Friday Facts #393 - Putting things on top of other things

[pichutarius]

i love those new inserters, however stack inserter does not stack item? instead bulk inserter stack item??

may i suggest the following:
1. we remove stack inserters, like we kill filter inserters
2. rename bulk inserter to stack inserter
3. give stack bonus to all inserters up to +5 (down from +11), like we give filter abilities to all inserters

[MrDayne]

[Henry Loenwind]

To be honest, since the big inserter change, I haven't used stack inserters at all. Even before that, I only rarely used them, but after, it just wasn't clear what advantage I would have by using them. Fast inserters were fine with vanilla, and for modded, there were faster inserters and loaders.

Also, the one feature I like most about filter inserters is that you can place them down and they won't start shovelling stuff you don't want to be moved.

So for me, replacing stack inserters with bulk inserters would make more sense. I'd also not be against making long and filter inserters variants of the other ones. A different base when it has been upgraded to "filter" and a longer arm when it has been upgraded to "long". This would give us 4 distinct inserters (burner, normal, fast, bulk => colour) with 4 variants (normal, filtered, long, both => form) each.

[nathan67003]

My only concern was if bulk inserters could get stuck unloading a train but after a quick look-see, full cargo wagons of ore (and therefore plates) are divisible by 16 so no issues from me!

[Locane]

WOW. I had no idea there was a Bulk Items debate somewhere, but I can see why.

I'm really excited about the dropping of filter inserters - I think the idea of them makes sense for the game and the purpose, but it's always seemed just a little too inconvenient. Great that we're getting so many awesome updates for 2.0!

My only concern is that this makes the game too easy now? If I can just make a million bulk inserters, why would I ever upgrade track tier? I mean I'll probably do it anyway, but I guess I just don't want all these great optimizations and game improvements to make the overall experience too much of a breeze.

[half a cat]

Pretty sure during the Quality discussion, most people came to the conclusion that items with different Qualities don't stack. That Quality FFF (https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375) show its possible to use splitters with only quality as a filter condition. If different Qualities items don't mix in stacks, then the splitter doesn't have to do any special logic to break down item stacks, instead it just handles each 4-stack of an item as if its a single item.

Huh. I thought that mixed-quality stacks would be necessary because quality is hidden until it's researched, and you don't want to have items refusing to stack together because they're secretly different.

[MajorDestructive]

Interesting... I like it!

I see some folks concerned about the belt throughput being too high, but for me this raises interest in how much throughput we will need which demands this. I guess I've already felt some of that with some beacon-based setups, so this should be fun to play with!

With the belt speed, the slight color variation worked very well for me (very clever solution, I thought!); though the flickering did temporarily burn my monitor... whoops! Gonna have to be careful about standing around and watching the factory if that doesn't change, haha!

As with most of these upcoming features, very exited to get my hands on this!
(Also, how is UPS going to be with all this? These kinds of speeds sound like they could be a lot to process, but I don't know; you all have gotten the engine to be impressively strong so far!)

[NotRexButCaesar]

Pretty sure during the Quality discussion, most people came to the conclusion that items with different Qualities don't stack. That Quality FFF (https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375) show its possible to use splitters with only quality as a filter condition. If different Qualities items don't mix in stacks, then the splitter doesn't have to do any special logic to break down item stacks, instead it just handles each 4-stack of an item as if its a single item.

Huh. I thought that mixed-quality stacks would be necessary because quality is hidden until it's researched, and you don't want to have items refusing to stack together because they're secretly different.

I think quality items are not created until the research is unlocked and you have added quality modules.

[mmmPI]

Pretty sure during the Quality discussion, most people came to the conclusion that items with different Qualities don't stack. That Quality FFF (https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375) show its possible to use splitters with only quality as a filter condition. If different Qualities items don't mix in stacks, then the splitter doesn't have to do any special logic to break down item stacks, instead it just handles each 4-stack of an item as if its a single item.

Huh. I thought that mixed-quality stacks would be necessary because quality is hidden until it's researched, and you don't want to have items refusing to stack together because they're secretly different.

Noooooo ! You cannot have secretly different item, because that would mean you'd have created quality item before having the quality research. When you research quality, supposedly you just unlock the quality module, meaning everything that exist in your world was created before you had acces to them, and as such is of the same quality level, the lowest one.

Then you have the research, and quality level are visible if you do create some of higher quality, you would spot them amongst all the other having the lowest quality, but this can only occur AFTER you put some quality module in some assembly, which means you have made quality level visible for yourself and you then are guaranted to understand why things do not stack. ( i suppose they won't and i'm fairly certain for the quality research)

Item do not stack in a single inventory slot when quality differs, this was confirmed by devs.

If items of different quality do stack on belts, unlike in inventory it's fine too for me, it would be a weird mechanic, interesting, but hard to see on the screen the quality of stacked items and as such probably confusing so unlikely i think.

[SnowZyDe]

So if you're adding 5 filter slots to inserters by default, how about boosting the filter slots on splitters to 5? It's been a pet peeve for a long time that I can only filter one item on a splitter rather than a group - it means I have to chain splitters and burn a lot of space.

