Compact belt arrangement

[kwiz]

A thought I had while trying to sleep. The belts are different types just to illustrate the difference between tracks. This may or may not ever be useful to someone.

[rymn]

This is fantastic! You certainly are a shomahulk.

[Mysteria9]

Thank you! This will most likely come in handy.

[Icebird]

Three belts in two lanes, nice.

However, I have better...

I present you, three belts in ONE lane!



The construction is quite special, you need to build from the end of your triple belt. Build a first underground belt with maximum range between entrance and exit. Destroy the entrance and leave the exit. Then build a second underground belt two squares before the exit, the same way, etc..
Once you have a row of exits, you can rebuild the entrances and it will click in correctly.

And thanks Kwiz, without your idea, I would never have thought of trying to compact belts like that.

[Wazzebu]

Excellent !!

[kwiz]

Three belts in two lanes, nice.

However, I have better...

I present you, three belts in ONE lane!



The construction is quite special, you need to build from the end of your triple belt. Build a first underground belt with maximum range between entrance and exit. Destroy the entrance and leave the exit. Then build a second underground belt two squares before the exit, the same way, etc..
Once you have a row of exits, you can rebuild the entrances and it will click in correctly.

And thanks Kwiz, without your idea, I would never have thought of trying to compact belts like that.

Level: Glitch

[kovarex]

Three belts in two lanes, nice.

However, I have better...

I present you, three belts in ONE lane!



The construction is quite special, you need to build from the end of your triple belt. Build a first underground belt with maximum range between entrance and exit. Destroy the entrance and leave the exit. Then build a second underground belt two squares before the exit, the same way, etc..
Once you have a row of exits, you can rebuild the entrances and it will click in correctly.

And thanks Kwiz, without your idea, I would never have thought of trying to compact belts like that.

Wow, it took me a while to figure out how to actually build it.
Sadly, this is buggy as those connections will be lost when you save/load the game.
The pointer to the opposite piece of the belt to ground isn't stored in the savegame.
So this is classified as bug and there are different ways I could handle it:
A) Repair the bug, so you can't connect transport belt to ground this way. It keeps the readability of the factory (you can understand what is going on without looking at arrows), this is especially useful when you look at screenshots
B) Repair the bug, so the counter-part of the transport belt is stored in the save game, this adds more interesting and semi-hidden mechanics to the game, but readability suffers.
C) A + Let only transport belts to ground of the same type to connect (yellow + yellow, red + red, blue + blue), so you could still do this but you would have to use one type of belt for each line.

I like C the most.
Any suggestions?

[kwiz]

Three belts in two lanes, nice.

However, I have better...

I present you, three belts in ONE lane!



The construction is quite special, you need to build from the end of your triple belt. Build a first underground belt with maximum range between entrance and exit. Destroy the entrance and leave the exit. Then build a second underground belt two squares before the exit, the same way, etc..
Once you have a row of exits, you can rebuild the entrances and it will click in correctly.

And thanks Kwiz, without your idea, I would never have thought of trying to compact belts like that.

Wow, it took me a while to figure out how to actually build it.
Sadly, this is buggy as those connections will be lost when you save/load the game.
The pointer to the opposite piece of the belt to ground isn't stored in the savegame.
So this is classified as bug and there are different ways I could handle it:
A) Repair the bug, so you can't connect transport belt to ground this way. It keeps the readability of the factory (you can understand what is going on without looking at arrows), this is especially useful when you look at screenshots
B) Repair the bug, so the counter-part of the transport belt is stored in the save game, this adds more interesting and semi-hidden mechanics to the game, but readability suffers.
C) A + Let only transport belts to ground of the same type to connect (yellow + yellow, red + red, blue + blue), so you could still do this but you would have to use one type of belt for each line.

I like C the most.
Any suggestions?

I also like C, as you could always argue for differing depths of underground belts, but I would also like to add that I personally am very satisfied with the current difficulty in arranging factories (as one of my main interests is making small factories with high outputs), and being able to transport 6 resources (9 in special situations) in ONE lane just seems like it is too easy. Hidden game mechanics are always fun, though.

[Duny]

I find it incredibly irrealistic, underground belts shouldn't be able to collide like that. We should make use of z-levels or work around it, not let them collide without consequences. With the C option you could argue they are in different depths yes, I still don't find it satisfying tho. It's still much better than the option B.
Hidden mechanics yes. Glitches no thanks.

[Icebird]

I'm up for option C, as the different speeds can easily also mean a different depth.
Also, to further mark the difference in both speed and depth, and to counter the prohibitive price of red and blue underground belts, I would suggest a different underground distance possible for each type of belt.

Yellow: 5 units (actual maximum distance)
Red: 7 units
Blue: 9 units

[kovarex]

Ok I did C, as well as fixed some minor bugs with transport belt to ground.
Now when you mine the transport belt to ground, you get items inside, and you can rotate it (switch input/output) as well.

[Verbesity]

Ok I did C, as well as fixed some minor bugs with transport belt to ground.
Now when you mine the transport belt to ground, you get items inside, and you can rotate it (switch input/output) as well.

Does that mean you can change the direction of the belt when you place the first part of a belt to ground? It seems like placing it going North-South it defaults to going South if you don't have it pre-connected to something. If you want to build underground tracks taking items north and start at the output it's a bit tedious to set up.

Also, I like the idea of multi-length belts. You could add in multi-layered belts by making them lose two range for every belt they go under without it being too unrealistic. Or make it cost x amount of standard belts to place the second half of the belt to ground where x = length of belt + (2 * belt depth).

[Arakasi]

I was used to build lot of tunnels in OTTD (transport tycoon) and there was also limitation how can collide tunnels. But there was clear in which layers tunnels are.
I would prefer disabling this behavior because it seems to me unrealistic.

But I like idea Icebird mentioned here. Different lengths for different belts.

[kovarex]

I think, that crossing different types of belts (yellow/red/blue) adds nice possibilities to the game.
I always chose gameplay when I have to choose between gemeplay and realism.

Btw, I'm creating one of the challenge scenario missions, and used some of the concepts here, the challenge is called Transport belt madness

[Milaha]

I'm up for option C, as the different speeds can easily also mean a different depth.

Untrue the way it is implemented here (no flexibility on side to side movement for crossing). See picture.

I always chose gameplay when I have to choose between gemeplay and realism.

Truer words have never been spoken. Huzzah for physics defying belts!