[1.0]wrong max length value underground belt recipies

[Mskvaer]

When hovering on Crafting, the recipie shows the wrong value for undergraund belt's max length. It says for the standard one, 5. The wiki, and experiments show the underground length is 4 (or 6 end-to-end). Same for Fast underground belt. (havn't checked the express version)

NB: It might be fair to point out that underground belts can cross

BadLength.png (193.67 KiB) Viewed 2594 times

BeltLength.png (189.46 KiB) Viewed 2594 times

[Rseding91]

The max distance is set as 5 in the prototype but i'm pretty sure that's from the edge of the first underground belt to the tile the exit is on. Another artifact of showing game-implementation details in tooltips...

I think actually the underground belt is half a tile above ground, then 5 tiles underground, and half a tile above ground on the exit; which would be exactly 5 tiles of underground distance.

We could lie and change the tooltip to show 1 less than the prototype value. Or we could say that's "correct", I don't know. I'll let someone else decide

[sparr]

I think the technical explanation is that the distance is center to center?

A belt located at 0.5,0.5 (that is, occupying the tile spanning from 0,0 to 1,1) connects to a belt at 0.5,5.5.

[Klonan]

I'm gonna call not a bug

Whats the difference between 3 and 8? Its 5
How many numbers are between 3 and 8? There is 4, 5, 6 and 7.
There are 4 numbers between 3 and 8, but the difference is 5.

Same thing here, there are 4 tiles between the belts, the distance between them is 5.

[Xorimuth]

At the end of the day, it is currently neither right nor wrong without a better explanation (such as '6 inclusive' or 'goes underneath 4 tiles' etc), so I'd agree with not-a-bug.

[Mskvaer]

Here is the Newbies(*) point of view:

Belt2.png (183.62 KiB) Viewed 2535 times

<sarcasm with a smile, ON>
This is clearly a one length belt, measured center to center. Strange I have to use two tiles.
</sarcasm>
Interesting about the internals, as a enduser player I do not care.

On the other hand the" 5" is the average of whether it is 4 underground or 6 total length

(*)Newbie: Started with 1.0 and only played 50 odd hours. On the other hand - played computer games before there was PC or DOS.

[5thHorseman]

Here is the Newbies(*) point of view: Belt2.png
<sarcasm with a smile, ON>
This is clearly a one length belt, measured center to center. Strange I have to use two tiles.

Let's say you are placing items on the ground and want them to travel via belt a distance of 1 square. Would you place 1 belt or 2?

[SoShootMe]

Here is the Newbies(*) point of view: Belt2.png
<sarcasm with a smile, ON>
This is clearly a one length belt, measured center to center. Strange I have to use two tiles.

Let's say you are placing items on the ground and want them to travel via belt a distance of 1 square. Would you place 1 belt or 2?

The first belt you place allows a distance of zero. The second increases the distance by the length of a belt, which is one.

Does placing an underground belt at maximum length ("max. length 5") make the belt five or six tiles longer?

Maximum length is four underground, or six including entrance/exit. The value shown is the maximum distance items are carried, which is one less than the latter, but the length (either underground or total) is the meaningful number.

[5thHorseman]

Does placing an underground belt at maximum length ("max. length 5") make the belt five or six tiles longer?

Placing the 2nd one makes the belt 5 times longer than just placing the 1st belt.

Maximum length is four underground, or six including entrance/exit. The value shown is the maximum distance items are carried, which is one less than the latter, but the length (either underground or total) is the meaningful number.

That's 100% true. I'd personally prefer 4 as that's the distance over which you can put useful stuff in between the hoods. But it's not "wrong" to say 5. Or 6. It's just unexpected.

I honestly don't know which is the "best" number to put there. I do know that whatever number is there, someone won't like it.

[Mskvaer]

Gentlemen, ( or whatever one is allowed to write these days )

I will not labour the point if it is a bug or not - clearly the number is correct depending on your interpretation.

So, the gamedesigners could as themselves: Who is most likely to read the recipe-/fact-popup? A user who has played the game for eons during development, is busy optimising the item/min/storage/delay time of a belt way (and has likely already memorized all facts, or uses a spreadsheet) - or a new player that is just comming to grips with the game ?

Well, I'm clearly the latter, and for me its either 6 or 4 that is the "number" I want.

Facts are better than arguments - I measured in sandbox:

BeltCount.png (246.72 KiB) Viewed 2470 times

I first placed down the two belt pieces. (stacker set to 1). The same amount of plates was stacked on both. I then added 8 belt pieces to the iron lane, and the maxlength "5" underground belt plus two more belt pieces in the copper lane. Exactly the same amount of plates was stacked onto the two belts.
To me that means it is length 6. Now there may be some strange edge effects, if the lane is that underground belt alone, I wouldnt know.

Or there is the density difference between Iron and Copper plates

[Xorimuth]

I'd like to +1 for length 6 as well. A single belt obviously has length 1, so if it covers 6x as many tiles it should have length 6.

[SoShootMe]

Does placing an underground belt at maximum length ("max. length 5") make the belt five or six tiles longer?

Placing the 2nd one makes the belt 5 times longer than just placing the 1st belt.

Adding a maximum length underground belt to a single belt makes the result six tiles longer (from 1 to 7 tiles). It also adds six to the distance items travel when placed on the first belt (from 0 to 6 tiles). Just like adding a single belt makes the result one tile longer and adds one to the distance items travel.

Maximum length is four underground, or six including entrance/exit. The value shown is the maximum distance items are carried, which is one less than the latter, but the length (either underground or total) is the meaningful number.

(You misquoted: I wrote the above.)

That's 100% true. I'd personally prefer 4 as that's the distance over which you can put useful stuff in between the hoods. But it's not "wrong" to say 5. Or 6. It's just unexpected.

The point I was trying to make is that it's not (just) the number that is wrong, but what it says the number is makes it so. It says "max. length", which is either four (underground) or six (total), not "max. distance items travel", which is five (and this only for an underground belt not joined to any other belt). So I disagree: either of four or six is correct, but five is wrong.

I'd suggest either "Max. underground length: 4" or that and "Max. length: 6". I think (as you seem to) the former is the most useful single number to know; despite appearances from my first paragraph, the latter is better than just "Max. length: 6" because having both provides the clue that "Max. length" includes the ends. Similar applies to other underground belts and of course underground pipes.

[sparr]

The "length" in question here is the *underground* length, not the total belt length.

If you consider that each underground belt entity has half a tile of above-ground belt and half a tile of below-ground belt then the math all works out. One pair of underground entities is 0.5+0.5=1 tiles of belt and 0.5+0.5+4=5 tiles of underground.