Well done, you also suggested what I wanted to write about

[SnowZyDe]

You know that yellow and Orange are different colors.
Faster belt tier it should be orange

[Zaflis]

i love those new inserters, however stack inserter does not stack item? instead bulk inserter stack item??

may i suggest the following:
1. we remove stack inserters, like we kill filter inserters
2. rename bulk inserter to stack inserter
3. give stack bonus to all inserters up to +5 (down from +11), like we give filter abilities to all inserters

Not good because of few reasons:
- They have a different function.
- You can't use bulk inserters everywhere you now use stack inserters. Like some mentioned in this topic, having quality output from a machine is 1 such place. Bulk inserter waits until hand is full, but machine stops when output is blocked. Stack inserter would keep functioning.
- It would be a straight up nerf for many setups throughput if we lost current stack inserter with 12 items per swing. And you know how much we value UPS.
- Bulk inserters doesn't do anything for bot based designs.

[malecord]

Stupid question... all items can be stacked?

I mean, I can see how a circuits or plate can be stacked being flat items. I have harder time imagining a battery or a barrel that is a tall one... unless you change them to be horizontal.

Stuff like solid fuel that is cubic can also work but they should appear taller.

Complex shape things like cars, trains, turrets and stuff I have reserves on how they would look like.

Ofc my question is just from a visual representation and aesthetics point of view, not about realism.

[Sad_Brother]

So for me, replacing stack inserters with bulk inserters would make more sense. I'd also not be against making long and filter inserters variants of the other ones. A different base when it has been upgraded to "filter" and a longer arm when it has been upgraded to "long". This would give us 4 distinct inserters (burner, normal, fast, bulk => colour) with 4 variants (normal, filtered, long, both => form) each.

I would prefer burner/electric/long/stack inserters as coloured variants.
Optional upgrades could be:
Fast with Gear.
Filter with Green scheme.
...
How many items should it take and place could be determined by settings. And unlocked Tech ofc.

So may be we do not need separate stack and bulk inserters.

Stupid question... all items can be stacked?

I mean, I can see how a circuits or plate can be stacked being flat items. I have harder time imagining a battery or a barrel that is a tall one... unless you change them to be horizontal.

Stuff like solid fuel that is cubic can also work but they should appear taller.

Complex shape things like cars, trains, turrets and stuff I have reserves on how they would look like.

Ofc my question is just from a visual representation and aesthetics point of view, not about realism.

No chance to appear taller as it should not be taller than underground belt.
You have been told already about dark magic applied. Or how can you have car/tank/train/silo in your pocket?

[GregoriusT]

You know that yellow and Orange are different colors.
Faster belt tier it should be orange

The problem there is the same as using the current Olive color, as Yellow and Red are so close to Orange that its hard to tell the difference, and if you make it a glowing Orange you suddenly get Art Style Issues since that would not fit into the run down dirty style of Factorio.

[morsk]

- Bulk inserters doesn't do anything for bot based designs.

It can reduce bot traffic by only putting multiples of 4 in a chest, so bots don't carry partial inventories. How much it helps depends on whether the build was already doing it indirectly, by keeping chests full. It will at least be useful on nuclear reactors, for carrying away used fuel cells in larger batches than 1 at a time.

[malecord]

No chance to appear taller as it should not be taller than underground belt.
You have been told already about dark magic applied. Or how can you have car/tank/train/silo in your pocket?

As I said it's not a matter of realism but visual representation. Dark magic or not, how would you reasonably draw 5 barrels on top of each other? Items like these have been "conveniently" left out this dev diary.

I just asked if they figured out already, they decided to not allow it or is still wip.

[Zaflis]

Dark magic or not, how would you reasonably draw 5 barrels on top of each other? Items like these have been "conveniently" left out this dev diary.

Psh, simplest thing in the world:

barrels.png (691.19 KiB) Viewed 3310 times

[Terrahertz]

I just think of when I read about Quality and loved it instantly only to find the forums full of worried players...

Same here, quality was the big one for me also, instant hype. This tho.. having filters on all inserters from the start feels wrong to me, and indeed the graphics don't help.

Well you have filter from the start anyway, as splitters will do this operation for you.

Btw there are 3 things I picked up from the discussion, I like to comment on:

• I thinks it's pretty funny how the discussion about stacking is now revovling around things that you would rarely see on belts anyway, barrels for instance.

• A lot of people saying "Belt stacking and faster belts make transporting too easy and removes the challange", should remember that using bots for transporting everything makes it even easier. The way around this is some self control to just not use them. Just with other features: Your distaste for them, should not be a reason to withhold them from other people who might enjoy them.

• In some posts I get the feeling, people think the devs do not playtest these features before putting them out.

[gmfCoding]

Obviously I haven't seen the green belts in game yet but here is a few ideas that probably don't have potential:

Enclosed Belts:
What if the belts were enclosed/encased in some sort of shell, you wouldn't be able to see the items anymore which means they wouldn't be so hard to look at, you could show the items using other approaches, small window, display, icon etc.
The obvious downside to this is you cannot see what items are on the belt, what if there is a unwanted item, perhaps a flag could be displayed.
How should this effect items being placed and taken from the belts, both by machines and the player? (separate model/texture for access?)


Belts are in various visual configurations for prototyping only, one consistency would be chosen.

As I've thought more and more about this the less I like it, I will still include it though (this took ages), maybe it will inspire some other ideas.

Blurry Items:
Items on fast belts would have a motion blur applied to to them.

It still has to be said, the visual strain is unknown to me and the current player base, just something to think about that's all.