ssilk wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 8:51 pm
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.
