loader on cliff = hopper?

[golfmiketango]

What if the devs took the loader (or maybe always two loaders stuck together -- also, perhaps, for graphical reasons, the inputs and outputs might need to be made diagonal by one tile), and made a rule that the new item had to straddle a cliff, with the input at the top of the cliff and the output at the bottom? With the right graphics work this might finally be a way to introduce loaders into factorio without completely unbalancing the game.

[Tekky]

Should the player be able to place cliffs himself, then? Or should the player be unable to use loaders if he blows away all cliffs?

In principle, I like your idea that for loaders to work, one part of the loader should be located higher than the other part. However, cliffs seem like a bit too much elevation to me.

[golfmiketango]

There's a lot of ways one could imagine this being done but my thinking was limiting the player to doing it where a cliff has spawned would act as a constraint on when and where this can be implemented. Sort of like you need to find water to place an offshore pump and if you landfill in all your water, you have to go hunting for more.

[golfmiketango]

Was thinking visually of something vaguely like this:

[Tekky]

Yes, that photo indeed looks very good.

However, I'm afraid that being only able to place loaders on cliffs would be too much of a restriction and would give players more incentive to use bots instead of belts. See the bots versus belts thread for more information on why it is important to make belts more attractive for players, so that they use belts instead of bots.

Therefore, I am in favor of the graphics of the loader being changed so that it looks more like the photo that you posted. But I am against the loader being restricted to cliffs.

[golfmiketango]

Instead of building cliffs, one could imagine being able to construct a (probably mid-game) "reinforced concrete wall" or something, which appeared man-made but acted like a cliff in terms of its interaction with the terrain (and any hypothetical hopper entity).... anyhow just a thought.