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

[SnowZyDe]

I just noticed the most important thing that is very relevant to this! All the Forum Ranks need to be updated once 2.0 is out, since they are Inserter based XD

They will remain as a memory

[mcmase]

Quality - amazing, looking forward to it
New planets, Volcanis specifically - awesome, exactly what Factorio needs
New trains, QoL, mega-miner - literally can't wait to get my hands on it

4x belt speed and stacking - worried the game is forever broken

Seriously finding it difficult to understand why I feel this way, extremely tired after a long day at work, but I can't shake it even after re-reading the post. It just feels... not Factorio. The point of the game is to overcome challenges and limitations, and this seems like a mod-given-life that wipes out a huge challenge area from the game. I know its locked behind serious progression but in late game if there is no challenge left then what will we be doing? Maybe I need some time to think on it, but the current iteration of graphics aren't helping either...

Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to be a day 1 expansion player. And I realize people of all different perspectives play Factorio, and so I don't want to dump on the game, especially one that I love so much. At the end of the day, I can only applaud the work of the Wube team for creating such a masterpiece, even if I don't understand it entirely. Also, they deserve some benefit of the doubt as having actually play-tested this. I just think of when I read about Quality and loved it instantly only to find the forums full of worried players...

It's probably not really going to break the game, right now it just feels like a "cheap" addition rather than some of the more nuanced and interesting things we've gotten over the past months. Still hoping that they've knocked it out of the park with new enemies and combat systems!!!

[brunzenstein]

The 20.- € (or 1 million $) question:
When will we see version 2.0?

[Panzerknacker]

I just think of when I read about Quality and loved it instantly only to find the forums full of worried players...

Same here, quality was the big one for me also, instant hype. This tho.. having filters on all inserters from the start feels wrong to me, and indeed the graphics don't help.

[Cerberus]

It is true the names of the inserters are misleading now. Switching the names of stack and bulk inserter makes sense now. You could even release an update right now of the game, with the only change being the name of the inserter to "bulk" and drop all references to "stack inserter". So everyone is already accustomed to the change by the time Space Age releases with the new stack inserters.

However, one thing crosses my mind when reading this FF: now filter inserters are removed, if you want to place down an inserter with a filter, as soon as you place down the inserter next to existing belts or to grab items out of an assembly machine, immediately the wrong items will start coming out because you did not have a chance yet to set the filter. How can this be solved in a user friendly way? I can only think of placing ghosts and hope the bots take long enough to reach the construction site for you to be able to set the filter but that is not a user friendly way.
Splitters you want to set a filter to have the same problem now, but I solve it by temporary rotating the piece of belt just before the place I want to set a filter. But you can not easily remove an assembly machine (or remove the recipe) or so to set the filter to the inserter, that just feels too convoluted.
Or create a blueprint of each inserter with the checkbox "filter" checked but no filter yet, but this feature feels too obvious to require the user to create blueprints.

Also, maybe the ability to set filters to inserters can be locked behind a technology upgrade, similar to filter inserters now but instead of the entity you get the ability.

[G-Forces]

Request, can you please make the new belt tier a little bit brighter of a green? The drab oliveish color looks kind of ugly with the dirty look that underground belt have.

[Zaflis]

Now look what you've done... Hype was already touching the roof, now you broke the roof!

Oh also since it's locked behind planets, will the 2.0 non-Space Age be getting the bulk inserters and new belt tier? I'm somewhat guessing it's Space Age only.

[LiquidInsight]

The belt stacking update looks really cool! I quite enjoyed Deadlock's stacking mod. In that mod, the stacking was in a separate 1x1 building, and that additional complexity meant a trade-off in builds about where to put the stacking (one per assembler? One at the end of a belt, before combining it with a super belt). This feels simpler, but I think will still be very good.

I'm curious about the UPS implications of having a belt of mixed height stacks. I know there is a benefit to having an uninterrupted queue -- do you lose that benefit if there is a half height stack midway through a belt queue?

Also, to reduce the sampling bias of the discussion (since you tend to hear more from the complainers): I think the high speed belts look fine and that the dappling effect will help.

[DrakeyC]

Seeing stacks of items blew my mind, I instantly began thinking of my preferences for bus bases and how much of a game changer this would be, no need to have two dozen blue belts of green circuits infinitely splitting off at different stops, no fifty belts of copper just to feed low density structures! I don't need two belts carrying four items to feed one machine, I can have one belt with stacks! Glorious! So much room for optimization, efficiency, downscaling or upscaling as I see fit! Then I saw the Tier 4 belts and I was spent.

That said, with both bulk inserters and Tier 4 belts making belt management even more complex, what is being done to help us manage the ever-important question of balancing them? I'm sure it's no secret the community has long created entire blueprint books dedicated to various ratio-balanced rows of belts, 1x3 and 4x4 and 6x8 and 12x12 and so one, each taking up more room and more belts to achieve a comparatively simply goal. Has there been discussion on a single-tile balancer that evenly balances between left and right like some mods have?

