Friday Facts #133 - The train struggle

[kovarex]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-133

[Leveller]

SaturdayFacts !

[torham]

well, I am still on 23:04, so everything all right from my point of view...

[y.petremann]

SaturdayFacts !

True, 00:05 to me

[_aD]

Great FFF, excited to try out the new toys when they appear. It's always interesting to read about problems which are part technical and part visual, as it were. Wube has done a great job overcoming such obstacles in the past and it's no surprise your skills continue to solve new challenges as they appear.

[mngrif]

Absolutely glorious. These changes are most welcome!

[sillyfly]

It is now also possible to select individual items in the production/electric statistics, to limit the graph to only show these items.

This makes me so happy!

[Supercheese]

It is now possible to click the alert icon to open the map to the location of the alert.

Very nice.

[MiiNiPaa]

The heavy inserter is great addition. I was going to post almost exact idea as a suggestion in addition to loader (loader for loading, inserters for removing), but you beat me to it.

[Zeblote]

The heavy inserter is not placing the items fully compressed in your gif. It'll do that, right?

[torham]

I like the inserter. It would also work in reverse, where it would pick one item and than wait and scoop additional items of the same type until full, and only than put them in the chest. Simple and Effective!

[Bisa]

the auth feature looks absolutely gorgeous... or well, we want it/need it badly and are happy for anything you guys can come up with <3

[vedrit]

I'm curious to see how the heavy inserter behaves when picking items off the belt. Is it going to wait until it has the maximum items, or a period of time? Will it be able to do an AoE grab, per se? It's nice that it'll grab a bunch of items and put them down real nice and fast like. That's cool.

[Supercheese]

I like the inserter. It would also work in reverse, where it would pick one item and than wait and scoop additional items of the same type until full, and only than put them in the chest. Simple and Effective!

Yeah, the Heavy Inserter looks like a great idea. It would be nice if its claw graphics had an appearance distinct from other inserters'.

[MiiNiPaa]

The heavy inserter is not placing the items fully compressed in your gif. It'll do that, right?

It is probably to not "potentially destroy a lot of small optimisation puzzles". Still I think that only express belt should be not compressed when heavy inserter is used.

[kovarex]

I'm curious to see how the heavy inserter behaves when picking items off the belt. Is it going to wait until it has the maximum items, or a period of time? Will it be able to do an AoE grab, per se? It's nice that it'll grab a bunch of items and put them down real nice and fast like. That's cool.

Yes, there are few ways to do it, it would probably try to grab things from the belt as long as there are more of the same item already in hand until it reaches the stack size limit.

[y.petremann]

I don't know if that the case but I've made some mesures and this is notable that wagons are 3d objects and so at the base of the wagons in horizontal position 222px and in vertical position 152 px, the ratio is 1.46, I know this is not really visible, but 5 pixels can make a really small difference in how far look wagons to each others (for reference, a rail plank is ~ 6px).

[keyboardhack]

I'm curious to see how the heavy inserter behaves when picking items off the belt. Is it going to wait until it has the maximum items, or a period of time? Will it be able to do an AoE grab, per se? It's nice that it'll grab a bunch of items and put them down real nice and fast like. That's cool.

Yes, there are few ways to do it, it would probably try to grab things from the belt as long as there are more of the same item already in hand until it reaches the stack size limit.

'Does this mean it would only take from one side of the belt at a time? That would be a big nerf to the pickup efficiency.

[BrasilianEngineer]

[
Yes, there are few ways to do it, it would probably try to grab things from the belt as long as there are more of the same item already in hand until it reaches the stack size limit.

My suggestion would be to also have a small timeout (probably 1 to 2 seconds) so if the inserter doesn't reach the limit in that time, it goes ahead and moves what it already has.

[Neotix]

To be honest, vertical and horizontal difference is not an issue and in some cases is part of puzzle. With that we have choice to make longer station with more inserters or shorter that require less space. Don't take away that possibilities.
The main issue is wagons position that don't fit grid and in my opinion that should be fixed.