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

[FuryoftheStars]

I hope you make the long arm inserters colored white, and other ones range from yellow for normal, red for fast, blue for stack and green for bulk. This way one inserter color will correspond to one tier of belt.

That, I feel, would be a more confusing continuity change than simply changing the name. I'm sure that could be modded easily enough, though. Personally, I don't make that color association between different entity types.

[mrvn]

I'm curious why you didn't just set blacklist to be the default instead of adding a new UI element.

I think it is because blacklist filter also means it waits for you to set the filter, just like the filter inserters did before.

Actually no. An empty blacklist will just work.

What concerns me is that now you can't place an inserter ghost anywhere that won't start working on it's own.

But then I remembered that now ghosts can be configured. So you place an inserter ghost, open the GUI and set the filter. Unless you are right next to a storage chest with inserters building the ghost probably takes longer than configuring the ghost.

[mrvn]

The faster belts with changing colors give me a bad feeling. Looks like the items don't move but are flickering slightly. Might give people headaches.

As a side note: I would rather have stacks on belts earlier than more belt speeds. I hope this is somewhat interleaved so you get stacks before the last belt speed.

Does the stack size increase research happen on another new planets or do you get the stacks on a planet and all the increase research gets unlocked at the same time? Might be fun to mix it up. I wouldn't mind getting yellow/red belts and 2 item stacks on nauvis but research for blue belts and 3/4 stack size on another planet or something.

[raidho36]

I'm just gonna bring up again odd item throughput of blue belts. You can merge two yellow into red, and two red into the new one. You can only merge three yellow into blue, or red and yellow into blue. Blue belts weren't good before, and now it makes blue belts a waste altogether.

Just upgrade blue belts to 60 i/s.

[FuryoftheStars]

I'm just gonna bring up again odd item throughput of blue belts. You can merge two yellow into red, and two red into the new one. You can only merge three yellow into blue, or red and yellow into blue. Blue belts weren't good before, and now it makes blue belts a waste altogether.

Just upgrade blue belts to 60 i/s.

Belts follow a linear progression in speed (+15 each tier). How is that odd?

[raidho36]

Belts follow a linear progression in speed (+15 each tier). How is that odd?

I specifically explained how that's odd - it messes up the splitter math.

[FuryoftheStars]

Belts follow a linear progression in speed (+15 each tier). How is that odd?

I specifically explained how that's odd - it messes up the splitter math.

The fact that blue isn't double of its lower tier (exponential growth) isn't "odd" and doesn't "mess" anything up.

[bnrom]

Super stuff! (I also actually really like the color randomization. It looks good to me)
I hope there is going to be a corresponding train capacity / speed buff!

[spacedog]

Late to the party but getting caught up (and excited for 2.0).

Totally agree that the new belt tier animation is just really janky, due to all the reasons why you avoided introducing it so many times before. Maybe the better solution is just not to make it so fast: Make it move 28/256 positions per second instead of 32/256. That way you avoid animating things >= 50% of their size per frame. Coupled with the stacking mechanic it's still a significant upgrade. It's also semi-realistic for the belt speeds to start asymptotically approaching a limit rather than linearly increasing in speed indefinitely. I'd even be happy with the speed being the same as blue belts, and only having the longer underground distance (which is a huge deal).

Alternatively, please consider finally supporting higher refresh rate monitors. I know 60 FPS/UPS was baked into the architecture in a not very forward-looking way, but probably there are simple workarounds to support 120 FPS? For example only updating the circuit network every other frame.

Other thoughts:

• Agree with everyone else that the green color of the new belts needs to be brighter to match the other belts better.
• What will happen to existing 1.1 savegames that are using the removed filter inserters? Will they be auto-converted to the new bulk inserters with equivalent filter settings? Or will those savegames be DoA?
• Now that we know the game engine supports it, for the love of all that's good and decent please add a checkbox to allow all kinds of inserters to wait for their currently specified max stack size before swinging. The lack of this is the bane of all UPS-optimized builds, and we create lots of complex circuitry to work around it. Please make this pain stop.
• Adding functionality to splitters to allow them to compress inputs into full stacks would be a lot simpler (gameplay-wise), not to mention more UPS friendly, than having to do it with extra inserters and belts.
• If stack inserters aren't unlocked until too late in the game, are they going to see less use than desired since it would potentially mean going back and significantly reworking existing factory designs? Is there any real harm to the gameplay in making them available earlier in the game?

- Each item on the belt could have a randomized rotation

This was one of my first thoughts too, but I realised it only works for things like gears and plates. Rotating science packs or barrels would just make them look slightly tipped over, which would be weird. I like that they are trying to provide ways to improve factory density, and this may be the best way, but it still feels about 85% baked.

A comment I saw several people mention (though am not worried about it because I love trains) is that these new belts can possibly outperform a train. I'd love to see the math on that.

This has been true from a throughput and UPS standpoint long before this update. The advantage of trains has always only been that they are lower latency, and are dynamic/flexible in terms of routing. Well, and more fun. None of that really changes. (Although like others in this thread I'd also like to see upgraded rail cars that actually can hold more stuff versus a chest that's a fraction of the physical size...)