Thanks all for the replies, explanations and ideas.

Regarding using heat pipes as storage, I was reluctant to do that because heat pipes (unlike the fluid system) still have limited throughput. But probably just having 2-3 parallel pipes instead of one would be enough to handle that without ...

Tertius, you've lost me here. I've used exactly the same lossless nuclear power and steam buffer setups before and after 2.0, and fluid flow or pumps aren't relevant to it.
Heat exchangers adjust their water usage and steam production to the heat they receive from reactors. Steam turbines only ...

Tertius, this was the part of the FFF that I was referring to - "The previous solution of people reading the amount of Steam in storage tanks felt like it needed a bit more brainpower and engineering, but it's hard to justify missing capabilities with this reasoning."
I could have misinterpreted it ...

This has been bothering me since before version 2.0 even came out.
In https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-428 a developer stated that the new feature allowing the circuit network to read the temperature of a nuclear reactor, made it unnecessary to store excess heat from nuclear reactors in steam ...

I wanted to suggest something like this too - I would be happy for an artificial soil type for Nauvis trees.

My use case:
I have an upcycling setup that moves all the ingredients of one product on a sushi belt. These are mixed quality since they are output from producing and recycling the final product with quality modules.
I have dedicated belts that bring in new ingredients, each of those belts carries ...

There's probably a very simple answer, but it's driving me crazy. How do I set a signal value to a maximum if it is above the maximum, but otherwise leave it alone?
If I use a decider combinator with "less than or equal" it will output the value if it is equal to or below the maximum, but if the ...

- Edited the post and topic to mention the expansion instead of the 2.0 version.
- I'm not sure this system would be impossible even if 300% productivity is a maximum, because productivity bonuses are compounded when you apply them to each intermediate product as well as a "final" product. This ...

Having seen the previews for recyclers and quality bonuses, I'm wondering if it would be possible to break the game with a combination of productivity modules and recyclers.
The quality preview said that the Space Age quality bonuses could apply to productivity modules, which would mean even more ...

Thanks for your responses, this makes a lot of sense.
What I understand from coppercoil and Tertius is that storage and buffer chests are kind of used in the reverse of their names - storage chests as a temporary collection point while buffer chests are the long-term storage. Promptly emptying ...

When I deconstruct a part of a base wholesale with construction robots, the robots have to move not only the "buildables" but also any items that are on belts, in chests or inside machines. This can add up very quickly to thousands of items for the robots to move and for me to decide what to do with ...

Very nice!
Can you explain how you made it work? I can guess some ways, but I can't figure it out from the picture without seeing the settings, or even the wires very clearly.
You have a combinator timer to start and stop the counting, and this is how the bots are counted -
You take ALL the bots out ...

I like the idea of a loader with small internal buffer. It should only interact with belts, and you will still need an inserter to move items. Basically, it should be a part of the belt system that applies inserter stack bonus to belts.

I think this is the most reasonable suggestion so far. It's ...

In-Game Note and Picture Taking

Summary – Add GUI features that allow players to type text notes and possibly save pictures of the game screen, to use as reminders, build notes etc.
Maybe even allow export/import of these text and picture notes between games.

Advantages -
Convenient way for ...

Mining Robots

Summary –
Add a type of flying robots that mine resource patches and return the resources to storage.
Add a “mining planner” item that the player uses to designate resources for mining by the robots in the same way as the deconstruction planner.
The mining planner can have a filter ...

Fast/Express Transport Belts Require Electricity

Summary – Basic belts and splitters remain the same, while fast and express belts/splitters require a small amount of electric power.

Advantages -
Players will have more interesting/meaningful choice between the basic belts and the more advanced ...

Storage Buildings

Summary – Replace the wood/iron/steel chests with different sizes/shapes of buildings that "pool" resources in the same way as cargo wagons.

Advantages –
The new buildings will allow more use of the resource sorting/routing techniques that players have until now used stationary ...