The problem#
Factorio comes with a scenario called Supply Challenge which is a shorter, more directed experience than the standard "Freeplay" game mode. It replaces the pressure from enemies attacking your base with a series of timed requests where you have to provided a pre-defined set of items within a time limit with a new request every several minutes. This both can be good for new players to have guidance on what they should be working on next and for experienced players as getting everything done within the time limit can be, as the name suggests, a challenge. As those are two somewhat opposing goals, I wanted to add settings to make it better for both use cases.
But first was the question that precedes many coding projects: has someone already done this?1 And the related question: has anyone suggested doing it and what features did they find important that might be worth considering in the design?
Why?#
For a personal project that possibly no one else is going to use, it's not immediately obvious why I care what features other people might want. But there's a few reasons such a search can be valuable in addition to the obvious that other people might use what I create. First, finding other users wanting the same features I want is validation that those features are good ideas. Other people may have thought of features that I hadn't thought to implement but actually want. And even for features that I am not interested in implementing at the moment, keeping them in mind may affect the design.