Some Details

[Bleda]

Hi There

After Playing for some time, I'd like to mention a few things that I have come across and that should be changed imho.

1. Transport belts are the most interesting feature of the game, but in mid-game they are made unattractive by the introduction of logistic robots. I think the logistic robots are great, but they should have a lower throughput than belts. I think they are great for high-level items and for character logistics. Maybe the robots themselves should be more expensive, so it's not that easy to get a huge number together, that can outperform the fastest belts. Also, they should take some time to pick up items from a chest, so if there are too many robots, there will be a queue.

2. Inserters in combination with belts become too slow at some point. The inserter stack bonus schould apply also to inserters operating on a belt. They could just keep their hands over the belt and wait until enough items have passed by. Right now it's really impossible to fill a circuit factory fast enough with cable from a belt, even with two fast inserters.

3. Gun turrets are obsolete. To produce huge amounts of ammunition and build a reloading system ist just way too complicated, if you can simply set up some lasers. My proposal is to build a requester chest into the gun turret, so that logistic robots can fill them up, if they are within range of a roboport.

4. If you connect a smart inserter to a chest an set a condition to only take items out of the chest, if there are, say, more than 10, the inserter will wait until there are 11 items. But if you have the stack size bonus researched, it will take out up to 4 items, so that you end up with less than 10 items in the chest. I guess that's not the way it's meant to be. The inserter should only be allowed to take out the surplus of items.

5. It's really annoying to have your car destroyed because you drive into an object accidentally. You lose all the items stored in it and have to build a new car. Instead it should just break down, so you can't drive it anymore until you repair it using repair packs.

6. Inserters that insert around a 90° edge would be nice!

7. A lane-splitter, that splits the two lanes of a belt into seperate belts, would also be nice.

8. If you build storage chests, you get kind of a global pool of items, that can be dynamically distributed to where they are needed. That's great, but there should be a way to limit the storage and production of certain items. I don't want my storage to be filled with tons of speed modules that I will never use.

9. Character logistics is great! It would be totaly awesome though, if you could set up your robots to bring you the items needed to craft something. So if you are within the area of your robot network, all the materials stored in logistic chests are counted as materials that you can use to craft something. So, if I craft a car, robots will take the materials needed to the caracter, instead of the caracter crafting them from raw materials in his own inventory.
Or if you want to keep it more manual, just add the possibility to request a number of items once.

10. Trains are a nice feature. I agree that the train system should not get as complicated as in dedicated railway transport games. However, right now it is difficult to build a rail network that works fine with more than two trains. As an easy way to make things simpler, I suggest you adapt the system of Simutrans, where the tracks are unblocked as the train passes through. This would allow us to build simple crossings that work with multiple trains, without further complicating the system.

11. It shouldn't be possible to mine a robot. They accidentally get in the way of your cursor and end up in your inventory, which doesn't make any sense.


That's it for now. I hope you like some of my proposals, feel free to discuss and criticise them.

[Undermind]

8. If you build storage chests, you get kind of a global pool of items, that can be dynamically distributed to where they are needed. That's great, but there should be a way to limit the storage and production of certain items. I don't want my storage to be filled with tons of speed modules that I will never use.

You can limit production with smart inserters connected to circuit network.

[Bleda]

8. If you build storage chests, you get kind of a global pool of items, that can be dynamically distributed to where they are needed. That's great, but there should be a way to limit the storage and production of certain items. I don't want my storage to be filled with tons of speed modules that I will never use.

You can limit production with smart inserters connected to circuit network.

I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong, maybe. I can use a smart inserter and connect it to the chest, where it puts the items. This will work perfectly, as long as this chest is not part of the logistic network, because then, the robots will get the items and put it into other storage chests. And the chest thats connected to the smart inserter will be empty, so the smart inserter will go on inserting stuff. So I would have to connect it to every single storage chest in my factory?

[Undermind]

So I would have to connect it to every single storage chest in my factory?

Yep.

[logarithm]

Ad. 2.

Right now it's really impossible to fill a circuit factory fast enough with cable from a belt, even with two fast inserters.

1x Copper Plate = 2x Copper Cable and you need 3x Copper Cable for Electronic Circut.
So transporting Copper Cables is bad idea. Do something like that:

circuit factory.PNG (1.43 MiB) Viewed 3807 times

and inserter stack bonus will do magic.

[Bleda]

Hi!
I know I can do that, but thanks for the hint!

My point is, that conveyer belts should improve as the technology level rises, just as other means of transport do. I think they should still be a powerfull tool in the late game, because they are the most interesting one. I like it if there is more than one sensible way of building a circuit factory. Currently there seems to be just the one you suggest here.

[ssilk]

logistic robots are great, but they should have a lower throughput than belts.

So use belts, instead bots. Belts don't generate queues.

Inserters in combination with belts become too slow at some point.

Typical beginner mistake. See above. To your answer: belts have technical limits. See also https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ts/Physics
Or in other words: the faster they are, the more inefficient they get. I'm very sure: This is a direction, where factorio shouldn't go.

Gun turrets are obsolete.

Well. Guns will be needed somehow in future. Currently you need in the beginning sometimes guns.

The inserter should only be allowed to take out the surplus of items.

Same bug (I call it bug, but it's not a bug, following the definition, it's unawaited behavior) is, with inserting, when you want to insert only 1 item. Same bug appears with logistic bots and requester chests. But this does not belong here! Hm...

5. It's really annoying to have your car destroyed because you drive into an object accidentally

I load the last autosave. but well, the car itself is currently really ugly to drive... And we already had some discussions, what should happen if stacks are destroyed, it's not that easy, because such mechanisms could be used for cheating the game.

6. Inserters that insert around a 90° edge would be nice!

Well, often wished... even if I don't know what it will bring. there are mods which implement it AFAIK.

7. A lane-splitter, that splits the two lanes of a belt into seperate belts, would also be nice.

https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... anes_trick

8. If you build storage chests, ... I don't want my storage to be filled with tons of speed modules

Wait for V0.9 or don't use them.

, if I craft a car, robots will take the materials needed to the caracter, instead of the caracter crafting them from raw materials in his own inventory.
Or if you want to keep it more manual, just add the possibility to request a number of items once.

Something, which sets the needed items to craft an item as request. Good idea.

10. Trains are a nice feature. I agree that the train system should not get as complicated as in dedicated railway transport games. However, right now it is difficult to build a rail network that works fine with more than two trains. As an easy way to make things simpler, I suggest you adapt the system of Simutrans, where the tracks are unblocked as the train passes through. This would allow us to build simple crossings that work with multiple trains, without further complicating the system.

I suggest a decent look into open transport tycoon deluxe. And into the wiki. I updated the whole railway stuff last week and now wait for 0.9 to make pictures. The texts about the block signals should give an idea, what must be done. And this is just the alpha version of signals. OpenTTD implements pre-signals and also path signals. The last one is eventually, what scimitars implements. But having only block signals is the way like every railway can run. Path signals need much more sensors and are a lot more complicated. I mean implementing that stuff is possible with programmable signals and blueprints.

11. It shouldn't be possible to mine a robot. They accidentally get in the way of your cursor and end up in your inventory, which doesn't make any sense.

Hehe... Shortly I needed a requester chest to change the requests, but was not possible, because of the many bots.

And your suggestions show me also, that you found only about half of the possibilities; I suggest you to play more. Sometimes the solutions are so obvious, that nobody founds it - like the enter key to enter the car.