Loaders?

[dragontamer5788]

My only point of contention about the comparison is people slapping a fixed throughput number on bots -whose entire thing is a malleable, dynamic throughput- in order to compare them with belts.

I think the point of the comparison is that belts are "supposed" to be better at fixed throughput.

The sad part is, with the current balance, bots happen to be better at fixed throughput as well. So they win in all situations. That's clearly a balance concern.

[mrvn]

My only point of contention about the comparison is people slapping a fixed throughput number on bots -whose entire thing is a malleable, dynamic throughput- in order to compare them with belts.

I think the point of the comparison is that belts are "supposed" to be better at fixed throughput.

The sad part is, with the current balance, bots happen to be better at fixed throughput as well. So they win in all situations. That's clearly a balance concern.

Have you played with Bobs+Angels? I find bots far from performant there. Far from having a fixed output, always draining your power grid, building a queue at the recharge pads.

You might say I should build 10 times the bots, 10 times the recharge pads, have a solid line of recharge pads where the bots fly along during delivery.

But seriously, isn't that the same as a belt then? Except much more expensive? Or like a train track? Actually in some way it's worse than a train track because it has to be a straight line. No way to curve around a lake or aliens.

And the most important part: bots don't replace loaders. They replace belts. Different thing.

[dragontamer5788]

But seriously, isn't that the same as a belt then? Except much more expensive?

No. Because no amount of belts can handle 677 gears per second + 967 iron plates/second + 805 iron ore/second in this amount of space or regularity.

You will never accomplish this design with belts in 0.16. End of story. Try it if you don't believe me. I already did the math out for you: you need 20 parallel blue belts coming out of the miners. You'll need 25 parallel blue belts leaving the electric furnaces. And you'll need 17 parallel blue belts coming out of the gear assembly machines. That's the minimum number of parallel-lines of belts to support the production line of that picture (Maximize productivity 3 modules to minimize traffic at every location, maximize speed3 beacons to minimize the space required). There are even superior designs out there: 12-beacon based bot builds available. But even this "simpler" design seems outside the scope of belt feasibility.

And if you disagree, please demonstrate. Chances are, the 17 belt balancer needed for adequate train stations would already eat up all the space. Heck, each train station supports 664 gears/second (24x stack inserters per train station). So a "proper" comparison would be closer to 17-belts PER train station in this design.

[Hedning1390]

Bots being OP is not a reason to make OP things for belts. However, I don't think they are too op. If they could only pull to and from chests, no other containers such as train wagons or assemblers I think they could be ok, and maybe since they easily compress belts form eg a requester chest some bot lovers might get to see a belt, which is worth something.

[dood]

Bots being OP is not a reason to make OP things for belts.

That term has always puzzled me when applied to factorio you know.
"OP" really means nothing in this game which is all about scaling up to potentially huge levels. Not overcoming opposition.

A more interesting question is, should all tools scale up to accommodate (almost) arbitrarily large factories?

I think that's the more fun option.
More fun than hitting bots which directly means hitting peoples ability to build stupidlarge.
That's why there is such a huge blowback over the mere suggestion of this.
I don't think anyone here really likes the idea of "hey, let's tone down how large you can build".

Of course this is still a game and needs its rules and limitations but in cases like this, it's probably best to correct upwards, unless it negatively affects game performance which should be the only "balancing factor" to consider and create parity for.

[Hedning1390]

Op in the sense I am using it means that it ousts the alternatives from the game, making it less diverse. If you compare it to ecosystems a balanced game is like a diverse ecosystem while an unbalanced game turns into a monoculture of the OP plant.

OP can also mean it is so strong it unbalances the game itself. In single player games this means allowing you to skip objectives and challenges to get to the goal too fast and/or too easily.


This topic was about loaders, not really about bots, but to answer your concerns about hitting bots reducing people's ability to build large, yes, it would reduce the spm count, however the time it would take to hit the limit of what your processor can handle would probably be longer, and I argue that the challenges you will overcome in that time would be more fun and less tedious, however that's of course subjective. spm count itself is an arbitrary number that is no indication of quality of gameplay experience. This can be proven by a very simple thought experiment: Lets say each science recipe produced x2 the number of science packs. Is the game now x2 as fun? Clearly not. Lets take another: To improve performance we introduce a "teleportation module" allowing outputs from assemblers to directly teleport into inputs of other assemblers with the module. Now all you have to build is power and assemblers, vastly improving your spm before hitting your processing cap. Is the game now therefore more fun? Arguably no.

[HurkWurk]

loaders work with trains, you have to turn it on in mod options.

loaders are about 50% more powerful than stack loaders + filter inserters.

the trick is rember there is a belt side and a storage side. so to go from chest to factory or train to chest you need 2 loaders, not 1.
autoplacing loaders with bots often places them in the wrong configuration. double check after you place.

