Forklifts to move around chests

[Aardwolf]

One of the more tedious and annoying things of the game is having a chest full of junk somewhere, and now you want it out of the way, move it elsewhere.

Moving the stuff through inventory is tedious, and so is using belts and inserters.

So it would be awesome to have a new vehicle, the forklift. With it, you can pick up a chest, drive around, and put it down elsewhere. Managing chests will be *fun*!

Driving it would be similar to the car and the tank. In addition, a key is needed to move up/down the fork. In down position, the crate will stay where it is. In up position, the crate will move around with you. E.g. the shooting key could be changed to have this function while in a forklift.

Would be sooooo useful and improve the game. What do you think?

[ske]

One word: Spidertron!

[Koub]

ow yeah moving full chests
Love the idea.

[Supercheese]

Yeah, this does sound like it could be fun.

[Player 1]

It sounds really neat in theory. I would like the player to be unable to pick up chests manually, as that would add a new element of storage managing to the game. (I say this while having probably hundreds of chests in my factory.)
...but in practice, that would mean having to deal with driving around a vehicle within your base.
Just be sure to make the forklift smaller than the car, and with a smaller turning radius than the car has, and I'm with you.
Prior to this suggestion, I'd like alternative control schemes for vehicles to be implemented (that gives the player the option to drive vehicles in the same way as he normally controls the player).

[Koub]

Tbh, it's not the vehicle I find appealing, it's the ability to move, under circumstances, full chests. I've had to face the necessity to move a block of more or less filled chests to reorganize my factory, and it's soooo tedious.

[Player 1]

Tbh, it's not the vehicle I find appealing, it's the ability to move, under circumstances, full chests. I've had to face the necessity to move a block of more or less filled chests to reorganize my factory, and it's soooo tedious.

The last time I played, I think I moved maybe 15 chests worth of copper plates. ...but while the work itself was tedious, I knew that it was my own fault. I could have spaced out the factory more to allow for conveyor belts to extract and insert resources into chests at a better site, but now I had to pay for not planning ahead enough.
...but it was pretty easy to move "a chest":
- You have the chest stack in your hotbar, so that it ends up there when you carry it.
- You empty your inventory into an empty chest (except for the hotbar).
- You pick up the chest. Its contents goes into your inventory.
- You walk to where you want the chest to go.
- You put down a chest.
- You open the empty chest inventory, and Ctrl-click on a stack of plates in your inventory.
- Done.

No need for a forklift if you just want to transport full chests. I just like the idea because it sounds fun to play Sokoban with the crates.

[Koub]

- You have the chest stack in your hotbar, so that it ends up there when you carry it.
- You empty your inventory into an empty chest (except for the hotbar).
- You pick up the chest. Its contents goes into your inventory.
- You walk to where you want the chest to go.
- You put down a chest.
- You open the empty chest inventory, and Ctrl-click on a stack of plates in your inventory.
- Done.

- And you suicide when you see you have to repeat that 10 or 20 times

The last time I played, I think I moved maybe 15 chests worth of copper plates. ...but while the work itself was tedious, I knew that it was my own fault. I could have spaced out the factory more to allow for conveyor belts to extract and insert resources into chests at a better site, but now I had to pay for not planning ahead enough.

I don't think the player should be expected to be able to plan his whole factory at the first glimpse of the map. Whatever effort you put into spacing things, there is always a point where you end up saying "well I could have let more space for that (maybe 200 hours ago)". That's why I think it would be convenient to be able to rearrange full chests without all this chest content juggling. I have already rearranged whole parts of a factory with blueprints, and construction robots. It's pretty fast. comparatively moving a set of full chests is horrible.

[Player 1]

- And you suicide when you see you have to repeat that 10 or 20 times

Well, with a forklift, you'd have to drive back and forth 20 times too. Maybe you're thinking more of something like a small truck, that can carry multiple boxes at once.
Besides, if you have 20 boxes sitting somewhere where they're not supposed to be, and you can't place a conveyor to where they need to go, you created that situation, and you deserve what you got. I'm speaking from experience, and I accepted the consequences.
You can also easily make them storage and requester chests, and have bots transfer the contents for you. They're like flying forklifts, I guess.

