Better Compression (Stacking/Boxing/Pallets) Support

[NotRexButCaesar]

i dunnooooo, in real life we have this thing called technology and we advance it - one advancement is in packing techniques. you can see where i'm going with this.

the one person who's really vocally against compression here thinks it's game-breaking but wants to tell others the way the game should be played - i.e. 'by the time you get to this stage, you should be doing this, and then do that'.

yanno, the whole fun of this game is how many multitudes of options exist to get from point A to point B. you want to make train city? no one's stopping it. bots only? it's been done. no belts? you might be called brave.

the other thing is how good it feels to advance technology and see more ways to increase throughput. some people might go ahead and redesign around packing, others can choose the challenge of foregoing it. it could be a late-game addition in a post-space world. what kind of space age society doesn't know how to crate items?

What I’m saying is that if compression were implemented, everyone would be “forced” to use it, as it would become the most efficient method. I don’t want all the work I put into making highly efficient blueprints to be destroyed by a new feature.

I wasn’t telling anyone how to play the game. A person expressed frustration about laying belts, and I gave a suggestion: use trains instead.

The fun of the game for me is creating blueprints. I’ll admit that blueprints are a result of game mechanics, but adding compression doesn’t add a new way to move things anyway, it would just be taking an existing one and multiplying the throughput by x.

Said space age society does(chests and wagons). It just doesn’t move the crates around on belts.

I think the 1(2?) people arguing for it should judge the validity of an argument by its quality, not by the number of people who hold it.

[ptx0]

What I’m saying is that if compression were implemented, everyone would be “forced” to use it, as it would become the most efficient method. I don’t want all the work I put into making highly efficient blueprints to be destroyed by a new feature.

like the logistic robots that are unlocked around utility science? a lot of people feel like making a "mall" using belts is pointless torture. others choose to take that challenge on. i don't think you should worry about this. and then the rest of your argument is just silly!

[NotRexButCaesar]

What I’m saying is that if compression were implemented, everyone would be “forced” to use it, as it would become the most efficient method. I don’t want all the work I put into making highly efficient blueprints to be destroyed by a new feature.

like the logistic robots that are unlocked around utility science? a lot of people feel like making a "mall" using belts is pointless torture. others choose to take that challenge on. i don't think you should worry about this. and then the rest of your argument is just silly!

Can you tell me what is silly about it?

[ptx0]

Can you tell me what is silly about it?

because the fundamental basis of it is that a new way to do things that are more efficient will be the only way people play. this is silly, and i will demonstrate.

trains are more efficient than belts or bots, and you'll see users not wanting to use those, either. they're complex.

if you require empty crates and return them when materials are unpacked, it's roughly equivalent to barrelling for fluids - they allow players to bypass CPU use issues of pipes, or just plain avoid throughput issues of pipes. it's actually far better to use barrelling for petroleum gas movement with plastic production. you can easily make ratio'ed assembler blueprints that each consume a full pipe. when I was doing modded 1 million science per minute, barrelling petgas for plastic was the only way to make it work.

heck, you will see players who make a 'pipe bus' where they run absurdly long pipelines, just to avoid having to either barrel OR use trains. it's probably too early for them to have bots..

you'll have to find a different reason to hate on it.

ninjaedit: I don't really care for blueprints

[NotRexButCaesar]

Can you tell me what is silly about it?

because the fundamental basis of it is that a new way to do things that are more efficient will be the only way people play. this is silly, and i will demonstrate.

trains are more efficient than belts or bots, and you'll see users not wanting to use those, either. they're complex.

if you require empty crates and return them when materials are unpacked, it's roughly equivalent to barrelling for fluids - they allow players to bypass CPU use issues of pipes, or just plain avoid throughput issues of pipes. it's actually far better to use barrelling for petroleum gas movement with plastic production. you can easily make ratio'ed assembler blueprints that each consume a full pipe. when I was doing modded 1 million science per minute, barrelling petgas for plastic was the only way to make it work.

heck, you will see players who make a 'pipe bus' where they run absurdly long pipelines, just to avoid having to either barrel OR use trains. it's probably too early for them to have bots..

you'll have to find a different reason to hate on it.

ninjaedit: I don't really care for blueprints

It is the way I play. I am speaking from my own perspective.

Secondly, you said "the rest of this arguement is just silly". The rest. So not the part you criticized.

[ssilk]

This suggestion doesn’t force anybody to be used. As long as you don’t use any compressed item the whole game works exactly as before!

Experience show that a lot of players will not use it. And on the other hand it gave you a lot more opportunities to create efficient blueprints. In other words: more stuff to play around with.

