Ore Hopper

[Telarin]

The ore hopper would be a storage building for handling large amounts of ore more efficiently than chests:

• 3 x 3 building
• The building is not "smart", so no complex ingredients. Some steel, maybe a a few gears and electronic circuits
• Maximum capacity of 50,000 mined resources
• Has an "outflow" tile, similar to a mine
• Material flows out on both sides of a belt connected to the outflow tile as quickly as the belt can move it away
• Can be filled by a belt connected to the middle of all 3 sides except the outflow side
• Can only contain mined resources - iron ore, copper ore, coal, and stone. If a feed belt contains other items, they will either fall off the belt and pile up in the area around the hopper, or they will simply sit on the belt and back everything up.
• Not openable. Items are not stored in stacks, just as a total quantity visible on mouseover. Cannot put items in or take them out manually.
• Cannot be connected to an inserter
• If a hopper contains multipe types of resources, for instance both iron and copper ore, the resources that come out will be random, weighted by the amount contained. Example: A hopper contains 1000 copper ore and 4000 iron ore. Approximately one in every 5 ore discharged will be copper ore, the remaining 4 will be iron ore.

[n9103]

The ore hopper would be a storage building for handling large amounts of ore more efficiently than chests:

+1

[ssilk]

Hehe, yes, this would be very good! I like this "only raw-resources", that's a good point!
(If you are lucky you can read this: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=1073 around the "filling stations", but no need!)

This are the things where it is useful for:
- I would place it near mines or before the furnaces to have a more constant flow and don't loose so much production-time, when something stucks.
- It would make cascades of splitters to balance unevenly balanced sides of long belts unneeded (when one side of the belt runs much faster, than the other, then the mines, which sits on one side are earlier empty then the other). I think balancing the sides of belts is a time-consuming and boring job, because you need to watch and watch, run back and forth, which is now the problem. Sometimes makes fun, sometimes not. I would like to use the silo to just avoid building 7 splitters and make complicated routings all the time.
- Cleaning resource-fields much faster. There is much flat land, but there is a big resource-field in the way and it is difficult to built on the field, before clearing it.

My suggestions:

- I suggest as name "silo", because this is just, what a silo does and it would also explain, why you can't get in or out of it.
- I would say, it is THE device to make train-stations much easier to build, so I would say with an later possible upgrade: the silo can have a "handle", which has a direction and it works like an inserter and can put things very, very fast into or from a wagon or assembly. So it can fill or unfill a wagon within seconds and this would be much more useable than building thousands of chests and inserters.
- I would like to have more outputs. The reason for it is just: If a silo/hopper is full, it would take 1/2 hour to empty it with express belts. With 4 outputs it takes only 8 minutes. I suggest to have on each side one input and one output, like so:

Code: Select all

     ^ v
    +---+
  < |   | <
    |   |
  > |   | >
    +---+
     ^ v

This layout will enable very interesting stuff and especially enables to cascades silos - just build them besides.
- I would reduce the storage to about 20000 items. This can be emptied within 3 minutes. This is even more dense than a chest, because we need to calculate input- and output inserters, (6000 items / 3 (area chest) * 9 (area silo) = 18000).
- And because when putting silos besides, it is not possible to stop the flow I would say there are switches for the input and output to close it and to pump the stuff into the silos besides.
- It would be great, if those switches can be controlled by the network in a later stage! You can collect until one resource-field is empty and then the silo switches to output and a warning sign pops up.
- I would say all other items than resources will block the entries and stay on the belts.
- Not openable: This might be a problem: How can I remove this, if it is full? See above, half an hour to empty it! Inventory is also no good idea, it would take minutes to move that! Thats really a problem... and doing it like with chests, that everything inside, which doesn't fit in you inventory is scattered on the ground is also no good idea, because the area to scatter that is really large, about 60-70 tiles in diameter (45 with the reduced 20000)! So I would say: Cannot put items in: Ok. Cannot take items out: Hmmm. Only if it has 4 outputs.
- When removed when full, only some items inside spread (see up for reason, to keep the area not so big). The rest just disappears.
- To remove it, you need to make some extra action, to avoid removing it accidentally, which would be a beginners trap (like with the chests).
- balancing: I would say it should be a bit more expensive, it should cost some chests. This would be a good usage for wood.
- should be available after research logistics-1 and before -2 and may take another thing, which must be researched before.

[applemachine]

I see where this idea is coming from, but you can build your own hopper out of inserters and chests. I prefer to be able to build my own unique hopper system each playthrough than having a building do it for me.

[3LollipopZ]

I agree, I think that is part of the joy of this game is constructing your own hopper system.

