Friday Facts #221 - 0.16 is out

[Koub]

[snip]

I think you might be judging too quickly. The main feature was the massive optimization on belts to help improve performance. the issue we experience now with compression is just an infortunate side effect. And compression by underground belt trick was that : just a trick. Wh don't know yet if compressing a belt will be something natural and straightforward, or if compressing it will become an inherent part of the puzzle :

We are going to have some discussions in the office about how should the belt compressing work, and what techniques should work and what shouldn't. I would personally prefer, to make the only way to compress two uncompressed belts by using a splitter, as all the other tricks are kind of unintuitive usages of bugs in the previous belt internals. Others think differently, as they want to make inserters and side-loading to compress automatically. I think that it would actually remove part of the emergent-gameplay and something for the player to learn as he/she explores the mechanics of the game, but I have to agree, that the game would be more comfortable to play. You are free to say your opinions in the comments

In the end, the devs will do what they think is best.

[Avezo]

Hope we will learn about final decision tomorrow, not anytime later.

[Koub]

Nobody can be sure, but I have quite realistic expectations that the world would still be there after tomorrow if that wasn't the case .

[mh_]

So, just after reading all that.
If you want compression just (pick one):
a) Use shorter length and use splitters to join.
b) Use circuit magic
c) Use mods

I'll explain:
a) mines: Do not use a single belt running through the hole mine, but output half of it in the other direction. Join by splitter. -> compression.
a) furnaces: Do not use the default 4xIron setup, just build 8xIron, and do them shorter, splitters to join.
b) circuit magic: learn it! Time the inserters to compress the belt just right. Even with the item creep bug this is possible. (see viewtopic.php?f=7&t=54693).
c) Obviously a lot want easy compression back. Go have it: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Klonan/belt_buffer

a) is easy and vanilla
b) is magic
c) is easiest

The changes were made to improve performance. And they did, massively. Like factor 5. People seem to think the devs just have a checkbox in the dev-gui saying "inserter compression", "side loading" or "underground belt compression". Please read the FFF or at least the wiki about belt physics to get a glimpse how hard this problem really is. The devs put in a sh*tt*n of work to make factorio running as smooth as it wondrously does.

[Engimage]

Every optimization has its tradeoffs in terms of lost features. The purpose of optimizations is making product better.
The question is whether these tradeoffs are acceptable or not. Do cons outweight pros or not.

I will give you some numbers to think about.
How many players out of whole playerbase have made a belt based megabase which hit UPS floor due to belt performance and got it fixed with optimizations? I do not expect you to know exact number but I can ensure you this is a pretty small minority of players (like 5% or so). 5% out of million is pretty damn much so I don't want to say this is not important.

However on the opposing side are say 95% of people using sideloading for different cool stuff and another pretty significant part of players who want compression to be simplified to mitigate underground trick loss.

So there is a fine line of how to make game better (maybe not 5 times batter but 2 times better) without hurting main player base. In this case making performance 2x better without nerfs is much better than making it 5x better while introducing nerfs.

[torham]

Its not just sideloading though, belt balancers let through gaps as well. before the update, if you had stack on one side of the belt balancer, it would balance the load and compress. Now the behaviour is erratic, and full of gaps. You have to massively flood the whole system with resources to actually achieve compression, and I mean that you have to have piles of resources just waiting at the splitter, on both belt lanes.

This is the first update in Factorio that I feel something has actually been taken out of the game to make it less fun. I do not play with mods, and I do not do circuits, so I have to settle for uncompressed belts. Its not a catastrophe, I can accept that, but it feels like a step backwards.

[Avezo]

Actually, it seems splitters don't work the same way as before either - standard 4-lane balancer in my new game doesn't seem to balance belts properly anymore.

[mh_]

Actually, it seems splitters don't work the same way as before either - standard 4-lane balancer in my new game doesn't seem to balance belts properly anymore.

Why don't you just test this?

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[uio]

Well in newer version there is no way that i know of how would i compress belt, and half belt goes unused because 'unloading' has 'nowhere to put' stuf. Its BS if you ask me, you coud do 24 furences and you knew they will work optimal all the time, now with same setup, last 10 furences dont even work, becouse belt is 'full'. I dont know what you mean by it's not intuitive, but now loaders still take whole belt of stuf, but when you produce, you cant compress it satisfactory to be useble. For me that is broken mehanic.

[uio]

Its not just sideloading though, belt balancers let through gaps as well. before the update, if you had stack on one side of the belt balancer, it would balance the load and compress. Now the behaviour is erratic, and full of gaps. You have to massively flood the whole system with resources to actually achieve compression, and I mean that you have to have piles of resources just waiting at the splitter, on both belt lanes.

