[MOD] Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes & Compact Loaders

[Durabys]

The choice to go a darker gray is what really draws me to yours, since items stand out a lot more than their vanilla counterpart. Belts are now less of an eyesore and I can see items more clearly, so thank you for that.

My pleasure.

Something is very wonky. My Angel/Bob game Violet and Green belts do not fit the color scheme of the corresponding Beltbox. Green to Violet. Violet to Green. What is going on?

No idea, some other mod probably, it doesn't do that for me with just Bob's Logistics 0.16.15. I know Bob is talking about changing all the colours around and messing with belt speeds but I didn't think it was done yet.

Question: The color of the Beltbox is controlled by your mod or Bob's mod?

[Deadlock989]

The colour of the beltbox is controlled by Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes. The colours of the loaders and optionally underneathies and belts are controlled by Deadlock's Compact Loaders. If something else is switching sprites around, the tint for the masks defined in those files won't match the sprites.

I can look into it if you give me a screenshot and ideally a mod list or a save.

[dood]

This is brilliant, exactly what I want to see added to vanilla factorio but I don't like its dependency on loaders.
Can you make the boxes with built in inputs and outputs so they act like compression splitters?

[orzelek]

This is brilliant, exactly what I want to see added to vanilla factorio but I don't like its dependency on loaders.
Can you make the boxes with built in inputs and outputs so they act like compression splitters?

There is no entity that can do that currently. So realistically it would need to stitch hidden loaders there anyway or do other tricky stuff (like miniloaders mod and it's hidden inserters). It's not likely to happen - I'm not sure if loaders could be hidden nicely since they need to connect to belt.

[Deadlock989]

This is brilliant, exactly what I want to see added to vanilla factorio but I don't like its dependency on loaders.
Can you make the boxes with built in inputs and outputs so they act like compression splitters?

That was the original plan, it was going to be a 1x3 box with built-in loaders like Klonan's belt buffer, but as pointed out above, it's riddled with issues. The buffer and Miniloaders are clever but hiding invisible things leads to all sorts of consequences. Having to look out every time every other mod in the world might move or delete or build it in their own idiosyncratic way ... I just couldn't face it, too hacky. I still think it can be done but it would always be fragile, too high maintenance.

[dood]

Guess I'll have to use it with loaders too then.

Another thing, those things generate pollution.
I have to disagree with that since neither inserters nor bots generate pollution.
Pollution only has a fixed amount that you can do nothing about if it comes from burner miners and furnaces.
The beltboxes don't burn anything nor are they big enough to accept modules and since they don't mine or produce anything it would only make sense to treat them like inserters or roboports which generate no pollution.

Another thing, red beltboxes should probably not take red circuits to build and thus be gated behind oil.
That is a blue belt thing.

[Deadlock989]

Guess I'll have to use it with loaders too then.

There are situations where inserters are enough. It's true that you can't get optimal use without loaders, though.

As regards cost and pollution: these things can save you hundreds of thousands of resources, not to mention space, by cutting your buses to 1/5th their former size. They need to cost something to run and they need to be a little ahead of the belt tier tech, not dead on it. Personally I was thinking they're too cheap. I'm happy with them as they are.

[orzelek]

Guess I'll have to use it with loaders too then.

There are situations where inserters are enough. It's true that you can't get optimal use without loaders, though.

As regards cost and pollution: these things can save you hundreds of thousands of resources, not to mention space, by cutting your buses to 1/5th their former size. They need to cost something to run and they need to be a little ahead of the belt tier tech, not dead on it. Personally I was thinking they're too cheap. I'm happy with them as they are.

Hmm I didn't notice the pollution.
Any chance to add them module slots that allow efficiency/pollution reduction as an effect so that we can reduce it later on?

[Deadlock989]

The higher the tier, the less they pollute. They don't have room for module slots. They could only have efficiency effects anyway, speed or productivity would break everything.

Which made me check - never thought I'd add tier 4 and 5 boxes for other mods, so it turns out they are actually cleaning the air ...

[dood]

Just saying in case you value consistency, pollution in vanilla is entirely a production thing and is never used in logistics.
That's why trains don't pollute even though they burn something and electric mining drills do even though they are electric.

[orzelek]

The higher the tier, the less they pollute. They don't have room for module slots. They could only have efficiency effects anyway, speed or productivity would break everything.

