[MOD] Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes & Compact Loaders

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Deadlock989
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[MOD] Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes & Compact Loaders

Post by Deadlock989 »

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Description
Deadlock Technologies have done it again, bringing a new kind of special loving to belts. Try the incredible Stacking Beltbox, an inline 5x electric stacker that doesn't require crates, barrels, or pallets, and doesn't even need to be configured. Just plonk it down between belt loaders and away it goes. Repeat just before your assembling lines to unstack again. Wave goodbye to those 32-lane buses.

Resent that single tile of wasted space required by 1x2 loaders? Try our stylish Compact Loaders - all the brute force abandonware features of vanilla loaders in half the space!

Maintained and updated by shanemadden and others. Original mods and graphics by Deadlock989.
Mod portal links
Mods with built-in support
Third-party add-ons
These mods provide a "bridge" add-on, which lets you use beltboxes with other mods (they may not be up to date).
Stacking tips
  • Loaders are recommended. Vanilla inserters can work but you will have difficulty compressing the faster belts.
  • Beltboxes require power. Low tier beltboxes are dirty.
  • Beltboxes can be disabled in the mod settings if you only want to use the loaders.
  • Research is required to progress the finesse and speed of beltboxes.
  • Only raw resources and some intermediate products can be stacked (unless another mod enabled more).
  • Each tier of beltbox can handle a fully compressed belt of the same tier.
  • Beltboxes don't need to have a recipe set. If they get blocked by stray items getting onto the belt, open them and remove the blocking item.
  • Stacked items don't work in crafting recipes (unless by third party mod).
  • Stacked fuels do work as fuel. There's no bonus from that, except not having to unstack them.
  • Stacks do not increase inventory density (e.g. chests, trains, player inventory).
Loader tips
  • DCL does not replace vanilla loaders, so it can be used alongside other loader mods in existing saves.
  • Snapping can be turned off in per-player settings. Loaders can also be disabled entirely, if you want to use another loader mod instead.
  • Deadlock's Compact Loaders do not work with cargo wagons. If you insist on that, I recommend Miniloaders.
Inter-mod support
If you want to make a mod's items stackable in Stacking Beltboxes, or automatically generates a matching beltbox and loader for any given belt tier that another mod provides, an easy-to-use pack of functions is exposed to do it for you automatically. See the documentation on the github pages (link on the mod portal).
FAQs
Will you add support for [other mod]?

DSB provides a whole bunch of shared functions which make it easy for other mod creators to ask DSB to work with their items - see above.

Why can't I stack [vanilla item X]?

Probably because there's no point. This mod's aim is to reduce hassle, cut down on bus space, and improve UPS/FPS in big bases. If you ever had an enormous multi-lane bus carrying only that resource, then this mod already handles it. If it's something you don't ship around on multi-lane belts then stacking it would increase your hassle and lower your efficiency. There are third party add-ons which expand the items available for stacking.

Why doesn't stacking increase the amount of items I can hold in my inventory?

Because this is a mod about belt throughput, nothing more, nothing less. If you want to boost your inventory capacity or create huge storage facilities, there are many, many other mods that have options for you.

Will you add cargo wagon support to the loaders?

No. There is no good way to do it without killing UPS. If you want loaders that work with trains, ask Wube to sort it out. Alternatively the mod Miniloaders provides "fake loaders" which work with invisible inserters, which are cargo wagon compatible.

Can you stop loaders from filling up machines with hundreds/thousands of items?

No. That behaviour is inherited from vanilla loaders. Loaders were intended to quickly fill mass inventories such as chests. If they are used to fill a machine, they will keep filling it until they reach the item's stack size. If this is some item from another mod that's been given an enormous stack size for some reason, the loader doesn't care. If this is a problem and you want the behaviour of inserters (i.e. you only want to fill up the machine to a small multiple of the recipe's amount), use inserters.
Last edited by Deadlock989 on Wed Sep 30, 2020 3:08 pm, edited 106 times in total.
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Bilka »

I really like that this idea has been picked up as a mod. Kinda disappointing that this isnt as versatile as what the devs tested out, but I dont think you could replicate that behaviour with a mod anyways.
I'm an admin over at https://wiki.factorio.com. Feel free to contact me if there's anything wrong (or right) with it.

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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by foodfactorio »

this looks cool :)

i got stuck in one of my older games (which i still need to finish) on v0.14 of factorio, because my cascading warehouses kept filling up, and all the belts or loaders (and compression mods i was trying) seemed to make the game go slower, or my wahehouses could not cope with all the items. (maybe the default stack sizes were a bit low or i just had too much stuff lol, but if there is any way that this mod can also work on an older version, id really like to try it out there too :)
viewtopic.php?f=97&t=34176&start=20#p294780 (cascade is shown about 3 pictures down the page)
(also me from the mod portal - im not dustine lol) = https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Dustine/ ... ssion/9108
my 1st Mod Idea :) viewtopic.php?f=33&t=50256

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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by lorddjinn »

I was wanting to know if you are going to add support for Bob Mods?

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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Deadlock989 »

lorddjinn wrote:I was wanting to know if you are going to add support for Bob Mods?
Probably not, no. I've opened it up a couple of times and then had to go and have a lie down.

