[MOD 0.17] Deadlock's Crating Machine

[Recon777]

Any chance we could get a settings variable to determine the base crafting speed? I'm getting these gaps:

Shouldn't be happening since the last patch or two. Can't reproduce. Are you using any other mods? Need more info.

Alright, I reproduced it.

Took out all mods except crates and Bob's.

In the mod settings, Bob has this under Startup:
Bob’s Logistics Mod
Transport belt speed per tier
The default is 12.5 (he slowed them down from Vanilla) and I bumped it back up to 15.

This setting is reflected in the Deadlock Loaders and stacking beltboxes, but not the crating machines.
https://i.imgur.com/KtGuiJw.png
https://i.imgur.com/bfOZsu9.png

Could you have the crating machines reflect the value put in this setting if it exists?

[edit]
Hold on... My setting got bumped back down to 12.5 so maybe it's something else. Testing...

Confirmed. Deleted all mod settings and just have Bob's installed + the various deadlock stacking/crating mods.
This issue happens regardless of the settings.

[edit 2]
If I take that setting for belt speed and lower it below the default of 12.5 down to 10, the gap goes away. So the crating machines definitely need to account for this setting as it determines belt speed when using Bob's Mods.

[Deadlock989]

shanemadden might take a look at it if you ask him nicely. I'm way too far gone to run around after Bob.

[shanemadden]

Ahh yeah, Bob's belt speed overhaul setting.. just dealt with this one in the other mod a couple weeks ago. I'll plan on adding the same speed syncing hook for DCM, it'll probably be this weekend or so before I have time to add it and test.

[Recon777]

shanemadden might take a look at it if you ask him nicely. I'm way too far gone to run around after Bob.

I fixed the recipe issue, though I'll have to dig a bit to learn how to fix the speed.
I don't suppose you could expose an add tiers function in your mod so other mods could add more machines?

[Recon777]

The upgrade planner doesn't work with these.

Crating Machine 1 becomes an Assembling Machine 2
Just need to add the upgrade planner definitions.

We've fixed it in our Bob-integration mod, if you want to just copy over the code into the base.
Also made them their own subgroup in the build menu, fixed speed, recipes, etc.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/deadlock- ... tegrations

[Deadlock989]

The upgrade planner doesn't work with these.

Crating Machine 1 becomes an Assembling Machine 2
Just need to add the upgrade planner definitions.

We've fixed it in our Bob-integration mod, if you want to just copy over the code into the base.
Also made them their own subgroup in the build menu, fixed speed, recipes, etc.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/deadlock- ... tegrations

That's one way of handling it ... but you've copied the definitions wholesale, which means that if the base tiers 1-3 ever change, yours won't catch any of the changes. You've already missed a recent change in DCM 1.4.4 which changed the animation layer order (caused rare/random flickering glitches in current/previous versions of 0.17, but I bug-reported it and it'll be fixed without needing the layer change in next experimental 0.17). It would be better if you copied the tier 1 machine and then tweaked only those parameters that need tweaking.

I've put in a pull request to shane that builds the entity from scratch instead of inheriting any old junk from the assembling machines, added distinct fast-replace group and next-upgrade.

[Recon777]

The upgrade planner doesn't work with these.

Crating Machine 1 becomes an Assembling Machine 2
Just need to add the upgrade planner definitions.

We've fixed it in our Bob-integration mod, if you want to just copy over the code into the base.
Also made them their own subgroup in the build menu, fixed speed, recipes, etc.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/deadlock- ... tegrations

That's one way of handling it ... but you've copied the definitions wholesale, which means that if the base tiers 1-3 ever change, yours won't catch any of the changes. You've already missed a recent change in DCM 1.4.4 which changed the animation layer order (caused rare/random flickering glitches in current/previous versions of 0.17, but I bug-reported it and it'll be fixed without needing the layer change in next experimental 0.17). It would be better if you copied the tier 1 machine and then tweaked only those parameters that need tweaking.

I've put in a pull request to shane that builds the entity from scratch instead of inheriting any old junk from the assembling machines, added distinct fast-replace group and next-upgrade.

Pawz did most of the coding, but from our discussions, the impression I got was that there was no other way to do it because your base mod doesn't expose any functions that could add tiers.

[Deadlock989]

Pawz did most of the coding, but from our discussions, the impression I got was that there was no other way to do it because your base mod doesn't expose any functions that could add tiers.

I just gave you a better way. Deepcopy the tier 1 machine and edit only the parameters you need to.

I'm not adding a tier API to DCM myself. Personally, I think 60 item/s belts and beyond are a suspect idea in the first place. The whole point of crating and stacking was that you can get many more items through a belt without adding N tiers of mega-hyper-belt. Crates-on-uber-belts is literally double dipping. A five-speed belt full of crated copper cables would deliver the equivalent of 3,000 cables per second. I think that's ridiculous. 1,800 on a blue belt is bad enough.

