Poll: Loader vs. Heavy-Inserter

[sillyfly]

After the Loader idea was introduced, many people voiced conflating opinions, so a poll was created.
Now, a new concept, that of a Heavy-Inserter was put out by the developers, and I believe a new poll is in order

To make this clear and simple, please don't base your opinion/vote on balancing of the components, but solely on the base mechanics. If you wish, imagine each is balanced as you see fit to make your choice. Also, please don't factor into your vote any development-time arguments. I'm not saying these are not important, just that the idea of the poll is only to look at core mechanics, with no other factors involved.

Thanks for your cooperation

[Rockstar04]

As for whats included in the base game, I voted for the loader, but I would love the see the ability for mods to make either happen, regardless of what makes it into the base game.

[zytukin]

I say both, that way everybody can choose the method they prefer instead of only pleasing half the people.

[Nic]

I say both, that way everybody can choose the method they prefer instead of only pleasing half the people.

If the devs would try to please all the people we would have x versions of every current item and x different additional items.

[orzelek]

I see some potential tricky stuff with heavy inserter and picking items from belts. Loader had clearly described functionality and would have it's uses for sure. It wouldn't also make inserters obsolete.

[sillyfly]

Loader had clearly described functionality and would have it's uses for sure. It wouldn't also make inserters obsolete.

Exactly why I think loaders are the better choice between the two.

[Shadowcaster]

The loader is a tool that would be useful in situations where more throughput is needed than inserters can provide. an assembly machine setup for red science even usually only allows to export the iron gears from 1 side giving a slot for at best, 3 fast inserters. The loader on the other hand attached to either a chest or just the assembly machines making gears would allow for 100% throughput where the new bottleneck is simply crafting speed making having enough assembly machines the final issue rather than having as many inserters per machine possible. To balance the loader make it bigger to where its maybe a 3x1 item that outputs out of a selectable tile. This would not destroy most common setups and would effectively be similar to 3 inserters on one side of an assembly machine. The loader isn't broken, it just simply changes the bottleneck areas of the game. Production is bottle necked by actual item production and logistics are used to simply get item A to production facility B as quickly as possible.

[Evan_]

Seems I'm the minority here. But I feel there's a fine line between a nice QoL change, and one that makes an interesting puzzle moot. I think reaching an equally balanced high loading/unloading speed for wagons is a lovely small logistic challenge with the current tools, that you wouldn't need to solve with the above additions.

[albatrosv13]

deleted

[sillyfly]

Seems I'm the minority here. But I feel there's a fine line between a nice QoL change, and one that makes an interesting puzzle moot. I think reaching an equally balanced high loading/unloading speed for wagons is a lovely small logistic challenge with the current tools, that you wouldn't need to solve with the above additions.

The problem is the current tools can't compare with bots. If you want to have dense unloading platforms, you have to use bots, because all belt+inserter unloading solutions take too much space. Using bots for this has no real competition in the game.

[steinio]

This heavy inserter is so supid.
We have inserters in a lot variants and dont need one more with big stack size.

What we need is an element which can put the filled belt 1 to 1 in or out a chest.
The mentioned inserter can not do that because of moving the arm - there will be a lost in time everytime it moves.

Sorry factorio team but this is no sufficent compromise.

[Evan_]

The problem is the current tools can't compare with bots. If you want to have dense unloading platforms, you have to use bots, because all belt+inserter unloading solutions take too much space. Using bots for this has no real competition in the game.

Indeed. But constantly using bots eats a lot more energy than inserters. So you either pay the cost by space or by power. Of course you could argue that electricity is 'free' - and I wouldn't have a counter-argument, as a huge lategame solar farm kinda means that.

Guess I'm a special kind of masochist, but I feel it's a loss of complexity to have a pollution free, final solution that doesn't need maintenance and resources for an important aspect of the game like electricity. I wouldn't use 'bots on free power' as a comparison against a system that needs some creativity, nor I would take it as reference point for balancing.

But as said, I'm just a minority - looking at the popular mod-packs, I'd guess the majority of players doesn't mind side inserters, extra long inserters, underground belts with 50+ distance and so on. So I guess the general opinion favors convenience against creative puzzling.

[bobucles]

Instead of trying to find an inserter that can compete with bots, how about addressing the reason bots are SO good? NO matter what you do with inserters, it takes a finite amount of time for any inserter to perform any single action. Bots don't have this limitation. It takes a bot 0 time to grab from a chest, 0 time to deposit from a chest, and you can have literally a thousand bots attend to any single chest at once.