Also, will there be a way to adjust the stack size in the name of belt balance beyond a bulk inserter picking up stacks, tossing them in a crate, and two or three individual inserters, take them back out and put them back on a belt? Upscaling to even just a small number of rows of belts, that's going to lead to a lot of spaghetti. Admittedly I cannot think off the top of my head an occasion when I would prefer single items to stacks, but if I find such an occasion during gameplay, what will be my recourse?

I'm also curious if there was ever discussion of allowing players some manner of control over which side of the belt inserters take and drop fun. Seeing a single side of my belt half-empty while the other inches along as the inserters at the other end prioritize the former makes my eye twitch.

[Kadet123]

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?
..
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.

Sorry, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this isn't true. In vanilla today, stack inserters max out at a hand size of 12. However, they will not pick up more than 10 Low Density Structures (or Rocket Fuels) at a time. Any inserter will not pick up more items than that item's stack size (meaning, chest stack size). Inserters will only pick up the lesser value of the item's stack size, or the inserters hand size.

So, similarly for a cargo wagon full of satellites, one inserter of any type (even stack inserter) will only remove satellite 1 at a time (because their max stack size is 1).

[MachineGamer728]

I would aboslutely love to see a legacy version availible with the space age update as a way to still play the 1.whatever factorio we all know and love.
I honestly dont know how i would feel if we were to loose this version of the game alltogether.

[MartenM]

Logistics bots when they see their friendly neighbour construction bots go on a suicide mission to repair the wall. (relevant)



Pretty powerful to give each inserter the ability to filter, but I guess it fits in line with the belts too. We don't have a 'filter' belt so I think the change makes sense. It will probably make it quite easy to make the throughput of the base higher. Wonder what research it will be locked behind.

[Sad_Brother]

We don't have a 'filter' belt so ...

Splitter?

[FeistyCanuck]

Bulk inserters sound great for UPS.

Now make bulk loaders that withdraw from containers a whole stack at a time. This would be a major UPS optimization when using molded large containers like AAI at 512 stacks capacity.

Current loaders withdraw/add one single item at a time which is brutal on UPS load at full belt speed. You could implement loaders as having a one stack internal storage buffer.

[akulla]

How does quality interact with stacking and filtering? Can a belt splitter split stacks by quality? Are inserters dexterous enough to pick one high-quality item from the bottom of a stack like that trick where you remove a tablecloth without disturbing the plates?

Want to highlight this discussion thread. Very curious what your thinking is for this tradeoff:

- If mixed quality stacks are allowed, then curious about how belts and inserters filter by quality,
- If mixed quality stacks are not allowed, then bulk inserters could get stuck waiting to fill their hand with a Quality 3 item stack

Another observation:

> happily ever after
> crying bot

something's going on here.

[Cyclonut]

I like the FFF393 story telling and the proposed updates. The only thing I want to mention is that you did not have to say you ran out of colours, because the only color you did not use so far, is the one that is used in the robotic industry, the ORANGE colour for the robots, for visibility and safety.
Am also wondering, while already engaged in SE mod which will take many weeks to complete, why the need for all these changes to the base game and hopefully not too soon to be published, so I can still finish my SE game before that 2.0 is released. I hope that all of my BPs (blue prints) will not be too obsolete, and that I did not waste time to make them, only to be obsoleted by WUBE team making all these updates/changes. Basically I am saying, make changes backwards compatible and allow us to retain the old legends/accomplishments.

[SteelWolf300]

I'm taking the opportunity of devs talking about inserters and filters to bring back this suggestion. I'm also posting here for more visibility.
Currently the blacklist filters can be misleading visually in ALT mode. It would be nice if it was more clear, eg. current vs suggested:

blacklist-inserter.png (398.45 KiB) Viewed 1746 times

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

That's true, a blacklist on no item is basically equivalent to no filtering, making the "Use filters" button redundant.

[arthurdent86]

- If mixed quality stacks are not allowed, then bulk inserters could get stuck waiting to fill their hand with a Quality 3 item stack

This is how it's going to be, the devs confirmed it on discord. And I think that makes it more interesting because this way, bulk inserters will not be better than stack inserters in every scenario. Wherever mixed outputs might occur they are possibly much worse.

[raspo]

What do barrels look like when they are stacked on a belt?

[Kadet123]

How does quality interact with stacking and filtering? Can a belt splitter split stacks by quality? Are inserters dexterous enough to pick one high-quality item from the bottom of a stack like that trick where you remove a tablecloth without disturbing the plates?

Want to highlight this discussion thread. Very curious what your thinking is for this tradeoff:

- If mixed quality stacks are allowed, then curious about how belts and inserters filter by quality,
- If mixed quality stacks are not allowed, then bulk inserters could get stuck waiting to fill their hand with a Quality 3 item stack

Pretty sure during the Quality discussion, most people came to the conclusion that items with different Qualities don't stack. That Quality FFF (https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375) show its possible to use splitters with only quality as a filter condition. If different Qualities items don't mix in stacks, then the splitter doesn't have to do any special logic to break down item stacks, instead it just handles each 4-stack of an item as if its a single item.

But it does seem like Quality could indeed cause problems for bulk inserters picking up items. They hinted as much saying their 'use is a bit more complicated in places where multiple items are transferred - it could get stuck waiting for the "wrong" item type. So you need to be a little careful when using it.'