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

[ombus]

Great news again. I like the color of the new belt. I find brighter colors as requested in some posts and as I have already seen them on some mods disturbing.

The new inserters are also cool. Wube has finally managed to make it so that many of my previous blueprints have to be recreated.

Since only the expansion was mentioned in the blog post when exploring, it would be interesting to know if the new inserters and the new belt are also available in version 2.0 without activated expansion?

As in the post they talk about the tech is behind other planets its an expansion only feature.

[gGeorg]

When you get a filter feature on the burner inserter, you could make it so that coal is contaminated by stones by default.
Because you find some stones full coal, then mine them manually. It should work opposite way.

Miner placed on coal field, has a chance 1:10 produce a stone instead of coal.

That would create a chance to use filtering on burner inserter right on start, and add some nice spaghetti around mines, dont you think ?

[FutureSpec]

This all looks good EXCEPT the faster belt tier looks yellow. Factorio color palette has always been strange and an acquired taste, fine. But please don't make us try to distinguish between yellow belts and "sickly greenish yellow" belts.

[gangan]

These two mods combine to completely solve the flashing power icon annoyance. They have become essential for me in every play through:

No Power Icons - https://mods.factorio.com/mod/No_Power_Icons
Bottleneck Lite - https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BottleneckLite

The factory looks nicer overall and you can tell at a glance if there is an issue.

Nice, thx

[aka13]

I do have my pitchforks ready, if yall are not upgrading bots as well.
Point to point on demand logistics and trains is what differentiates factorio from other similar games, not faster belts.

[AiuR]

This looks dreadful; at best, it will give you a massive headache, and in more extreme cases, it may even lead to epileptic seizures

mp4

[warlordship]

A couple notes:
- Definitely swap the names of the Stack inserter and the new Bulk inserter. If you refer to belt stack size, then it makes sense that only stack inserters can move or place entire belt stacks. Plus, Bulk Inserter is a good name for an inserter that can move more items than a regular inserter can.
- Consider allowing any inserter to add to stacks. I'd love to create one long line of smelters, and see blue inserters slowly increasing the stacks of plates one by one as they go past.
- Belt stacks are going to be great for train-and-belt-based builds that I prefer. I can have 4x the material on a single belt from a train than before, which works great for material-rich recipes such as Processors, I won't need to run 10 belts of circuits for every one belt of Advanced Circuits.
- Consider creating an item that will auto-stack belts. If you don't allow regular inserters to add to stacks, then I might have to combine 4 belts of furnace lines into one stacked belt, but needing to do an awkward belt>inserter>belt config to do so will not look nice. Someone showed a (mockup?) version of what I'd love to see earlier in this topic.
- Filters: Why do you need a checkbox to enable filtering? Why not just have it so that if an item is set in an inserter filter, then "filtering" is enabled? I can't see a reason right now to why you would want a filter set, but to not actually filter.

I like the bulk inserter addition. But the new belt tier seems redundant to me, since the bulk inserter tech already increases belt capacity 4x, whereas the belt tier improvement is a 1.33x increase. Sure, we could have both, but it seems like two hands trying to scratch the same itch.

I especially like that long inserters can do filtering now too, and all of them can.

To help colorblind people, maybe consider giving different feet (or hands) to different tiers of inserters. Burners, yellows, and reds can have the traditional 3-foot/tripod base. Stack inserters can have a 4-foot base in a + pattern, bulk inserters can have a 4-foot base in a x pattern.

On the bulk inserter, what happens with items whose stack size is less than the bulk inserter hand size? For example, low density structures. I assume the bulk inserters will only pick up a stack (10 items) instead of a full hand (16 items). If that's true, when it drops them on a belt (which caps at 4 items per stack), I assume its going to put items on the belt in a 4-4-2 pattern (leaving incomplete stacks). I'm fine with that, just curious. Or does it still pick up a full hand size of 16, and place them in 4-4-4-4 on the belt?

How will this work with items that stack to 10, like low-density structures?