This is the first update in Factorio that I feel something has actually been taken out of the game to make it less fun. I do not play with mods, and I do not do circuits, so I have to settle for uncompressed belts. Its not a catastrophe, I can accept that, but it feels like a step backwards.

yes i totaly agree. And problem with it is also that before balencer (which is spliter not a blencer mind it) it's inposible to achive full lane. so you need 2 lane to compres corectly to 1 lane, which is stupid as fuck. Now you cant even calculate what you need for full compresion anymore, becouse you need not one streight line but many so you can 'split' them to 1 lane to achive compresion. If that is intuitive ... i dont know what is.
I dont know why kov. even uses word balancers, it is not balencer it's a spliter that is main function.

[mh_]

Well in newer version there is no way that i know of how would i compress belt, and half belt goes unused because 'unloading' has 'nowhere to put' stuf. Its BS if you ask me, you coud do 24 furences and you knew they will work optimal all the time, now with same setup, last 10 furences dont even work, becouse belt is 'full'. I dont know what you mean by it's not intuitive, but now loaders still take whole belt of stuf, but when you produce, you cant compress it satisfactory to be useble. For me that is broken mehanic.

I just told you how to do this.

yes i totaly agree. And problem with it is also that before balencer (which is spliter not a blencer mind it) it's inposible to achive full lane. so you need 2 lane to compres corectly to 1 lane, which is stupid as fuck. Now you cant even calculate what you need for full compresion anymore, becouse you need not one streight line but many so you can 'split' them to 1 lane to achive compresion. If that is intuitive ... i dont know what is.
I dont know why kov. even uses word balancers, it is not balencer it's a spliter that is main function.

It is called balancer since it balances the two output obviously. To achieve o a full lane you have to combine two half full lanes, which is basic logic. You can easily calculate what you need. You can not insert to a 90% full belt, get used to it.

Please people. When posting to the forum you could at least do some spellchecking.

[Jap2.0]

Also note that there will be an improvement in UPS even with sideloading, and also that splitters divide the belts into segments, which has (a probably miniscule) impact on UPS.

[Avezo]

Actually, it seems splitters don't work the same way as before either - standard 4-lane balancer in my new game doesn't seem to balance belts properly anymore.

Why don't you just test this?

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At low load it seems to split evenly, but I would need to test it with some full belts where it seemed to choke for no reason. May try later but without creative mod updated it's so anoying.

[Zavian]

THere is a mod called something like "creative mode 0.16 fix" that is working for me (at least for my basic testing needs, it's possible that some parts of creative mode are broken).

[Tercicatrix]

Breaking compression on underground belts has been the worst. Having to build a billion splitters has been incredibly annoying and I hate it.

Forcing you to build splitters everywhere to get compression is not an interesting or fun problem, just a 'floorspace & iron tax' on your factory.
And how the heck are we supposed to design lane balancers now? The compression changes have been awful, ugly, and anti-fun.

My personal opinion is that EVERYTHING should compress belts automatically. Sideloading, splitters, inserters, underground belts, it all should 'just work'.
(At worst, I'd think it's fair if inserters were unable to insert into a compressed belt)

Having express belts turn out to be too fast for burner inserters to keep up with was a fun little discovery that kind of makes sense.
Having belt compression being arbitrarily complex to achieve is not an interesting 'problem'. It's not fun, and it doesn't need to exist.

[purdueme91]

Now that I have been playing 0.16 for a bit, need to add my 2 cents to this on a few of the changes.
1) belt compression. This really needs to be figured out/tweaked. The way everything runs right now is I get little gaps everywhere in my smelting columns that are just too small for an inserter to put something into and so they don't and I can''t get a full belt. I guess sideloading still works and haven't tried loading with splitters again.
2) the new feature where when you are laying a belt and it overwrites splitters and undergrounds. It seems like a good idea but it really isn't. My issue is when I am running and placing a new belt and hit another belt, get bumped off your path and you wipe out another belt/UG setup and your materials are mixing on your belts. Really really annoying. I hated the belt bumping mechanics before and this takes it to a new level. Not sure how to fix it except the special module in nanobot mod that you can research.
3) new landfill is also really annoying. Takes so much landfill and you get those little crescents that you have to landfill over and over. And then when it looks like you are done, you try to lay a belt and square turns red and you have to put down yet another landfill to get rid of one pixel of water
4) I love the new graphic upgrades and all the new doodads that you put in. However, the coal rocks blend in with some of them and it's a little hard sometimes to see the coal you are missing in a patch.
5) do see a drop in UPS with a lot of trees on the screen and when I am really zoomed out. Seemed to get better when I updated last (I'm at 16.13 and haven't downloaded 16.16 yet).

Otherwise seems to be a great update. Still just starting with buffer chests and haven't tried the artillery yet.