Which made me check - never thought I'd add tier 4 and 5 boxes for other mods, so it turns out they are actually cleaning the air ...

Thats why I'm asking for module slots that only allow effectivity
I'm guessing that when I get into green modules those yellow belt boxes will be heavily polluting compared to smelting area

If higher tiers pollute less it might work out - I'm not sure if yellow ones will get abandoned later on.

[Deadlock989]

Just saying in case you value consistency, pollution in vanilla is entirely a production thing and is never used in logistics.
That's why trains don't pollute even though they burn something and electric mining drills do even though they are electric.

And 300w each time you split something off the bus is quite costly on its own.

Assemblers pollute, pumpjacks pollute, electric pumps pollute, centrifuges, electric furnaces ... I don't think there's a black and white distinction between production and logistics but if I were forced to choose, I would class beltboxes as production.

Which made me check - never thought I'd add tier 4 and 5 boxes for other mods, so it turns out they are actually cleaning the air ...

OK, so that was clearly broken.

I've rebalanced them so that they consistently get less polluting the higher the tier. The dirtiest are yellow beltboxes and they are still less polluting than an Assembler Mk I despite handling vastly greater throughput of materials (they were about as bad as an Assembler III before). If you have more tiers running because you're using one of the supported mods, the highest tier will still be the cleanest (so the mid tiers will be dirtier than in vanilla).

[dood]

Assemblers pollute, pumpjacks pollute, electric pumps pollute, centrifuges, electric furnaces ...

And miners, oil refineries, chemical plants.
Yeah those. Those are production.

And now that you mention it, the electric pump is the only exception and is probably an oversight.
Makes me want to report it.

[Deadlock989]

I see them as assemblers. They have moving parts, motors, they kick up dust and bits, just like assemblers. They should probably have engines in them, if this were AAI I would have crammed them full of motors. They take in one thing and produce another, they have a raw material and a product. They're not just logistics.

Edited to add, I had a look at adding a single effectivity slot. I'd really rather not - the savings are marginal in the new scheme, and there isn't physically enough space to have a module info icon (the alt-view activity icon already covers 90% of the box).

[dood]

Well I see them as throughput enhancers. A variant on splitters and while it is true that they technically convert an ingredient into a product, its only function is to be unpacked again unlike something like green circuits which you can not unpack into 1 iron and 1.5 copper.

[Deadlock989]

*shrug* We disagree. Likesay, if you're using a lot of big multi-lane buses, beltboxes can slash your logistics infrastructure capital cost by 80%. So there's a very minor payback in the form of a smidgen of extra energy and pollution. I don't how long you'd have to run how many boxes to equal the pollution you would have burned off to smelt all the iron and crack all the lubricant for those X,000 extra blue belts you would have needed, I guess it would depend, but it's going to be quite a while.

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DSB version: 1.4.11
Date: 26. 03. 2018
Changes:
- Added Regroup as an optional dependency, just to force loading order.
- Rebalanced energy and pollution. Beltboxes are consistently cleanest at the top tier and dirtiest at the lowest tier.
Bugfixes:
- Tier 4 and 5 beltboxes were cleaning the air.

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[Deadlock989]

DSB version: 1.5.0
Date: 28. 03. 2018
Changes:
- Made the internal structure of the mod properly modular, reducing variable/function scope.

DCL version: 1.4.0
Date: 28. 03. 2018
Changes:
- Made the internal structure of the mod properly modular, reducing variable/function scope.
- Added Paradox Mode. This is Compact Loaders without loaders, but allows you to keep the belt styling if that's all you want.

[LION42]

Hi
first thanks for this great mod
second i'm playing 0.16.36
the loaders/unloaders seem to not Load/unload on the edge of the train cars. Only 4out of 6 work.

[Deadlock989]

Hi
first thanks for this great mod
second i'm playing 0.16.36
the loaders/unloaders seem to not Load/unload on the edge of the train cars. Only 4out of 6 work.

They're not supposed to work with cargo wagons at all.

They will if Loaders Redux is also installed, because LR assumes that all entities of type loader belong to it. The method used by LR to support wagons has the potential to slow the game to a crawl and has done exactly that on one of my maps, so I'm not ever going to use the same method for DCL.

[dood]

Would it be possible to have stacking/unstacking not affect the production statistics?
It kind of falsifies the numbers.