Conveyor belt option: fixed

[StormWhisper]

TL;DR

Make an option that prevents a belt to change it's shape by placing adjacent belts.

What ?

Instead of placing a belt on another side like this:

Or this:

Make an option that lets you make it like this:

Why ?

Because there are cases when you need to fill only one side of a belt. Placing that reduntant belt makes it ugly and sometimes even impossible to fit.

So besides convinience it would make some buildings more aesthetically pleasing.

[ssilk]

And how do you think this should work? I mean it’s a bit to simple to say 8 want to have that, but not how how a player can do that.

The current behavior is IMHO part of the puzzle you have with belts.

[boskid]

No.

Current rules are easy to understand and predictable. I see no value added in this suggestion other than removing a need for a single belt piece and complicating belts logic because they would have to have extra bit of state that player would be able to mess with.

[StormWhisper]

And how do you think this should work? I mean it’s a bit to simple to say 8 want to have that, but not how how a player can do that.

The current behavior is IMHO part of the puzzle you have with belts.

It can be done as a checkbox in belt interface that is already exists

No.

Current rules are easy to understand and predictable. I see no value added in this suggestion other than removing a need for a single belt piece and complicating belts logic because they would have to have extra bit of state that player would be able to mess with.

That is partially fair.
This idea doesn't have to be necessarily used by a player (like an input/output direction and filter in splitter).
This logic is not that complicated. Behind the scenes it will only affect the moment that another belt is placed next to the fixed one. And all it does is it prevents the belt from changing it's state. All this logic is already in there.
I understand that probably it is not as simple as I explaned because of optimisations, but what I say is mostly the truth.

[boskid]

- It would add an option to what is already possible by placing another belt
- belt layout would not be as readable as it is right now
- corner belts would have to have that option disabled because locking curved belt would not behave correctly or it would have to prevent side feeding onto curved belt
- locked state would have to be copy-pasted
- locked state would have to be preserved by blueprints
- would remove one of the puzzle parts in the game

[ssilk]

I repeat some of boskid arguments, because I was too slow.

I admire your courage to change something, which is in Factorio since the very beginning (over 8 years), and nobody (really, you are the first I know) ever questioned to change this detail.

And at the same time I really think this works perfect as it is. And I think you highly underestimate the effort to change this extremely optimized code. (Boskid explained them in detail, so I removed that part)

Another point of view is to ask the good question. The good question here is: how does this increase the game-play value? The only advantage I can see is that it looks better or you can use one-side-loading even in rare cases.

And at the same time you lose that you as player can decide to built different, so that it looks fine and that you do some tricks to bring items to only one side. I think this is part of the puzzle. Your suggestion adds something, but will lose something more important.