Friday Facts #128 - Back down to earth

[JellyVeggie]

No to the loader/unloader, as it is right now, nor as has been suggested (use lube, make expensive, etc); and definitely not now.
The inserter/belt system is fine as it is.

If anything, I'd rather it expands into a new system: Make chests movable by belts (much like how you can move a car around in the belts), with a crane (an "inserter" of sorts) capable of placing said crates in and out of the belts; plus crate wagons. Thus the loader would become a packager of sorts, kinda like how the assembly fills and empties crude barrels: keep it stocked with crates when packaging, take out the empty crates when unpackaging, all this with inserters.

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EDIT: Just found out that ske already proposed something like this:

Instead of chests, we could load "containers" which could be moved around. In extension to this idea I could think of a whole set of new "heavy" equipment (let's call chests containers here):

• The heavy inserter moves containers around.
• The heavy belt transports whole containers.
• The containers waggon moves them by rail.
• The heavy robot shaped like one of those army helicopters transports a container from one place to another. (Still, keep throughput much lower than land based equipment.)
• The heavy furnace/assembly machine for bulk processing takes whole containerloads of items like iron ore and outputs containerloads. (Then increase the amount of ore we need to process for one plate by 10x.)

Obviously the heavy equipment would be bigger in size (4x4 or 5x5?) and consume more power but provides much higher througput per area. Limiting containers to one kind of item (one single huge stack) might be necessary and also makes sense.

Will have to agree with the "heavy duty" belt, it does sound nice; although the heavy duty furnaces and assembly machines would detract from the packaging/unpackaging I had in mind...

Anyway; this should be left for some future update, rather than .13

[jorgenRe]

I think a loader would be nice for unloading mainly lots of ores and other bulk items which can take a "hit".

[Powderking]

Congratulations for the great Steam start!
Never had a shadow of a doubt, love your work!!!

I'm very much looking forward for the loader. In my late games my single problem is the managing of throughput between roboport regions. I usually use several requester chests at the border, a fast inserter per chest in between two regions and an active provider chest per inserter on the second border.

If I leave two squares in between two regions and having a loader connecting directly two chests, does it mean I will get infinite throughput? I would very much love that
Do you consider a container as every entity like assembly machines, chests, belts, trains, cars, tanks? Can the loaders be programmed? Ooohhh, the futur is so bright

Can't wait to check out the new train stuff as well!
Thanks again for your AWESOME work.
And I am very much looking forward to hear your plans in the future. Fancy 3D graphics, more vehicles, oponents, places, mechanics?

You are great guys!!!
All of you, the developers especially, the modders, youtubers, and the whole community!

[roothorick]

-1 on the loader.

I think a better way to push lategame away from robots is to make the stack size bonus apply to belts too.

When an inserter gets one item it wants from a belt, it'll wait to collect more items, until either it has collected its maximum stack size, or after some timeout, say, one second for burner/basic/long, and half a second for fast/smart. The timeout resets for each item picked up. Not sure if it should be able to collect different types of items in the same stack when moving to a chest or another belt.

When putting items on a belt, it'll drop its stack of items one after another on the belt without moving, before returning with an empty hand (claw? whatever).

How quickly they can drop their stack on the belt depends on the type. Burners are, well, just slow; basic and long inserters can achieve maximum density on a standard belt; fast and smart inserters can max density on a fast belt. (Inserters won't be able to actually saturate a belt because they're not placing items while cycling.)

To buff inserters further, add an express inserter. They're unlocked by Logistics 3, are made from a fast inserter and an electric engine unit, and take 64kW while running (and like all other non-burner inserters, 400W while idle). They're twice the speed of a fast inserter, and can drop their stack fast enough to achieve max density on an express belt. There's no smart version; to get that wicked speed, you need to plan your supply lines to have the right things going to the right places right from the start.

If that's not enough, the key to balance here is to make the logistics bots not scale well. They need to be effectively incapable of high volume. Perhaps each roboport could have a limit to how quickly it can dispatch bots, low enough to make it incredibly unwieldly to achieve high volume throughput. 5-10 bots per second would probably do it. Worse, the closest roboport with idle (not waiting to launch) bots is always assigned a given request, regardless of its backlog. You can game this a little by shuffling bots around... with inserters (and the circuit network).

This makes them for practical purposes just as effective at their intended purpose of carrying small quantities to/from awkward locations (and players/vehicles), but they lose miserably to inserters and belts for volume. They're also a bit more spaced out, enhancing that "buzzing hive" feel.