Efficiency is relative to what you need to invest before - and it is part of good balancing to make costs of compression so, that it isn’t too cheap.

[ptx0]

It is the way I play. I am speaking from my own perspective.

Secondly, you said "the rest of this arguement is just silly". The rest. So not the part you criticized.

you are the one yourself who said "what i'm saying, is..." if you don't want to boil your argument down to that one thing, then you'll have to do a better job on clarifying what your point is.

is it the blueprint thing? that's your personal preference, plenty of blueprint books out there have tiers for each level of the game. you can't ratio everything from the beginning anyway, the different levels of belts require different builds.

so, what is it that you're upset about?

[NotRexButCaesar]

You say that building belts without blueprints gets repetitive, but you shouldn’t be doing that. You should make trains. The challenge of increasing throughput is a fun and interesting part of the game. And by the time you are building 16 belts at a time, you should be using bots and blueprints, and have an automatic belt supply system.

Well, perhaps I need to explain the dimensions I normally play with:
Screenshot 2020-08-03 at 00.21.16.png

The peak here is around 310k per minute iron ore production. That would need over 400 express belts in a row to be able to smelt it.

Building that is definitely no fun!

Rather than argue against the negatives, give some obvious benefits: ones that outway the negatives.

O.K.: With (current) compression I need only around 16. I already said I think this is a bit overpowered, but I think 32 is really enough for any Factorio game. More isn't just fun.

I don't know. It's hard to explain someone the benefits of a truck, who is used to drive bicycle.

I personally really hope compression doesn’t get implemented: I would be almost obligated to redesign everything around it. Though it may be “good” in that it allows much greater throughput, it is not good in that it would be fun to use.

A larger factory does not necessitate more manual belt placing/ghosting. Many people build small bases and tile them for this (among other) reasons. A large factory is not a good reason to be placing many belts by hand. and you are already playing with compression mods? Do you want to further compress your compressed items?

Aside: That is a very nice factory. I wish my computer was that good (good enough without compression).

I don't know. It's hard to explain someone the benefits of a truck, who is used to drive bicycle.

No it isn't. Lets say I ride a bicycle. I will be able to understand that the truck holds a lot more, is nice to use in the rain, goes much faster, doesn't get tired, et cetera.
This is a bad example anyway. It implies that compression is to not compression as trucks are to bicycles. There is no such obvious advantage.

[ptx0]

This suggestion doesn’t force anybody to be used. As long as you don’t use any compressed item the whole game works exactly as before!

Experience show that a lot of players will not use it. And on the other hand it gave you a lot more opportunities to create efficient blueprints. In other words: more stuff to play around with.

Efficiency is relative to what you need to invest before - and it is part of good balancing to make costs of compression so, that it isn’t too cheap.

yeah, having more toys is always fun. this isn't an olympic event!

for what it's worth, when you're using compression, it doesn't magically give you more items. it's not a huge deal to easily move a bunch of items across the map. you can do this with trains. now it will be doable via belts!

it's actually pretty depressing to look at what used to be a full belt, going into a compressor, that then comes out with a rather empty looking belt of stacked items. sure, there's all that extra room on the belt to feed, but there's balance trade-offs due to the way splitters and belt buffers work;

when you split off a bus of normal iron plates, you get a certain length with 4 plates per section of belt. they split off 50/50 and it's "easier" for a split to back up.

now if you compress those plates with Deadlock stacking, you'll have 1/5 the belt filled up, but they still split off 50/50.

this is an advantage and disadvantage. you'll have trouble splitting the belt off as many times as you did before, but where you do split it off, you'll have a greater density of plates.

honestly, it doesn't change much about the "logistical challenges" of the game.

[NotRexButCaesar]

It is the way I play. I am speaking from my own perspective.

Secondly, you said "the rest of this arguement is just silly". The rest. So not the part you criticized.

you are the one yourself who said "what i'm saying, is..." if you don't want to boil your argument down to that one thing, then you'll have to do a better job on clarifying what your point is.

is it the blueprint thing? that's your personal preference, plenty of blueprint books out there have tiers for each level of the game. you can't ratio everything from the beginning anyway, the different levels of belts require different builds.

so, what is it that you're upset about?

I guess I should have used past tense:

What I was saying was that...

I was replying to his comment, not making an independent summary.

[NotRexButCaesar]

This suggestion doesn’t force anybody to be used. As long as you don’t use any compressed item the whole game works exactly as before!

Experience show that a lot of players will not use it. And on the other hand it gave you a lot more opportunities to create efficient blueprints. In other words: more stuff to play around with.

