Saying Hello and a feedback question

[Ako]

New poster here, enjoying the game a lot, got 200 hours played so far, main game is a 60 hour deathworld.

I was mainly posting because I was wondering if there's specific places for feedback - the 2 things I'm finding frustrating at the moment, being a bit of a tidy freak, are the fact that roboports and big electric poles don't have a 32 range. My base would be so much neater if I could build these 2 items at 1 per chunk!

So yeah, do the devs like feedback/suggestions and if they do could anyone point me to the correct place for suggesting them.

Cheers,
Ako

[Koub]

Hi and welcome on the forum,

The devs do read a lot of what's posted in these forums (maybe even all). The best place to submit an idea or a suggestion is ... in the Ideas and Suggestions Forum here.
I know it's kind of obvious . Amongst other things, feel free tu use and overuse the search, and even better advanced search in the Ideas and Suggestions subforum, especially in the frequent suggestions. You'd be surprised how many suggestions have been made by the 20k-ish forum members that have posted these last 4 years and a half.

I don't remember seeing yours (but a search will confirm that).

[Ako]

thanks Koub, I'll check out the suggestions forum as suggested

[quinor]

I in fact have suggested that for substations and it went into the game Substations now have 16 instead of 14 range and they span exactly one chunk now!

[Ifalna]

Speaking of little things that annoy the crap out of my neat-freak:

Our inserters being able to grab items from both lanes of a belt but apparently not being able to deposit on the lane closer to them, necessitating weird looking belt loops and other stunts to get the items where I want them to be.

Also, why isn't there a lane-based slitter in the game? (I know you can build one with underground belts)

Sometimes awkward auto-connects from belts (and pipes). (I'd love an optional hotkey-triggered manual placement mode)

Definitely a rage moment when you have one stupid auto-connection to a too close pipe flooding half your pipe network with the wrong fluid and having to reconstruct everything in order to get the damn fluid back out. >.<

[t-lor]

i frequently have to AM insert 2 different items onto 1 belt (eg inserters and yellow belt for green science)
making it so inserters can insert items on 2 sides of the belt would brake most bases and remove a lot of fun belt tricks from the game.

[Ifalna]

It would not break anything, if we could assign a lane of our choosing, It would streamline base design and eliminate some weird belt stunts in order to get our items onto the lane we want. make them pick the further lane by default but give us the option to choose otherwise if needed.

I mean seriously now: we are able to launch spaceships and build pocket sized fusion reactors. We should be able to program a friggin inserter to choose a lane we deem optimal. Oo

[Jap2.0]

It would not break anything, if we could assign a lane of our choosing, It would streamline base design and eliminate some weird belt stunts in order to get our items onto the lane we want. make them pick the further lane by default but give us the option to choose otherwise if needed.

I mean seriously now: we are able to launch spaceships and build pocket sized fusion reactors. We should be able to program a friggin inserter to choose a lane we deem optimal. Oo

If you did make it so you could choose, then it would have to default to the way it is currently (because most people prefer it this way and doing otherwise would break old bases), and then you'd have to add some interface to change it. Guess what? Lots of new players would never know the interface existed.

[nljr]

It would not break anything, if we could assign a lane of our choosing, It would streamline base design and eliminate some weird belt stunts in order to get our items onto the lane we want. make them pick the further lane by default but give us the option to choose otherwise if needed.

I mean seriously now: we are able to launch spaceships and build pocket sized fusion reactors. We should be able to program a friggin inserter to choose a lane we deem optimal. Oo

Welcome to Factorio. "There's a mod for that" is practically a mantra. There are some great mods for more specific inserter behaviors.

[Ifalna]

Guess what? Lots of new players would never know the interface existed.

Why should that stop the DEVs from implementing new stuff?

Ultimately it's all about writing proper tutorials to explain the games mechanics. Currently we only get thrown into the game wo/ much of a peep as to how things work and basically (unless we heavily browse forums etc) discover how stuff works via trial and error / by accident.

[Jap2.0]

Guess what? Lots of new players would never know the interface existed.

Why should that stop the DEVs from implementing new stuff?

Ultimately it's all about writing proper tutorials to explain the games mechanics. Currently we only get thrown into the game wo/ much of a peep as to how things work and basically (unless we heavily browse forums etc) discover how stuff works via trial and error / by accident.

Some people ignore tutorials and the controls screen and tips and tricks.

It would not break anything, if we could assign a lane of our choosing, It would streamline base design and eliminate some weird belt stunts in order to get our items onto the lane we want. make them pick the further lane by default but give us the option to choose otherwise if needed.

I mean seriously now: we are able to launch spaceships and build pocket sized fusion reactors. We should be able to program a friggin inserter to choose a lane we deem optimal. Oo

Welcome to Factorio. "There's a mod for that" is practically a mantra. There are some great mods for more specific inserter behaviors.

Yep.

[Ifalna]

Some people ignore tutorials and the controls screen and tips and tricks.

While it is most certainly true that many people ignore valuable information right in front of them (both in games an in real life), that kind of human behavior is quite irrelevant when it comes to game design in general and still not a valid reason against adding a simple "lane select" option to inserters.

To be blunt: You can't make a good game revolving around complex logistics and base design by "dumbing it down" so far that people never have to read a single tooltip.