Friday Facts #276 - Belt item spacing & Script rendering

[Aardwolf]

More stable belt full detection is great.

But how about adding a way to start/stop belts or make item flow go to choice of output belt or choose item flow input to belt based on electric signals to control different item flows?

[Nova]

You can already do that. Connect a green / red wire to a belt piece and now you can control the activity of the belt.

[bobingabout]

On the down side... this is just more for me to change in my mod (The rebalance that changed all the belt speeds to round numbers, which will NOW result in unround numbers)

Look on the bright side. If you must rip out the speed overhaul that's less code and options you have to maintain

I still need something, because I put basic belts at the beginning, bumping all the other speeds up. I haven't figured out what yet though.

[Nova]

Is it possible to mod the item spacing? Maybe even different per belt type?

[Serenity]

Is it possible to mod the item spacing? Maybe even different per belt type?

Not the spacing. But there are mods that adjust the speed to integer values. Including mods that add the 0.17 values to stuff. So stuff moves faster, but it's not perfectly aligned or something to that effect

[Bilka]

Is it possible to mod the item spacing? Maybe even different per belt type?

No. Adding moddability would negatively impact the performance of all belts, even in vanilla.

[Nova]

That's sad, but very understandable. Thanks for the answer, Bilka.

... and I really like your avatar...

[tomikland]

Talking about the last gif:

Waaait... is all the unit selection and the "issue move command" text also handled by the scripting/script rendering? Because that would mean that there is some sort of access to the cursor's position. Is that still part of the gamestate? Do these sprites that are only visible to a particular player get synced across players?

Sad face

Because if this is the beginning of clientside modding, then it really does open a lot of interesting possibilities for mods to explore.

I have a dream mod that would now be possible... For the curious, it's alignment lines - helper... things, i don't know what to actually call them but they would help you align what you're trying to place with already existing entities by drawing relevant gridlines extending towards your mouse cursor. Actually, i'll try and make some concept art for this since i'm not sure if you can immediately understand the usefulness of such a thing...

[TheRaph]

Also, I think that ratio breaking updates should be MORE common. Factorio is a solved game and every multiplayer map is just people plopping down the same massive blueprints they didn't even make. And everybody just waiting for it to build.

I agree with this, look at nuclear power - 'perfect' ratios are almost impossible and thanks to it there are many different builds around, but then look at steam power with its perfect 1-20-40 (or whatever it was) - it looks the same every time, everywhere.

+1
I hope for more imperfect ratios... More challenge more fun - and no its not as worse for the beginner... Beginner typically use intuition more than math, if a belt runs empty they built more sources and if belt fills up, they built more sinks. And in late game they may like the challenge and do overwhelming complicated math on the ratio and have fun with it, or they hate to do the math and use bots instead... (or just download ready blueprints made by people who like to do the math ).

[sparr]

Waaait... is all the unit selection and the "issue move command" text also handled by the scripting/script rendering? Because that would mean that there is some sort of access to the cursor's position. Is that still part of the gamestate? Do these sprites that are only visible to a particular player get synced across players?

The existing mod system supports selector items that let you drag boxes around things. Lots of mods use it.

Not sure about the text, though.

[Matthias_Wlkp]

Also, I think that ratio breaking updates should be MORE common. Factorio is a solved game and every multiplayer map is just people plopping down the same massive blueprints they didn't even make. And everybody just waiting for it to build.

I agree with this, look at nuclear power - 'perfect' ratios are almost impossible and thanks to it there are many different builds around, but then look at steam power with its perfect 1-20-40 (or whatever it was) - it looks the same every time, everywhere.

+1
I hope for more imperfect ratios... More challenge more fun - and no its not as worse for the beginner... Beginner typically use intuition more than math, if a belt runs empty they built more sources and if belt fills up, they built more sinks. And in late game they may like the challenge and do overwhelming complicated math on the ratio and have fun with it, or they hate to do the math and use bots instead... (or just download ready blueprints made by people who like to do the math ).

+1 from me as well

In industry you never get perfect ratios. I would even welcome any kind of production inconsistency, like machine downtime/slowdown, ramp up for the first product, etc. Is there a mod for that by any chance?

[bobucles]

A belt buff is always good for me. Any news on if items can be stacked on belts? That'd be a hell of a belt buff.

Any buff to furnaces is also good. Bases do tend to be dominated by furnaces taking up a quarter or third of the real estate even with beacon builds, and players spend perhaps a bit too much time building the same furnace routine instead of focusing on new recipes. Buffing 3.5seconds to 3.0 seconds is a 17% buff to go with the belt's 12% buff. A yellow belt would take 45 furnace power which isn't a perfect symmetric match but it is a clean integer to work with. Once players go into beacon builds the numbers get all scrambled and have to be figured out from scratch anyway.

