Modular Inserters
Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 2:07 pm
After playing a couple dozens of hours, I had this notion that there's a huge "tech" gap between low-tech belted assemblies and hi-tech logistics network assemblies. After you research long-arm inserter, your options for building a belted assembly pretty much peak out (you can squeeze some more efficiency out of smart inserters, but that won't change general layout). Afterwards, you get a few tiers of "faster, faster, and even faster" production, but there's no options to improve layouts.
Then you get bots, and it's pretty much over for belted assemblies, because bots allows SO much better modularity and scalability that belted designs (which are prone to maintenance hell) are simply outdated.
It seems like many people come over this problem, and there are various suggestions here, like "chest on belt" and such. However, I've decided to take a different look on it.
The "bottleneck" issue with belted designs isn't about belts. Belts are simple, well-functioning, and they perform admirably in their scope. The bottleneck is always about inserters -- there simply aren't enough options for them that would allow some advanced designs.
These limitations are (again) already recognized by players, as there are several mods that provides a much wider selection of inserters. However, here comes another problem -- we already have quite too many "inserter" items, and having more just adds unnecessary clutter.
So, instead of having a separate item for each inserter option, we should have a basic inserter plus several special inserter modules that'll change its functioning. To ease the pain of having to left-click each inserter, some universally useful variants, like fast inserter, should stay as separate items available for production.
The lesser used options will all become "place basic inserter, then add modules". I.e. long-arm inserter will be "basic + long-arm module", smart inserter is a "basic + speed + logic module", and so on.
So, how this addresses the belted vs. botted assemblies issue? We can easily have more advanced inserter modules for cleaner layouts. For example: an "adjustable pickup/dropoff point" module(s), which would allow much more flexibility for inserters' placement. Of course, such modules should be appropriately costly, so that it won't become an "overpowered" option.
Given the extra freedom with assemblies' layouts, these advanced inserters could become a nice "middle ground" between low-tech belted designs, and hi-tech logistics networks.
Then you get bots, and it's pretty much over for belted assemblies, because bots allows SO much better modularity and scalability that belted designs (which are prone to maintenance hell) are simply outdated.
It seems like many people come over this problem, and there are various suggestions here, like "chest on belt" and such. However, I've decided to take a different look on it.
The "bottleneck" issue with belted designs isn't about belts. Belts are simple, well-functioning, and they perform admirably in their scope. The bottleneck is always about inserters -- there simply aren't enough options for them that would allow some advanced designs.
These limitations are (again) already recognized by players, as there are several mods that provides a much wider selection of inserters. However, here comes another problem -- we already have quite too many "inserter" items, and having more just adds unnecessary clutter.
So, instead of having a separate item for each inserter option, we should have a basic inserter plus several special inserter modules that'll change its functioning. To ease the pain of having to left-click each inserter, some universally useful variants, like fast inserter, should stay as separate items available for production.
The lesser used options will all become "place basic inserter, then add modules". I.e. long-arm inserter will be "basic + long-arm module", smart inserter is a "basic + speed + logic module", and so on.
So, how this addresses the belted vs. botted assemblies issue? We can easily have more advanced inserter modules for cleaner layouts. For example: an "adjustable pickup/dropoff point" module(s), which would allow much more flexibility for inserters' placement. Of course, such modules should be appropriately costly, so that it won't become an "overpowered" option.
Given the extra freedom with assemblies' layouts, these advanced inserters could become a nice "middle ground" between low-tech belted designs, and hi-tech logistics networks.