Version 0.16.8

[Engimage]

I like the new barrels, because I think that barrels were way overpowered until this release.

Yes the throughput is lowered and you need more machines and belts/bots to fill and transport your barrels, but that's not even bad.
Redesign your base - it's an experimental release.

Except that now it takes about 5x as much bots/belts to move the same amount of barrels as before, which means worse performance. That completely goes against what the devs have said before about want to increase game performance.
Going with a suggestion stated previously of reducing barrel stack size instead of fluid capacity would help bring them in-line with the tanker and be less OP than they are now, but not render them pretty much worthless.

It was an intention to nerf bots/barrels as before bots transported too much liquid per run which was extremely OP

[Avezo]

At the end of the day, we're still limited by pipe throughput. Fluid unloading directly to tanks is superfast anyway and it doesn't even need bots, so it all can be build away from roboports unloading normal items. There maybe would be a bit more pipes inside the base.

[exi123]

Imho this nerf was totally needed. Trains standing ages at stations waiting to be full or empty was horrible (god, at uranium fields... AGES )... I never use bots to carry around fluids. Mosty a pipe or train is doing the work for me... But thats only for me...

[Gnark]

This make barrel pointless.
Tanker are better than barrel and wagon.
Pipe move more liquid with less design than barrel and belt.

Ho yes barrel is still more storage than tank but what is the point of storage in a game of flux ? And what is the point of using barrel for storage when you can just built more tank ?

Ho well robots are still an issue, just build more and up your request. Play the game with robot from the start and see how boring this is, no design no worry about capacity. But for those who like challenge and and don't use them to mass carrying this is a big lose.

[Xterminator]

I like the new barrels, because I think that barrels were way overpowered until this release.

Yes the throughput is lowered and you need more machines and belts/bots to fill and transport your barrels, but that's not even bad.
Redesign your base - it's an experimental release.

Except that now it takes about 5x as much bots/belts to move the same amount of barrels as before, which means worse performance. That completely goes against what the devs have said before about want to increase game performance.
Going with a suggestion stated previously of reducing barrel stack size instead of fluid capacity would help bring them in-line with the tanker and be less OP than they are now, but not render them pretty much worthless.

It was an intention to nerf bots/barrels as before bots transported too much liquid per run which was extremely OP

Right, but it also nerfed belt transport of fluid almost equally. By reducing the capacity of the barrel, if you want to transport say, 1,000 liquid in barrels, you now need 20 barrels instead of 5, which means more belt space and more belts needed.

[Serenity]

Trains standing ages at stations waiting to be full or empty was horrible (god, at uranium fields... AGES ).

You can load or unload a train up to a certain amount with any item. You can also place a tank at the mine and link it to the train with the circuit network.

[Floaf]

I don't get it... I use to have four fluid wagons that visit the refinery part of my factory like once a minute. Now i am going to need 3 times that much? And i thought that the fluid wagons had too low capacity already...
Well, the factory are going to grow larger if they keep this spree of changes going

I mean, i already can select more expensive recepies when creating a new game if I want more shit transported around you know

[jo2k]

Except that now it takes about 5x as much bots/belts to move the same amount of barrels as before, which means worse performance. That completely goes against what the devs have said before about want to increase game performance.

This is a design decision. In my opinion a very good one.

You can increase the game performance if you lower the costs for products.
One iron for a rocket is a good idea, isn't it? It would increase the overall performance a lot...
But that's (hopefully) not the way the devs will go.

[Rensiur]

IMHO the barrel change should have only been implemented if the optimization of fuid mechanics was implemented at the same time. This mainly affects huge bases - but 5 times as many bots for example can be a strain on such bases. I have no idea how many players this really affects adversly, still what others said in relation to maybe changing the stack size to two would have been a better call.

[Zavian]

Right, but it also nerfed belt transport of fluid almost equally. By reducing the capacity of the barrel, if you want to transport say, 1,000 liquid in barrels, you now need 20 barrels instead of 5, which means more belt space and more belts needed.