[Koub]

In industry you never get perfect ratios. I would even welcome any kind of production inconsistency, like machine downtime/slowdown, ramp up for the first product, etc. Is there a mod for that by any chance?

Not exactly what you're asking for, but :
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/zKenirasRandomRecipes adds some sort of randomness.

[KlauzWayne]

Dear Devs

What have thou done?!?
I fear you're on a really dangerous way. Even though my brain really likes the idea of 8 Pixels a lot more than 9, i fear you're breaking the game more than you think.
When i started playing factorio i quickly realized that there are different ways to build a production line:

Quick and dirty: f*ck ratios, i need it NOW!!!
Advanced: ok, i need about this many assemblers to compress a belt
Overengineered: so i spent additional 200 belt, 2 beacons and 4 Stack filter inserters to increase this assemblers throughput by another 4.78%, this just took me about 2 hours to figure out. Lets make a blueprint!

What i want to say:
By dampening the ratios to fit to each other you might kill the need for the last level.
The better everything fits to each other, the less effort it is to get it perfect.
This sounds nice first but i really think it's the charm of the game, that you never really get it perfect but get closer the more effort you put in.

A single change should not be that bad but i warn you not to slowly change this game into a clicker-game!!!

[Oktokolo]

By dampening the ratios to fit to each other you might kill the need for the last level.

There are mods for adding more complexity to every aspect of the game.

[Serenity]

The better everything fits to each other, the less effort it is to get it perfect.
This sounds nice first but i really think it's the charm of the game, that you never really get it perfect but get closer the more effort you put in.

This won't cause perfect ratios for everything. Some things will fit (green circuits is the best example). But others are slightly off. There are cases where you now need some extra beacons to make some assemblers faster. In some other cases you can remove a few beacons to slow down an assembler as you don't need its full speed to make up the last bit

[tungsten33]

Regarding belts too fast to see the items move: I would like to have a belt tier, wich is too fast to be directly inserted or picked up from by inserters. That tier would be an expressway for items to be used in buses only. You would have to merge/split from/to lower belt tiers to add/remove items to/from it.
Could even be the blue belt with speed increased to double that of red belts. And it would be fine if it would be hard or impossible to follow items on that express belts visually when zoomed in.

I like this idea a lot. Maybe a covered belt? Like the vacuum system for bank tellers? Or like an underground belt? No visuals to display either way.

[astroshak]

There’s a mod for that. There’s another mod for five new tiers of belts that are two to six times as fast as a blue belt, though these belts can be pulled from directly.

That said, do you bother to use red, or at least blue, belts as expressways to feed yellow belt assembly machine lines, using splitters to move stuff onto and off of the higher tier belts? If you’re not doing that already, why would you want to have to do it? If you are doing it, hows it working out for you in the areas that you’d benefit from feeding the machines with higher tier throughput?

I’ve never seen anyone take two yellow belt stone furnace columns and feed one red belt of plates. I have never seen anyone take three red belt steel furnace columns and feed two blue belts of plate. Both of those are possible as the game currently works, yet people are more likely to just have one column per belt, with enough furnaces to fill the belt with Plates. Only allowing you to merge onto/off of higher tier belts isn’t really necessary. Things work fine as they are.

[H8UL]

Regarding belts too fast to see the items move: I would like to have a belt tier, wich is too fast to be directly inserted or picked up from by inserters. That tier would be an expressway for items to be used in buses only. You would have to merge/split from/to lower belt tiers to add/remove items to/from it.
Could even be the blue belt with speed increased to double that of red belts. And it would be fine if it would be hard or impossible to follow items on that express belts visually when zoomed in.

I like this idea a lot. Maybe a covered belt? Like the vacuum system for bank tellers? Or like an underground belt? No visuals to display either way.

IRL for high throughput of bulk items over short distances we use pallets on rollers. As well as realism it'd have the advantage of still having an open belt animation and seeing what's "on" the pallet (really just an inventory with alt).

Optionally there could be the logistics challenge of packing/decanting the pallet, or pallet wrapping machines, which are kinda cool.

Or just simply direct insertion.

Cars on belts basically already do act like pallets with direct insertion, so technically it'd just be a quality of life/cosmetic version of something belts already do. But it'd look way more sensible. Cars on belts are ingenious, but I don't think many players can bring themselves to do it. As long as it's balanced vs trains I'd be well up for it.

[Unknow0059]

Why did you guys use 8 lights for each belt instead of 1?