Friday Facts #128 - Back down to earth

[thc133]

It's too powerful. I don't like the idea of loader.

[Klonan]

at kovarex...

I maby have found some kind of bug...
I have 2 monitors.. don't know if that's due to the bug...

but when I am ingame and press Print Screen...
and I open the "picture " in paint...
the picture is taken when the game is paused .... like when you press Esc THEN take the print screen...

I can only do this when I have the game open and press on my 2nd monitor and then print screen
only then I do not have the " Esc " pause window

please... post a bug report
viewforum.php?f=7

[Nova]

The hell? Already 13 sites with only 1 day open? How? o_O

The loader... it's something I always did think about, because it is so natural. Just throw items directly from the belt inside a chest, or throw the content of a chest on a belt. That's only logical, but maybe really overpowered.
Make it REALLY expensive. Maybe express splitter + express belts + processing units. That sounds pretty expensive and should stop people from using it everywhere.

[ps666]

I like the "loader" idea very much!
But i'm a little worried that it could make robots a little bit redundant.
I love robots! It would be great if you could pay more attention to them.

[CNR_Thunder]

Hi
I like the Idea of the Unloader
In the endgame I need 5 fast inserter to keep the Belt filled from a big Buffer chest

If it only work with chests its good and balance I think
A realy nice to have item and if its expensive who cares^^

But the one Item I realy miss is a belt blocker for an better way to organize one side of your belts crafting lines in one block

[jjconroy]

My suggestion about balancing would be to make it only work with low-tier chests. That way you would sacrifice capacity if you used one.

[torham]

The hell? Already 13 sites with only 1 day open? How? o_O

The loader... it's something I always did think about, because it is so natural. Just throw items directly from the belt inside a chest, or throw the content of a chest on a belt. That's only logical, but maybe really overpowered.
Make it REALLY expensive. Maybe express splitter + express belts + processing units. That sounds pretty expensive and should stop people from using it everywhere.

Lets combine ALL suggestion!

lvl 1 loader : 1 yellow splitter, 2 yellow belts, 2 basic insterters and 2 green circuits. Has internal space of 1 ( can hold max 1 stack) and can output at the speed of yellow belt. Requires power.
lvl 2 loader : 1 red splitter, 2 red belts, 2 fast inserters, 2 green ( or red?) circuits. Has internal space of 2 ( 2 stacks) and can output at the speed of red belt. Requires quite a bit of power.
lvl 3 loader : 1 express splitter , 2 express belts, 2 smart inserters, 2 processing units. Has internal space of 3, can output at max speed. Requires ton of power ( and possibly lube).

How's that for balancing

[roothorick]

People are against the loader, nobody provides a reason why. "It's OP because I think it is." Please explain. To me it doesn't harm anything.

Ultimately item flow is limited by crafting speeds of assembling machines, furnaces and miners. The challenge of the game is getting these things right and saturate belts with those. Loaders would not replace inserters because they would be limited by the speed of assembling machines (both putting things in and taking out). Assuming that they are bigger than inserters and cost more energy, they would not be a reasonable replacement for inserters.

The more I think about it, the only reasonable application I see is for loading/unloading trains, when items come in bulk. That and maybe more efficient load balancers, at which point in time you probably already have the traditional balancers in place (because it's a late game item), you could replace them at additional energy cost, or just not bother.

Yea, I still don't see the possible drawbacks and overpowered everybody seems to be afraid of. Maybe someone can argue the case why it would be OP.

The issue is that they have substantial advantages over inserters with no meaningful downside, once unlocked. Worse, they would oversimplify many of the core challenges of the game. Every belt layout becomes one of a half dozen very basic, canned designs with no thought put into it. Trains would likely become hideously overpowered, as your throughput on/off a single car is enough to saturate up to 14 fast belts (if not express belts), whereas now you typically get two, and have to lengthen trains to scale further. Item buffers with perfect belt saturation become trivial. You could feed items to the already overpowered logistics network with obscene speed.

The late game is already too easy, and this would make things far, far worse.

[Weresmilodon]

I like the idea of the Loader, but you need to provide more information of how you want it to work. Almost all the feedback seems to be kneejerk reactions based of personal assumption. We really need more information to make informed decisions.

[Powderking]

Perfect suggestion, torham!

I would like to give some alien goo and get one with storage 0 but infinite speed.

[aRatNamedSammy]

i love the loader idea.. i know i will use inserters and all as well.. but main storage and train station will work way better with that

[flamingtomato]

The loader imo only makes building efficient setups less interesting. Trying to get stuff in and out of containers atm is a cool puzzle, and not something which should be ruined by a perfect, simple pre-made solution. It doesn't expand your options, it shrinks them down to just one: the loader. I think however, that there are a few good ways of doing something like this, which have been suggested already:

- Make them need lube. This is a very cool idea, because it means setting them up will be tricky -> inserters will not be phased out, it makes setting it up more rewarding and cool, and it makes use of a relatively useless resource. Also works thematically. Lastly this would phase them in naturally at a good point in the game, making them appear slightly after you got oil setup, so you can then go back and, if you wish, redo some old layouts with new tools. Also this would make them appear just in time for trains, and having to get lube around to train station to get a smoother load/unload is awesome.