Hardly significant. You now need about 1 blue belt of petroleum barrels, plus one blue belt of crude oil, (plus about 1.25 belts of water barrels, if you also barrel water) for per 900 sci/minute (including the rocket and satellite for space science, and assuming productivity 3 modules everywhere). You need about 2.25 belts of stone for that amount of science, about 4 belts of steel, 17 belts of copper ore, and 31 belts of iron ore. So the extra belts (or bots) are miniscule in the greater scheme of things.

[milo christiansen]

I like the barrel changes. It may be a little too far, but they were OP before. In my mind barrels are for use where you only need a little bit of something.

With the lighter fluid wagons and nerfed barrels I can see myself using mixed tanker/cargo trains to service outposts instead of adding a few stacks of barrels to a normal cargo wagon. No big deal.

As for barrels and bots: Bot bases are boring/lazy mode. Almost anything that nerfs them is OK by me.

[yohannc]

Except that now it takes about 5x as much bots/belts to move the same amount of barrels as before, which means worse performance. That completely goes against what the devs have said before about want to increase game performance.
Going with a suggestion stated previously of reducing barrel stack size instead of fluid capacity would help bring them in-line with the tanker and be less OP than they are now, but not render them pretty much worthless.

In fact the only thing you don't like is that it will be harder.
Harder = low rocket / minute for the same factory.
Is it realy a problem if for example, in the final version, the game would be 3 time harder than now ? I don't think so. Ok, you will launch 3 time less rocket per minute, and that's all.

[irbork]

Right, but it also nerfed belt transport of fluid almost equally. By reducing the capacity of the barrel, if you want to transport say, 1,000 liquid in barrels, you now need 20 barrels instead of 5, which means more belt space and more belts needed.

As far as fluid throughput on belts it is still to much. 2000 fluid/s on blue belt. To make this value balanced gameplay wise it ought to be cut to at least 750.

[rldml]

Right, but it also nerfed belt transport of fluid almost equally. By reducing the capacity of the barrel, if you want to transport say, 1,000 liquid in barrels, you now need 20 barrels instead of 5, which means more belt space and more belts needed.

Barrels are not intended to be a better way of transporting fluids. It's simply not intuitive... The actual changes in 0.16.8 is a compromise between the usefulness of fluid waggon, tanks, pumps and pipes against barrels.

It makes no sence if you can transport that much liquid with just a few barrels over long distances with the help of thousands of robots or with a huge amount of belts....

Greetings, Ronny

[deer_buster]

As for the fluid wagon, and specifically the barrel changes...

I sense a great rush to create a mod that changes the barrel capacity back to original values, and stack size to 2

[Engimage]

Right, but it also nerfed belt transport of fluid almost equally. By reducing the capacity of the barrel, if you want to transport say, 1,000 liquid in barrels, you now need 20 barrels instead of 5, which means more belt space and more belts needed.

And do you really think that 10,000 per second on a belt was fine? (40 * 250/sec) While pipes have much less throughput.
I think barrels are just a backup solution if you are lazy enough to fit pipes around and want to go bots. Barrels on belts maked only sense cause they had more throughput than pipes and THAT did not make sense at all.

[Gnark]

Right, but it also nerfed belt transport of fluid almost equally. By reducing the capacity of the barrel, if you want to transport say, 1,000 liquid in barrels, you now need 20 barrels instead of 5, which means more belt space and more belts needed.

As far as fluid throughput on belts it is still to much. 2000 fluid/s on blue belt. To make this value balanced gameplay wise it ought to be cut to at least 750.

How can you say that? One pipe is 1200, you need to bring back empty barrel so you need two belt for the 2000 f/s while 2 pipe goes for 2400 with no design ....

Right, but it also nerfed belt transport of fluid almost equally. By reducing the capacity of the barrel, if you want to transport say, 1,000 liquid in barrels, you now need 20 barrels instead of 5, which means more belt space and more belts needed.

And do you really think that 10,000 per second on a belt was fine? (40 * 250/sec) While pipes have much less throughput

I think this was fine, you need all the factory to feel and empty the barrel, the you need to get ride of the empty one and some logic to make the mecanic continue to work through time.