If it's input from a super-belt that bothers you, just split the belt and have two crating machines handle it. Factorio isn't supposed to be about having magic one-off boxes that solve all your logistics issues for you.

I'm happy for Shane to port DSB's tier API over to DCM if he wants to take that on, but it will be a lot of boring work for very little personal gain or indeed thanks, and to be fair this is not a popular mod, so I'd totally understand it if he didn't.

[Recon777]

Pawz did most of the coding, but from our discussions, the impression I got was that there was no other way to do it because your base mod doesn't expose any functions that could add tiers.

I just gave you a better way. Deepcopy the tier 1 machine and edit only the parameters you need to.

I'm not adding a tier API to DCM myself. Personally, I think 60 item/s belts and beyond are a suspect idea in the first place. The whole point of crating and stacking was that you can get many more items through a belt without adding N tiers of mega-hyper-belt. Crates-on-uber-belts is literally double dipping. A five-speed belt full of crated copper cables would deliver the equivalent of 2,400 cables per second. I think that's ridiculous. 1,800 on a blue belt is bad enough.

If it's input from a super-belt that bothers you, just split the belt and have two crating machines handle it. Factorio isn't supposed to be about having magic one-off boxes that solve all your logistics issues for you.

I'm happy for Shane to port DSB's tier API over to DCM if he wants to take that on, but it will be a lot of boring work for very little personal gain or indeed thanks, and to be fair this is not a popular mod, so I'd totally understand it if he didn't.

First, again, I didn't do most of the coding. Just the recipes and some minor fixes. I'll see what Pawz wants to do with the deepcopy option, if anything. It may very well work smoothly as you suggest.

Next, I think you've made some assumptions about what we're trying to achieve and why a faster crating machine is actually useful. First, we're not trying to saturate a fast belt with crated items. I realize that's ridiculous. But... it IS useful to be able to output onto fast belts which are needed to feed assembly sections. To be honest, we don't use the crating machines to get more items onto a single belt. We use them in conjunction with logistics bots to deliver materials into difficult to reach places and then produce a mini bus on the other side that feeds assemblers making various things.

With Bob's Mods, there are over 20 raw materials, each of which produces at least one (often more) refined materials. And then there are intermediate products, which add up to probably another 20 or so. So to really make a singular "base" which actually utilizes all Bob's materials while making use of a main bus, that bus is going to be enormously wide. I've done this very thing in my .15 game, and it gets really crazy. This is even with a ton of factorissimo buildings, which was necessary in order for the extra wide bus to be feasible.

Point here is that there are a lot of cases where you want to deliver maybe a dozen different items to a particular location in decent quantities. Bots + crating works fantastic for this because it can bypass your maze of belts ferrying things around. When you've got 60+ different types of materials going all sorts of places, bots are really your best option. And crating allows for you to not need 20,000 bots in order to do it with sufficient quantity.

[Deadlock989]

To be honest, we don't use the crating machines to get more items onto a single belt. We use them in conjunction with logistics bots [snip]

When I first made this mod, I asked the devs to give us an event or parameter which blocked bots from picking up specific items, so I could block them from moving crates.

Luckily for you, they refused, citing performance.

You can guess which side of the bots vs. belts war I was on.

Bob's over-design is not my problem.

[Recon777]

To be honest, we don't use the crating machines to get more items onto a single belt. We use them in conjunction with logistics bots [snip]

When I first made this mod, I asked the devs to give us an event or parameter which blocked bots from picking up specific items, so I could block them from moving crates.

Luckily for you, they refused, citing performance.

You can guess which side of the bots vs. belts war I was on.

Bob's over-design is not my problem.

In vanilla, I'd agree. There are FAR fewer item types you need in mass quantities in one spot in vanilla. So I would prefer belts in that scenario. I'm more belts > bots myself in general because I really enjoy SEEING the flow of materials in a factory.

However, Bob has complicated things to such a degree that you really do need DOZENS of different types of materials delivered to a small area in large quantities. Doing this with belts is so difficult that it crosses the fun/tedious boundary. But that doesn't make me want to stop playing Bob's. I really enjoy the challenge of the intermediate builds the player needs to come up with. Usually, you can get away with requiring under ten different types of materials for making a lot of a particular thing. In a megabase, they would be shipped in by rail in vast quantities. But trains actually behave more like bots, if you think about it.

The problem is that if you're making a large non-mega base that does all the Bob stuff, you're pulling all the materials everywhere, which is not feasible with a bus. I mean look at this thing. https://i.imgur.com/ndJgfeI.png That's not even the whole width.

Crating solves this nicely by allowing us to create customized mini busses in certain places, supplied by bots and avoiding having a bus so wide you can't even see its full width on the screen at the same time. I honestly don't know how other bob players do it.