[kovarex]

If it where to be addded like shown in the news it's highly OP (no matter how expensive the recipe is, that's only a one time investment) and takes away a lot of the puzzling aspect.
I made a quick layout of what i think could be a middleground in a way, if some sort of running cost (power, lubricant!) is addded and let's us still enjoy synchronized inserter movement:


The underground belt/wooden chest is the (un)loader as a 1x2 item, the chest could have 1 slot, effectively limiting it to one type of item.
Throughput/compression of it would need to be balanced, i don't think full compression with only one of those is a good in that case, something lower.
Depending on the direction of the belt connected to it, it acts as an loader or unloader.
It adds a bit of convenience as it fills both lanes of a belt, but should still require some thought to balance multiple outputs from a long train.

Oh, now I finally understand, the (un)loader would have the chest integrated in itself. So it would still work as a way to improve throughput form container to chest and reversed, as it would still use and require the inserter stack size bonus, but it would be no longer useful to be abused as balancer and the speed would be still limited by the inserter. I like this idea. It would actually reduce the amount of things in the station.

[Zeblote]

If you don't add the loader, can you improve inserters so they align items on the belts?

People keep saying here that inserters are fine for unloading on belts but they aren't, they just make an uncompressed mess.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=19540

[Koub]

First of all, congratulations for your success on Steam. But to be honest, it's not THAT surprising, is it ? Factorio's totally worth it.

Now to the loader thing ...

Tbh I'm not fond of the loader the way it is presented. It makes me feel the same way as a "win now" button. I'd rather see boxing/unboxing technology to help throughput.

However, I like the idea of hoppers/loaders, which can be convenient and visually badass to load trains with ore/coal/stone, without being overpowered.

[roothorick]

I just thought of another way to potentially balance it:

It outputs items at a constant rate. They will happily flood any production building with items. If it is blocked from outputting an item (either due to there being no space or because the output doesn't accept that kind of item), it jams, and will do nothing until it is manually reset. For convenience, you pick up any item in the loader as part of clearing the jam. (If its input is empty, it simply waits. It consumes the same amount of electricity whether moving items or not.)

Therefore, their primary downside compared to inserters is in flexibility. Inserters intelligently choose item types their output will accept, and will automatically recover from the system getting backed up. Loaders don't. They're effective at loading and unloading trains with a little finesse in the circuit network, but incredibly unwieldly to feed production buildings with. (It'll also encourage new players to start playing with the circuit network.)

[frustbox]

People are against the loader, nobody provides a reason why. "It's OP because I think it is." Please explain. To me it doesn't harm anything.

Ultimately item flow is limited by crafting speeds of assembling machines, furnaces and miners. The challenge of the game is getting these things right and saturate belts with those. Loaders would not replace inserters because they would be limited by the speed of assembling machines (both putting things in and taking out). Assuming that they are bigger than inserters and cost more energy, they would not be a reasonable replacement for inserters.

The more I think about it, the only reasonable application I see is for loading/unloading trains, when items come in bulk. That and maybe more efficient load balancers, at which point in time you probably already have the traditional balancers in place (because it's a late game item), you could replace them at additional energy cost, or just not bother.

Yea, I still don't see the possible drawbacks and overpowered everybody seems to be afraid of. Maybe someone can argue the case why it would be OP.

[Alvin853]

If it where to be addded like shown in the news it's highly OP (no matter how expensive the recipe is, that's only a one time investment) and takes away a lot of the puzzling aspect.
I made a quick layout of what i think could be a middleground in a way, if some sort of running cost (power, lubricant!) is addded and let's us still enjoy synchronized inserter movement:


The underground belt/wooden chest is the (un)loader as a 1x2 item, the chest could have 1 slot, effectively limiting it to one type of item.
Throughput/compression of it would need to be balanced, i don't think full compression with only one of those is a good in that case, something lower.
Depending on the direction of the belt connected to it, it acts as an loader or unloader.
It adds a bit of convenience as it fills both lanes of a belt, but should still require some thought to balance multiple outputs from a long train.

Oh, now I finally understand, the (un)loader would have the chest integrated in itself. So it would still work as a way to improve throughput form container to chest and reversed, as it would still use and require the inserter stack size bonus, but it would be no longer useful to be abused as balancer and the speed would be still limited by the inserter. I like this idea. It would actually reduce the amount of things in the station.