Efficiency is relative to what you need to invest before - and it is part of good balancing to make costs of compression so, that it isn’t too cheap.

That is like saying we should implement random free item sources around the map, or add items you can craft that crash the game or delete your save. Those who don't want to use them won't, right? The fact that people will choose not to use it is not a good reason to add it. Why not leave compression to the realm of mods?

Efficiency is relative to what you need to invest before - and it is part of good balancing to make costs of compression so, that it isn’t too cheap.

I disagree. Efficiency is a rate of something per something else. You may try to make something cost efficient, but cost does not define efficiency.

What does it add to the base game other than convenience. What are some positive things to outweigh the negatives.

[Koub]

Well, perhaps I need to explain the dimensions I normally play with:
Screenshot 2020-08-03 at 00.21.16.png

The peak here is around 310k per minute iron ore production. That would need over 400 express belts in a row to be able to smelt it.

Building that is definitely no fun!

To be honest, I see compression as a bit too overpowered for vanilla. If I can replace the need for 4, or maybe 10 belts by just 1, it somehow unbalances the game. The incentive to move from yellow to red, and blue, or to build trains would be pushed back way further.

come and see my starter base where i'm using Deadlock stacking. we're well on our way to a big train base with blue belts and blue stacking beltboxes, even. I just automated those last night

I'm wondering what proportion of the playerbase builds that big. I feel (despite having no data to back this up) that gameplay style distribution follows a normal-ish distribution. If this is the case, extreme playstyles (speedrunning, megabasing, undersizing, ...) only concern a tiny minority of the whole playerbase.
What would be the advantage for the vast majority of players who build around average sized factories ? Switch from 8x blue belts to 2x red ?

As long as it's like loaders (functionality natively present ingame, but not in the vanilla experience), and if it doesn't "consume" too much dev time for the benefits, then I don't really care, no balance would be broken, and no significant impact on the rest of the game. If it was added to vanilla, it would break the game balance, and cannibalize other transportation media.

[ptx0]

What would be the advantage for the vast majority of players who build around average sized factories ? Switch from 8x blue belts to 2x red ?

you're forgetting that stacked items can go into player inventory and helps with buildout of large areas. I can keep stacked landfill and rails in the pocket. you don't need to have high throughput builds to benefit..

i've been using compression from the beginning in my current playthrough, and i think we're only around 100spm. so, plenty of benefits at all stages of the game. we're not stacking everything, not everything needs it.

[NotRexButCaesar]

To all who would implement compression in vanilla: how is adding compression any better than adding more tiers of belts?

[mrvn]

I also like your idea of compresssed items being 2x2 times the size on belts. That would also mostly solve the problem of generating icons for them. They simply are scaled up to 2x2 times the size. The size alone will tell you they are different from normal items.

Also thanks. I think this is an important visual link.

Now that doesn't solve the issue with compressed items in the inventory. If compressed items are 2x2 times the size on belts then why not in inventories too? The equipment grid shows us how that works. Mixing compressed and uncompressed items could lead to fragmentation issues where an inventory has lots of free 1x1 slots but no 2x2 slots. But that just adds to the puzzle I think. Alternatively inventories could move uncompressed items out of the way to make 2x2 slots as needed.

That is an interesting idea, I like the thinking behind it, but I think using 4 slots per item is a bit too much space. Maybe 2 slots?

The reason for 2x2 slots is that you can simply scale up the normal icon to double the size and it will occupy 2x2 slots. Not sure how you would automatically generate icons for a 2x1 form factor. I guss you could place 3 copies of the item, with some overlap into the 2x1 space. But there will be plenty of items where that looks horrible.

One problem I still see is when inventory space runs out while you use up some items. Say the inventory is full and you take 10 compressed landfill into the hand. Then you place down one landfill tile. That leaves you with 9 compressed landfill and (N-1) uncompressed landfill. There is no space to put them both back into the inventory. Unless a stack of compressed landfill equals 4 stacks of uncompressed landfill. Then whatever you have in your hand can always be completely uncompressed and put back in the inventory.
Note: Deadlocks stacking has 1 stack of items == 1 stack of compressed items. You don't gain any inventory space by stacking, it just improves belt throughput and train loading times. I think that's fine. And the 1 big compressed stack == 4 uncompressed stacks would work the same way. But no reduction of the default inventory size there. My vote would be for inventories to collect items uncompressed and whenever they have 4 full stacks of something it gets replaced by a compressed stack and the inventory re-aranged to make it fit.