[mrvn]

I mostly try to build and use up intermediates on the spot. Especially those where there is more output than input like resistors need to be moved directly from assembler to assembler. Don't put those on a belt or the bus. Also don't put anything with only one (or two) uses on the bus. Build it as needed.

With stacking or crating it also is often better to build stuff on the spot. For example a lot of times you need iron gear wheels you also need iron plates. Better to send a few more crates of iron plates than have an extra belt for gears and build the gears as needed in the right ratio. You don't need every single intermediate on the bus. Figure out some essential items to put on the bus and build intermediates on the spot even if you have to build the same thing several times. It's easy to copy&paste sub units.

[McDuff]

By the time i get the technology to build a crating machine 1, it will be pointless to use it since i will be already using express belts, so i will just go straight to Crating Machine 3... that makes Crating Machine 1 & 2 redundant. It costs Red and Green Science packs to unlock the technology for crating machine 1, but the materials to build a crating machine 1 require Blue Science packs, and Blue Science Packs gives me Express Stack Inserters and Belts, a Crating Machine 1 should require regular Inserters+Engine Units+Assembling Machine 2+Steel a Crating Machine 2 should require Fast Stack Inserters+Electric Engine Units+Assembling Machine 3+Crating Machine 1+Steel, and the Crating Machine 3 should require Express Stack Inserters+Assembling Machine 4+Crating Machine 2+Steel+Something else, I agree it should be expensive, for that quantity can be adjusted, not locked behind technology.

Maybe its some sort of bug with Bobs mods, since it has 2 more levels of logistics, yet you have crating machines only up to level 3 logistics.

Your stacking beltboxes and compact loaders have 5 machines for each logistics level.

*shrug* I didn't balance the crating machine recipe for other mods and whatever changes they might make. I don't know what an "express stack inserter" even is.

Instead I wrote code that lets third party add-ons crate their stuff up easily. Bob and Angel support is provided by such an add-on. The add-on is responsible for making this mod compatible with whatever other mod, in terms of what is packable, what the machine recipes are and so forth.

But there is no support for higher tiers of belt in Crating. DSB does, but not this mod. A five-speed belt full of crates would have the same throughput as 100 yellow belts or more. Got no interest in trying to make that happen, myself.

My usual use case with beltboxes is that I have a fast belt running into the box and a slow, cheap belt to transport the stacks long distance.

So an express or ultimate crating machine would be for the purpose of keeping up with a express belt or ultimate belt of raw items. Not to produce an express or ultimate belt of crated items. It's only 4-5 yellow belts worth per crating machine. How many you then combine to fill a belt and at what speed is another matter.

Yes, but if you really want to do that you can split the belts and route them into two crating machines, same as using two yellow beltboxes to compress a red belt if that's all you've got.

[mrvn]

By the time i get the technology to build a crating machine 1, it will be pointless to use it since i will be already using express belts, so i will just go straight to Crating Machine 3... that makes Crating Machine 1 & 2 redundant. It costs Red and Green Science packs to unlock the technology for crating machine 1, but the materials to build a crating machine 1 require Blue Science packs, and Blue Science Packs gives me Express Stack Inserters and Belts, a Crating Machine 1 should require regular Inserters+Engine Units+Assembling Machine 2+Steel a Crating Machine 2 should require Fast Stack Inserters+Electric Engine Units+Assembling Machine 3+Crating Machine 1+Steel, and the Crating Machine 3 should require Express Stack Inserters+Assembling Machine 4+Crating Machine 2+Steel+Something else, I agree it should be expensive, for that quantity can be adjusted, not locked behind technology.

Maybe its some sort of bug with Bobs mods, since it has 2 more levels of logistics, yet you have crating machines only up to level 3 logistics.

Your stacking beltboxes and compact loaders have 5 machines for each logistics level.

*shrug* I didn't balance the crating machine recipe for other mods and whatever changes they might make. I don't know what an "express stack inserter" even is.

Instead I wrote code that lets third party add-ons crate their stuff up easily. Bob and Angel support is provided by such an add-on. The add-on is responsible for making this mod compatible with whatever other mod, in terms of what is packable, what the machine recipes are and so forth.

But there is no support for higher tiers of belt in Crating. DSB does, but not this mod. A five-speed belt full of crates would have the same throughput as 100 yellow belts or more. Got no interest in trying to make that happen, myself.

My usual use case with beltboxes is that I have a fast belt running into the box and a slow, cheap belt to transport the stacks long distance.

So an express or ultimate crating machine would be for the purpose of keeping up with a express belt or ultimate belt of raw items. Not to produce an express or ultimate belt of crated items. It's only 4-5 yellow belts worth per crating machine. How many you then combine to fill a belt and at what speed is another matter.

Yes, but if you really want to do that you can split the belts and route them into two crating machines, same as using two yellow beltboxes to compress a red belt if that's all you've got.

