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

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-393

[Splitframe]

Release when?
(edit: Damn this is a really unexpected change for me. It certainly looks cool, but also more messy.)

[SnowZyDe]

[danbopes]

I'm curious why you didn't just set blacklist to be the default instead of adding a new UI element.

[BlacKcuD]

RPI Filter Inserters. That is a great change.

[tolomea]

So if yellow belts are 1 and blue belts 3, fully stacked new belts are... 16?

[husnikadam]

Now belts can be even more convenient than trains on short to middle distances. I hope there are better wagons, locomotives or some other improvements besides bridges. Unless the bridges add so much value to the train network, hard to judge without trying it. It just feels silly to me to have 8+ wagons, the stations are huge and costly

[GregoriusT]

I'm curious why you didn't just set blacklist to be the default instead of adding a new UI element.

I think it is because blacklist filter also means it waits for you to set the filter, just like the filter inserters did before.

[Ghoulish]

Great changes / additions !

[Dev-iL]

A couple of things regarding the full green belts' animation:

1. Wouldn't it be simpler to add a tiny "light" to the underground belt (much like the bottleneck mod) that says whether items are moving or not?
2. Something you guys might not have noticed due to developing on 1337 systems with RTX 6000s and 240Hz monitors - scrolling the webpage up and down while the animation was playing was really bothering me visually (wouldn't call it motion sickness, but something of that sort). I suspect if a factory is filled with such full belts it might be hard to look at.

[Neutronium]

This is awesome.

[FasterJump]

OMG!

"They didn't know it was impossible so they did it"

That looks like an awesome belt buff, can't wait to try it out.

[Tooster]

Factorio 2.0: The fall of cityblocks

Great to see filter inserters getting removed and adding their functionality to regular inserters.

On another note, here is an approximation to what a colorblind people see (I didn't include monochromacy):



It would be nice seeing some more variations to graphics than a simple color — I know several people that struggle with colorblindness who couldn't normally play many games due to that condition.

[NaurEnForven]

I noticed that in the last video things seemed to be flickering, looking more closely the issue seems to be that the shadows are moving around wildly.
In the third last video, this does not seem to be the case. You might want to look into why that is and update the last video.

The video of the new belt with the single item also looked off to me. When I looked at it frame by frame, it seems like the belt perfectly aligns itself every so often to the previous frame. This causes it to look like the arrows move independently of the belt. Also the frame rate of the video is only 50 which may also cause some problems, I think the item moves different distances because of it. Giving a stuttering impression.

Very excited about these changes otherwise!

[mmmPI]

Great ! i like the story , and the results !

Stacking item on belt this way is great, i like that you can pick up some of the stack, the way all inserter will be able to filter, and the new bulk inserter mechanic seems all great !

I like that assembly can be fed with stack of item, and that big mines output stacked items.

I like the visual for the item at the bottom of the stack being darker, it really is a nice touch and allow to distinguish item.

I like the new faster belts and the attention to make sure it's visible when item are moving. I had seen a random resize, or offset in the item sprites from this mod https://mods.factorio.com/mod/rp_item_anarchy , adding color on top those things will help me

I think it's a little fast and it start getting visible that the item are jumping into different positions when there is only 1 like the stack of fish and it's on straight line but that may be an effect from the video which seem to only have 50 images per second. I'm curious and eager to see how it will be in game with 60 !

This FFF was easier to understand than the previous one but the intricacies and gameplay value of stacked item is great, and i can imagine the fun to use with mods that also allow stacked item for stack of stacks

[danbopes]

I'm curious why you didn't just set blacklist to be the default instead of adding a new UI element.

I think it is because blacklist filter also means it waits for you to set the filter, just like the filter inserters did before.

That wouldn't make sense. If you're blacklisting nothing, it would grab everything. Right now, the functionality is if you set a filter inserter to blacklist and select nothing, it will act as a normal inserter.

[Norgust]

An upgrade path for trains to Maglev/monorails might be interesting there.

Now belts can be even more convenient than trains on short to middle distances. I hope there are better vagons, locomotives or some other improvements besides bridges. Unless the bridges add so much value to the train network, hard to judge without trying it. It just feels silly to me to have 8+ vagons, the stations are huge and costly

[TheoMarque]

Some mods will be outdated...

But, what about loaders? Inserter swinging give interrupted flow - loaders - not. Only for train usage will be great:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/railloader

[SnowZyDe]

The railway in 2.0 looks amazing, BUT it is becoming non-competitive with the new belts. Maybe you will revise the volume of wagons or add new ones that can accommodate x10 times more than the current one.

[MrGrim]

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?