Friday Facts #393 - Putting things on top of other things

[Mernom]

I dunno, gonna be honest this is the first one that's had me kinda worried. Now a 2 wagon train can outperform 8 wagon trains. This feels like a very big move towards scale up rather than scale out, and scaling out has always been where Factorio's emergent complexity, the part that makes the game so compelling and interesting, shines.

I guess we'll see when it's all put together. That new inserters looks more promising and interesting than a 4th tier belt tho. That animation looks _bad_ even with the shading. The new inserter is 75% of the total new belt capacity. Maybe just have that and not the weird looking belt?

It's very likely items can only be stacked on belts. and even if not, it's trivial to make the stacked items have a proportionally lower stack size to their... stack size.

On another front, might I request allowing items to set a max limit on the 'stack size' they can be placed in? It sounds like it could be useful to have.

[ProfBits]

This is really cool. Now Belts have even more vertical progression.

With Quality many Items got additional vertical progression like larger power pole, faster assemblers, better modules and so on. Big mining drill, bulk inserter, faster and stacking Belts as "in place" upgrades. Also the foundry can be seen as vertical progression by faster speed or skipping steps, the new comibnater many also be considerd here. So in summary many systems get a new (inplace) upgraded version for vertical progression.

The one system where, at least at the moment, where these is no such updated anounced are Trains.
Trains cannot carry more Suff in the same size, be faster. There the changes were more on the utility side as with elevated rails, event bases stops, the signal groups.

Some thisngs I would like to see are:

• Electirc Locomotives:
  • Powerd by electricity, no refuling
  • can be bi directional with only one locomotive
  • accepts modules (speed for accelaration and top speed, efficence for lower power consumption)
  • integrated radar, train is alway fully visible on map
  • maybe: braking generates powers
• Electified Rails:
  • provides continues power to an electric train and charges accumulator wangon
  • acts like pwoer poles, can connect an transfer electricity
  • visually may some low mounted power rail like in metro/subway systems?
• Accumulator wagon for operation on unelectrified Rails or power transport
• Bulk wagons:
  • the wagon has higher capacity for items
  • may only contain one type of item at a time
  • loading from "a train loder" that, directly accepts belt input of stuff
  • unloading from "a train unloader", direct unloaded to compressed(, and stacked) belt

I like the changed shown in the FFF today, however also I am exited what will be anounced in the next FFF's untile the expansion. I cant wait.

[Durabys]

I only have one question: Will we get loaders too? Pretty please?
What I mean:
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https% ... 383j71.gif

[majoca]

Is it just me or should the names for the "stack inserter" and the "bulk inserter" be swapped now? Seeing as how one of them puts stacks of items onto belts, and it's not the stack inserter

[Deadlock989]

Some mods will be outdated...

Tell me about it.

It's nice to see these ideas revisited at last but I wish you had followed through with the original intention of having stack inserters do this.

As a point of feedback - the large GIF of the flickering stacked circuits on green belts is almost seizure-inducing, there's no way I would voluntarily subject my eyes to that.

I don't really see why we need another tier of belts, especially given that you're now putting item stacks on belts into vanilla. If you can't ship items to satisfy the DLC paid-for mod's demands fast enough otherwise, there's probably something wrong with the demands.

[Kaeto]

I'm just looking on my phone, so I can't tell if that is a 60fps animation, but that reservation aside the new belts look like garbage. Really not a fan of the way they look, and I'm not sure what could be done about it. The changes to coloring seem to just add a shimmering that make it look like your monitor is failing.

[MrGrim]

I'm just looking on my phone, so I can't tell if that is a 60fps animation, but that reservation aside the new belts look like garbage. Really not a fan of the way they look, and I'm not sure what could be done about it. The changes to coloring seem to just add a shimmering that make it look like your monitor is failing.

Not just your phone, it's really not good. The new tier of belt is just more extra than needed tbh. A blue belt can push 180 items per second now with bulk inserters. At least on blue belts I can stand to look at the fancy new stacking graphics.

[TheoMarque]

Some mods will be outdated...

Tell me about it.