Thinking about this more, I assume setting the bulk inserter's hand size to 8 instead of 16 would prevent incomplete stacks from getting on the belt, it would make 2 4-item stacks.

You might be confusing two separate but similarly-named topics. Stack size for Low-Density Structures only comes into play when stored in chests. A "stack" on a belt can only be - at maximum level - 4. So a Bulk Inserter will pick up 16 LDS items from a chest in 4 stacks of 4. It will place them onto a belt in stacks of 4. It makes sense to me that an inserter can theoretically hold more items in its hands than a single CHEST stack size.

[Qon]

Great news again. I like the color of the new belt. I find brighter colors as requested in some posts and as I have already seen them on some mods disturbing.

The new inserters are also cool. Wube has finally managed to make it so that many of my previous blueprints have to be recreated.

Since only the expansion was mentioned in the blog post when exploring, it would be interesting to know if the new inserters and the new belt are also available in version 2.0 without activated expansion?

As in the post they talk about the tech is behind other planets its an expansion only feature.

Wrong. That is how it is balanced in SA. Without SA it might still exist. Some currently existing things are locked behind tech from other planets in SA, but without SA they will be available on Nauvis.

[mmmPI]

Only works when zoomed out. Because it's not just enough to make the item "traceable", you also MUST remove the high frequency feature of the item in motion by explicitly blurring it in the direction of movement for this to work. You have to blur it to about twice its size in the direction of movement.

I tried hiding most of the image with my fingers and indeed it makes items (red circuit in the upper left corner) harder to track with the eye.

I'm not sure what you mean by high frequency feature of the item in motion, it puzzled me. Though when thinking about droplets of water falling from a sink, i can imagine where the blurring would need to be applied (similar to deformation) and i can understand how it's different than in factorio where on a screenshot there is no blurry parts. Maybe this "blur" technique to trick human brains into seeing motion is not used by devs because it would look weird when items are not moving/backed up on the belt or require (too many) additionnal calculations to make it appear only when necessary.

I had such problems of items seemgingly going backward with lower FPS than 60 and/or modded belts of custom speed but it's only way later when trying for fun the item anarchy mod that i realized it solve the problems for me https://mods.factorio.com/mod/rp_item_anarchy I suppose it is another way of getting rid of the frequency feature because then things do not repeat/no pattern, but i can understand how it's going to annoy other people to have their belts look messy if items are too different from one another despite making sure all stacks are filled at the same level on the belt, maybe it can be an alternative to color that is less taxing for some other player's eyes.

I know less about how the monitor function, and blur motion with 60 hz screen than about how to draw images of a ball or other thing to make it look like it's moving like you could do on the corners of big books, and even those i was never really rewarded for my creativity for some reason and missed the opportunity to investigate or practice, i would always welcome some more informations about it.

[Qon]

You might be confusing two separate but similarly-named topics. Stack size for Low-Density Structures only comes into play when stored in chests. A "stack" on a belt can only be - at maximum level - 4. So a Bulk Inserter will pick up 16 LDS items from a chest in 4 stacks of 4. It will place them onto a belt in stacks of 4. It makes sense to me that an inserter can theoretically hold more items in its hands than a single CHEST stack size.

Are you claiming that is the logic bulk inserters will use, or that the current inserters already follow this?

[Svip]

You might be confusing two separate but similarly-named topics. Stack size for Low-Density Structures only comes into play when stored in chests. A "stack" on a belt can only be - at maximum level - 4. So a Bulk Inserter will pick up 16 LDS items from a chest in 4 stacks of 4. It will place them onto a belt in stacks of 4. It makes sense to me that an inserter can theoretically hold more items in its hands than a single CHEST stack size.

This was largely explained on Reddit by Klonan. It's unclear whether the stack limits apply to the bulk inserter itself. Scratch that, they are.

[V0ID]

Letting go of the filter inserters shows good flexible thinking skills. I won't miss that they take up precious space in my quick access bar although I need them so rarely.

