Friday Facts #133 - The train struggle

[Nic]

I am Nic and I approve how the Loader turned out

[namako]

It'll be nice to be able to use the same blueprint for stations in every orientation.

[Jackalope_Gaming]

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.

There are currently some problems with inserters not being able to pick up things on belts going faster than they can, especially with corners. If this is undesirable behavior, perhaps it might be possible to have inserters default to the down/pickup position for idling instead of having to reach for items? And that behavior could work well for the new heavy inserter so it will properly be able to pick things up without having to have a crazy fast rotation or extension speed?

[Xterminator]

Hehe I was worried there wouldn't be a FF today.
Anyway, it's great to hear about all the changes, especially the ability to select certain items on the production graph. This will never better for when you use mods like Dytech or Bobs where there are a ton of different items you can't see.

Also I think the Heavy Inserter is a very good compromise between the Loader and how things are now. Being able to use the Stack Size Bonus when placing on Belts will be great. Might be a little tricky when grabbing from a belt. I think there should be some sort of timer as well that says like after 2 seconds if no other item has passed by then the Insetter should just put what it has in the box or machine rather than sitting there for a long time to get a full stack size amount.

[madpav3l]

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.

+1

Also I think the Heavy Inserter is a very good compromise between the Loader and how things are now. Being able to use the Stack Size Bonus when placing on Belts will be great. Might be a little tricky when grabbing from a belt. I think there should be some sort of timer as well that says like after 2 seconds if no other item has passed by then the Insetter should just put what it has in the box or machine rather than sitting there for a long time to get a full stack size amount.

+1

[y.petremann]

I would like to add that this type of loader is also interesting because it is a "new game mechanic" without being too diferent, it would be like the character has imroved it's stuff, I'm seeing a lot of friends that start playing factorio completely blind, and they don't directly figure some mechanis, so adding a new diferent way of doing things without knowledge is not really good, especially at mid-game to end-game, o for me this is a big + to these heavy inserters

[Lauri455]

I'm gonna swim against the current and say that I'd like to see Loader put into the game in a form it was presented in the blog post. Well, maybe not literally put into a game, like in a patch, but for now, I'd like to see it being released as a mod for us to check it out. Literally slap the code and the placeholder graphics into a mod package and let people download it. I think that the concept itself is really nice, it just needs some tweaking/balancing.

[Supercheese]

I'm gonna swim against the current and say that I'd like to see Loader put into the game in a form it was presented in the blog post. Well, maybe not literally put into a game, like in a patch, but for now, I'd like to see it being released as a mod for us to check it out. Literally slap the code and the placeholder graphics into a mod package and let people download it. I think that the concept itself is really nice, it just needs some tweaking/balancing.

You should check out: viewtopic.php?f=93&t=22955

[Gouada]

Honestly, I am not worried about the loader/big inserters so far as the devs seem to have a good idea of what the community likes. For trains, the grid and # of inserters per wagon must be aligned as currently it is a pain to build long train stations without fiddling around with the placement. Then, we could have a poll to see if people prefer having horizontal stations more capable than vertical ones, or if both axes should be the same.
I am a fan of the UI improvements, but in my opinion there is still a major issue which needs to get fixed! When mousing over a robotics network, it is impossible to see all of the items! A quick fix might be to just let players scroll over the list to see everything.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, Gouada

[Mengmoshu]

I really like the Heavy Inserter concept. If it doesn't do full compression on express belts it should leave a whole item worth of space, so 2 Heavy Inserters side by side can achieve full compression. One of my frequent annoyances with filling belts is the little spaces too small to put stuff in.

When it comes to trains I don't care much about the orientation issue. However, figuring out where to place stations relative to your inserters is too fiddly. I'd like to see some sort of preview or markers for where engine and railcar boundaries will be when you're placing a station.

And a resounding +1 for all the ease of use stuff.

[Tev]

I'm drunk and you own.