I would like to see a chest or mine that can drop items onto a conveyor system. chests that have opened bottoms that conveyors can be built through (perhaps using the underground conveyor system).
If chests are on an underground conveyor they will drop all items on all segments of the conveyor at a speed to fill a slow or perhaps a fast conveyor.

I would like to design not larger components into this game, but more flexibility to existing 1x1 components. Space is not a valuable resource, but you have to be smart to plug an efficient factory within a smaller space. We all can produce huge spread out factories that pump out massive resources, but not all can punch this into a small space.

[ssilk]

Ok, well, that's not what I have awaited...

I try to avoid saying, that it is not possible with the existing stuff, but I have been building many of them and I think I know that it is currently just hard work and has many disadvantages and a weak benefit.

I try to explain the problems, why I think a storage containing out of chests doesn't work with the current stuff we have.

A) To fill a chest with an inserter takes too long. It takes 40 minutes with an smart inserter. This is too long., should be under 5 minutes.
B) a cascade of chests isn't filled balanced. No matter how you built it, you will always have chests which are useless because what comes in is just what goes out. Thats not bad, but A good storage can be filled in different ways.
C) A storage should only filled/emptied, if needed and it is currently complicated to build that and takes much space and you have to watch carefully for the difference between left and right splitter entries.
D) to cover a basic belt we need about 5-6 smart inserters. But a chest has only 4 sides. I think the idea of 3LollipopZ with the underrground belt is fine, but it isn't possible to get the throughput of a basic belt into such a chest just with 4 inserters.
E) I mean 6000 items for a chest is much too low for an storage. I think a serious storage should begin with about 3 times more. So we need to have some chests. It is difficult to get an overview of how full your storage currently is with so many chests. I need a way to have some chests behaving like one.
F) The afford of resources to build such a storage (chests, inserters, belts, splitters) is high compared to the benefit.
G) for every chest you need minimum two inserters (one for in and one for out). So with a serious storage we have about 12 inserters working and they need a significant amount of energy. Indeed it needs so much energy to fill and empty a chest, that it can cause power problems.

The reason, why I think that such a kind of storage is needed are:
A) forwarding of game. If you change your production, everything gets stuck. It would be a big win, to store that production-loss, but it doesn't make sense to build a working storage first, which takes 5-10 minutes, because this production is lost, too.
B) the resource fields are far away. It takes some minutes to see, that it is empty, because the belts are long. In this time the production stucks. A storage would help here out.
C) much easier setup for train stations is possible and if combined with fast loading/unloading trains would gain much use.
D) faster clearing of your building area.
E) an efficient storage takes much space, between 5x10 and 20x20 tiles... So if not much space is available, an storage is unusable. But especially with small space a useful storage would help and bring the game forward.
F) equal balancing of left/right side of a belt isn't currently possible.
G) it can open a way to control the streams of items automatically.


Edit: this discussion reminds me to the container-discussion and for me it is no question, that a game which is about transport, logistics, building etc. has something like a really big storage and this means it must bring the infrastructure to use it efficiently.

[3LollipopZ]

yeah, I mostly agree with what you mentioned. I think I should have said I don't think similar storage capacities, while taking up more space, is of any benefit.
I completely agree with the bigger capacity storage as the chests just aren't big enough.

How about if you put two or more chests of like type (ie: Steel) together they morph into 1 storage area? (I think one of your comments might have meant that)

Also, I completely agree with the pain to get items into and out from chests. Having to have heaps of inserters for both input and output are a pain.

What I don't want to see though, is a 20x20 building that might get destroyed if a creature gets stuck on it, essentially destroying my 1Million copper bars. If it was destroyed and it scattered the contents over the map that might be ok...
I also like having to manage my factory input & output to a nice level. If I pull too much off a conveyor my factories towards the end of the line begin to stop receiving materials.

To balance my right and left, and to keep my production moving, I tend to use splitters that come back into the same line. A better storage system would resolve that issue...

Hmm... much to think about... much to mod.

[ssilk]

How about if you put two or more chests of like type (ie: Steel) together they morph into 1 storage area? (I think one of your comments might have meant that)

Yes, I meant, that the form of a 3x3 item can be point symmetric and if each side has an input and output it can feed another silo. The idea to make that behavior for chests is quite interesting! Never thought to that, but I think you found a really good idea.
I think this is it: a chest-cloud. (everyone has a cloud, now also factorio ) if you place two chest of the same type besides, they change to a "chest cloud".
- when opening the "chest-cloud" you don't see all stacks of all chests, you see only a list how many stacks of each item are filled.
- so logically we don't have some chests here. It is a "cloud of chests" and they behave differently. For example if one chest of 10 is destroyed, then 1/10 of the cloud items are destroyed.
- the chests must be of the same type! does a requester-chest-cloud make sense?
- smart chests and up behave also like one, so you need to add only one cable. Might be difficult to implement.
- even more complicated: how can you clear a chest and remove it, if something inserts all the time into the cloud of chests? I think clearing a chest (with LMB) is looking up if the remaking chests can contain all the items and if yes chest is cleared. Otherwise tries to put it into inventory or is deployed on ground. manageable cause only one chest drops its containing on ground.
- there are ways to cheat that stuff. I mean one rule to avoid cheating is that the cloud must be more or less quadratic (8x10 is ok, but 20x2 not).

