Balancing of Capacities of Containers

[Cdr.MaS]

The topic speaks for itself, so no abstract needed.
There has been a similar thread before but that one was not well formulated.

I would like to present you some numbers and then speak of my suggestion because I think it makes more sense this way

advanced chest requires 1 tile, provides 48 slots, means 48 slots per tile

train car requires 14 tiles, provides 20 slots, means 1.43 slots per tile

ride requires 4 tiles, provides 80 slots, means 20 slots per tile

character requires 1 tile, provides 60 slots, means 60 slots per tile

From these numbers we can easily see that a chest has an approx. 34(!!!) times higher capacity than a train car
that is quite unbalanced I think
I was already told on reddit it might be that way for gameplay reasons but that's an argument I can't accpet because this ratio makes no sense
If there were any technology to compress things in a chest then I can't see any reason why this should not be possible for train cars as well
I see and accpet that limiting the inventory of the character might have a massiv turn down on enjoyment of the game so no need to change that

My suggestion is to make chests modular like tubes and belts and lower the amount of slots a one tile chest can have (which would have even some more benefits beside this capacity thing) and/or to give train cars at least as many slots as the ride has.

[ssilk]

I'm conflicted!

On one side there is this gap, that I can transport in a car more than in a train with 5 wagons. On the other side it would be a shifting to more short trains. One wagon would be enough for nearly everything!

Would look stupid.

The other thing is, that it would take ages to load/unload everything.

A wagon can be loaded with up to 14 inserters. With full stacksize bonus they can load a wagon in under 10 seconds (ores). By making it real it would take ages! And you need to believe me, that this is a problem in gameplay, if you have suddenly wagons, which are half emptied and others which are not, because it takes too long to unload/load.

So I think: Maybe we can put in some more stacks into the wagon, maybe, eventually double them (higher tier of wagon), but more doesn't make sense from gameplay and look.

I think there are already mods for that. You can try them first.

[katyal]

WHat about something like:

Wood chest: 5 slots/tile
iron chest: 10 slots/tile
steel chest(and variants): 15 slots/tile

possibly with more sizes of chests

car: 20 slots
train: 25 slots

Keep player inventory the same

[Night_Ange1]

This is something Ive wondered as well. I'm guessing it came about because trains were added later and sized according to unloading. I agree with katyal on lowering crate sizes but this messed with buffers, however it still gets my vote, and maybe we can have a 2x2 storage warehouse or crate like shipping containers for larger sizes

[Nova]

I was already told on reddit it might be that way for gameplay reasons but that's an argument I can't accpet because this ratio makes no sense

It doesn't have to make sense. If it is a good choice for the game, then don't change it.

Well, I don't know if it is a good choice. We have to discuss this.

[Cdr.MaS]

thanks for the nice discourse
To avoid tl;dr I segmented my post chronologically referring to the order of the posts of you guys.

answering ssilk
I see your point ssilk, a train with five or more cars definitly looks nicer and more realistic and I agree to your point about loading/unloading so I'd like to turn to chests for a decent change in reasonable sizing.
A little bit of track but I thought of another variant of transport for railways in an overall perspective. (That'd nicely fit for transport by ship aswell, if that is a plan of the devs)
There could be a special giant insterter for train stations that lifts off a whole container, like the ones that are used for oversea shipping these days, and put another one onto the car.
The giant container then is emptied by regular insterters and ready for reuse.
I'm not a dev so I don't know if that is a lot of work or could easily be done, but I think that this could add a little more diversity to the transport feature.

answering katyal
There is another point that makes my argument even stronger.
One needs a 3x3 assembler to create items, one item at a time and afterwards one is able to store up to 9.6k of said item in an one tile chest.
For sure, assembling requires more space than storing but the ratio here is beyond 1:86k (messuared in tiles assemblinig to storing).

answering Night_ange1
I like your idea, a decent sized warehouse could be a proper answer.
What I meant was a principle that follows the way you build pipes and how they increase capacity by joining them.
For example, you place a chest-like item that requires one tile and provieds 10 slots, then you place one in the next tile and they are automatically joined and the capacity is risen by another 10 slots.
This could be made expandable up to X tiles in any direction but must keep a rectangular shape.
In my point of view this would have two major pros.
First it might look better than a field of storage chest anywhere in between railtracks or whereever. (I think this looks just ridiculous)
Second it'd provide the poissibility to make more inserters that face the same direction take things out of the same chest.

