Hyper belts (new belt tier, not a straight upgrade)

[Chao]

I know there are other threads about belt upgrades but I think this is noticeably different from other suggestions.

TL;DR

High throughput belts designed for moving items between factory segments but not within them.

What ?

Belts capable of carrying either 135 or 225 items/s with an accompanying set of undergrounds (+2 length) but no splitters. These belts move too quickly for inserters to pick up or put down on. They will not connect directly with normal tiered belts for input or output.

Instead of normal splitters they have loader/unloaders that must connect to express belts on one side and hyper belts on the other. The loader should have a 45 item buffer per input and will only output once each buffer is full. Likewise the unloader can only unload equally onto all outputs.

Why ?

There is a need for high throughput belts in megabases, but the developers (rightly) do not want to just add just a simple straight upgrade as it would add nothing to the gameplay other than needing another cycle of upgrading existing lines. The intention with this design is to provide high throughput at the places it really matters (high traffic stations, smelting etc to high production areas such as green circuits) but can't be used as a direct upgrade. Instead it takes some of the mechanics of belts that players are already used to but forces different approaches.

The loader/unloader mechanic in particular requires players to have even throughput on both ends to avoid stuttering or backing up. As multiples and powers of 2 are common for scaling I went with it taking 3 or 5 belts in order to throw more complicated ratios. If it was 4 belts worth it would be easy to upgrade main supply lines but this requires a bit more thought and planning at each end.

[Festmester]

I wonder if it could use a similar logic to either heat or fluids for item transport, such as only one type of item will fit on the line (no mixing). Then the items would be transported on a rail type of thing, instead of on a belt. Very futuristic and fast

[Qon]

There is a need for high throughput belts in megabases, but the developers (rightly) do not want to just add just a simple straight upgrade as it would add nothing to the gameplay other than needing another cycle of upgrading existing lines. The intention with this design is to provide high throughput at the places it really matters (high traffic stations, smelting etc to high production areas such as green circuits) but can't be used as a direct upgrade.

The loader/unloader mechanic in particular requires players to have even throughput on both ends to avoid stuttering or backing up.

Sounds like you are describing trains. Have you tried trains? Double headed single wagon trains on 2 way rails can have stations small enough to fit inside a base and provides all the interesting mechanics you are looking for.

[eradicator]

There is a need for high throughput belts in megabases, but the developers (rightly) do not want to just add just a simple straight upgrade as it would add nothing to the gameplay other than needing another cycle of upgrading existing lines. The intention with this design is to provide high throughput at the places it really matters (high traffic stations, smelting etc to high production areas such as green circuits) but can't be used as a direct upgrade.

The loader/unloader mechanic in particular requires players to have even throughput on both ends to avoid stuttering or backing up.

Sounds like you are describing trains. Have you tried trains? Double headed single wagon trains on 2 way rails can have stations small enough to fit inside a base and provides all the interesting mechanics you are looking for.

Car Belts to the rescue?

Personally i wouldn't mind if the concept of car belts was refined and polished into a proper base-game mechanic instead of the hack that it is now. Though i've always thought that proper high-throughput belts should be wieder than standard belts to set them apart more. A train comparison would then be a closed rail loop filled completely with wagons, moving forward in one-wagon steps.

[Qon]

Yeah I don't want to fiddle with cars on belts because

• Why craft something that has wheels and its own engine just to put it on a belt? Looks kinda stupid.
• Can't blueprint it: Not using it.
• I don't want to fiddle with cars being misaligned by a tiny bit and suddenly one car can't be reached by an inserter or something.
• No splitters or underneathies. So why not just use trains which can be signaled?

If they just gave us "cars" with a bucket graphic but with a big inventory and have splitters and underneathies handle the buckets then it could be a cool vanilla mechanic. Probably better gameplay and more interesting to use than "stacks" on belts.

[Chao]

There is a need for high throughput belts in megabases, but the developers (rightly) do not want to just add just a simple straight upgrade as it would add nothing to the gameplay other than needing another cycle of upgrading existing lines. The intention with this design is to provide high throughput at the places it really matters (high traffic stations, smelting etc to high production areas such as green circuits) but can't be used as a direct upgrade.

The loader/unloader mechanic in particular requires players to have even throughput on both ends to avoid stuttering or backing up.

Sounds like you are describing trains. Have you tried trains? Double headed single wagon trains on 2 way rails can have stations small enough to fit inside a base and provides all the interesting mechanics you are looking for.

I love trains, this isn't trains though. Trains come with different problems and solutions. Trains are for very high throughput and over large distances. Yes you can get higher than belt throughput over short distances but even a 1-1-1 has very different constraints and advantages. It is more easily filterable and able to transport a variety of goods but can't be snaked through existing setups and still requires more space at these stiations. I'm proposing something to fill the gap between express belts and small trains that leans a lot more heavily on the mechanics of the former. It lacks splitters but still has undergrounds, is designed for continuous throughput, and is more for the transition from large train stations into the centre of a large factory (the sort where people can have reasonably long and very wide belts).

[Hiladdar]

That is fairly easy to implement. Just make a new mod with say green and purple belts, running at 125 and 250 speed. Do not make any splitters in the mod, and appropriate length underground belts.

Or better yet, just download a mod that already had similar belts and build a base, but don't use the higher speed splitters.

Hiladdar