Also I keep asking people to tell me what items from Bob's they typically ship around in giant multi-lane buses, and they don't seem to be able to tell me.
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by orzelek »

Deadlock989 wrote:
lorddjinn wrote:I was wanting to know if you are going to add support for Bob Mods?
Probably not, no. I've opened it up a couple of times and then had to go and have a lie down.

Also I keep asking people to tell me what items from Bob's they typically ship around in giant multi-lane buses, and they don't seem to be able to tell me.
I think that adding all the various plates would be a good start. After that I'd say that tin wires and electronic parts from bob's electronics since they get used a lot. Maybe also module contacts but thats pushing it a bit.

There are few other mods that could use stacking like Xanders or Py series but you'd need someone well versed in those to get items for stacking. Xander adds more types of plates for sure but I didn't get to far in it yet.

Also maybe think about making some automated icons for items too so you could make more automated support for other mods with a whitelist. They wouldn't look so nice as hand made ones but would make adding mods compatibility much easier.

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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Deadlock989 »

orzelek wrote:Also maybe think about making some automated icons for items too so you could make more automated support for other mods with a whitelist. They wouldn't look so nice as hand made ones but would make adding mods compatibility much easier.
Already done, although as you say, it doesn't always look good, and I assume it's not great for FPS.

To be honest I don't really care about Bob's or Angel's. I don't play them. It'll be ores and plates and that's all, if anything, possibly cables if there some sort of analogue of copper cable in other metals. But the documentation is meagre, Bob's especially. I just need lists of item names, and in the case where those items are locked behind a technology, the name of the associated technology.

Literally never heard of Py or Xander.

My general feeling is that if these big multi-mods need belt compression so badly, they should add it themselves.
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Deadlock989 »

Just tried reading through other people's code again. Ain't nobody got time for that.

What I will do instead is provide a remote interface so that other mods can very easily add their own stacked items with all the right properties, and supply their own graphic if they don't want DSB to make its own layered icon, and a short doc explaining how to use it.
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Caine »

This looks way better and more workable than I expected from the FFF. Thanks for implementing this idea in a mod.

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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Deadlock989 »

TBF it's probably nothing at all like what the devs imagined, but it's what I thought of when I read the FFFs.

I've got inter-mod requests to provide stacked items almost done. I had to resort to tricks with the Lua _G table, since we can't use remote calls in the data stage, and we can't require each other's libraries, and we can't modify data.raw in the control stage.
Last edited by Deadlock989 on Thu Feb 01, 2018 11:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Deadlock989 »

LOL

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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by lorddjinn »

Thank you for the great mod. It has saved me a lot of belt and UPS.

Bob's Mods also has faster belts. Is that part of the plan to add those level of stackers?

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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Deadlock989 »

lorddjinn wrote:Thank you for the great mod. It has saved me a lot of belt and UPS.

Bob's Mods also has faster belts. Is that part of the plan to add those level of stackers?
Maybe. Not soon though. Are they 4x yellow and 5x yellow? The blue beltbox is already running pretty fast, I don't know how fast you can push crafting times.
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by lorddjinn »

From the tool tip on each belt I got these numbers and then divided by the yellow belt items per second.

Belt Speeds
Yellow 13.33 1x
Red 26.67 2x
Blue 40.00 3x
Green 53.33 3.265x
Purple 66.67 5x

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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Caine »

lorddjinn wrote:Green 53.33 3.265x
That seems to be a miscalculation. It is just the expected 4x.

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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Deadlock989 »

OK, I've got tier 4 and 5 beltboxes working, turned out to be a simple extension. They'll be in the next version, will auto-activate if Bob's Logistics is installed. I didn't spend a lot of time on the sprites. They seem to work OK but I'm not convinced that belt compression will be perfect, it looks likes the belt spacing is off for stacked items, though things seem to be coming out fully compressed after unstacking.

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I note that Bob's Logistics 4 research is a lot cheaper than vanilla Logistics 3, so Stacking 4 inherits that quirk.

I dimly remember some other mod that adds 4x and 5x belts, can't remember it now. I'll take requests to activate 4x and 5x beltboxes for other mods, but I'm not going any higher than that.

Still finishing off inter-mod support, figured out a better way of doing it, makes it even easier for other mods to ask DSB to make stacked items.
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Deadlock989 »

Draft pdf attached of the readme for how other mods can easily enable support for stacking (and also for my other mod, which uses crates). If you make mods, let me know if this looks reasonable.
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Deadlock989 »

Version: 1.2.0
Date: 03. 02. 2018

Inter-mod support:
- An easy way for modders to make their items stackable has been provided. See the readme pdf inside the zip.
- Tier 4 and 5 beltbox technologies are available if Bob's Logistics is active. The research costs are whack because Bob's Logistics costs are whack.

Changes:
- Manual unstacking was re-enabled for players (requires Factorio >= 0.16.22).
- Uranium ore/235/238 and batteries added to research tier 3.
- Iron sticks and sulfur added to research tier 2.
- Green and red circuits moved from tier 3 to tier 2.
- Some icons refreshed and much code tidying.
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by orzelek »

It might be a bit crazy... but there is a mod called Ultimate belts. I'm not sure if stacking box of that magnitude is even feasible :D

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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Deadlock's Stacking Beltbox

Post by Deadlock989 »

Yeah I looked at it. Nearly gave me a seizure.
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