Balancing of Capacities of Containers

[Ohz]

I like the idea to reduce size of chests, pushing us to stock things on special 2x2 or 3x3 warehouses.
If you want to stock, it's gonna cost you ressources, space and logistic, because I personnally believe you're supposed to run your factory smoothly, with small chest for buffers...

That's also push us to make bigger trainstation with space to handle huge stock, so wider trainstation like a tile or 2 wide for a dock, more realistic too.

OpenTTD mod:


And so you need special giant inserter to unload a train, if we make a wagon bigger capacity:


And why not a way to stock things is to use wagons:

[Ailure]

That is ton of waypoints in a row, not a station in openTTD.

Either way, while I don't mind how much you can fit in a container, I find that oil barrels are a bit too effective at storing oil vs how much space they take in stacks. 100 barrels take up 10 slots within a container, while containing as much oil as a storage tank. I was almost a bit disappointed how a fresh but remote oil pumping station would barely fill up the train with filled barrels even when the train had it's orders delayed to the max of 200 seconds (yes I like to have a good excuse to use more than one wagon on my trains ). Maybe it would be slightly better if they contained just 10 units of oil each (that's about how much a oil refinery consumes when refining), and would be max in stacks of five? (basically multiplying the required space by five) Even with this nerf, a level 2 assembly machine would empty barrels fast enough to feed 3.75 oil refineries (and most players don't seem to use more than two refineries from what I seen?).

[Slayn25]

My first playthrough I appreciated the generous cargo sizes of the character, boxes, and the car because if they weren't so generous I think the gameplay would become a little punishing/grindy while you are still learning the ropes.

However, for my future playthroughs I think I would prefer smaller capacities for everything except the trains because:
1. I identify more with the "unrealistic = not immersive = not fun" crowd.
2. Now that I know how the game works, smaller inventories would be just another logistics problem to solve. The idea of smaller inventories for everything but the train actually makes a new playthrough sound more appealing to me as I would have to rely more on the car in the early/mid game. (I crafted the car when I got the tech but didn't find it useful until the late game when I had claimed a lot of land)

Maybe a hard/realistic mode would solve this? (more likely a mod I'm guessing)

The Dark Souls player in me says give the character 1 slot, containers 1 slot, cars 5 slots, and the train of course would be the santier's spear/dual-avelyn wielding havel monster.

[Chao]

There's actually two issues to consider here I think, total items and variety of items. Trying to rebalance number of slots will have problems because as a player I don't really need thousands of plates but I do generally need a variety of items. Ditto for cars or tanks where I may well want a variety to start up a new base. Chests with a large number of slots are also great for emptying what im currently carrying.

So a suggestion here would be to not reduce the number of slots on chests and players but quarter the slot capacity for them. This would also be good for the early trap for new players of trying to hand craft or move lots of items and will push people into realising its time for more assemblers, more belts or time to start that train network.

Then to rebalance the trains give them deeper stacks (the same amount as currently). You could also have the warehouse type building people mention with the same increased stack depth, possibly with fewer actual slots for the large buffer and unloading scenarios. This also has a nice balancing decision between things designed for mass storage of a few things vs a few of many things.

[bobucles]

Perhaps instead of changing the slot count, perhaps the stacking size of items could be changed? Not too long ago assemblers were changed to store arbitrary amounts of materials in order to build things. Because of that change, the 200 stack of green circuits no longer has any reason to stay. A single slot could very well hold 20 circuits today and the major change for the player is to just liek build moar factory instead of stashing all these raw materials on hand.

The only thing that needs high capacity storage is a train car, and that can be taken care of without much difficulty.

[Levendi]

I wanted to open up a discussion about the imbalance of Storage capacities of chests, trains, etc.

Now, I am willing to overlook the personal inventory in this scenario, just to get that out of the way.

I like developing rail systems to transport most materials, and it's a bit disappointing that a cargo train hold LESS than a single steel chest. It would be nice for each cargo train to hold more than just 40 stacks. Perhaps the capacity can be upgraded, as to limit it from throwing the current balance of the game off, or chests should have a lower overall capacity.

[EditorRUS]

Firstly, this topic belongs to Balancing.

