Transport Belt as Flooring

[zirty]

This would help with things like biter spawn farms for certain mods as well as adding a whole new way of playing the game as you could place something on the belt (since it wouldn't count as taking up that tile like a normal belt) and it could move around on the belt, for example a moving turret or something like that.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Your suggestion is unclear. Are you suggesting that the moving surface of the transport belt be able to attach static entities?

[zirty]

What I am saying is for there to be a transportbelt on the same level as concrete and other tiling. That way you can place objects on top the transport belt (not drop, Place) and it would move around on the transport belt as an active entity.

[thereaverofdarkness]

So yes, you are suggesting that the moving surface of the transport belt be able to attach static entities.

I don't think it's possible without a major code rewrite, and someone would need to figure out how to optimize it so that it doesn't wreck your computer in the process. It would need to update the position of entities constantly unless it had some workaround to achieve the same effect.

[zirty]

Oh alright, yea sorry i'm not familiar with coding and coding terminology. Didn't realize it would be so complicated haha.

[EneCtin]

Hm, instead of a turret going round and round (if it is for defense, it means it is outside the base, meaning very long loops to carry the turret around and if one of the segments gets destroyed as it surely will, the turrets will uselessly amass in one spot) why not a new "defence belt" having on the sides and middle rows of spikes or blades or something. Sure, it'll take damage but if high speed it'll probably get out of range before being taken out. Think chainsaw. It'll not transport anything (or maybe just one row of stuff)
Even if a segment gets destroyed, just it and the 2 adiacent segments will stop working, the others will continue. The gap createdwon't help buggers that come from other directions.
To repair the belt, you'll need a dedicated vehicle replacing damaged tiles with new ones. Perhaps automated to some degree, like needing to be moved to another belt manually? Just add power consumption and increased cost in materials so that this defence belt it is nor abused or over powerful.
In fact, add power consumption to the already existing tracks, you can build a mile of them without spending a single Watt, much too powerful feature this. You can run a number of factories and foundries and a pretty large base on 2 measly steam engines.

As for quality of life improvements:
- did you notice that when you fill in a gap between 2 tracks going the same way, the new belt is almost always oriented the wrong way? Make the game copy the orientation of the nearest identical object. Chances are it'll fit without needing to rotate yourself.
- speaking of rotation, it is first up, then right, left and under. Why not in a single direction? It would be more intuitive, or preferred for some. I can think of arguments either way.

[sarcolopter]

I thought he meant turn it into flooring so that you could run belts underneath buildings over any arbitrary distance without ever needing to use undergrounds outside of belts crossing each other; that would actually be useful, especially when there's an ore patch directly in the path of your bus and you don't want to go around