I just wanted to mention these 2 points:

1) An express belt of crates might be insane. But a yellow belt full of crates not so much.

2) To uncrate to fill an express belt without having to split the belt into tons of entites you need a uncrating machine that works at express belt speed. Splitting and merging with 3 in/out belts per crating machine is unwidely.

I agree with Fenzier that crating machines for each tire should be buildable within that tire. But that is probably something for the Bob integration mod to fix. It should be like the belt boxes. Each tires belt box can fill/empty a belt of the same tire and requires items from that tire and before.

Note: I locally changed the belt boxes a bit to take the splitter recipe as basis for their own recipe. That gives really nice sequence of ingreediences.

[Deadlock989]

If it's input from a super-belt that bothers you, split the belt and have two crating machines handle it. Factorio isn't supposed to be about having magic one-off boxes that solve all your logistics issues for you.

2) To uncrate to fill an express belt without having to split the belt into tons of entites you need a uncrating machine that works at express belt speed. Splitting and merging with 3 in/out belts per crating machine is unwidely.

Then it's unwieldy. So are 48-furnace arrays and I don't see many complaints about those. That's just the way it is. This mod is based on vanilla and it provides a minimal API for other mods to do things with. Adding new tiers of machine is not one of those things and I am not giving up my leisure time to add it because I don't see the need. It is not Stacking Beltboxes and it doesn't have to be anything like Stacking Beltboxes. If you don't like it, change it yourself, or use Pawz and Recon777's mod.

That's my final word on this subject.

[mrvn]

If it's input from a super-belt that bothers you, split the belt and have two crating machines handle it. Factorio isn't supposed to be about having magic one-off boxes that solve all your logistics issues for you.

2) To uncrate to fill an express belt without having to split the belt into tons of entites you need a uncrating machine that works at express belt speed. Splitting and merging with 3 in/out belts per crating machine is unwidely.

Then it's unwieldy. So are 48-furnace arrays and I don't see many complaints about those. That's just the way it is. This mod is based on vanilla and it provides a minimal API for other mods to do things with. Adding new tiers of machine is not one of those things and I am not giving up my leisure time to add it because I don't see the need. It is not Stacking Beltboxes and it doesn't have to be anything like Stacking Beltboxes. If you don't like it, change it yourself, or use Pawz and Recon777's mod.

That's my final word on this subject.

I never said you have to fix it. I said:

But that is probably something for the Bob integration mod to fix.

. No need to get upset.

[Deadlock989]

I'm not upset. Just really, really bored of getting e-mails alerting me to the same thing over and over. Please change the record.

[mrvn]

I'm not upset. Just really, really bored of getting e-mails alerting me to the same thing over and over. Please change the record.

Maybe make sticky threads for angels, bobs, ... mod integration and unsubscribe from them. That way we can talk about those there withut you getting bored.

[Deadlock989]

Maybe make sticky threads for angels, bobs, ... mod integration and unsubscribe from them. That way we can talk about those there withut you getting bored.

I can't make sticky threads. I think you're confused.

But yes, please go somewhere else and talk about other mods there.

[ssilk]

Hi, I want to say, that I really like this mod, especially
- the idea of balancing the crating machines with the speed of the belts
- using the wooden chest as box
- the graphics of the crating machine.

But I played a lot with boxing mods around (and with "a lot" I mean thousands of hours) and compared to them,
I don't like the following things:

- The ridiculous amounts of wooden chests needed.
- The small amount of items matching into one chest.
- No advantage in transport for lokomotive.
- No advantage for storing overflow-items.
- Because the number of items in the chests is so low, there is no way to create "One-belt factories" (I also know them as "compact factories", where all items are "swimming" on one belt, like oxygen in the blood). This is possible with other boxing-mods.
- And because of that also not very FPS-friendly

So I would suggest some changes in balancing, which are:

1. Multiply amount of items in chests by 2 to 5.
The right factor is part of further balancing.
This means for example for iron that the chest can transport 20 to 50 items instead of 10.
This should reduce the needed number of wooden chests by more than factor 1.5-4.5 (!!). Which also reduces CPU-usage and number of items, which are "stored on belts" instead making useable in the machines.

This enables also one-belt factories.
And it would make transport by bots a bit more useful. I don't see any reason to forbid transport by bots. it depends.

2. Increase the stacksize of filled chests from 5 to 20.
This would enable
- to pack items before storing (because of enery usage this makes currently no sense)
- to use "packed trains" to transport items over long distances, which is in my opinion a very interesting gameplay, cause you need a gigantic amount of empty chests.

3. Reduce the size of the crating machines from 3x3 to 2x2.
This would reduce the needed space for the crating a lot. And would make the gameplay more puzzling and fluid.

4. Add a recipe for crating chests.
Put 20-50 chests into one.

My two cents.