Now, about the issue. You are right, this doesn't make much sense for train wagons to have lesser capacity than chests. Not only do they have less capacity somehow, but they also take up much more space.
But I am willing to make a point here: train wagons are movable storage that can be used for automation, but chests are not. You can store things in wagons and you can also move these things around, which make this whole thing an actual proper transport system. Less capacity is required to keep things balanced.
Chests are static and cannot be moved. They are used to store excess or balance production. There isn't much use in them outside of this, you can't use them in logistics. That's why they have more storage capacity -- it's because you cannot move whatever is inside them which makes them useless in logistics. It's not "realistic", but it's needed.
Wagons (and belts, and robots), on the other hand, are a way to move things around. If they had a bigger capacity than they now, then it would be way too easy to set up a train network and it would also render many ways of transportation obsolete. They would also be a ridiculously cheap way of doing that too.

Cars are a middle ground. They have capacity that of two steel chests, but here is the thing: they cannot be automated. Well, they can actually, but this is more of an exploit and they are not supposed to be used that way. Basically they act as an expanded player inventory and 99% of time they are used for that.

I like developing rail systems to transport most materials, and it's a bit disappointing that a cargo train hold LESS than a single steel chest. It would be nice for each cargo train to hold more than just 40 stacks. Perhaps the capacity can be upgraded, as to limit it from throwing the current balance of the game off, or chests should have a lower overall capacity.

The thing about chests and wagons is that they are used for absolutely different things. That alone distinguishes them from each other and makes balancing them to be two separate tasks.
If you limit chest's capacity, you do nothing but force people to use more chests. There is almost never a problem that requires you to use something bigger than a steel chests. For most tasks even an iron chest is an overkill. There is no associated challenge with it, you only make it more annoying.


All in all, I consider current capacity of things to be balanced.

[Koub]

[Koub] Moved to Balancing and merged with older thread on the same topic.

[RiiDii]

The balance between cargo wagons, chests, cars, tanks, and the player has bothered me as well. It feels like the cargo wagon should just carry more because it is bigger.

That said, there are some other logic issues. For example, storing a chest, the size of a chest, inside a chest. Tardis anyone? Or, even worse, storing 3x3 assembly machines inside a 1x1 chest. I won't even get into the volume and weight of all the cr*p the guy is carrying. So, I figure there must be something going on that we just don't see; some sort of energy ray that converts stuff. My guess, this ray makes things smaller and turns them into little energy cubes - like the dehydration tech from Megamind.

Megamind Dehydrated Fish Thingy.png (162.75 KiB) Viewed 8769 times

Taking this idea a little further, perhaps instead of water, the shrunken factorio energy cubes are susceptible to vibrations. Just tossing them roughly to the ground causes things to revert back to their normal sizes and states. Chests have almost no vibrations, so you can store a lot without a lot of padding. Trains, on the other hand, have a lot vibrating going on, so a lot of the space is used to cushion these cubes against the rough train rides and occasional collisions. Tanks and cars need some cushioning because of blah-blah-unimportant-detailed-and-completely-made-up-explanation-blah-blah. And there you have it. It all makes perfect sense now.

[thereaverofdarkness]

This debate is going back and forth, saying the same two things:

1.) cargo wagon should carry more because it looks big
2.) cargo wagon should not carry more because that would make trains OP

Why not nerf the train in another area? The train moves like it's made from thin aluminum plates with an electric engine powered externally. It's way too fast and fuel-efficient. Why not increase the train's weight to a reasonable value? Then there's better reason to put more space on the train. Then increase the material cost of each car, and add a couple fuel slots to the engines. That will make the train more train-like, you know, heavy.

As for item storage, I think something like the Warehousing mod should be made vanilla, and it wouldn't hurt to reduce storage space of smaller chests after that. Once you start using large storage units for logistics, you won't want to go back. You can fit way more inserters onto one chest when it takes up more space. Also, there's a neat aspect to having storage actually take up a significant amount of space. The biggest problem with chests is that they're tiny, not that they hold a lot of stuff.

[bobingabout]

Give the cargo wagon massive story space (120 slots perhaps?)

Add a weight penalty per slot with something in it. (Yes, dynamic weight)

result:
Empty train runs like it does now
full train runs like a lead brick being pulled by a snail.
in actually, the fully loaded single wagon would weigh about as much as 3 or 4 do now, which is why having 3 or 4 times the storage space makes sense.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Regarding larger chests, one thing to watch out for there is that multi-space chests essentially function as faster belts (not quite infinite speed, but only capped by stack insert speeds). People occasionally use cars or stationary train wagons in this manner already. This isn't a major concern with 2x2 or 3x3 chests (which would be pretty similar to the car/wagon option anyway) but if you allow flexible chest shapes you can get some ridiculous options.

