Cargo wagons need more slots

[Legoman165]

This know topic is already on here already but I couldn't find it. I just want to dig this up again maybe in time for 0.12 but hopefully before the Steam release.

So a "Steel Chest" has 48 slots and takes up 1x1 and a "Cargo Wagon" has 30 slots and takes up roughly 5x2(depending on direction). Am I the only on that sees a issue in balancing? Therefore I think the cargo wagon should at least have maybe 60 slots (at least the same as a steel chest, so 48).

I just think that the cargo wagon is not as good as it should be given the slot-size ratio of the rest of the game.

[Smarty]

in 0.11.18 it has changed from 20 slots to 30 slots and more slots means that you need more inserters or longer waiting times

[Marconos]

I like the limit on the train car size. Moving product should take more space than storing it. If train cars are too large it can make moving product too trivial, too small and everything becomes a pain. At this time it feels about right to me.

[bobucles]

In truth it is all the other inventories which are WAY too big. It is trivial to store the contents of an ENTIRE mine with only a handful of trees. The player and vehicle inventories are similarly very large- a player is never strained for inventory space while the latter lets them haul an entire superbase complete with arsenal.

The only times a player inventory becomes truly strained is:
- Storing ammo. A stack of bullets barely lasts a few seconds, so combat can tear through inventory space.
- Storing damaged items. Each damaged item requires its own inventory slot.

A 30 slot train is a LOT of space. Don't forget that:
- Trains can have multiple rail cars.
- Players can have multiple trains.
- Ores can be smelted on site to double capacity
- Plates can be processed on site (gears/steel/CPUs) to more than quadruple capacity.
- Trains move through hostile territory. A dead train causes you to LOSE everything.

So I find it very difficult to believe that trains don't have enough space.

[ssilk]

I extend the space of wagons by using the boxing mod. It is very good and enables a new type of gameplay! You can load 6000 raw items per wagon with it. That should be really enough.

Off-topic: I would like to have the ability to store items of items in the vanilla, because I think this is really a cool idea.

[bobingabout]

I remember when wagons only had 10 slots.

Lets give it as many slots as the car!

[bobucles]

The biggest weak point of the train system are the intersections. Large numbers of trains have to stop at a crossway, which cripples their speed and is only really viable for small nimble trains. If a large train has to stop, you lose a ton of time and fuel as it has to pick up speed again, never mind vastly increased danger of deadlock. An elevated rail would help. There will always be a place for small fast trains of course, but elevated rail would let you run truly independent rail systems and create intersections with no stops. This means large trains can work without stopping, without blocking small trains, and without fear of deadlock.

What does that mean? More trains, of course! More trains will easily carry all the goods you need.

[Marconos]

The biggest weak point of the train system are the intersections. Large numbers of trains have to stop at a crossway, which cripples their speed and is only really viable for small nimble trains. If a large train has to stop, you lose a ton of time and fuel as it has to pick up speed again, never mind vastly increased danger of deadlock. An elevated rail would help. There will always be a place for small fast trains of course, but elevated rail would let you run truly independent rail systems and create intersections with no stops. This means large trains can work without stopping, without blocking small trains, and without fear of deadlock.

What does that mean? More trains, of course! More trains will easily carry all the goods you need.

If you do your signaling correctly at intersections you only get slowdowns / stoppages if the trains physically cross the same track. You can eliminate a large portion of those slowdowns with signals that keep the sections from blocking each other.

[bobucles]

If you do your signaling correctly at intersections you only get slowdowns / stoppages if the trains physically cross the same track.

While this is true, it only works well with small nimble trains that can handle stopping multiple times. Larger trains suffer greatly at a crossing, and many crossing designs will break if a train grows too large.

It's a bit telling that some of the strongest, most reliable train setups are those that completely get rid of intersections and thus eliminate cross traffic. Even if it means the trains have to travel twice the distance, the network can easily handle twice the trains.

[Marconos]

If you do your signaling correctly at intersections you only get slowdowns / stoppages if the trains physically cross the same track.

While this is true, it only works well with small nimble trains that can handle stopping multiple times. Larger trains suffer greatly at a crossing, and many crossing designs will break if a train grows too large.

It's a bit telling that some of the strongest, most reliable train setups are those that completely get rid of intersections and thus eliminate cross traffic. Even if it means the trains have to travel twice the distance, the network can easily handle twice the trains.

My setup runs 30+ trains with the majority of them 2 x 6, many lane crossings etc and I don't have much of an issue. Really comes down to how you set things up.

[GopherAtl]

Taking the less popular side here, I agree there's an imbalance, but I agree with bobucles, it's not that carriages hold too little, it's that every other inventory holds too much. Even in late game, I carry a stack of wooden chests around, because wood is always cheap, and wooden chests have more than enough slots for the majority of cases where I'm plonking a chest down. More often than not I even limit how many slots in the wooden chest can be used, to prevent it from being filled completely with something for no good reason.

