Friday Facts #128 - Back down to earth

[Carl]

You already force players to rebuilt once they hit electric furnaces. And when they get robots. As much as you want to avoid it, game already includes a lot of rebuilding.

Nope, no you don't with bots. just demolish a lot of belts, and furnace setups aren't your entire factory, in fact it's pretty trivial to set them up with the necessary space allowed for allready in the design, i do it routinely now.

[Animar]

I'd absolutly love those two posts

Degraines point of view

[quote="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'.[/quote]

Klonans presentation

[quote="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

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[/quote]

I belive if Loaders / Unloaders had been shown this way in the first place there would be a lot less arguing. To sum it up, for the Hopper, loader (however you call it) to only interact with it's own internal buffer storage (lets asume someting about a wooden chest or a half, at least enough to deal with mixed belts) would gratly solve all the points people are whining about.
- You still have to use inserters to make any use of them, witch also limits the speed in some way, based on your stack bonous research. And EVEN IF they could compress a full belt you still have to fill their internal buffer at the same speed.
- In regards to connecting it to factorys, with the Loader being 2x1 you still need at least one Inserter and one splitter wich comes to a total footprint of 5 tiles. Where a Logistig chest and a Inserter only takes two tiles. Talking about what is OP.
- It's quite obvious that Loading and Unloading should be two seperate modes, give it an interface with a button that swiches between those two functionalitys.

PS: We never had a Problem from unloading, loading trains four fast inserters and steel chest could do that very easily. The point ist to clear the chests bevore the next train arrives and as of now you beeing sereusly punished by using belts instead of robots for that. And also please stop talking about constand Lube supply, thats downright insane stupid. Yea in reality many machines require some sort of lubricant to run efficient but that argument could be applied to ANY device in Factorio, we are still talking about a game and not the real world here. I'm drawing here a line from blue belts put lube in it's production costs but not in it's opperating costs. That alone would shift their use behind your oil intusdry and put them somewhere midgame.

[ratchetfreak]

And also please stop talking about constand Lube supply, thats downright insane stupid. Yea in reality many machines require some sort of lubricant to run efficient but that argument could be applied to ANY device in Factorio, we are still talking about a game and not the real world here. I'm drawing here a line from blue belts put lube in it's production costs but not in it's opperating costs. That alone would shift their use behind your oil intusdry and put them somewhere midgame.

Unless there is a better way to supply lube to dozens of little 1x2 machines cramped into a small spot than the current pipes then please stop asking for lube as machine maintenance

[FrozenYonana]

I believe that the loader should only be usable with raw materials. If you have coal, stone, iron or copper ore you should be able to load it or unload it as fast as possible.

[Klonan]

I was thinking also,
It would be a really useful utility if you can filter the slots on the loader chest, like cargo wagons,
Could lead to some interesting builds, some examples below:

Images

Limit slots to plate and gear -- Loader does proxy transfer too

Without slot filters, the loader would fill up with a material we dont want for assembly, leading to awkward production jams, with filters, we can use it for both input and output, and make sure production doesn't jam up from mixed belts

Some sort of circuit build

You can image some splitter belt utility or something with filtered slots

[MeduSalem]

I was thinking also,
It would be a really useful utility if you can filter the slots on the loader chest, like cargo wagons,

Do it! If it is too overpowered you can still remove the filters in a later patch, so I say: Give it a shot.

But don't forget that you should add filter slots to the yellow Logistic Chests as well because they really suck currently due to not being able to do that. The Robots dump the stuff anywhere all over the place and there is no way to prevent them from doing that.

[Neotix]

Adding slot filter into loaders will give something different than inserters mechanic replacement. Adding more clever mechanic into loaders will make them more usable and more like piece of puzzle.
So as I said before, I'm against loader as entity to only fast load/unload. But when it will have more mechanic behind (maybe wire logic connection to read content and control it) then I would like to have it in game.

[NoScopeNinja25]

I think...yes.

[wwdragon]

I want the loader!

[Zeblote]

I want to see it get implemented exactly the way it is shown in the blog and watch everyone who's against it to change their mind after a couple of days.

[sillyfly]

Klonan... You are turning it into something entirely different.
A chest with a filter was not the intended use case (as I see it). Adding filters to chest is a different issue altogether.

[ikarikeiji]

Just wanted to give another +1 for Klonan's post.

Not keen on the filter additions though, unless that was like a more expensive "smart loader" or something.

[Carl]

I was thinking also,
It would be a really useful utility if you can filter the slots on the loader chest, like cargo wagons,
Could lead to some interesting builds, some examples below:

Not a bad idea, it would be nice ofc to get a filterable chest as well for lower tech regions.