Em. I used some your mods but boxing and unboxing machine have a problem with ultrafast belts.

Flickering - saw. Playing on 120Hz screen a 60FPS game (but most of time 35FPS due UPS impact) - flickering is part of factorio.

Why we need a faster belt? Because consumption of one machine can be greater than inserter throughput.

On small bases - is useless - on megabases when your factory start consuming and producing Milion items / minute - things go wild.

For example - mining - do you know, that over some level of mining efficiency one miner with modules can overfill one side of expres belt? 22,5 it/s

[ombus]

man... i want to play already >.<

some things.

1. Showing 2 blacked out inserters for wich 1 is shown.. would it means there is still one new ? ( give corner inserter )
2. I feel the stack and bulk inserter should swap names.. so that the stack inserter is the one that stacks..
3. Would have liked for the new belt to pop more .. something like any range of violet.

[juliejayne]

It may be a great idea, or not. But it is locked away behind tech on a different planet? I have been playing a lot of Baldur's Gate 3 recently, and one thing that stands out and puts this game Head and Shoulders above others is that they allow multiple ways to get through or past or around each and every challenge. Hence the game is much more complex yet simple, as each player finds their own route from A to Z.

I fear that Factorio 2 is going to restrict players to "having" to go route A or B because otherwise we will miss out on something that we need. Don't you think it is time to let us start playing with these things JUST IN CASE you are developing down a dead end.

[husnikadam]

The green belts got me thinking. There are only two whole frames each item goes trough, so that's why the belts don't look good.

I have a pipe dream - detaching FPS limit from UPS limit, make the game being able to appear smoother on fast refreshrate monitors. I can imagine it needing a significant engine rework while it wouldn't solve the fuzzy looks on 60hz monitors

[Justderpingalong]

Is it just me or should the names for the "stack inserter" and the "bulk inserter" be swapped now? Seeing as how one of them puts stacks of items onto belts, and it's not the stack inserter

You have a point good sir.

A comment I saw several people mention (though am not worried about it because I love trains) is that these new belts can possibly outperform a train. I'd love to see the math on that.

Another point I'd like to make is that whilst sure, we can restack items via the bulk inserter, I feel that's a very awkward solution. A stacker would be a very welcome addition. Simply place it on a belt and it automatically stacks any items it gets inserted, outputting the resulting item on the side of the belt where the first item of that type got in.

[morse]

The graphics for ore looks strange. Ore is already a "stack of rocks", so "a stack of stacks of rocks" looks silly.

[Kyralessa]

I think the green belts should be a more vibrant green.

Currently they look rather washed-out, especially when compared with blue belts.

[FauxFire]

The idea is nice, but there's one issue for me that I felt strongly enough about to make an account to complain about.
I have a condition with how my brain receives visual information that leads to this fuzzy static effect on everything I see; the colour effect that was implemented to distinguish the items on the belts is very similar, and physically hurt to look at for even just a couple of seconds.
Alongside that, I'm a bit worried about how the sound of the belts will be, because as is the pitch of the express belts already force me to lower the volume due to the buzzing echoing in my brain.
Those two issues/concerns aside, I think having this as a part of space age fits well and I'm excited to see how it goes once it's released.

[Dial-up]

I always smiled imagining when deadlock stacking packed 128 items into 1, in my head it looked like unstable items on a conveyor belt that for some reason did not fall. now I want to see what mods will do with the new mechanics (I'm talking about simple mods that will redefine the maximum size of such a pack).
hmm, now I’m wondering why items don’t “fly away” when the conveyor ends abruptly or is stopped by logic, especially with the new mechanics

[someone1337]

finally XD

[General Shrooms]

Bulk inserters move items in stacks and stack inserters move items in bulk. This update will make the game unplayable

[Dial-up]

Now, i cant unsee that
items are slightly visible when entering the underground belt

[Ext3h]

To be honest: With stacking in place, "fully packed" belts just look awful and cluttered at this point.

Especially when traveling vertically. It's just "colored pixel soup" at this point.

You also appear to have gotten unresolved issue with the geometry of the undergound belt entry, you already exceeded the "visual" door with the stack height