Version 0.15.8

[mophydeen]

Maybe that is just a typical main bus design because underground belts could always bridge 4 belts?

The UG yellow belt still has 4 tiles between ends. Usually the main bus is planned early in the game, and it's a lot of hassle to switch it to wider groups of belts.

And groups of belts that are powers of two feel more "natural" to the game: a connection of two pairs of UG belts is two tiles, splitters are two tiles, balancers look nicer for 4/8/16 belts.

he is right

[Lav]

And here we see the bad karma for doing a Friday release hit the developers.



Love the increased UG belt distances. Maybe they won't be that useful for the main bus, but they sure open up some new options elsewhere.

[Mehve]

Honestly have mixed feelings on extending the UG's. I don't think it was necessary, and the limitation was a core aspect of gameplay that made you think and learn new solutions. But in the end, I suppose it doesn't actually hurt me. I can definitely think of a few belt balancer designs that can compacted and streamlined.

I don't agree with the differing lengths, though. I consider it a minor art form to know when a section of a giant megabase doesn't actually NEED higher-tier belts, and this eliminates some backwards compatibility and arbitrarily forces higher tiers. In fact, I would have argued the opposite setup, with the yellow belts reaching further underground. That way, when you go underground, you have to choose between going fast or far.

[Bluebones]

When discussing the underground belt. Comparing it to a “main bus design” is the poor comparison when it comes to balance. Sure it will affect the look but I do not see how it will affect the game play when it comes to the main bus. The 3 things where I see changing the underground belt drastically are: How assembly machines are used and chained together. How belt balancers are used. Underground belt braiding will become much much more of a thing.

[moon69]

My trains don't re-fuel any more - inserter doesn't go even though train fuel is not full...

Affects 3 trains on two separate lines.

[neoc]

Am I just stupid or are underground belts still too cheap after the changes in 0.15.7 and 0.15.8?

First of all, we shouldn't say an underground belt has length 5 / 7 / 9 if it really is equivalent to 6 / 8 / 10 normal belts in length.

Belt costs are:
2 belt = 3 iron = 1.5 iron / tile
1 red belt = 11.5 iron / tile
1 blue belt = 31.5 iron / tile

In my opinion with the current lubricant costs, you can ignore lubricant when comparing costs. A tank of 25000 heavy oil (equivalent to 2500 in 0.14.x) gives 25000 lubricant which is enough for 625 express underground belt pairs, which is A LOT compared to the costs of heavy oil.

Underground belt costs are:
2 u-belt = 17.5 iron / 6 tiles = 2.92 iron / tile
2 red u-belt = 97.5 iron / 8 tiles = 12.19 iron / tile
2 blue u-belt = 257.5 iron / 10 tiles = 25.75 iron / tile

Fast underground belts are only 6% more expensive than fast belts. Ignoring lubricant costs as pointed out, express underground belts are 18.25% CHEAPER than express belts. That can't be balanced.

In my opinion underground belts should be 1.5 or 2 times as expensive as normal belts per tile for all belt tiers (considering only the iron costs).

[neoc]

Also I'd like to add that adding 40 / 80 wheels to the recipes of red / blue underground belts is probably not a good idea.

An assembling-machine-2 with crafting speed 0.75 would need 2*80*0.75 = 120 wheels per second to constantly craft blue underground belts. A stack inserter with +4 bonus (5 items pickup in total) has a throughput of about 10 items per second. So you would need about 12 stack inserters to feed this assembler - which is not even possible.

It would be better to balance underground belts with the corresponding normal belts.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Maybe that is just a typical main bus design because underground belts could always bridge 4 belts?

I was just thinking this would allow me to have much wider buses to allow for the materials that never needed bussing before, such as Coal and to some degree Bricks (I used to only use half a belt, now needs a full belt).

Though I'm baulking at the new cost. Will need to play another game from the start I guess (ha, my next game is no-belt run). Technically this makes sense for doubling the distance but you're not always going to use that distance, especially if just replacing existing belts which a lot of it will be so in terms of cost increase 1.5x would make more sense but see how we go I guess.

[gheift]

I also think, the express underground belt is still to cheap. It is also discussed here: viewtopic.php?p=268403#p268403

[FrodoOf9Fingers]

The express underground belts are prohibitively expensive. It really depends on your use case.

