Factorio Forums

The main issue is this:
The Express Trasport Belts require lubricant in their recipe.
As a result, The Express Belts require an automation step, and an operational oil chain.
The Express Splitters require the belts to be produced, so also require lubricant.
The Express Underground belts do not require Lubricant, nor the Belts.
As a result, the Underground belt is far easier to produce, because they can be built stright out of the inventory with nothing more than Iron plates.

Read below for a breakdown, and possible solutions.


Basic Transport Belt (x2) = 1x Iron Plate + 1x Iron Gear Wheel
Fast Transport Belt = 1x Basic Transport Belt + 5x Iron Gear Wheel
Express Transport Belt = 1x Fast Transport Belt + 5x Iron Gear Wheel + 2x Lubricant

There are no listed "energy_required", which defaults to 1. Since you get 2 for the Basic, time to build 1 basic is half that of the others.


Basic Splitter = 1x Energy(time) + 4x Basic Transport Belt + 5x Electronic Circuit + 5x Iron plate
Fast Splitter = 2x Energy + 4x Fast Transport Belt + 10x Electronic Circuit + 10x Iron Gear Wheel
Express Splitter = 2x Energy + 4x Express Transport Belt + 10x Advanced Circuit + 10x Iron Gear Wheel

There's a little material cost differences from the belt recipes, but otherwise a fairly ballanced set of Recipes. And since the Recipe requires Express Belts, they also require Lubricant to build.


Basic Transport Belt to ground x2 = 1x Energy + 5x Basic Transport Belt + 10x Iron Plate
Fast Transport Belt to ground x2 = 2x Basic Transport Belt to ground + 20x Iron Gear wheel
Express Transport Belt to ground x2 = 2x Fast Transport Belt to ground + 40x Iron Gear wheel

Okay, these are using upgrade recipes, like the original belts, rather than a new version on the upgraded belt. This in itself is not a problem, but the recipes are off. The cost of the Fast version are okay, and make sense... Except for the lack of an energy tag, it should have an energy_required = 2 tag set. The Express version gets even worse, still with no energy tag set, and costing more Iron Gears with no Lubricant cost.


Possible Solutions:
1. If you want to stick to the upgrade system, Add an Energy requirement of 2 to the Fast Transport Belt to ground recipe, and change the recipe of the Express version to as follows, this should put the upgrade costs on par with the costs of the base belts, and the splitters.
Express Transport belt x2 = 2x Energy + 2x Fast Transport Belt to ground + 20x Iron Gear Wheel + 8x lubricant

2. Make the recipes match closer to the splitters. They would then become as follows:
Fast Transport Belt to ground x2 = 2x Energy + 5x Fast Transport Belt + 20 Iron Gear Wheel
Express Transport Belt to ground x2 = 2x Energy + 5x Express Transport Belt + 20 Iron Gear Wheel
This actually makes them a little more expensive, but on par with the splitters.


What does everyone else think?

I don't understand what kind of problem you want to solve.

ssilk wrote:I don't understand what kind of problem you want to solve.

Consistency in recipes and upgrades?

I think I would prefer the second option, where underground belts just use a number of the same speed belts instead of the lower speed underground belt upgraded.

ssilk wrote:I don't understand what kind of problem you want to solve.

The main issue is this:
The Express Belts require lubricant, and Splitters require the belts to be produced, so also require lubricant.
The Underground belts do not require Lubricant, nor the Belts, and are therefore far easier to produce, because they can be built stright out of the inventory with nothing more than Iron plates, where the other 2 require an automation step, and an operational oil chain.

I agree that underground transport should require at least some transport belts of the same type (normal, express, etc...)

I can understand why they wanted to have the UG belts as a separate upgrade from the belts themselves (so when you upgrade your line, you can upgrade the belts and UG belts by reusing the existing material - not the splitters though?). But, I agree with the OP that the recipes should be revised. At least 6 belts (consistent with the maximum length of the UG belt - 2 terminals plus 4 UG tiles) should be used to produce the pair of UG terminals. I'd also suggest using just iron plate instead of gears as the additional cost to produce UG belts. The gears are appropriately associated with the belts themselves.

Of special note, this feature can be exaggerated in the Dytech Transportation Mod where the faster belts can extend something like 12 tiles underground.

arl85 wrote:I agree that underground transport should require at least some transport belts of the same type (normal, express, etc...)

Same here.

Agreed, express underground belts should require lubricant as a minimum.

I believe the excess gears indicated are being used in place of the lubrication as the method of transport. in the real world materials tend to slide down inclines unless the belts have bulkheads. having the belt made entirely out of gears would eliminate this by providing a traction surface that has positive engagement

jon_joy_1999 wrote:I believe the excess gears indicated are being used in place of the lubrication as the method of transport. in the real world materials tend to slide down inclines unless the belts have bulkheads. having the belt made entirely out of gears would eliminate this by providing a traction surface that has positive engagement

Except they gotta come back up again, not just go down. And in theory, simply having more gears doesn't negate the need for lubricant when it comes to speed.
Putting real world issues asside, the main issue is the difficulty scale, lubricant is a significant difficuly increase, having in missing effectively puts it at the same level tech wise as the Basic and Fast belts.

in 0.11.1 express splitters now need lubricant, I think express belt to ground really needs to use lubricant, as OP suggested.

Ya, I pointed it out to him in the topic where he said he changed the splitters. I think he forgot to fix the belts.

bobingabout wrote:

jon_joy_1999

jon_joy_1999 wrote:I believe the excess gears indicated are being used in place of the lubrication as the method of transport. in the real world materials tend to slide down inclines unless the belts have bulkheads. having the belt made entirely out of gears would eliminate this by providing a traction surface that has positive engagement

Except they gotta come back up again, not just go down. And in theory, simply having more gears doesn't negate the need for lubricant when it comes to speed.
Putting real world issues asside, the main issue is the difficulty scale, lubricant is a significant difficuly increase, having in missing effectively puts it at the same level tech wise as the Basic and Fast belts.

I wasn't trying to argue for the lack of lubricant required to make underground belts, but was offering an idea for why so many gears are needed, the gears would provide the force to lift the resources back up to the ground