This sounds like a good idea, and make it work only with ores, coal, stone, that way they feel more like bulk materials and we have the hopper/feeder style suggested earlier in this thread.

[thc133]

It's too powerful. I don't like the idea of loader.

[Klonan]

at kovarex...

I maby have found some kind of bug...
I have 2 monitors.. don't know if that's due to the bug...

but when I am ingame and press Print Screen...
and I open the "picture " in paint...
the picture is taken when the game is paused .... like when you press Esc THEN take the print screen...

I can only do this when I have the game open and press on my 2nd monitor and then print screen
only then I do not have the " Esc " pause window

please... post a bug report
viewforum.php?f=7

[Nova]

The hell? Already 13 sites with only 1 day open? How? o_O

The loader... it's something I always did think about, because it is so natural. Just throw items directly from the belt inside a chest, or throw the content of a chest on a belt. That's only logical, but maybe really overpowered.
Make it REALLY expensive. Maybe express splitter + express belts + processing units. That sounds pretty expensive and should stop people from using it everywhere.

[ps666]

I like the "loader" idea very much!
But i'm a little worried that it could make robots a little bit redundant.
I love robots! It would be great if you could pay more attention to them.

[CNR_Thunder]

Hi
I like the Idea of the Unloader
In the endgame I need 5 fast inserter to keep the Belt filled from a big Buffer chest

If it only work with chests its good and balance I think
A realy nice to have item and if its expensive who cares^^

But the one Item I realy miss is a belt blocker for an better way to organize one side of your belts crafting lines in one block

[jjconroy]

My suggestion about balancing would be to make it only work with low-tier chests. That way you would sacrifice capacity if you used one.

[torham]

The hell? Already 13 sites with only 1 day open? How? o_O

The loader... it's something I always did think about, because it is so natural. Just throw items directly from the belt inside a chest, or throw the content of a chest on a belt. That's only logical, but maybe really overpowered.
Make it REALLY expensive. Maybe express splitter + express belts + processing units. That sounds pretty expensive and should stop people from using it everywhere.

Lets combine ALL suggestion!

lvl 1 loader : 1 yellow splitter, 2 yellow belts, 2 basic insterters and 2 green circuits. Has internal space of 1 ( can hold max 1 stack) and can output at the speed of yellow belt. Requires power.
lvl 2 loader : 1 red splitter, 2 red belts, 2 fast inserters, 2 green ( or red?) circuits. Has internal space of 2 ( 2 stacks) and can output at the speed of red belt. Requires quite a bit of power.
lvl 3 loader : 1 express splitter , 2 express belts, 2 smart inserters, 2 processing units. Has internal space of 3, can output at max speed. Requires ton of power ( and possibly lube).

How's that for balancing

[roothorick]

People are against the loader, nobody provides a reason why. "It's OP because I think it is." Please explain. To me it doesn't harm anything.

Ultimately item flow is limited by crafting speeds of assembling machines, furnaces and miners. The challenge of the game is getting these things right and saturate belts with those. Loaders would not replace inserters because they would be limited by the speed of assembling machines (both putting things in and taking out). Assuming that they are bigger than inserters and cost more energy, they would not be a reasonable replacement for inserters.

The more I think about it, the only reasonable application I see is for loading/unloading trains, when items come in bulk. That and maybe more efficient load balancers, at which point in time you probably already have the traditional balancers in place (because it's a late game item), you could replace them at additional energy cost, or just not bother.

Yea, I still don't see the possible drawbacks and overpowered everybody seems to be afraid of. Maybe someone can argue the case why it would be OP.

The issue is that they have substantial advantages over inserters with no meaningful downside, once unlocked. Worse, they would oversimplify many of the core challenges of the game. Every belt layout becomes one of a half dozen very basic, canned designs with no thought put into it. Trains would likely become hideously overpowered, as your throughput on/off a single car is enough to saturate up to 14 fast belts (if not express belts), whereas now you typically get two, and have to lengthen trains to scale further. Item buffers with perfect belt saturation become trivial. You could feed items to the already overpowered logistics network with obscene speed.

The late game is already too easy, and this would make things far, far worse.

[Weresmilodon]

I like the idea of the Loader, but you need to provide more information of how you want it to work. Almost all the feedback seems to be kneejerk reactions based of personal assumption. We really need more information to make informed decisions.

[Powderking]

Perfect suggestion, torham!

I would like to give some alien goo and get one with storage 0 but infinite speed.