I don't think the player should be expected to be able to plan his whole factory at the first glimpse of the map.

Well, every building you commit to, is a building that you have to uncommit to. That's what Factorio is all about: Learning when you've messed up, and doing it better - building it again, better this time.
...and by now you should have learned: Always space out your buildings. Always.

[Hakusho]

I think this could lead to a new kind of gameplay if we go further this way.
Like moving chests with a fork lift. Being able to automate movement of full chests. Next step is maybe produce filled boxes with goods and send them on their way (Boxing mod?). Make "care packages" for your outpost where you put everything you need for an outpost in a large box and send it on its way.
That forlikft sounds like a good beginning!

[ssilk]

Haha, and if you are not careful enough the items in the chest will explode. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=617

[Hakusho]

great way to teach people to be careful with those chests?

[Siapran]

moving chests or crates could a be really fun solution for transporting goods at any rate.
it would introduce a brand new mechanic for train logistics.
perhaps you should make full chests not holdable by conventional means, only holdable by vehicles such as trains, cars and tanks (at a rate of about 4 wooden crates for cars, 20 for cargo wagons, etc)

vehicle logistics have a lot of unexplored potential.

[DailyFrankPeter]

One of those walking lifters Ripley used in aliens?

[Koub]

Totally

[sinrise]

Haha! Totally. I'm using the Warehouse mod and I didn't realize the Storage Warehouses have a cap of 2000, while the others (requester and providers) only have 800. I wanted to change a storage to a passive provider so I plunked it down and kablooey! Stuff everywhere. The worst part is it also spills onto belts, which can jam up your whole base. Luckily, if you have the Deconstruction Filter, you can at least pick up the majority of the spill in one go without pickup up anything else, and then clean the belts.

I would LOVE to be able to push around warehouse and chests without having to empty them first. A forklift is a good idea! It shouldn't be too hard to implement. Maybe using some of the train car functionality; how you can connect and disconnect a car from an engine while it's on the track (V and G I think.)

So you get in the lift, drive it around (I wonder if you can change the the pivot point to the front, so it steers more like a real forklift.) Then you get the front of the lift close, hit a key, which sticks it to the front and also places it in the same "height" as flying objects so you don't bash into things with your load (mimicking real forklift practices.) You get it close and hit another key, which places it back onto the grid.

It sounds simple but as I'm still an intermediate programmer, it's probably more complicated than I'm imagining but I would be up to giving it a shot.

[British_Petroleum]

This has never been a problem for me. Just setup a belt and some inserters and new chests then come back later and your chests have moved

[xuhao]

the idea is not bad.

But there are other solutions to the problem of moving stuffed chests.
Personally i always carry some roboports and a few active provider chests. - Say i have 20 steel chests stuffed with iron that i want to move a mile or so. I connect it to the logistic network with roboports and simply change the chests from steel to active provider. Then my bots will automatically move all the iron to an altnernate storage while i concern myself with other things.

If my inventory becomes full of unwanted/currently unneeded goods I will drop an active provider chest where i stand and put all the items in it. My bots will move it to storage and it will become part of the logistic network. I can always pick up the empty chest later on when i pass by.

Regarding the ability to move chests I think it is somewhat important to look at the storage size of chests compared to a train wagon. - The chests has just about 3 times the storage space (realistic...?? no, dont think so. Should be the other way round. Is it balanced, though??? very likely. - trains would be pretty sick if a cargo wagon could hold 20-40k ressources)

IMO if you could move chests it should not outdate, or compeed too hard, with trains as a logistic system.

[XBBX]

Cool idea just be careful with chest full of explosives

[steinio]

Forklifts are steered by humans / maybe other lifeforms on other planets what is not meant with automation.
So it don't make sense in this game.