Hm. Never thought to that. Hm. Some thoughts:
1. I don't like to have deadlocks balancing. I understand deadlocks position and read the discussion about it, but I think it's ok to have a short transport advantage for trains. So I don't know if this 1:4 balance will be really used.
2. I come back to your above suggestion with the four slots for compressed items: What if three of that slots show the compressed item(s), and the fourth is reserved for one expanded slot? If you put some compressed items in your inventory one (!) is automatically uncompressed into that slot.
3. Bad, if the expanded item has a slot size that is lower than the slot size of the compressed item.
Would it be a good idea to forbit compressing such items?

It could always be flexible. And if you use something other than a 1:4 ratio the game can always drop any excess items that don't fit into the inventory on the ground or leave them in the hand. There is also a third optionl. If you pick up a compressed item stack the game also reserves a 1x1 slot. If that is impossible uncompressing with leftovers could be blocked saying there is no space in the inventory. That actually sound slike a solid idea. If you don't have the space for the leftovers then you can't uncompress. A little drawback to offset the gains of compression.

Note: This is a 1:4 ratio in terms of stacks. You can have iron plates stack to size 100, compress by a factor of 25 and compressed iron plates stack to size 16.

Not sure how you would visualize option 2. Draw a big 2x2 icon in the slot with a number in the top left corner and over that a normal icon in the bottom right corner with the number of uncompressed leftovers? I think that will be confusing and hard to see.

[ptx0]

To all who would implement compression in vanilla: how is adding compression any better than adding more tiers of belts?

because compression adds new ways of gameplay that new tiers of belt do not.

also, it helps bots too.

i use stacked items for long distance bot transfer and then unstack into local buffer chests for local movement between chests. it's great.

[steinio]

Hmm so the loaders would finally get a use.

[ptx0]

i've been using landfill to try and fill an ocean. i'm not using ReStack or any other re-stacking mods that change the density of items, so teh 100 default stack size for Landfill is.... QUITE ANNOYING.

my workaround using stacking is as follows;

(1) go and fill up inventory with STACKED LANDFILL
(2) shift click the unstack recipe in crafting menu.
all of the landfill is now out of your inventory and queued up for unstacking!
(3) grab more STACKED landfill.
(4) before the tides turn and your pockets fill up with the previously-queued destacking, shift click the unstack recipe in crafting menu.

you can repeat this several times so that you have about 1,000 (x5) stacks of Landfill being produced from your pocket, substantially reducing the amount of time it requires to go back and re-supply.

I have trains hauling landfill up to the spot, I have a whole bot network with thousands of bots all trying to help fill in the lake.. but nothing beats landfilling by hand, really.

and i love this exploit! helpful as hell.

[mmmPI]

Sounds fun but given the popularity of the (simpler) fluid-wagon vs (more complicated) barreling system, i doubt this would sounds appealing to other people than already experienced players if "the container is not destroyed and you have to ship it back".

You're right, it is a completly different game. Please don't mix compressed fluids with compressing items. A compressed fluid is still a fluid (not boxed, aehm, bottled), it's more like concentrated orange juice: for the recipes the cost of compressed fluids are just reduced. So I would eventually call compressed fluids "concentrated fluids" instead.

I was misunderstood/explained poorly, i wanted to say that a system where you use a container for another item already exist and is creating a new challenge, which is roughly re-using the barrels in priority compared to making new barrels so that the system doesn't clog, and/or manage the number of barrels.

i was saying this refering to the idea you expressed where the container that is used to compress item wouldn't be destroyed when you decompress the item and you would need to ship it back.

It's an interesting mechanic that is somewhat unpopular it seems from what i see on multiplayer games where most people use fluid wagons and some older forum posts before the fluids wagons asking for help setting up a limit for barrel production, or how to make a system that wouldn't clog when you have too much barrel and the un-barrelling process can't happen anymore. ( only actual use case seems to be for logistic bots). you called it "2.2. Container is part of expansion-recipe (not destroyed but eventually in parts)" it was the last type of compression you mentionned in the first post, which seems interesting, but may be so only to veteran player ( imo ).

... tin and copper to make "tinned-copper-wire" ... "tinned-copper-wire", or you can make "tinned-copper-wire-coil" that you can cut later into individual wire piece, but you can also use "copper-wire-coil" that you cut into "copper-wire" and "tin-plate" (in a different machine) or even "copper-sheet-coil"=>"copper-plate"=>"copper-wire"+"tin-plate"=> "tinned-copper-wire".
It differs by making the compression process not fully revertible which is also fun

Yes. Hm. But compression would just add something to it and does not remove the fun to have such recipes.

it's another way of compressing items, instead of having "stacked-iron-plate" you have "iron-sheet-coil", which is a different item. Not creating all those trouble in the inventory and production tab. effectively boosting the inventory capacity for player, chest , cars, trains , robots and so on that would benefit it when it comes to carrying material around but also making them not usable for crafting .


