Friday Facts #128 - Back down to earth

[scyley]

The problem with the Loader is that you think it's going to buff belt play to be competitive with trains and bots in the late game. Unfortunately, its actually just going to be a buff for bots because you will be able to load ore/plate/copper wire directly into passive/active provider boxes. Then bots with their huge stack size carry upgrades distribute it all over your base to requester chests at every assembler faster than belts ever could. You'll basically never see belts anywhere again and completely kill the "Main Bus" build.

[fls81245]

I'll suggest some requirement of cargo source.Like you need to elevate the chest or wagon by scaffold,mound or something like that.
Then the "loader" can simply rename into "slope"
Not need power,fast,low technology requirement, and very reasonable.

Or course there are some restrict suggested.Like the normal inserters cannot transport cargo between different height(but the long-arm could, if shorten the distance into 1 block.)
And the locomotives and belts need extra power to climb these ramps to transport wagons or cargos into higher position.

How's my idea?

[Drottningu]

I think that it would be cool to have in the game, but should only interact with trains. Its that or it shouldn't be put in the game at all.

[torham]

Maybe there should be a poll or something like this. I don't like the idea, but i think there should be some optimizations:

What are you thinking about a stacking/sorter Machine. Maybe big as a factory where the belt is moving through, but instead of storing things in a chest it will stack items of the same kind (or you can build custom stacks). These Stacks can be taken from the inserters at once.

Maybe the bigger sorter can take 2 Belts and output the content on on belt in a stacked form.

There is. In the general forums.

[transportman]

I like the new tech tree, really makes it clear where things are going. Does remind me of the Civ tech tree, although that one is horizontal and just keeps on going over the whole tree instead of just the selected part.

[kheyas]

I think something like a STRONG Inserter could be introduced. It would treat a stack of materials as one item (eg. it would transfer 100 iron plates at once). In order to keep it balanced it would have to use oil/lubrifiant as part of a hydraulic system, have a much larger footprint and/or draw a lot more energy from the grid. Also, considering one idea from the first pages, hoppers could be used for non-stackable resources like coal and ores both for storing and retreiving them (acting like the current design of the loader).

I am not really fond of the current concept of loaders. They do not make sense physically, it's not like you could suck items out of a crate or chest, respectively push it in and I believe that's why they feel overpowered.

[Sparkerish]

Interesting . . .

I think implementation of this "loader" idea should be a Hopper, (might need a few new items/entities)

Perhaps if a belt encounters a hopper it should default to "dump into" hopper, "extraction" from hopper would be underground belt, just a thought.

Characteristics of Hopper...
NO SORTING,
MAX THROUGHPUT, (limited only by capacity of hopper and speed of belt - yes belt would be 'filled' if material is available)
LIMITED CAPACITY 1-4? stacks/square -adding adjacent hoppers (in rectangle or square shape merges into larger hopper - especially for train load/unload),
Can only accept items from: Belt, Inserter, Hopper Car. (see below)
Can only Put items into/onto: Belt, Chest, Hopper car.

useful to merge belts; yellow belt(s) dump into hopper with blue belt crossing underneath - this would only be different from current merge by adding a small 'tank' at merge point.

inserters would be used to move items from chests to hoppers
hoppers can dump directly into chest


Trains & Hoppers
Hopper cars (used to transport bulk goods)
Hoppers installed OVER tracks (loading of trains, belts dump into hopper)
Hoppers installed UNDER tracks (unloading of trains, belts extract from hopper)

Connections:
Belts: - determined by belt type
if placed on end of belt, belt dumps into hopper.
if placed 'over' underground belt, hopper dumps onto belt.

Trains: - hopper setup may only be load or unload NOT both.
hopper must be installed AFTER first belt (to specify type of 'station')
Run belt to tracks, place hopper on track at end of belt (train loader - creates tank/box over tracks)
Place underground belt under/next to tracks place hopper on tracks 'over' belt (train unloader - creates 'pit' under tracks.)

Just my thoughts on this idea.

AWESOME GAME Keep up the great work!

EDIT: added "Connections" & clarified a few parts

[Skraflar]

I vote no for the loader atm. But if you could make it really hard to obtain and was allot bigger only be design to load and unload trains and requires insane power use then maybe. I like the concept bring something other to the table

[Grimakar]

I do not like the idea of a Loader. It is doing the same as the inserter, only faster. And there are two things related to the transportation of goods that make up the charm of Factorio. The first is the animation of the inserters and the other is the complexity of building patterns with them. I fear that this charm could get lost with a Loader.
I would prefer implementing other more crucial things like bridges over tracks, direct trading between players or recycling of unneeded items.