[Xterminator]

Right, but it also nerfed belt transport of fluid almost equally. By reducing the capacity of the barrel, if you want to transport say, 1,000 liquid in barrels, you now need 20 barrels instead of 5, which means more belt space and more belts needed.

Barrels are not intended to be a better way of transporting fluids. It's simply not intuitive... The actual changes in 0.16.8 is a compromise between the usefulness of fluid waggon, tanks, pumps and pipes against barrels.

It makes no sence if you can transport that much liquid with just a few barrels over long distances with the help of thousands of robots or with a huge amount of belts....

Greetings, Ronny

How does that make sense? Barrels are more complicated to set up than a fluid wagon and pipes and take more to keep running due to the constant need for empty barrels and such. It is clearly more complicated, which is fine. But should't the player be rewarded for choosing the more complex alternative instead of punished?

Except that now it takes about 5x as much bots/belts to move the same amount of barrels as before, which means worse performance. That completely goes against what the devs have said before about want to increase game performance.

This is a design decision. In my opinion a very good one.

You can increase the game performance if you lower the costs for products.
One iron for a rocket is a good idea, isn't it? It would increase the overall performance a lot...
But that's (hopefully) not the way the devs will go.

That is not my point at all. I would not play Factorio if that was the case. I enjoy the challenge and obviously gameplay takes priority over performance. My issue is with the way the change was implemented. There was at least one other way to do it that would have accomplished something similar without hurting performance at all. Even the Devs themselves have said how important performance is to them, so I'm puzzled as to why it was done this way.

Except that now it takes about 5x as much bots/belts to move the same amount of barrels as before, which means worse performance. That completely goes against what the devs have said before about want to increase game performance.
Going with a suggestion stated previously of reducing barrel stack size instead of fluid capacity would help bring them in-line with the tanker and be less OP than they are now, but not render them pretty much worthless.

In fact the only thing you don't like is that it will be harder.
Harder = low rocket / minute for the same factory.
Is it realy a problem if for example, in the final version, the game would be 3 time harder than now ? I don't think so. Ok, you will launch 3 time less rocket per minute, and that's all.

Wrong. It's not that it will be harder, it's that it will be significantly worse than the easier alternative of using a fluid wagon, which pretty much points the player in the direction of only one option. I love the fact that Factorio has many ways to play and multiple options for ways to do things and this kind of ruins that. Barrels are harder to setup and keep running than pipes and a fluid wagon, so shouldn't the player be rewarded for doing that method, or at least make it equal to the easier method? Making the alternative worse just means you are being limited to pretty much one option.

[irbork]

Right, but it also nerfed belt transport of fluid almost equally. By reducing the capacity of the barrel, if you want to transport say, 1,000 liquid in barrels, you now need 20 barrels instead of 5, which means more belt space and more belts needed.

As far as fluid throughput on belts it is still to much. 2000 fluid/s on blue belt. To make this value balanced gameplay wise it ought to be cut to at least 750.

How can you say that? One pipe is 1200, you need to bring back empty barrel so you need two belt for the 2000 f/s while 2 pipe goes for 2400 with no design ....

My designs recycle barrels, many empty oil barrels carry on distributing all the products and only few goes to barrel distribution center. Empty products barrels join the line later. It's a beautiful replacement system where amounts of belts does not increase just to cary empty barrels.

[Gnark]

Right, but it also nerfed belt transport of fluid almost equally. By reducing the capacity of the barrel, if you want to transport say, 1,000 liquid in barrels, you now need 20 barrels instead of 5, which means more belt space and more belts needed.

As far as fluid throughput on belts it is still to much. 2000 fluid/s on blue belt. To make this value balanced gameplay wise it ought to be cut to at least 750.

How can you say that? One pipe is 1200, you need to bring back empty barrel so you need two belt for the 2000 f/s while 2 pipe goes for 2400 with no design ....

My designs recycle barrels, many empty oil barrels carry on distributing all the products and only few goes to barrel distribution center. Empty products barrels join the line later. It's a beautiful replacement system where amounts of belts does not increase just to cary empty barrels.

I just want to see that please.
For me it is like math. I you bring and full barrel somewhere to use it you need to to care of the empty barrel or sooner or later it will stuck your chain ...