It makes it so that not every item can be compressed, if you have a belt of "iron-sheet-coil" it's like having 4 belts of iron plate ( or 5 ? ). You use machine to cut the coil into plate locally where you need a lot of plate, like you would transport copper plate and make the wire locally. but you can't transport steel plate on a belt and recover the iron plate locally.

In that case for vanilla game the implementation would be adding some items that represent the compressed item that are not called "compressed-item" and that you could not recreate from their decompressed counterparts.

sort of a soft compression, not powerful enough to fully free a player from using more belts if more thoughput is desired but still decent, like you combine 5 "raw-iron-ore" to make 1 "refined-iron-ore" that would yield as much iron plate as the 5 "raw-iron-ore" but the receipe would be +/- 5 times slower, thus not changing too much the balance, possibly adding a step after mining and before loading trains. And if you make the receipe for plate from each form of iron the same speed, you would reduce the number of furnaces needed by the same factor ( 5) .

the process being not revertible you would still need some regular uncompressed "raw-iron-ore" for concrete for example. thus also adding the dimension of the choice for the player as to what should be compressed and when.

( you could compress the plate by having an item called "large-plate", you could cut it in an assembly machine to have usable "iron plate", but you couldn't make a "large-plate" from regular plate , only from furnaces ).

One could avoid the logistical challenge of mass low-density-item, which i think is a defining aspect of the unmodded factorio experience. i fear it could be a bit boring if the natural solution would be to compress at all time and only use 1 single belt per material.

I don't think so. There is always the space problem and that the long range inserters grep only 2 tiles wide. And if you place four belts to produce flying-robot-frame you don't win anything. It is much more clever in that case to use expanded items, because it takes so long and you will not have any throughput problems at any time. That kind of thoughts will make it still interesting.
Another point is, that I think there is nothing really interesting to built 16 rows of belts and repeat yourself over and over and cannot really use blueprints, because the layout of the belts differs a bit every time. Yes, that is sometimes interesting to solve space problems in this scope. But that is also the reason, why I'm unsure if miners should be able to produce compressed ore.

I shouldn't have used "at all time", i agree that for flying-robot frame it's probably not straightforward to use stacked-item IF they take both side of the belt, ( one may argue that sushi belt could still do the trick )
but also i would describe flying-robot frame as a "dense" item already, meaning that you already move "compressed item" when you move robot frames around, more compressed that if you were to move the iron, and copper needed for 1.

What i'm afraid of is that it would make the earlier stages of production 'boring'. If you have it as a late-game tech it's fine, i do not see problems here, but it would change a lot of the game principles if you had incentive to do your mining using compressed item. It could make the 'natural' progression going from yellow to red to blue belts , and then compressed blue-belts, and then launch rockets. without ever making the player think about making parralel belts and managing the items flow on them. removing the use of balancer unless you go for megabases.

If you can use compressed items in every single aspect, then it wouldn't change much, you'd be doing the same layout but every material would be counting for 5 in the production tab. as mentionned in this thread already. except most late-game belt would have only 1 lane. ( )

And an aspect, that you eventually missed with this is, that a compressed item (2 lanes wide) blocks all items that comes after it. I think that could result in "interesting solutions". And the other aspect is, that with compressed material it is much, much easier to create "factory streets", where you can use mixed belts. This is possible only with compressed items. I added that to pros.

yes i didn't pictured item being 2 lane wide when writting previously. i would see it as "interesting solution" but it could also be seen as a frustrating thing ( like the barreling ).

what do you mean by "factory streets' where you can use mixed belts" ? i don't understand what would be enabled by having the compressed item that is not possible with regular item.

[foamy]

also, it helps bots too.

This is frankly an argument against it in my books. :v

The thing about compression is that there's significant jumps in the complexity of belt handling as you go beyond one or two belts of material to, say, eight and up, but once you're at that point going even further starts turning into 'more of the same'. Compression significantly delays the point where you need to start doing more complex things with belts, hence keeping the player from being presented with a problem and a puzzle, and that's a bad thing in a game that is, ultimately, about problem- and puzzle-solving.

On the other hand, once you hit megabase territory, mass throughput starts becoming less of a challenge and more of a chore, e.g.: