Do we need faster belts?

[BurnHard]

And belts doesn't cost power, because when power goes off the belts won't feed the burners any more. No burners, no steam, no power, no coal, because the belts strike. It's the same reason, because pumps don't need power, because no water no steam.

Well, the burners have a 5-item storage (which would last for for at least the time the next coal piece comes by ^^), and if you screw up somewhere this massive that all of this coal is burned you could just start once again by carrying some pieces of wood or coal by hand to the next steam boiler.

[ssilk]

Hehee.. Once your factory is really big and only going with coal one piece of coal is really not enough to restart a cluster of lets say 40 steam engines. Needs about 5-10.
And with belts not running much more, I'm really sure.

But, well, I see this as option for a far future. But before that, we need many other things, but belts, that needs power.

[BurnHard]

When your factory is really that big, you will be at the point where you have some solar arrays, and hopefully some other electric generators like wind powered generators (which could start the first water- or oil pumps, we already had that discussion), or oil-powerd generators with attached large pressurised oil tanks, and so on, so that the belts would work somehow at least at slow speed. (just like the inserters slow down at low power and dont quit to work at all).

yes, I agree that at the moment there are things a lot more important to be implemented first. In fact I think that the development team will have to speed up their work at some point if they want to get out a balanced, feature-complete basis-game this year. (Which features real endgame content, where you could really need millions of ironplates etc, maybe big! automated killer robots that roam the area around your base, killing all those nasty biter-nests ^^) At the moment I can reach the rocket-defense goal with a main base not larger than one screen.

That leads to another point, on some other threads, we were discussing and looking at structures for processing maybe 2000-3000 iron ores per minute etc, but at the moment, thats just for fun, you could never use that amount of material for something useful. at the total endgame, for some freaks like us, we need some useful item-dumps, the need raw material of 5000+ per minute, even if its only some sort of endless research projekt

[ssilk]

Well, you may get at the limits of "normal" computers, with that. But yes, I see that also: after 0.9 more aims should be added.

[JackGruff]

Well, guys, after taking a break from Factorio for a month and coming back for the oil update, I can say that no, we don't need faster belts. I have actually been surviving with just fast (red) belts for now.

All it took was some more experience and smarter arrangement of production. So I change my mind completely

[GewaltSam]

I think we don't need faster belts at all. Okay, maybe like some told for things like defense, but I don't know if this isn't kind of "abuse", and if so, it's okay that you can at least run faster than the belts work.

For production: If you want to have an even higher throughput than you get with express belts, sure, just split the production. With a good train setup you can get nearly unlimited troughput, so why bother with even faster belts? I think if you integrate faster belts, more people would refrain of using trains and just build very long belt systems (they tend to do that right now also, I guess, but building trains gets more and more attractive after some factories ). And I think that takes away an important and fun part of the game.

[sciencemile]

I think if you integrate faster belts, more people would refrain of using trains and just build very long belt systems

http://www.conveyorbeltguide.com/Images ... andTop.jpg
http://www.tech-a.com/Assets/Images/ConvSystemLONG.jpg

People irl really love their long conveyor belts too ;P, dozens of miles long transporting phosphate from mines to coastal ships in the Sahara, or Bauxite Belts feeding Aluminium Smelteries in Australia...glorious. I'm like a pyromaniac when it comes to conveyor belts, I just can't stop watching the stuff move!

it can't cost that much to power conveyor belts if they're using them in lieu of alternative methods I guess.

[GewaltSam]

http://www.conveyorbeltguide.com/Images ... andTop.jpg
http://www.tech-a.com/Assets/Images/ConvSystemLONG.jpg

People irl really love their long conveyor belts too ;P, dozens of miles long transporting phosphate from mines to coastal ships in the Sahara, or Bauxite Belts feeding Aluminium Smelteries in Australia...glorious. I'm like a pyromaniac when it comes to conveyor belts, I just can't stop watching the stuff move!

it can't cost that much to power conveyor belts if they're using them in lieu of alternative methods I guess.

Nice pictures, didn't know that by the way. I am looking for some bigger versions of something like that right now - could use some new factorio themed wallpapers

[DarkenDragon]

hi all, so I just started playing a few days ago, and thought i'd put in my 2 cents in. after playing for a while, I noticed upgrading the belts was near pointless in most cases. mostly because my stuff was constantly getting backed up. the only time I ever felt the need to upgrade my belts was when I got to the point where I was creating so much iron that my input feed of raw iron was not reaching the end of my forges, but the raw iron was all backed up still to the point that some miners were not even producing any more due to how backed up it was.

then I realized, that the only reason to ever improve your belts was how long you make your production line. how long it takes to get from the first assembler/forge to the last one.

also this depends on the rate of which the item is being made.

so with iron and electrical forges. I found that if you do 2 forges with a gap in between for an electrical pole, and fast inserters. with no modules you'll get about 10 on either side (total of 20) before you will not get any iron at the end of the line. I would go no more than 8 per side after seeing all this.

so what does this mean for the faster belt? well the only reason you'd want a faster belt in terms of production, is if your making more than this amount per line. otherwise getting a faster belt would be pointless. other than getting to your destination faster, but then do we really need something like that when we have a car?

so upgrading your belts should be based on if your output is being consumed faster than you can make it, but your input production of that item is going so quickly that its constantly getting stalled due to backlog. thats when you should upgrade your belts.

if you still finding a choke point in your belt. then create a second line instead. of just having 1 line, that'll fix your problems.

[sciencemile]

I sometimes find I have to switch to a slower belt if I'm grabbing things off with an inserter; otherwise some of the slower inserters start getting jittery and won't be able to pick up anything as it moves past.

A specific point is just coming off my smelting line - Which is long enough that I'm confident in not having any total cloggings despite feeding stone, copper, and iron on the same beltline - where I put the stone bricks, iron plates, and copper plates on a single line.

I have to slow the line down from blue to yellow at one section so that my smart inserters can grab their associated materials off the line quick enough to avoid it getting past them and ending up in the wrong storage chests or creating a blockage somewhere further downstream. Probably a better solution to this but it saves space and is less thought-dense than alternatives I can come up with off the top of my head ;P

[ssilk]

http://conveyorbeltguide.com/

[ssilk]

I sometimes find I have to switch to a slower belt if I'm grabbing things off with an inserter; otherwise some of the slower inserters start getting jittery and won't be able to pick up anything as it moves past.

Use a splitter, side chain the flow and the inserter has enough time. An inserter which constantly tries to pick things up take more energy.