Btw only question: how would be backward compatibility handled re: vertical/horizontal standardization of trains? What I should (not) do in my current map to make it 0.13-ready?

[tehroach]

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.

+1
Would have to agree with this, so what if a vertical train can only have 5 inserters a side and a horizontal can have 6, that simply spells options to me.
Personally the change in gap size would give me the same heeby geebys as the train stretching.


+1 to the heavy inserter that looks like a great addition,
one query that I do have about it that it doesn't seam like anyone else has mentioned yet;
How will the Heavy inserter handle chest to chest transfers, will it get a technology squared bonus (as this would be a big plus for trains)?


While we are on the subject of trains, I would be interested in how the plans are going with integrating the train stations into the circuit network?

[Ojelle]

Snif, would love to have a seperate loader even if i have to wait a little longer
And nice way of solving the train problem!

[Marconos]

Interesting Friday facts.

I do really like the idea of trains being able to be rotated horizontal / vertical and be the same. I do understand the screen issues and think you are on the right track there. Will be interesting to see what you final end up with.

The heavy inserter is a very cool idea EXCEPT for what happens on a belt that isn't fully compressed. The wait there can potentially be a big issue and you could actually get better performance with 3 arms picking up items -vs- one heavy inserter depending on how it's implemented. That is going to be a difficult item to balance and I'm very curious to see how you solve it.

Great game, solid thinking and logic behind your work, keep it up!!

[ikiris]

The huge gap looks terrible, and I strongly dislike the heavy inserter over the loader.

Just keep as is and limit the inserter hitbox to like 6 centered(the door) and have the cars align to squares.

The right solution to load unload speed is a bulk goods car that either tip/dump unloads or is overhead loaded via hopper. As it is storage types and amounts are very imbalenced and it makes things like barreling look better than it should by far

[Ojelle]

Interesting Friday facts.

I do really like the idea of trains being able to be rotated horizontal / vertical and be the same. I do understand the screen issues and think you are on the right track there. Will be interesting to see what you final end up with.

The heavy inserter is a very cool idea EXCEPT for what happens on a belt that isn't fully compressed. The wait there can potentially be a big issue and you could actually get better performance with 3 arms picking up items -vs- one heavy inserter depending on how it's implemented. That is going to be a difficult item to balance and I'm very curious to see how you solve it.

Great game, solid thinking and logic behind your work, keep it up!!

I dont get the problem. If your belt is nearly full you cant put items on it with either a heavy loader or a normal inserter, or am I missing something?

[YotaXP]

I fiddled around with the train thing myself in Blender. While the stretching still quite obvious, I think using some quadratic easing makes it a much smoother transition. (It looked like the GIF in the FFF used linear interpolation, as it size seemed to 'bounce' when it went horizontal.)

With grid: https://imgur.com/sEEWcoZ
Without grid: https://imgur.com/evqdoIV

[Juanajones]

What would you call the loader-inserter?
A "Stack Inserter"?

I like the idea of the train gaps, it means there's not a real difference between the vertical & horizontal stations which is nice.

-Juanajones

[-root]

lol, and people are just like "uh, you should make it the same length". little did they know how much actually is required to make the trains the same in both directions.

Onto the loader, I think you guys should draw some inspiration from real life. Get like a hopper or something going. The heavy inserter doesn't really make sense to me, as it doesn't (visually) look any different from a normal inserter and yet it has the this *completely* radically different capability.

I think if you kept the loader as is, turned it into a hopper looking thing and made it suitably expensive (recipe maybe 10 electric engines, 20 iron pipes, 10 Blue Belt) it would really add a ton to the game. I think the concern that it would "remove optimization puzzles" is moot besides making the game easier to play. Factorio is complicated enough and there will always be ways to make factories better. The loader gives new players a way to easily implement stuff.

As a random thought, you could "link" the loader into the belts. Have three different speeds of loaders, yellow, red and blue.

[wwdragon]

Heavy Inserter is a good idea.
Better that, then take time away from spider tank or whatever.