[Juanajones]

I like most of the ideas that've been posted earlier but thought I'd suggest some more:

- Loader only unloads to the middle of the belt (i.e. 1 Stream of items, not both sides)
- Limited speed, only available in yellow for instance

And the most important bit: It's expensive to research and use.

In general this sounds like it could really change the end game.
I'm very excited to see what you can do with these when designing train stations

[Zourin]

I asked for this ages ago. Glad to see it come around. It's not OP. We've just gotten used to a very inefficient solution for putting things into and out of a storage unit.

1. It should attach to the end of the belt (like an underground connection), thus it can't be run in parallel like Inserters without more space and splitters (extra cost).
2. No sorting/smart function. That's what Inserters/bots are for. These are just for bulk storage of presorted (or unsorted) items. It shouldn't handle complex loads.
3. Just one speed that has a throughput around 2-3 fast inserters. It shouldn't naturally saturate a belt (say, 1/2 yellow throughput?)

[FlyHigh]

I have to agree on a No for the loader and I think most of us agree on the reasons why. It is a devise that does not add to the game and, as pointed out in the topic, makes loading and unloading trivial. It also renders inserters obsolete as it gives a 1 to 1 ratio of unloading.

As it stands, the belt balancing and ratio-playing has been tremendously simplified already with the curved belt fix. The loader would further take complexity away.

As a rule of thumb i think the ratios of stuff should rarely be 1 to 1 because this eliminates the need to 'play with things'. You just hook it up at never tend to it again. This should not be the way of Factorio.

[kaovalin]

I think we should have these. The idea is not OP. We already have trains, robots, and multiple tiers of belts. Anyone wanting to artificially challenge themselves can ignore all three of those features and have a purely yellow belt setup with just burner inserters, wooden chests, and yellow belts (no splitters).

I very much disagree with supplying these lubricant persistently as a means to balance them. If that's the case, why doesnt everything in the blue belt tier require constant lubricant because "its speed is OP"? I do agree they should be filled via inserters. These are clearly for converting the item transfer speed of inserters to the throughput speed of belts. I think everyone was just freaking out and saying no because they looked like a complete solution that would eliminate the need for inserters late game. Even the people against the idea seem to not mind them if they convert from inserters to belts. This is a sorely needed niche that has led to ridiculous setups to work around up to now.

[Pappus]

Hi there,
I thought I would come over and give you free feedback on wether that thing might be overpowered or not. I don't see how. I am pretty new so I didn't do a lot with trains yet, I am starting the migration of my first base to get a cooler one independent of coal with nicely setup processing for everything. When I say nice, what I really mean is requester chest -> assembly -> provider chest /no worries.

If anything I think the loader/unloader should already be in the game with the reason of things falling off the belt instead of magically one lane stopping while the other is fine.

My first attempt of getting green/red science automated failed horribly - why? Because I tried to get everything in a nice line and finding the correct ratio. With little options to finetune crafting speed it was met with failure relatively swiftly.
Second attempt was pretty easy. Tiny strips of belt here and there (could also do chests with max input) and suddenly 3 green and red factories are running constantly and surprisingly outputting such a crazy amount of science pack that researching becomes actually annoying. Think about next thing... research done... click.... research done....

I'm sorry but a meager 3 red/green factories shouldn't overproduce against 8-9 labs. I would have liked to see a way to upgrade a single lab to a double, but that is more an aesthetic thing. In the end labs will be chained anyway and getting stuff from a full belt into them isn't exactly a challenge either so I would have preferred 1 big lab anyway back to the main point.

While figuring out oil I basically teched every green/red thing. Of course I tried to get a nice setup going for blue, but I got bored of chopping down trees everywhere the ultimate design seems to boil down to chain several intermediate factories and just haul everything to the next step - there is no beauty in that.

A nice factory to me would have clean output coming out as long as supplies are steady. Where I carefully increased/decreased every step of the way to make it fit. I did my blue processing thing manually since going once and supplying a chest with a couple of thousand green/red chips is actually easier than coming up with a design that makes it work with pipes everywhere. Especially since you need to pipe it from the top. I mean the design basically would have boiled down to !fitting! the belts - nothing else.