[Hannu]

This debate is going back and forth, saying the same two things:

1.) cargo wagon should carry more because it looks big
2.) cargo wagon should not carry more because that would make trains OP

Why not nerf the train in another area? The train moves like it's made from thin aluminum plates with an electric engine powered externally. It's way too fast and fuel-efficient. Why not increase the train's weight to a reasonable value? Then there's better reason to put more space on the train. Then increase the material cost of each car, and add a couple fuel slots to the engines. That will make the train more train-like, you know, heavy.

I agree this. Trains in Factorio are not like trains. They are some kind of ultra fast cargo tram system. I see that current choose give some elements in railway planning, because there must be very many very fast trains and player must avoid jamming. But I would prefer more realistic train logistics. Trains are slow but can haul huge amounts of stuff. Only large real factories need more than one train per a day to transport their raw materials and products. I would increase capacity of cargo wagon by factor of about 10 and limit acceleration, deceleration and speed to 80 km/h. Maybe rails could also be more expensive so that player could optimize between single track and double track layouts instead of 4 track systems wit crazy intersections. That would give a feeling about railroads and not toy train system. I would also increase energy consumption to be significant so that player would be motivated to create reasonable schedules. Currently it is just tedious work to put requester chest to all stops and one train to bring fuel to all factories, but it has absolutely no significance in base's energy budget.

[Lav]

After two pages worth of discussion, I still fail to see the purpose. Pretty sure I'm not the only one.

Current system has one important advantage: it works and it's familiar to everyone.

Perhaps a mod is in order by one of proponents of this change, then there will be something tangible to discuss.

Another funny thing: people advocate increasing the train capacity and decreasing chest capacity. But increased train capacity means less frequent train trips, with much higher peaks in cargo transportation, which greatly increases the need for train station buffering, which requires bigger chest sizes... Kinda self-contradictory IMO.

[leadraven]

Just saying, but why not to reduce chest's capacity 8 times?

• Wooden - 2
• Iron - 4
• Steel - 6

Need to store a lot of something? Design a warehouse (not too hard). Need some buffer storage? Place multiple chests. It will give better feeling of volume.
The only problem it will produce : it would be hard for player to empty his inventory into a chest. But if he needs to do it, he's doing something very wrong.

It's absolutely normal for player to have cheaty huge inventory. But chests have no reason to be a black holes.
What downsides of such change do you see? How will it affect your gameplay?

EDIT. Also more use for logistic network even if mainly focusing on belts and trains.
EDIT. Currently, vanilla feels like a mod with huge chests.

[ejg]

What upside of such a change do you see?

I think placing multiple chests with stack inserters between them to achieve the same capacity is not 'fun' and does not really increase complexity so in the end is just a decrease in quality of life.

Also, in my setups most of the time chests are limited already. So not really overpowered anyway.

[leadraven]

What upside of such a change do you see?

Well, yes, it's not good for a player. But cargo wagon has very limited capacity compared to chests. Why?
Most of the time players don't need huge chest capacity (and nearly never when automated).
It isn't good or bad, just a change for itself. To fit better the game capacity balance.

[Ranakastrasz]

What upside of such a change do you see?

Well, yes, it's not good for a player. But cargo wagon has very limited capacity compared to chests. Why?
Most of the time players don't need huge chest capacity (and nearly never when automated).
It isn't good or bad, just a change for itself. To fit better the game capacity balance.

Cargo wagons are limited (and not nearly enough I think) to avoid one train being able to carry huge amounts of resources. Obviously still unreasonablly large, but still smaller than chests.

Small inventories suck, are no fun, etc, etc. There was a mod that did this, but I saw no reason to use it. What would be the point?

[Serenity]

Steel chests are a bit ridiculous compared to cargo wagons. Overall there could be some reduction. But not by that much

[leadraven]

Small inventories suck, are no fun, etc, etc. There was a mod that did this, but I saw no reason to use it. What would be the point?

I don't suggest to nerf player's inventory, only chests.
Currently, vanilla feels like a mod with huge chests.

Steel chests are a bit ridiculous compared to cargo wagons. Overall there could be some reduction. But not by that much

Why not?) Do you really need more?