[impetus maximus]

loaders work with trains, you have to turn it on in mod options.

are you talking about base mod? because we were talking about vanilla loaders not working with trains.

[dragontamer5788]

This topic was about loaders, not really about bots

That's a fair point.

I dunno, it feels like "Loaders" to me would be a major change to how belts are handled: even in 0.16, loaders would be a strict upgrade to belts. Based on the "bot" discussion from the past however, it seems like the devs are thinking of creating something new that's far stronger than loaders even to improve belt-throughput. In many respects, my general argument is:

1. Belts need a buff.
2. Loaders are clearly a buff to belts.
3. Unfortunately, loaders don't seem interesting enough or strong enough to solve the core problem.

Loaders would be a step in the right direction though.

[impetus maximus]

i don't feel loaders should be in vanilla without console/mods. i prefer figuring things out with stack inserters, circuits etc.
however, i do like loaders for Lab (not science labs) work. testing layouts with infinity chests etc.

my solution to bots vs belts is to use bots in very limited ways. mostly re-supplying me at my hub.
i just avoid playing with folks that create 'all bot' factories once logistic research is done. that bores the hell out of me.

[HurkWurk]

loaders work with trains, you have to turn it on in mod options.

are you talking about base mod? because we were talking about vanilla loaders not working with trains.

no, talking about deadlocks loaders that were mentioned earlier in the thread.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DeadlockLoaders
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LoaderRedux

if you load both loaderRedux and Deadlock, deadlocks will unload trains, as LoaderRedux adds the mod option to do so.

[orzelek]

loaders work with trains, you have to turn it on in mod options.

are you talking about base mod? because we were talking about vanilla loaders not working with trains.

no, talking about deadlocks loaders that were mentioned earlier in the thread.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DeadlockLoaders
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LoaderRedux

if you load both loaderRedux and Deadlock, deadlocks will unload trains, as LoaderRedux adds the mod option to do so.

Are you sure about Deadlock's unloading trains?
LoaderRedux is using scripting for that so it works.

[Sumitcare]

I also facing fictitious problem with belt loaders, whenever I start it freezing my system, ha anyone suffered this problem? if ye, how did you rectifier this problem? some guidance on this issue will be very helpful.

[HurkWurk]

loaders work with trains, you have to turn it on in mod options.

are you talking about base mod? because we were talking about vanilla loaders not working with trains.

no, talking about deadlocks loaders that were mentioned earlier in the thread.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DeadlockLoaders
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LoaderRedux

if you load both loaderRedux and Deadlock, deadlocks will unload trains, as LoaderRedux adds the mod option to do so.

Are you sure about Deadlock's unloading trains?
LoaderRedux is using scripting for that so it works.

im using them. yes.

[mrvn]

But seriously, isn't that the same as a belt then? Except much more expensive?

No. Because no amount of belts can handle 677 gears per second + 967 iron plates/second + 805 iron ore/second in this amount of space or regularity.

You will never accomplish this design with belts in 0.16. End of story. Try it if you don't believe me. I already did the math out for you: you need 20 parallel blue belts coming out of the miners. You'll need 25 parallel blue belts leaving the electric furnaces. And you'll need 17 parallel blue belts coming out of the gear assembly machines. That's the minimum number of parallel-lines of belts to support the production line of that picture (Maximize productivity 3 modules to minimize traffic at every location, maximize speed3 beacons to minimize the space required). There are even superior designs out there: 12-beacon based bot builds available. But even this "simpler" design seems outside the scope of belt feasibility.

And if you disagree, please demonstrate. Chances are, the 17 belt balancer needed for adequate train stations would already eat up all the space. Heck, each train station supports 664 gears/second (24x stack inserters per train station). So a "proper" comparison would be closer to 17-belts PER train station in this design.

Your setup has space to unload 6x4=24 train cars. So yeah, 25 parallel belts sounds about right. A bit slow though. Is that the best bots can do? With 24 train cars I can fill 48 blue belts. Seems belts are twice as fast? Or are you simply not maxing out the bot speed? I would probably build this with 36 belts though, 6 belts per train car and place all train stops in parallel with underground belts going across the stations.

So what if I need 25 parallel blue belts. Or actually 75 parallel yellow belts or 15 parallel purple belts? You want 10 times the throughput you need 10 times of whatever you use. That was never the question.

The question is this:

1) How much resources and space does it take to build 75 parallel yellow belts or 25 blue ones?
2) How much resources and space (including the exclusion zone around it so the logistic network doesn't connect to the next station) does it take to build the provider chests, requester chests, logistic bots, recharging pads, robot chests, zone expanders, (green houses, ash or fertilizer producers, water pumps, pipes, boilers, steam engines) or solar pannels or (electrolyzers + liquifier + crystalizers + ore sorters + centrifuges + nuclear reactors + heat pipes + heat exchangers + steam turbines) to do get the same throughput with bots?

