... we are clearly leaving vanilla gameplay! As already said one main issue is how many items needs to be handled at once. The stacking (also known as boxing, pallets, compression, …) puts many items into one stack-item. The simple mods end here, you can stack and unstack items and so you spare a lot ...

I may also point to
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=87419 Better Compression (Stacking/Boxing/Pallets) Support

But that’s part of this suggestion...!?

But you missed the point that you already have a miner / furnace / assembler before that which fills the belt in the first place. You set the output of that to compressed and the need for a beltbox goes away. What you will be left with is just a loader into a buffer chest. ;) Good point. Never thou...

Granted. But a) completely out of scope of this suggestion b) forgetting, that the loaders in deadlocks mod can be placed over “edge”, which enables nice puzzles.

this not a problem as it is already, barrelling really is consuming lubricant and the unbarrelling machines are producing it.. what would you prefer they show as? invisible? it is not merely another transport line. You see a doubled production/consumption. I want to see only the production/consumpt...

Compression is already there and weather you love it or hate it is not a valid concern but an opinion. So lets please let us get back on topic on how the game could support it better. I’m pretty sure most people (or at least the op)here were asking for it in the base game Ah. Hm. Good point. I thin...

This suggestion doesn’t force anybody to be used. As long as you don’t use any compressed item the whole game works exactly as before! Experience show that a lot of players will not use it. And on the other hand it gave you a lot more opportunities to create efficient blueprints. In other words: mor...

You say that building belts without blueprints gets repetitive, but you shouldn’t be doing that. You should make trains. The challenge of increasing throughput is a fun and interesting part of the game. And by the time you are building 16 belts at a time, you should be using bots and blueprints, an...

Wow, so much feedback! :) TL;DR Here in short form what I think needs to be changed or explained more exactly to this suggestion. This is just a short repetition of what is written below. Assembly/Smelter/etc. - An assembly/smelter/etc. can produce normal or compressed items by selecting a "tar...

... easily. First of all I love compressed items. I wrote an article long time ago https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19343 Boxing / Packaging / Container / Cargobox : Pre-Filling but I think this is quite out of date and not longer actual. So I played with those mods around ...

... talked about it - there are some mods, that will make the need for speed of this suggestion more ore less obsolete. That are these points: - boxing mod (deadlocks stacking inserters and extensions are able to assemble stacked items with stacked items. That means to produce 200 (a stack) of ...

... working in simulation, this should be a real bringer! And it would enable much, much bigger factories than now. If this is also combined with some boxing mod, like deadlocks https://mods.factorio.com/mod/deadlock-beltboxes-loaders which enables to produce with boxed items, then I think factor 10-100 ...

... not care this kind of special cases but player moving with belts is very annoying especially with short vanilla building distance. Moving chests, boxing etc. is an always repeated request.

In conjunction with compression/boxing loaders make totally sense, but only, if they where nerved, e.g. with usage of electricity. Another case of nerfing is to make loaders something like entity with size of 1x3 or maybe 1x5, they are need ...

... (?). They where never introduced and since then never really supported. https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-128 In conjunction with compression/boxing loaders make totally sense, but only, if they where nerved, e.g. with usage of electricity.

I recommend using some compression/boxing mod. It makes such ideas not useless, but really not needed. I currently use https://mods.factorio.com/mod/deadlock-beltboxes-loaders , because it is really fast and has a good balance, but there are ...

... a difficult question. All in all I would like to keep it as it is. Items should have volume and mass: I would support this, if you also intoduce boxing (compression of items). Cause they solve a lot other (already mentioned) problems, I already mentioned Deadlocks Mod. Power-user hotkeys: Of ...

Try using some of the boxing mods.

... experimental stuff. There can be found lots of in the forum. If you really want to have a good time with Factorio I recommend using some kind of boxing mod, which increases amount of items on belts to reasonable numbers. But then also: a single lane is just no good gameplay.