I mean, even for train loading, if you have 5 chests/inserters to a side for a carriage, then it currently takes 3 slots per chest to completely fill a carriage from empty. If they're wooden chests, the 10 of them can hold enough buffer to fill 5 carriages without any additional input.

[sillyfly]

Yup, I also think most containers have way too much storage.
What I think is pretty reasonable:

Wood chest - 4 slots.
Iron chest - 8 slots
Steel/Smart/Logistic chest - 10 slots.
Cargo wagon - 20-30 slots.
Car/Tank - 20-30 slots.
Player inventory - 30 slots.

Plus, maybe allow some bigger storage facilities, like a 2x2 storage depot with 30-40 slots, and maybe some 1x5 or 1x6 buffers (10-20 slots) for unloading trains and buffering for assembly.

[bobucles]

sillyfly's storage numbers aren't that bad. Early game there's not much reason for any singular storage to have more than a few slots of stuff. Excess storage can in fact be detrimental because it can create trouble at train depots. Huge empty inventories also cause massive overproduction that generates excess pollution, and thus causes trouble.

There are very few applications where any single piece of a factory NEEDS more than 10 slots of space. At that point it is no big deal to just use more storage chests. More chests means more inserters, and throughput is likely more important than having a huge pit of storage.

[Marconos]

Early game I can easily empty a full wooden chest of belts. Late game I have blueprints that have thousands of items and can easily empty the size of chest you are talking about. Not to mention when you are processing 10k plus of specific items per min you would empty the chests you are talking about quickly. I do not see a problem with the size of current chests.

[bobucles]

Early game I can easily empty a full wooden chest of belts.

Ah, but that's really the kind of exception that proves the rule, isn't it? Out of all the early game goods that can be easily managed with one or two storage slots, there's this ONE thing that gets used in huge quantity. So, just like use more than one storage chest. Assemblers have easy room for 3 chests on one side, after all. A player who needs a big line of storage chests is already half way to setting themselves up a train station for bigger things.

Late game I have blueprints that have thousands of items and can easily empty the size of chest you are talking about.

Once again, you're sort of proving the point by saying that a single storage chest can handle a super sized construction order. At the blueprint stage, it's no obstacle to have capable storage chests numbering in the dozens.

Don't forget that storage chests are also a point of combat vulnerability. A simple chest can store a LOT of goods, yet it only guards them with a measly 50'ish HP. Given the hugely compact space chests take up, there is no hope at all of allowing any goods to be safely ejected when a chest breaks.

[GopherAtl]

this is getting a bit off the original point about cargo wagons, but for the special cases that arise where bulk storage is genuinely needed, perhaps a 2x2 warehouse structure with storage density roughly equal to the current chests (so, being 2x2, 4x as much as the equivalent tier of chest) but limited to a single item type, or perhaps a few types for the higher tier versions, would fill that need without allowing you to store a whole base in a single container? So early-game, when you want to keep mining stone so it's stockpiled when you can start making walls later, or you want it to make 50 stacks of belts at a time, you can plonk down a warehouse and be good to go.

[hitzu]

I agree with the majority here - storage chests are disbalanced and should be reduced in capacity or increased in size. This also would provide new layouts where many assemblers have an access to the shared big storage.

I extend the space of wagons by using the boxing mod. It is very good and enables a new type of gameplay! You can load 6000 raw items per wagon with it. That should be really enough.

Admit that this is just a cheating.

[ssilk]

I extend the space of wagons by using the boxing mod. It is very good and enables a new type of gameplay! You can load 6000 raw items per wagon with it. That should be really enough.

Admit that this is just a cheating.

Nonono, it's not! It is really complex to handle the boxes. You cannot just move the items anymore, you need also to deliver the boxes to fill them in. You need packers and unpackers. It's not that easy, really. But it's quite interesting, when I look into the direction, where I think Factorio will go to: When we want to built the space plattform, we need ridiculous masses of items. The boxing (search also for cargobox) is in my eyes the right way.

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =94&t=7481

[Marconos]

Really don't like the idea of boxing / unboxing cargo mod thing. Just seems too cheat like to me.

[hitzu]

Nonono, it's not! It is really complex to handle the boxes. You cannot just move the items anymore, you need also to deliver the boxes to fill them in. You need packers and unpackers. It's not that easy, really. But it's quite interesting, when I look into the direction, where I think Factorio will go to: When we want to built the space plattform, we need ridiculous masses of items. The boxing (search also for cargobox) is in my eyes the right way.

Yes, it requires packers, but this is not a big deal. This mod just magically reduce the volume of the stuff. I don't like this, for me it's a cheating - easy way to solve tough problems.