TL;DR

Map the +/- keys to increase or decrease belt widths.


What ?

Currently, Factorio has +/- keys mapped to landfill / Concrete / other elements to grow-or-shrink the templates. This is very useful for building large paths. Belts could theoretically be mapped to the same +/- button ...

Yes it will make the factories worse. I thought we were in agreement here that productivity modules are obscenely overpowered.

Are they really? It costs thousands of iron and copper to build PM3 modules. At mega-base sizes, that resource expenditure is just a few minutes, but at "before the first ...

That brings up an important question: How do you fix it without upsetting your entire playerbase because of a change to core items? It's Belts vs Bots all over again.
It's beta. Tweaking balance is the entire point of beta.

That being said I haven't found a module idea that is much better than ...

So an Eff3 module in an Electric furnace at -480% energy usage is still saving you only 864kW. Even at 480% "savings" (so that electric furnaces generate energy instead of use energy), an Eff3 module makes less energy than its equivalent 27 x solar panels. That's how bad Eff3 is.
That says a lot ...

I was expecting this topic to be about the utter uselessness of Efficiency modules in general. Instead, this topic seems to be about buffing the most powerful module in the game.

Productivity is the best module, period. Bar none, there is absolutely no module that is as good as the Prod3 module ...

but cars in this game run off solid fuels, not fluids.
Personal vehicles don't use enough fuel to be a significant drain. Trains and turrets are not a significant consumer either, even in the most insane of megabases. Add all those drains together and there is still a need to crack light excess ...

Wooden poles/chests can be burnt into nothing and just about everything else is either already useful or can be upgraded into a final useful form. Factorio is already 90% towards making every item consistently useful all game. Transforming the rest of the "dead end" items is really nothing more ...

Hmm, why not make bigger inventory a specific research item??

As it is, being part of Toolbelt, Modular Armor, Power Armor, and Power armor Mk2 is unintuitive and hard to figure out. I can imagine that a number of new players don't notice the increase to inventory when these things are researched.

Bobucles, you still haven't told me what you're using steel chests for, or why there is ever a need to upgrade above iron.
The same thing I use iron and wood chests for. To store things. Oh no, I use iron chests! What hypocrisy?!?! Or maybe it's because I have used them that I know just how not ...

Well, to be honest, if you want an extremely efficient non-solar power setup, you're better off going nuclear anyway.
I was kind of taking the long route to explaining that. One of the most important tenants of Factorio is that building more gets you more. Coal cracked fuel is one of the few ...

However they are fully capable of satisfying base storage needs until steel chests are on the table.

Bobucles, you still haven't told me what you're using steel chests for, or why there is ever a need to upgrade above iron.

As far as I can tell, steel chests exist solely as an ingredient to be ...

Burner inserters are needed for early game.

Burner Inserters are literally unnecessary. Burner Drills can directly output into stone furnaces, or in the case of coal, into other burner drills. In both cases, you easily and automatically buffer up resources as long as you have a reliable source of ...

And since a modest train-station requires so many chests (ex: a 2-4 train will want 24-chests, maybe 48 if you're double-sided), cheaper iron-chests are certainly a strong option to use in the midgame.
Buffer chests are a convenience, not a requirement.

Buffering is unnecessary. The important ...

1) You don't need it. Like at all. You can 100% build a rocket without iron chests and every one made is destined to be future clutter.

Iron chests are far more efficient in the midgame however. You know, that long time period where you're still using yellow belts because red and blue belts are ...

This is all the info you need which is not readily available in-game:
http://i68.tinypic.com/30dh6ag.png
Umm, what are we looking at? What are axis labels?

You know, reading the original topic is probably all you need. XKnight did a series of tests and that graph is probably the most important ...

Here's a practical idea:

1. Nuke all of your Iron Chests when you're done with them.

Really. Because Iron Chests are so cheap: they are 1/5th the cost of steel chests. So just throw them away when you're done and don't worry about recycling the raw material costs.

For example, if you build a 4x ...

You should always build 4x Prod3 for the first rocket, under optimal strategy. Its more efficient to build 72 rocket parts + 4 Prod3 modules rather than 100 rocket parts. Math is simple: 28 rocket parts (aka: 280 Rocket Fuel + 280 LDS + 280 Compute Units) is way more expensive than 4x Prod3.

The ...

- I would strongly recommend to do a major "walkabout" of your map spiraling out at least up to the alien nests, so that expose all the nearby ore deposits on your map. It will take time, but it is worth it as Radar is too slow and a major power drain. Then save again. I think there are two good ...

Zavian wrote:(and he does not consider that roundabout to be deadlock safe

Note that the deadlock testing was in 0.15. Some version between then and now helped get rid of deadlocks. So a lot of "previously unsafe" intersections became safe in the 0.16 versions (somewhere...)

I've written about this period before. Here's my thoughts: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/8696vd/midgame_tips/

Also, for the very early game: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/4v21pk/analysis_for_beginners_machinery_and_factory/

1. Use Steel Furnaces -- Steel Furnaces are more ...