Factorio Forums

Not looking to retrieve magic coins, but using the "J" key to hop over pipes and such would be rather helpful at times.

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=21378 Footbridges (over pipes, rails, water...), Catwalks, Tunnels, Jumping

For now, suggest you use Squeak through mod.

Ranakastrasz wrote:For now, suggest you use Squeak through mod.

Actually my suggestion would be to make Squeak Through the way it works in the game normally. There is no good gameplay reason I can think of to keep you from walking "through" a pipe, or between two solar panels. It just frustrates you when trying to build or traverse your factory.

Well, this is not frustrating, if you plan in enough space to walk from beginning. For a beginner can become frustrating, if he insist on "I build it once and never ever change it".

Pipes are an unholy mess in this game imo. Way harder to use than belts, due to them connecting in all directions (flow control++) and being unwalkable. Underground pipes are pretty much mandatory in every setup otherwise the area is impassable.

Belts are annoying in trying to balance each side, the hack that lets you use an underground belt to remove half of the bell's content, the shorter underground belt range, and it moving you if you stand on it. Even so, far easier to deal with.

It's not a hack, underground belts do that by design. It is actually a pretty good way of doing it because it stops you doing things like blocking off one side of a belt after a row of assemblers then adding something else to it further down. You're forced to take into consideration additional space requirements and it encourages you to use more robust designs - typically you use the underground belt trick when pinching resources from a set of assemblers making something else, which is poor practice as you might need to expand it later or it could consume most or all of that resource leaving nothing for where it's trying to go afterwards.

As for pipes, it just makes it a bit more challenging. With belts there isn't really any direct punishment for making a really messy setup other than it's a nightmare to maintain. With pipes it encourages you to be MUCH tidier with your setups and spread things out. The additional tidiness is required to navigate the other logistic problems pipes cause like connecting to all other nearby pipes. And yes I think these are healthy game features, pipes aren't really a big part in the grand scheme and with 0.15 you'll be able to split up production much more tidily but the additional complexity over belts gives them their unique challenges, especially when mods are introduced.