One inserter can't compete against a thousand bots! No amount of power on the inserter's end is going to change that. You have to change the BOTS.

For example, have bots use docking points on chests to grab or deposit items. Now instead of 500 bots power loading a chest, only a single bot can access a chest at a time. A half a second action suddenly takes 5 minutes to complete. Inserters can take about 5 minutes to handle a chest, right? Congrats, you've just placed them on the same order of magnitude as one another.

[Tev]

Hopper idea seemed very good. (belt upgrade with stack size bonus, simple items) And if I had to choose I would prefer loader instead of plain inserter ugprade.

Otherwise I'm kind of against both. Similarly as with train assymetricality these aren't really necessary upgrades to factorio. If you really want to balance something, make accumulators more expensive, and maybe make solar panels produce less power (which would as a side effect make bots a bit more expensive ergo belts less behind), but that's still not even close to real issues in factorio . . . Which imo are 1) better tips / tutorials / gui help for newbies 2) something to spend resources on in late game (preferably utilizing rockets) 3) combat / (mining) expansion grind in late game.

[Neok]

I think the main issue is that you cannot place any more inserters at some point and then bots are the only alternative. This does not apply to storage because generally you can extend that because space is not an issue. The problem surfaces when unloading a train or an assembler you simply cannot connect any more inserters.
So for inserters to compete with bots they need a faster tier above blue, or there need to be some larger buildings so you can connect more inserters.

To me the loader really adds a new gameplay tool (though maybe a bit powerfull) but I dont think it will change your actual factories much unless you want this. A new entity to play with that is very strong for storage purposes and unloading trains sounds like a cool addition to the game to me. The inserter should always be required to interact with assemblers. I think the loader hits the sweet spot on where the inserters cannot compete with bots and I doubt I will feel forced to use it to add a storage chest to each assembler mk1 making gear wheels. Especially if this loader cost a couple electric engines to build. Actually half the power from bots is that storage box at each assembler, so why not give belts a reliable alternative later in the game.
The heavy inserter adds nothing for me that a faster inserter couldnt do, so why not just make a faster inserter? To me that sounds like a much cheaper solution to the problem without adding something that might look or feel out of place.

[bobucles]

It's okay to have a part of your factory become limited by the power of inserters. There's no chokepoint problem you can't solve with more factory.

[MiiNiPaa]

Aside from too many factory.

[GeniusIsme]

Heavy inserter looks and feels contrived and unnatural. Loader, though, looks like well suited mechanism for the task of seamless, maximum throughput conveyor driver. And it does not make other inserters obsolete due to the fact that one cannot put different items on conveyor sides using loader. The other thing which should stop players from using loaders everywhere - increased resources cost, power consumption and awkward 2x1 size.

[Rockstar04]

For example, have bots use docking points on chests to grab or deposit items. Now instead of 500 bots power loading a chest, only a single bot can access a chest at a time. A half a second action suddenly takes 5 minutes to complete. Inserters can take about 5 minutes to handle a chest, right? Congrats, you've just placed them on the same order of magnitude as one another.

I would love to see a limitation that only one bot can access a chest at a time, even if the delay was only 0.1 seconds, it would still rate limit them enough to help with balance.

[_itg]

Instead of trying to find an inserter that can compete with bots, how about addressing the reason bots are SO good? NO matter what you do with inserters, it takes a finite amount of time for any inserter to perform any single action. Bots don't have this limitation. It takes a bot 0 time to grab from a chest, 0 time to deposit from a chest, and you can have literally a thousand bots attend to any single chest at once.

One inserter can't compete against a thousand bots! No amount of power on the inserter's end is going to change that. You have to change the BOTS.

For example, have bots use docking points on chests to grab or deposit items. Now instead of 500 bots power loading a chest, only a single bot can access a chest at a time. A half a second action suddenly takes 5 minutes to complete. Inserters can take about 5 minutes to handle a chest, right? Congrats, you've just placed them on the same order of magnitude as one another.

I'm in favor of this. If you wanted to do mass transport of goods via bots after this change, you could still do it by building a series of chests connected by inserters to get better "surface area" for the bots. To do it right with multiple item types in the chests, you'd probably need a circuit network. Seems like bots would still be very strong but less braindead easy.