When trying to cross distances, they may out od above ground belts, but I use them in my factory as a method of compression. I can get 2 rows of electric furnaces operating from 3 spaces apart with no structures outside the formation by using lots of underground belts. Bumping up the cost really punishes these designs.

It would be nice if underground belts were an item used per square, rather than just the entrance and exit. That way, proper balancing could be done between use cases.

[neoc]

The express underground belts are prohibitively expensive. It really depends on your use case.

Did you even read my calculation? They are cheaper than using express transport belts on the same tiles.

When trying to cross distances, they may out od above ground belts, but I use them in my factory as a method of compression. I can get 2 rows of electric furnaces operating from 3 spaces apart with no structures outside the formation by using lots of underground belts. Bumping up the cost really punishes these designs.

The reason for that is that this design is not the design around which underground belt costs are balanced.

It would be nice if underground belts were an item used per square, rather than just the entrance and exit. That way, proper balancing could be done between use cases.

This would require the introduction of a new build mechanic since you can't do it (directly) with recipes. But of course, your method of building furnace factories is worth it, they totally should use their limited time on this proposal because building like this is so brilliant.

[Lav]

Did you even read my calculation? They are cheaper than using express transport belts on the same tiles.

I'm pretty sure you haven't examined the arguments of the other side properly.

How often did you use maximum underground belt distance even in 0.14? How often did you simply use UG belt to cross a single tile? How many uses were for intermediate distances?

When you charge the cost of 11 tiles for crossing a single tile, that's called prohibitively expensive. Not only fast belts are 8 times the cost for 2x speed, but then you also have to pay 7x the cost to cross a single tile.

Hence the various suggestions to actually take the covered distance into account. Whether per tile as FrodoOf9Fingers, or using another method as I suggested in related Balancing thread.

[neoc]

Did you even read my calculation? They are cheaper than using express transport belts on the same tiles.

I'm pretty sure you haven't examined the arguments of the other side properly.

How often did you use maximum underground belt distance even in 0.14? How often did you simply use UG belt to cross a single tile? How many uses were for intermediate distances?

When you charge the cost of 11 tiles for crossing a single tile, that's called prohibitively expensive. Not only fast belts are 8 times the cost for 2x speed, but then you also have to pay 7x the cost to cross a single tile.

The solution for this problem is to increase the lengths of red / blue belts to match 2 / 3 times the base distance of yellow undergrounds. And before 0.15.7 you could achieve this with Longer Underground Belt (Aligned). Now this mod needs an update to deal with the extra 40/80 wheels added to the red/blue undergrounds. For now I just hacked it myself:

Code: Select all

function my_underground_belts()
    data.raw.recipe["fast-underground-belt"].ingredients =
    {
        {"underground-belt", 2},
        {"fast-transport-belt", 12},
    }
    data.raw["underground-belt"]["fast-underground-belt"].max_distance = 11
    data.raw.recipe["express-underground-belt"].ingredients =
    {
        {"fast-underground-belt", 2},
        {"express-transport-belt", 18},
        {type="fluid", name="lubricant", amount=40},
    }
    data.raw["underground-belt"]["express-underground-belt"].max_distance = 17
end
my_underground_belts()

[FrodoOf9Fingers]

Did you even read my calculation? They are cheaper than using express transport belts on the same tiles.

I'm pretty sure you haven't examined the arguments of the other side properly.

How often did you use maximum underground belt distance even in 0.14? How often did you simply use UG belt to cross a single tile? How many uses were for intermediate distances?

When you charge the cost of 11 tiles for crossing a single tile, that's called prohibitively expensive. Not only fast belts are 8 times the cost for 2x speed, but then you also have to pay 7x the cost to cross a single tile.

The solution for this problem is to increase the lengths of red / blue belts to match 2 / 3 times the base distance of yellow undergrounds. And before 0.15.7 you could achieve this with Longer Underground Belt (Aligned). Now this mod needs an update to deal with the extra 40/80 wheels added to the red/blue undergrounds. For now I just hacked it myself:

Code: Select all

function my_underground_belts()
    data.raw.recipe["fast-underground-belt"].ingredients =
    {
        {"underground-belt", 2},
        {"fast-transport-belt", 12},
    }
    data.raw["underground-belt"]["fast-underground-belt"].max_distance = 11
    data.raw.recipe["express-underground-belt"].ingredients =
    {
        {"fast-underground-belt", 2},
        {"express-transport-belt", 18},
        {type="fluid", name="lubricant", amount=40},
    }
    data.raw["underground-belt"]["express-underground-belt"].max_distance = 17
end
my_underground_belts()

You seem to be stuck on the traveling vast distances use case. This is NOT a solution to the sudden sharp increase to cross a single tile with express underground belts.