- Do the hoppers thing. Basically just add use an item which goes in between a belt and an inserter and allows you to use the stck bonus. A hopper could be placed above a belt, and then an inserter could put stuff into it, benefitting from the stack bonus. This hopper would then distribute those items onto the belt. You could also have a reversed version. Not perhaps as interesting as the lube thing, but a very flexible and simple solution which doesn't eliminate inserters and isn't as strong. This integrates very well with the rest of the game imo

- Do packaging. Allow you to package goods with assemblers/dedicated packers and then send them around in a package. This solves a lot of throughput issues and is very potent, but requires a lot of effort to setup, and still makes use of all kinds of cool setups. Also feels very thematic. This is however a big change/feature and would need a lot of work and could be done in a lot of different ways, but personally I think this would be favourite solution. It would interact very well with so many other mechanics, it would make belts a lot more powerful and require a bunch of extra delicious puzzling to get setup properly.

[ssilk]

I see such a loader for for those cases:

1. More compressed setup for train-stations. There are already some suggestions here.

2. As a bridge for Belt Transport System <-> Logistic System. Something where you can either put in items from belt into a logistic provider (or storage) or something where you can collect items from a requester (logistic system) into the belts. Not both at the same time!

3. As a part of some kind of slow storage and/or sorter. It was often mentioned: "warehouse". For me a warehouse does exactly storing and/or sorting items. This loader is a part of that. The idea behind that is for me, that it is not possible to load AND unload at the same time. See above. You can either load or unload and the switching between both states needs time. For whatever reason (for example you need to reverse the loader?).


Comment to point #1 and #2:

The overall idea for that can be seen as "Changing the transport media". For #1 from belt to train. and for #2 from belt to logistic system.

It's fun to play around with the changing of transport media and optimizing that type of transport; it's challenging enough to become a new subgame. I've played some hundreds of hours to be sure to say, that this type of game is quite challenging. But I need to say, that for the logistic part we need some other elements to enable better control over the item-flow. That will bring in even more complexity.

Comment to point #3:

My thoughts are going into a direction that you need to use circuits to do that "changing of direction".
- Detection of state (overflow or lack of items? Enough items stored? ...)
- Is minimum time for one direction reached? So that it doesn't switch back and forth all the time.
- Handling of some kind of mechanics: I think to some "plattform" where belts and loaders can be built on. The platform has a mechanic which has two (?) different positions. Depending on position of that platform it has different functions (deoendend on what you have built on it) and can work as a switch for belts.

Now it become too off-topic.

[timesinker]

i dont think i like the idea of this loader.you are alone on this planet - and for a long time inserters are your only homies if you want so. they give life to your base,more than belts,assemblers or furnaces do, they are creatures although they have only one arm.later on ,its your robots that crowd the place. inserters rock. if i need faster loading or unloading, i ask bob.

[MeduSalem]

[...]you are alone on this planet - and for a long time inserters are your only homies if you want so. [...]

This made my day.

[Nova]

Well, the loader will also look like some more interesting thing - that grey box is only a temporary image. ^^

@torham: I would say even more expensive, not 2 circuits but 10 or even more. This thing should be so expensive that players really think about using it. It's the same for express belts.

But we also have to think about this: Why should player use the high-tier loader? There's are reason people use express belts and that kinds, because using more normal belts requiers much more space, but 2 low-tier loaders only require slightly more space than 1 high-tier loader.

[faloun]

I wish this board had a voting feature - there are so many great ideas floating around here.

[Fatmice]

To the detractors, you should know there are already mods that do this or accomplish part of this. Namely,
Terminal chest, (loader): viewtopic.php?f=87&t=4715
Slipstream chest, (loader/unloader): viewtopic.php?f=14&t=7121

This is simply to point out that when there is a will, there will be a way. Kovarex is almost a year too late, in some sense.

But back to the idea. I'm for it.

[CartesianBear]

It makes sense to me as a very expensive late-game tool to help with building the rocket (or potential future late-game content).

You could potentially make it available earlier at reduced functionality. Without any modules, it would perhaps be as effective as a single fast inserter (or maybe two). Make the player fill it with level 1 speed modules in order to saturate a yellow belt, level 2 for a red belt, and level 3 for a blue belt. That way the player could build and start to use them earlier (around when Logistics System comes online, perhaps), but they wouldn't be game-breaking. The use of modules, and a suitably high base electric consumption (5x-10x a fast inserter, perhaps?) would provide a sufficient tradeoff to make them useful in edge cases, while preventing the factory being completely taken over by them.

[pyrolytic_tungsten]

I like the loader and I would certainly find it handy for mass storage. I don't like the idea of it consuming lubricant because that makes it tricky to use at outposts. Its use should be restricted to chests.