There are many costs to bots. Some visible and some not so. For a fair comparison you can't ignore the extra power demand or what happens when logistical networks connect. The design could maybe be optimized by placing the roboports and train stations in the middle and then building the furnaces around it. Make the overall logistic zone smaller so you don't have as much wasted space around it.

Note: I see you have roboports enabled. Ever tried playing without them in Bobs? The robot chests seriously cut down on the rate bots leave when needed or return when idle. Don't wask me why but the chest seem to be limited to one bot per open/close while the roboport just streams them out 1 per tick. Needless to say that has a serious impact on bot speed.

As for your comment on belt balancer: Why would I need or even want a belt balancer? Trains come in perfecly balanced or you are doing something wrong. Train also leave perfectly balance or again something is wrong. So it is easy to build your production line to take a balanced input and give a nearly perfectly balanced output. It is then trivial to balance the buffer warehouses on the train stations using one combinator and 2 inserters, overall 3 combinators and 10 inserters for your 6 car station. Hell, even just placing inserters between warehouses to load adjacent train cars too will balance out things. Skip the combinators.

[dragontamer5788]

Note: I see you have roboports enabled. Ever tried playing without them in Bobs? The robot chests seriously cut down on the rate bots leave when needed or return when idle. Don't wask me why but the chest seem to be limited to one bot per open/close while the roboport just streams them out 1 per tick. Needless to say that has a serious impact on bot speed.

So you play in a game where bots are nerfed. That explains a lot. So the next question is: do you build megabases in vanilla? But based on this...

Why would I need or even want a belt balancer?

Then really, that tells me everything. Try building it in vanilla. Your experience in Bob's is hampering your argument severely.

-----------

A few notes:

1. Its a train loader, not an unloader. A Train loader is only as fast as the slowest belt connected to it. That's why you need a belt balancer: to speed up train loading. Some of these things are better learned by experience, so seriously, try it for real.

2. 750 Productivity 3 Modules is so expensive that it dwarfs all other infrastructure costs, aside from the ~375ish Speed3 modules needed for the Assembly / Smelters. I haven't calculated the number of Speed3 modules that are needed for the mines, but its also an absurd number that makes all other infrastructure costs miniscule.

750 PM3 modules costs you 577,415 Copper Plates + 416,688 Iron Plates, assuming PM3 throughout the rest of your build structure (PM3 reducing the cost of Circuits, Red Circuits, Processing Units, etc. etc.). Then 288707 Copper + 208344 Iron for the Speed3 modules in the Smelters / Assembly machines alone. The mines also have a large number of Speed3 modules, something like ~150 that I'm going to spitball estimate as 100k more iron at least. ~730k worth of Iron Plates.

Bot comparison:10,000 bots is only 114,814 Iron + 77,471 Copper, roughly 1/7th the cost of modules. PM3 + Speed3 is necessary to optimize the energy-used per output, as well as minimize the number of mines needed to sustain high production.

That's the thing about endgame. The only real resource cost is modules. Virtually everything else is a rounding error. Even energy costs are a rounding error: the 650/second worth of gears in that setup is 750MW or so or gears alone. The bot power usage is not quite a "rounding error", but once you've built out ~1GW of power, it isn't a big deal to build out another 1GW.

Besides, all of those solar panels are still cheaper than the modules that are being built.

[Jap2.0]

But seriously, isn't that the same as a belt then? Except much more expensive?

No. Because no amount of belts can handle 677 gears per second + 967 iron plates/second + 805 iron ore/second in this amount of space or regularity.

You will never accomplish this design with belts in 0.16. End of story. Try it if you don't believe me. I already did the math out for you: you need 20 parallel blue belts coming out of the miners. You'll need 25 parallel blue belts leaving the electric furnaces. And you'll need 17 parallel blue belts coming out of the gear assembly machines. That's the minimum number of parallel-lines of belts to support the production line of that picture (Maximize productivity 3 modules to minimize traffic at every location, maximize speed3 beacons to minimize the space required). There are even superior designs out there: 12-beacon based bot builds available. But even this "simpler" design seems outside the scope of belt feasibility.

And if you disagree, please demonstrate. Chances are, the 17 belt balancer needed for adequate train stations would already eat up all the space. Heck, each train station supports 664 gears/second (24x stack inserters per train station). So a "proper" comparison would be closer to 17-belts PER train station in this design.