By the way, using underground belts to less than their full distance is much, much more common than using them at exactly full distance. Hurting everyone so only 1 use case is nerfed is not how things should go (although, it's the only way currently possible). They should make underground belts variable in cost, and that would not be hard to do ( mechanics simular to this are already found in the railway system).

In response to asking the developers to spend time so that my one design is not nerfed as hard, I would like to point how that many people use simular designs, and make designs based on underground belt compression (both space compression and items on belt compression). This is creative engineering, a principle at the heart of the game. I am sure that the developers want to be encouraging this, not discouraging.

[neoc]

You seem to be stuck on the traveling vast distances use case. This is NOT a solution to the sudden sharp increase to cross a single tile with express underground belts.

By the way, using underground belts to less than their full distance is much, much more common than using them at exactly full distance. Hurting everyone so only 1 use case is nerfed is not how things should go (although, it's the only way currently possible). They should make underground belts variable in cost, and that would not be hard to do ( mechanics simular to this are already found in the railway system).

You don't need blue belts at all for furnaces, and it is very easy to build without undergrounds. If costs for building furnace factories are "prohibitivly high" with the current recipes, your design is faulty.

In response to asking the developers to spend time so that my one design is not nerfed as hard, I would like to point how that many people use simular designs, and make designs based on underground belt compression (both space compression and items on belt compression). This is creative engineering, a principle at the heart of the game. I am sure that the developers want to be encouraging this, not discouraging.

Did you see my code? Just mod the costs to your likings. It's fine if vanilla only covers the most obvious way to do things. If you want to do more exotic stuff either pay the price or mod vanilla.

[mp0011]

Show 0.7% in the uranium processing recipe instead of 0.0 for uranium 235. This generally works for any recipe that gives less than 1 of anything.

So, how do I know if 10 raw uranium ores is converted to 10 processed Uranium "chunks", not eg. 1 or 100?

[FrodoOf9Fingers]

You seem to be stuck on the traveling vast distances use case. This is NOT a solution to the sudden sharp increase to cross a single tile with express underground belts.

By the way, using underground belts to less than their full distance is much, much more common than using them at exactly full distance. Hurting everyone so only 1 use case is nerfed is not how things should go (although, it's the only way currently possible). They should make underground belts variable in cost, and that would not be hard to do ( mechanics simular to this are already found in the railway system).

You don't need blue belts at all for furnaces, and it is very easy to build without undergrounds. If costs for building furnace factories are "prohibitivly high" with the current recipes, your design is faulty.

In response to asking the developers to spend time so that my one design is not nerfed as hard, I would like to point how that many people use simular designs, and make designs based on underground belt compression (both space compression and items on belt compression). This is creative engineering, a principle at the heart of the game. I am sure that the developers want to be encouraging this, not discouraging.

Did you see my code? Just mod the costs to your likings. It's fine if vanilla only covers the most obvious way to do things. If you want to do more exotic stuff either pay the price or mod vanilla.

"Just change the game" is not a good market model. And this isn't exotic, this is normal uses of undergrounds. Using undergrounds for crossing vast distances is exotic.

[searker]

You don't need blue belts at all for furnaces, and it is very easy to build without undergrounds. If costs for building furnace factories are "prohibitivly high" with the current recipes, your design is faulty.

You do if you aim to get a fully compressed belt without using splitters / merges since inserters cant fully compress normal belt - only underground ones.

[neoc]

You don't need blue belts at all for furnaces, and it is very easy to build without undergrounds. If costs for building furnace factories are "prohibitivly high" with the current recipes, your design is faulty.

You do if you aim to get a fully compressed belt without using splitters / merges since inserters cant fully compress normal belt - only underground ones.

Fully compressed blue belts are completely optional, you don't need them. If your OCD is so bad just pay the price or mod the game.