Factorio Forums

After researching fluid processing, the crafting menu gets cluttered with the barreling/unbarreling recipes, since there's two recipes to handle each fluid type. This is a problem that will get worse if mods add their own fluids, since each of those will then need two recipes for this purpose.

To reduce the clutter, I suggest that there be a generic unbarreling/barreling recipe that takes any fluid as an input/output.

I thought the same when I saw the new barreling icons, since only one liquid can enter a piped assembling machine at a time, but, what would happen if you have a chest with multiple kinds of barreled liquids connected (via inserter) to a assembling machine with "General unbarrel" task?

Or if we could have a separate building for barreling, that would work like a furnace. Depending on what you put into the furnace you get a different output.

Barreling could work the same - use barrels as "fuel" and then transform input into barreled state.

Matthias_Wlkp wrote:Or if we could have a separate building for barreling, that would work like a furnace.

Furnaces still need recipes to work. So this wouldn't help reduce the clutter in the crafting menu.


If you're worried about clutter from the barreling recipes, they can be put into their own tab.
(Angel's fluid barreling mod already does this.)

Personally I'm not going to worry about 14 recipes. When mods add their own fluids it can make things unwieldy though.
It's possible for the developers to make this change in vanilla. In any case (and in the meantime), there could also be a mod that puts all fluid barreling and unbarreling into its own tab.

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19343 Boxing / Packaging / Container / Cargobox : Pre-Filling

+1 for putting barreling, as well as other stuff the player can't make by hand, on its own tab, as many mods do.

Agreed about segregating the barrelling recipes, but I'd hate to see logistics chests full of steam barrels, that's 120000 steam in dat wittle bitty space.

Then again, maybe it'd be a good laugh.

edit: I see, you can already barrel steam, but it loses its temperature and becomes 15℃ water again.

What about making a category with all the oils and barrels?

Or even all fuel/energy type production things. Water, Steam, Nuclear... Depending on the space available I guess.

The Omnibarrels mod adds a fluids tab containing all the barreling recipes. It's very convenient and a shame that the devs haven't done likewise with the main game. Putting everything in the intermediates tab is going to cause headaches if you install a few mods which add new fluids.

Factorios recipe system does not do "generic" recipes. Each recipe has ingredients and products and those are fixed. That's part of the reason it takes almost no CPU time for assembling machines/furnaces to run.

As for "clutter" - that's what the different tabs are for. If you add mods then they can re-arrange the tabs as they see fit - but otherwise the barreling recipes fit very nicely where they are now in the base game.

Rseding91 wrote:Factorios recipe system does not do "generic" recipes. Each recipe has ingredients and products and those are fixed. That's part of the reason it takes almost no CPU time for assembling machines/furnaces to run.

As for "clutter" - that's what the different tabs are for. If you add mods then they can re-arrange the tabs as they see fit - but otherwise the barreling recipes fit very nicely where they are now in the base game.

Not everyone wants to use mods, and using mods locks out achievements.

If "Move them to a different" tab is the official answer, then they should go in a separate tab in the base game.

I also have to ask: What happens if Factorio adds any additional fluids? Will those also be added to the Intermediates tab? If so, that would add to the clutter. As it is, barreling recipes take up almost two full lines on their own in the Intermediates tab.

I could see these copypasted sorts of recipies being moved to their own tab.

Create a tab for 'machine-only' recipies that holds things like the furnace and barrel recipies.

This will help reduce clutter when manual crafting, but will keep those recipies accessible for machine crafting and for reference.

Rseding91 wrote:Factorios recipe system does not do "generic" recipes. Each recipe has ingredients and products and those are fixed. That's part of the reason it takes almost no CPU time for assembling machines/furnaces to run.

As for "clutter" - that's what the different tabs are for. If you add mods then they can re-arrange the tabs as they see fit - but otherwise the barreling recipes fit very nicely where they are now in the base game.

Maybe they could just appear to the user as a single generic recipe, while still being distinct recipes behind the scenes.

Idea: Make usually-invisible pseudo-tabs full of recipes like barreling and cracking, which are reached by clicking the appropriate "generic recipe" icon in the main recipe list. This would take one extra click to set up one of those recipes manually (recipe copy/paste ftw!) but reduce clutter significantly.

Nemoricus wrote: If "Move them to a different" tab is the official answer, then they should go in a separate tab in the base game.

No, if I'm reading correctly the official answer is "vanilla Factorio is fine the way it is, and if you want them moved to another tab you can install a mod that does this."

We're only talking about 14 recipes here. I'd say there are more important things for the devs to work on. If you're using mods that add fluids, either that mod or some other mod can reorganize the recipes into different tabs. If vanilla Factorio added 15 fluids (30 recipes), then I would totally agree that vanilla Factorio should push those recipes into their own tab. As it is, I don't think this is worth worrying about too much. If you want things to be organized the way you want them to be organized, install a mod. If you want achievements, don't use mods.

(This thread is giving me a good idea for a mod that I'd like to write...)

mattj256 wrote:No, if I'm reading correctly the official answer is "vanilla Factorio is fine the way it is, and if you want them moved to another tab you can install a mod that does this."

It's important to note that the devs use the popularity of QOL mods as an indicator of what they should implement in the base game. Write a mod, use it, and if other people use it then it's more likely to get implemented officially.

Rseding91 wrote:Factorios recipe system does not do "generic" recipes. Each recipe has ingredients and products and those are fixed. That's part of the reason it takes almost no CPU time for assembling machines/furnaces to run.

As for "clutter" - that's what the different tabs are for. If you add mods then they can re-arrange the tabs as they see fit - but otherwise the barreling recipes fit very nicely where they are now in the base game.

I talked with Kovarex about this idea when I was in Prague, two years ago. I still think the boxing idea has a lot of potential. It can introduce a kind of gameplay, that is much more into direction of logistics and mass production. My current measurements show, that it allows up to factor 50 more throughput of items than now. And that was by using current assemblies for that (which means, that items needs to be filled in by inserters etc.). This has much more potential for speed improving.

So I think it would need another type of entity: not an assembly with receipe. Indeed it would need zero configuration. I would it call it "compressor/decompressor": You can define a list of items, that can be handled by one type of (de-)compressor and the game then knows, how to handle the rest. A barrel or box to put the items into makes sense, but is optional. The game should automatically generate item-icons, correct calculations of production statistics and so on and so on. Things, that cannot be handled by a mod.

And my current new idea to this whole subject is this: You can use the current loader and improve that existing entity to become a compressor/decompressor. (I think this is partly already possible with the existing loader)

I describe, how it should work. The compressor works like so:
- INPUT: Items are filled into the compressor by belt/pipe (depends on type of compressor) - remember: It works similar to loader, so that you can fill in items directly by belt.
- OPTIONAL INPUT: barrel/box is inserted by inserter,
- OUTPUT: compressed output can be taken out by inserter or is filled into a chest nearby (as the current loader does).

And decompression like so:
- INPUT: Compressed items are inserted into decompressor (or taken from a chest),
- OUTPUT: compressed items on belt/pipe
- OPTIONAL OUTPUT: barrel/box can be taken out by inserter.

Therefore the current loader can be removed from game, cause the compressor can emulate the loader.

This mod may be relevant also:

Auto Barrelling machine will automatically barrel any given liquid without having to select a recipe. Supports all modded items

Auto Barrelling Mod
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/ElecNinj ... barrelling

I know this is a mod, not vanilla, but at least it's something.