1. Space is not an issue.
2. Point 1 is not entirely true.
3. If you use point 2 as an argument against belts, you are hypocritical.
4. To elaborate on point 3: bots may be able to be space-efficient in a small area, but they require more infastructure by way of roboports and power - especailly by way of solar panels and accumulators if you claim "power is free"
5. Bots require more resources to set up, including roboports, bots, power, chests, etc.

Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C
Exhibit D
Exhibit E

[dragontamer5788]

4. To elaborate on point 3: bots may be able to be space-efficient in a small area, but they require more infastructure by way of roboports and power - especailly by way of solar panels and accumulators if you claim "power is free"
5. Bots require more resources to set up, including roboports, bots, power, chests, etc.

Resource expenditure doesn't matter if its dwarfed by more important resource expenditure.

Blue Belts use over 300% the resources of Red Belts but are only 33% faster. It seems like a bad choice at first, but honestly... we don't care and spam blue belts anyway, because modules and beacons dwarf the cost of infrastructure. Similarly, Bots (although more expensive than belts), are dwarfed by the cost of modules. Including the power-cost of beacon-boosted assembly machines.

If you're speed-running and care about resource expenditure of infrastructure to minute detail, then you'll want to stick with yellow belts as they're the most cost efficient. Alas, we're talking about Megabases. So all costs below a certain amount (everything aside from modules and science) are basically ignored.

By rocket launch 2000+, you really, really don't care much about even the cost of modules. Let alone the cost of all other infrastructure.

[mrvn]

Note: I see you have roboports enabled. Ever tried playing without them in Bobs? The robot chests seriously cut down on the rate bots leave when needed or return when idle. Don't wask me why but the chest seem to be limited to one bot per open/close while the roboport just streams them out 1 per tick. Needless to say that has a serious impact on bot speed.

So you play in a game where bots are nerfed. That explains a lot. So the next question is: do you build megabases in vanilla? But based on this...

I'm not playing in a game where bots are nerfed. I ASKED if you ever tried disabling the roboports. I quickly turned that option back off because the bot chest are total crap compared to roboports.

Why would I need or even want a belt balancer?

Then really, that tells me everything. Try building it in vanilla. Your experience in Bob's is hampering your argument severely.

You calculated I need 25 blue belts. Lets make that 24 green or purple belts so it is exactly one belt per train wagon. In Bobs each train car will carry 8000 iron ore per wagon (less in vanilla but that doesn't change anything). So each belt gets exactly 8000 iron ores unloaded. How can that ever unballance?

A few notes:

1. Its a train loader, not an unloader. A Train loader is only as fast as the slowest belt connected to it. That's why you need a belt balancer: to speed up train loading. Some of these things are better learned by experience, so seriously, try it for real.

No, it's a loader entity. And we have gone so far off topic that you missed what the thread was initially about at all.

Loaders, the thing that takes stuff out of a chest and dumps it on a belt at full belt speed. Or takes stuff from a belt at full belt speed and dumps it in a chest.

[dragontamer5788]

You calculated I need 25 blue belts. Lets make that 24 green or purple belts so it is exactly one belt per train wagon. In Bobs each train car will carry 8000 iron ore per wagon (less in vanilla but that doesn't change anything). So each belt gets exactly 8000 iron ores unloaded. How can that ever unballance?

Okay, we're talking vanilla here so only blue belts. But even IF we were talking bob's, purple belts are only 5x Yellow Belts or 66.66 items/sec per wagon. The design I laid out can burst 110.8 items/sec per wagon (4x stack inserters chest -> wagon). So even 5x speed Purple Belts are something like 1/2 speed of the design I laid out. That's how much weaker belts are, even at 5x speed (compared to 3x speed of blue) they wouldn't be fast enough to keep up with the design.

Second: there are 6-wagons per train in the design. If one belt was "starved" of resources for some reason (ie: they were unbalanced), then the train would wait for the starved belt. This doesn't happen with bots, because bots have enough bandwidth to fully load all of the belts while load-balancing them.

This is seriously basic train design at this point. Have you ever built a megabase? Seriously? I'm surprised I have to explain the concept of belt balancers to you. The math is simple: if wagon#1 gets 20-items per second (from a 50% blue belt) while wagon#2 gets 40-items per second (a 100% blue belt), the train will take longer to load. In fact, it will take 100-seconds for the train to load. Wagon#2 loads up really quick, and then has to wait for wagon#1's much slower belt before the train can depart.

In the balanced case: if wagon#1 and wagon#2 BOTH get 30-items per second (75% "balanced" outputs), then the train will take 67 seconds to load.

You calculated I need 25 blue belts.

No. I didn't. But I'm tired of explaining things to you. So figure out your mistake here. I double-checked my words from earlier, and they're quite clear where 25-belts come from, and what they apply to. Figure out how many belts are needed per train. Its a simple division by 40 from the specified items per second: that's pretty basic math.