To counter the possibility that items were able to travel up to X tiles in no time a restriction would be needed maybe like this.
Items that are placed into any part of the larger chest are avaiable in the other parts after a certain amount of time, lets say like the time an item would need to be transported by belts or robots.
This could really add more depth to the game because it'd make storage and it's design more important.

answering Nova
You are right in the perspective towards the need for reasonability in games in total. There is no such thing that's for sure.
I tried to write this post by taking your construstive critisism into account.

[Nova]

answering katyal
There is another point that makes my argument even stronger.
One needs a 3x3 assembler to create items, one item at a time and afterwards one is able to store up to 9.6k of said item in an one tile chest.
For sure, assembling requires more space than storing but the ratio here is beyond 1:86k (messuared in tiles assemblinig to storing).

You can create Roboports (4x4) in an assembler (3x3) and then store 5 per field in a chest (1x1, up to 48 fields as far as I know).

[sillyfly]

Let me ask this - from a practical _gameplay_ view (not regarding any real-life concerns!) do you ever find you need a container with more than 10-15 stacks?
And I'm not talking about scenarios where you just want to store huge amounts of something just for the fun of stressing your factory / hoarding stuff. For your factory / playstyle / efficiency - do you ever find it needed?

The only time I find myself really needing large amounts of storage is for train stations, where I already use lots of chests to get faster loading/unloading. With longer trains this would "solve" the problem even more, as I would need more chests in total.
So, yes. I like the idea of drastically reducing storage sizes of chests, while having a more specialized big-chest or storage-facility. Maybe a 3x3 building that is multi-story (only from a "realistic" point of view! not in any gameplay aspect), so it needs electricity to store / provide items because it uses lifts to move items inside it (but is still instantaneous like a chest), and say has the storage capacity of 30 steel chests (3x3 = 9, times 4 levels = 36, -6 for internal mechanisms / to make it a multiple of 10 ).

This way, I would have my train stations set up with chests (could even be wooden ones!) to take advantage of the inserter stack bonus, but they would immediately output onto a belt and then to a storage facility / warehouse, which will serve as a buffer for the furnaces (in times between trains).

[sillyfly]

Just to add to my own point, what I was thinking can be summed up as this -
I see chests as local buffers, mostly to be used for the stack size bonus, or to allow a small buffer between factories or for player usage - in this case most players I know already limit them to maybe 5 stacks (depending on exact usage). For long time / large scale storage we should have a more specialized item which is larger and with higher density.

[Cdr.MaS]

You can create Roboports (4x4) in an assembler (3x3) and then store 5 per field in a chest (1x1, up to 48 fields as far as I know).

this makes my point even more evident

like the idea sllyfly

[Rahjital]

Saying things need to change because (quoting) "this ratio makes no sense" is a bit silly in the context of Factorio. This is a game where a simple SMG is more expensive to built than a gun turret with a forever lasting internal power source, target detection and tracking and friend-or-foe identification, and where you can make bullets without any explosives. Compared to that, some size mismatches are peanuts...

Besides, train

Just to add to my own point, what I was thinking can be summed up as this -
I see chests as local buffers, mostly to be used for the stack size bonus, or to allow a small buffer between factories or for player usage - in this case most players I know already limit them to maybe 5 stacks (depending on exact usage). For long time / large scale storage we should have a more specialized item which is larger and with higher density.

