your end game fun. So in this regard the crafting cost is justified.
Try them out, if you're at that stage of the game, and experience some of the wildest air combat in Factorio!
Orbital Ion Cannon
This is definitely one of the most exciting mods that have come out of the Factorio's fan community.
As with any other premium mod, this one costs a lot of resources, and takes about a minute to craft. You also need a Rocket Silo to be able to send it into space. But when the thing finally gets there, there is no escape for your enemies.
The ion blast itself deals about 2,000 explosion damage and another 500 impact damage.
Bio Industries
If you want to expand the list of craftable buildings and many new recipes of your game, then consider installing the Bio Industries mod.
You will be able to produce wood in a green house, reduce the levels of pollution, combine many solar panels into a single powerful unit, and eventually ship bio fuel of different types.
All in all, it's a great mod for diversifying your gameplay!
The Fat Controller
Fat controller does not refer to an overweight character in the game, but to a system that regulates the movement of your trains.
After you do your in-game research for this component of the game, it'll show you a list of events that correspond to each of your trains actions. For example, it will show you if your trains stop or move -- and if they move, then it'll show where/when they arrive, and so on.
This is a great little mod that will help you follow all of your trains without manually looking for them on the map.
Advanced Logistics System
The more you play, the more items you accumulate. At a certain point it becomes really hard to keep an eye on all of your chests and the items in them. But with the help of the ALS mod, this task turns into a real pleasure.
Basically, it provides you with a complete statistics of your chests and other item-based features of the game, and lists them in a very convenient way. You can then analyze your spreadsheets and decide what to do with all that stuff.
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Which of these 11 Factorio mods do you find to be the most useful? Got any other awesome mods that we didn't include in this list? Leave your feedback in the comments section.
Published: Jun 29, 2017 10:31 am