Like i said before my biggest concern here is that you can allready trivially empty/fill belts far faster than the belts can cope with carry capacity wise this really needs addressing. I'd suggest some sort of covered belt variant that can carry say 20 items per side per segment, (as opposed to the 4 of current), with some sort of display on the top showing the type of items carried and somehow give an indication of how full the belt is. That with the blue belt version would up carry capacity to nearly 100 items a second per belt per side. Thats enough to feed most machines quite readily. The downside would be you can't unload from these via inserter so you either have to use a splitter to get some of it onto a normal belt, or use one of the new loaders/unloaders. Given the obvious utility for even early game setups for iron and copper transport i'd be fine with the full range of tiers of belt getting this treatment.

[Klonan]

Klonan... You are turning it into something entirely different.
A chest with a filter was not the intended use case (as I see it). Adding filters to chest is a different issue altogether.

Well its just ideas

[Dranzer]

I like the new concept for the loader, although making it an actual storage buffer I'm not certain about. I suppose it would make sense if you wanted a loader to hold several different kinds of item at a time, though.

Either way +1 for the new loader idea.

Edit: I wonder where loaders would fit into the tech tree. Under Logistics perhaps?

[RobertTerwilliger]

if you think it will be very limited and devs(and others) think that it will be useful - why vote no for something that others will find useful?

And whats so wrong with replacing the old solution - thats the topic that I see repeated here all over again.

I must admit, loaders would really make a bit easier train stations and buffers. Also will slightly help with assemblers that require rapid loading/unloading, such as copper wires or gears. But that's all.

Personally I would use them in these tasks, but I really don't think they are needed - that's what I meant.

My "no" isn't 100% negative, unlike logistic bots which are IMO breaking all the fun, so I avoid L.bots at all costs (in fact, I always avoid them). While in the same time I love construction bots.

People are expressing their opinions here, you know, and some of them may be helpful for devs to discover hidden downside of idea. Then, it's developers who will make final decision to intend new idea or not to and we can't and shouldn't force them to make what we like - once again, they ask our opinions, and we reply. That's it, nothing more.

[Belshazzar]

I vote 'yes' on the loader, though maybe to be on the safe side side they shouldn't be allowed for trains and assembly machines. Some people are saying it invalidates certain complex designs, but in my opinion complex problems deserve complex solutions and simple problems deserve simple solution, and storing your newly mined materials seems like it should be a simple problem. The current solution to that problem isn't even complex as much as it is tedious, not to mention ugly. I'd much rather just put down a couple loaders than have this big mess of splitters and chests cluttering up my factories, even if I have to pay more for it. Simplicity for extra resources is a tradeoff that we already make all the time in Factorio.(for example robots and electric furnaces) As long as they're significantly more expensive than fast inserters, I don't see how they invalidate fast inserters any more than fast inserters invalidate regular inserters. They're basically ultra-fast inserters minus the graphical wonkiness that would likely result from implementing an actual ultra-fast inserter.

[Degraine]

Where I part ways with Klonan is on making it another chest entity. I like the interoperabilty aspect of the proposal with any chest. That's kind of what links it with inserters, thematically, in my mind.

[Ext3h]

Klonan... You are turning it into something entirely different.
A chest with a filter was not the intended use case (as I see it). Adding filters to chest is a different issue altogether.

Well its just ideas

Still, filtering does sound reasonable.

Even though I would rather prefer some "magic" filtering, rather than explicit. Say the integrated chest has 2 storage slots, but the two slots muss fill with different materials, and the compressor will refuse to accept the same material twice. A third and fourth material may - or may not - be allowed. So there is only one stack of each material tops, but multiple materials can buffer in parallel.

Think of it as intelligent smart chests.

So it requires no configuration at all, and still provides exactly the behavior intended. With the option to feed factories both from properly interleaved, and lane split belts.

When allowed to compress up to 4 different stacks in parallel, all factories can be efficiently fed from a single, accordingly prepared belt, packing each two materials into one lane.


Hm, there is no "UNIQUE STACKS" storage type yet, is there?

PS:
I actually can't think of a scenario where I would prefer a regular "filter chest" over such an intelligent chest at all. When I want to filter, I usually already have a properly filtered input - but what I actually want to maintain is the unique property. The main goal for me is to balance materials in such a chest - not to provide huge storage.

[Ojelle]

Klonan, your idea gets better and better, I want that! I can come up with a whole bunch of nice things for it!