I really like this idea, though. There's no real need to use steel chests now since there's rarely a need for so much space, and when you want maximum storage capacity, you use robots and storage chests anyway. And even then the storage chests are a bit lacking, since using robots for this task is rather inefficient...

[katyal]

I have to confess the idea of trains with removable containers has begun to obsess me and only because I think it would look great.

[Nova]

You can create Roboports (4x4) in an assembler (3x3) and then store 5 per field in a chest (1x1, up to 48 fields as far as I know).

this makes my point even more evidenty

No, it doesn't, because this shows how ridiculous the game is, but you can't change it without huge amounts of work. Yes, chests are pretty big, but saying "thats unrealistic" does not make your point any more valid. We should ask ourself: Would making the storage space of chests smaller enhance the game? Well, it could be, but only if we get bigger chests, like 2x2.

If sometimes want to store things from the inventory in some chests, especially wood. Annoying trees... Cutting with robots is the only fast and good way, but you still need a full steel chest for a forest. I don't want to set 5 chests just to store the wood. It would not be annoying, just slighty unwell. ^^

[Night_Ange1]

Buffers that properly use the full size of steel chest are usually fairly large and include a line of chest. A storage chest that is larger 2x2 or however large shouldnt be game breaking. A small buffer using 1 chest usually doesnt require 20ish (however many are in steel chest) stacks of the material

[katyal]

Smaller chests and some kind of truck (flat bed with a crane) to move them without having to empty them and pick them up.

Replace train wagons with flatbed cars that a crane (giant inserter) can load or unload with chests.

I can keep running with this idea pack items into chest and make recipes that require chests of material... lots of room for new game mechanics in this idea

[immibis]

Smaller chests would be OK if there were bigger chests (physically bigger, but with as many slots as before) as well.

[Xecutor]

Smaller chests and some kind of truck (flat bed with a crane) to move them without having to empty them and pick them up.

Replace train wagons with flatbed cars that a crane (giant inserter) can load or unload with chests.

I can keep running with this idea pack items into chest and make recipes that require chests of material... lots of room for new game mechanics in this idea

I'm working on a mod 'Boxing'. You can make steel box and pack some normally numerous items into boxes, transport them on belts or in trains and unpack where needed.
Actually the mod is working, I just need to make better graphics instead of placeholders

[warmadmax]

on my latest train station i'm using wooden boxes for the inserter stack bonuses,
I find it's really silly that i can have 5 wooden crates running the length of one train carriage that can hold nearly 4 carriages worth in them!
let alone the iron & steel chests!

I think the crate slots should come down a lot, possibly with a penalty on the logistics chests for the added functionality?

if they came down to say... 5 slots in the wooden, 10 in iron and 15 or 20 in steel, that might be reasonable?, 14 or 18 in the smart & logistic chests?

off the back of that, the player inventory would be unrealistically too big, maybe it could be halved? with a research option to "double backpack" it.

then i'd up the train carriages to 40 or 60 ? I hardly ever use the car / tank inventory to be frank so haven't got an opinion on it other than it being too big.
would be a pain if you wanted to set filters on all the slots but with the extra space, wouldn't have to worry really!

[Gammro]

I just thought of something: Where would you store mountains of resources without them being visible above ground?

Could the chests be containers that go underground to contain all that stuff?

[DerivePi]

There could be a special giant insterter for train stations that lifts off a whole container, like the ones that are used for oversea shipping these days, and put another one onto the car.

I have to confess the idea of trains with removable containers has begun to obsess me and only because I think it would look great.
...Smaller chests and some kind of truck (flat bed with a crane) to move them without having to empty them and pick them up.

Replace train wagons with flatbed cars that a crane (giant inserter) can load or unload with chests.

These sound like excellent suggestions! Of course it wouldn't be logical for the player to pick up the large heavy containers. They would have to only be handled by "giant inserters" and flat bed train cars.

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... idge+crane