Also, I completely agree with the pain to get items into and out from chests. Having to have heaps of inserters for both input and output are a pain.

They said in the container thread, that they think about containers, and something, which does filling/unfilling them like this hopper. Now, when a fast inserter could move one container per action, he moves 64 ore in 0.4 sec, that is 9600 items per minute. I think I could live with that.

What I don't want to see though, is a 20x20 building that might get destroyed if a creature gets stuck on it, essentially destroying my 1Million copper bars. If it was destroyed and it scattered the contents over the map that might be ok...

Well, no risk, no fun. I think it is clear, that the chests are worthy and should be defended. But with your idea, the creeper needs to destroy one chest after the other, so the loss is not so hard, see above, for ten chests first 1/10, then 1/9+1/10 etc.

I also like having to manage my factory input & output to a nice level. If I pull too much off a conveyor my factories towards the end of the line begin to stop receiving materials.

This reminds me to the wagons. They behave like a big chest. I use them currently to experiment just with such things like leveling the factories.

To balance my right and left, and to keep my production moving, I tend to use splitters that come back into the same line. A better storage system would resolve that issue...

Yes, i know this trick but won't work in all situations, especially when the belts are jammed.

[applemachine]

when opening the "chest-cloud" you don't see all stacks of all chests, you see only a list how many stacks of each item are filled.

If I understand what you're trying to say, this already exists in the form of provider chest (the red ones). Every item in every provider chest becomes part of the "cloud". No matter how many red chests you have, you can view all the items in all red chests.If you need anything you can just call the robots to get it for you.

To fill a chest with an inserter takes too long. It takes 40 minutes with an smart inserter. This is too long., should be under 5 minutes.

If you utilize robots, you can theoretically fill a chest instantly if you have the production capacity. I read a post where robots are currently broken but as long as they don't require occasional battery recharge or recharge stations, they are amazingly useful. I built my latest factory with the idea of making the dominant mode of resource transfer flying robots.They work amazingly well...

If there is ever a point where the belts or inserters are not fast enough you can always introduce a horde of robots to improve efficiency.

Don't forget about container to container transfer. Those upgrades also provide incredible benefits. Fully upgraded robots and inserters can move more resources then I can ever use. Plus they are fun to watch. They fly around like little buzzing bees.

[n9103]

Think red chests that can be physically extended to be accessed by more than 4 inserters at a time, and the cloud is limited to the adjacent chest tiles, but all items are present in all chests.

[ssilk]

when opening the "chest-cloud" you don't see all stacks of all chests, you see only a list how many stacks of each item are filled.

If I understand what you're trying to say, this already exists in the form of provider chest (the red ones). Every item in every provider chest becomes part of the "cloud". No matter how many red chests you have, you can view all the items in all red chests.If you need anything you can just call the robots to get it for you.

No, that's not the same. Every chest has it's own inventory. For example, if you put something into a provider chest, you cannot take it out of another. But that's what I suggest: in short (for more see above), if chests are build side by side, they behave like one chest. That's quite differently!

To fill a chest with an inserter takes too long. It takes 40 minutes with an smart inserter. This is too long., should be under 5 minutes.

If you utilize robots, you can theoretically fill a chest instantly if you have the production capacity. I read a post where robots are currently broken but as long as they don't require occasional battery recharge or recharge stations, they are amazingly useful. I built my latest factory with the idea of making the dominant mode of resource transfer flying robots.They work amazingly well...

Well, but I think to the game between 1 and 12 hours, where you don't have any logistic bots.
I repeat: I want to store my production, when I need to rebuild the factory, because that would bring the game really forward. And many other reasons...

Don't forget about container to container transfer. Those upgrades also provide incredible benefits. Fully upgraded robots and inserters can move more resources then I can ever use. Plus they are fun to watch. They fly around like little buzzing bees.

I know how they are working and I think, they are currently much too powerful, because they bring the game into a direction, where some players will begin to argue, that we should use logistic bots instead of inserters to fill a chest.