Renaming the inserters like others mentioned would be wise. (And don't forget the translations, in German at least it is the same problem)

[ombus]

Great news again. I like the color of the new belt. I find brighter colors as requested in some posts and as I have already seen them on some mods disturbing.

The new inserters are also cool. Wube has finally managed to make it so that many of my previous blueprints have to be recreated.

Since only the expansion was mentioned in the blog post when exploring, it would be interesting to know if the new inserters and the new belt are also available in version 2.0 without activated expansion?

As in the post they talk about the tech is behind other planets its an expansion only feature.

Wrong. That is how it is balanced in SA. Without SA it might still exist. Some currently existing things are locked behind tech from other planets in SA, but without SA they will be available on Nauvis.

Could you name some example? Because I think if something is behind a science of another planet then those who don't have access to the new planets won't have that.

[Svip]

Wrong. That is how it is balanced in SA. Without SA it might still exist. Some currently existing things are locked behind tech from other planets in SA, but without SA they will be available on Nauvis.

Could you name some example? Because I think if something is behind a science of another planet then those who don't have access to the new planets won't have that.

Space Age is effectively a mod, the player activates before starting. Players with the expansion can disable Space Age, Quality and Raised Rails to play a more classic experience, but with all the quality of life improvements of 2.0.

Activating Space Age means the Artillery technology requires going to another planet. But deactivating it, the tree returns to a single planet run. It's not clear whether this includes the bulk inserters or the tier 4 belts, but it's not unreasonable to imagine they would. So far WUBE have been very clear when a feature is part of the expansion or not. This one is more vague, making me think they are available both with and without Space Age activated.

[Qon]

Could you name some example? Because I think if something is behind a science of another planet then those who don't have access to the new planets won't have that.

The first FFF about SA:

Since the goal was to make the overall expansion experience as good as possible, we have rebalanced the tech tree. This means, that with Space Age enabled, some items that are available in vanilla are unlocked later on some planet. This specifically applies to artillery, cliff explosives (this is the masochist part of me speaking), Spidertron, best tier of modules, and some personal equipment upgrades.

[Free_Ham_]

So who is the president for the Royal Society for putting things on top of other things? Who exactly provided the final method that convinced you guys to implement this?

[Sad_Brother]

Nice!
For some time I wanted three things for inserters:

1. Ability to take exactly designated number of items;
2. Filtered Long Inserter;
3. Bidirectional Inserter.

Now I see Bulk Inserter would wait for full hand. But why any other Inserter cannot wait?
Now I see disabled by default filter. But why it cannot be empty blacklist by default?

Long Inserter would get filter and that is good.

It seems main ability of Bulk Inserter is the magic to place a stack as a stack. Stack Inserter now looks as artificially downgraded.
It seems Bulk Inserters would need option to drop items in order to unlock. What would it do when filters change?

Would you at least think about Bidirectional Inserter like this? (it seems at least one colour is free now)

• use positive values of logic network at filter in forward direction, negative - backward;
• if no logic network, move anything possible in both directions;
• no items to move - stop.

Best wishes!

[Terrahertz]

• With 60 stacks or slots per second on the new belt, meaning 30 per second per side and 30 fps, how come that in the last animation the stacks are not optically staying in place?

I don't know which way was used to display the image at 30 fps, to me the last image has 60 image per second , unlike the one with just a single fish stack which has 50 images per second, this when downloading the video and looking at the number of images. Maybe that could explain the mystery, the last video to me would just be 2 diferent images without the color randomization.

I did not display the fps count for a while, so I completely forgot it runs 60 fps

[kizrak]

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?

I agree about scaling up vs out.
The new inserters are super amazing and interesting — add new problems but solves others!
The new belts are just meh...

Fascinating Friday Facts!

[KillHour]

Really cool update, but I don't love that the new stack inserter has different behavior from all other insertera where it waits until it's full to move but none of the others do. I would prefer if all inserters let you set both a minimum and maximum stack size. You could set the defaults differently, but I'd like to be able to control the behavior.