The gist of it is with steam engines (again a strange construction of just chaining it) I teched up to robots. Alien attacks are rather minor so for me the question starts like why even stress with a train? They transport like 600 and those quantities are simply not really needed, because you don't need that many products for a science pack. Okay I didn't do silo yet, but ultimately 20 furnaces for iron/copper met my needs including for processing units.

Edit: Additionally I would love to see the loaders supplying into factories. That way the beauty of your design bringing a good ratio of stuff via said belt is amplified.

See the version of factorio I am suggesting is one that forces you to grow your factory as it develops over the current version where you can just slap 30 of everything in a line and it will conveniently stop once the...belt ends....

[Degraine]

Speaking as the person who wrote Slipstream Chests, I wholeheartedly approve of the loader, of course.

It'd be a relief to see a version of it that properly attaches to belts, and doesn't rely on a kludgy unique chest entity, but something compatible with every type of chest in the game. That makes sense to me. Making it a 2x1 entity throws a wrench into super tightly efficient layouts, and frankly I think it looks cool. The existing methods of bulk transporting items from chests to belts or belts to chests never really sat well with me. Inserters going from chests/belts to machines or back is fine, but plain old belt<->storage interaction deserves a bit of love, considering how robots tend to overshadow the most iconic game mechanics once they're introduced. You know what else makes belt balancer setups obsolete? Robots.

Make them consume some power, of course, but that's about all I'd do. The suggestions about constantly supplying them with lubricant or petro gas are ridiculous, nothing else in the game requires anything resembling that, not even those horrifically squealing cogs in all the assembling machines I've built.

I suggest the official name be 'chute'.

[Drury]

As it stands, the belt balancing and ratio-playing has been tremendously simplified already with the curved belt fix. The loader would further take complexity away.

I get your point, but are you seriously implying glitched corners contributed to game balance? Come on. There are better ways for game developers to torture people than to rely on something as primitive as bugs.

[Zeblote]

As it stands, the belt balancing and ratio-playing has been tremendously simplified already with the curved belt fix. The loader would further take complexity away.

Good. Belt balancing sucks anyways.

I want to build large factories, not micro manage every belt intersection!

[Fatmice]

Good, high praise. Belt balancing is overrated. Speaking of which, who needs belts when I have hordes of fawning bots.

[Lupoviridae]

My suggestion is to simply not make the loaders operate so fast. Make them slighty faster than fast inserters. This means players will still need splitters to use them. They should also use less overall energy, and at a constant rate to make them energy-superior. This will look really cool, and be a niche function (large-scale storage loading/unloading) that still requires creativity.

Just imagine a line of chests with this capillary-like branching of belts feeding in and out, it would look just like a human circulatory system.

[Klonan]

To be honest,
I think people would be having the exact same reservations as if splitters were never in the game. You'd have to split using inserters! Its part of the fun of the game! Splitters just trivialise the logistic trouble of splitting a belt, which makes them overpowered, and they don't even need electricity? Splitters over powered, and they dont add anything we cant do already.

I've been thinking a long time about this, and i think i have figured out one possible solution.
I think it was someone in one of the earlier pages who came up with the idea,
But in essence its like this,
The loader is a 2x1 'chest' which automatically either inputs from a belt, or outputs onto a belt, I was thinking it could do so at half the belts speed
So for instance a 'Basic loader' unloads at half the speed of a basic belt.
I feel this balances it somewhat, as then you'd need two of them for a full belt, and a splitter, effectively making a full belt setup 3x2.
The loader wouldn't require any electricty, but to move items into/out of the loader, you'd need inserters.

So for buffer storage, you'd need input loader, inserter, output loader, which i think would look cool, and also involved the inserters as they are, and doesn't overlap in function.
For train unloading, you have a inserter direct from the wagon into the loader, which then puts onto the belt.

I feel this achieves all the goals of the loader, which not making it eclipse the inserter in function

In pics, combinator is loader

Example pictures

Simple buffer storage (half belt input/output)

Full belt buffer storage

Train unloading with loaders

Train loading

Another way of unloading

Simple storage for belt ends

Simple output buffer

Input and output buffers

Simple self-storage (like for gears for players)

Simple way of putting things on belts (like if you want to burn wood)

Bigger buffer storage

Sorting with smart inserters

Inline buffer storage

Another way of doing buffer storage

Some balanced input/output buffers

Any way these pics were just after like 10 mins of experimentation,
I can only imagine what people will figure out to do with these