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...)

[PrinceDest1ny]

Stack(lmao the rename) inserters and hyper belts?? can't wait for the expansion

[macdjord]

One thing I'm wondering - will there be an option, when using 'Set filters from signal', to control how many filters are used? I recall a couple years ago when working with a complex, heavily circuit-conditioned train unloader, the fact that a Stack Filter inserter only took a single filter condition based on the highest-value signal instead of the top 5 signals was actually helpful. (And, of course, going the other way - allowing more than 5 filters - would have obvious benefits. And incrementally increasing the maximum number of filter slots would give another upgrade chain to research, much like hand size!)

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.

First, the fact that blue doesn't divide evenly by red is rather annoying. By the time blue belts become available, most players have abandoned yellow belts entirely and switched to red as their default. If you could then replace two reds with one blue, that would be a big advantage. But you need at least 3 reds input to properly take advantage of blue's extra speed, and any place you have at least 3 full red belts of something, you're probably doing something like bulk train unloading, in which case you probably want to stick to powers-of-2 belt counts to make balancing easier and more compact.

More importantly, blue belts just don't feel like a big improvement. Getting red belts and suddenly doubling your throughput feels like a game-changer. But adding another 50% onto that just doesn't feel nearly as impressive, especially given the major cost increment.

[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.

First, the fact that blue doesn't divide evenly by red is rather annoying. By the time blue belts become available, most players have abandoned yellow belts entirely and switched to red as their default. If you could then replace two reds with one blue, that would be a big advantage. But you need at least 3 reds input to properly take advantage of blue's extra speed, and any place you have at least 3 full red belts of something, you're probably doing something like bulk train unloading, in which case you probably want to stick to powers-of-2 belt counts to make balancing easier and more compact.

More importantly, blue belts just don't feel like a big improvement. Getting red belts and suddenly doubling your throughput feels like a game-changer. But adding another 50% onto that just doesn't feel nearly as impressive, especially given the major cost increment.

First off, it's 1.5 red to 1 blue... not 3 red.

Second, when upgrading from red to blue, you don't need to be able to saturate the blue right out of the gate. You can upgrade 1:1 without issue. Or you can upgrade 3:2. Replacing 6 red with 4 blue doesn't mess up any ratios with train loading/unloading. Same goes in reverse splitting blues. It doesn't need to perfectly saturate.

Third, this isn't the only thing in the game that either does linear or less than exponential growth and non-easy ratios.

[Guenni7]

The wait-for-full-hand feature for the bulk inserter sounds nice, but why not make that an option for all inserters? Would be very UPS friendly.

[herrkocur]

I concur with both things that were said in here.
We're entering Space Age, time to break some stuff for the quality of life, OCD and the universe.

1. Naming. FFS. Stack inserters for the new ones, bulk for the old ones. People are used to it? Sure, but we can relearn. While at it, fix Worm to become a thrower or vomitter or hurler.

2. Colors. If you're already rearranging them then it is correctly pointed out you could follow the belt progression (i.e. yellow stays as is, red is fast, blue is bulk (single layer) and green is stack (multiple layers) and then make long reach inserter a special case (whether it's white or purple I trust you to make a better decision).

[CyberCider]

2. Colors. If you're already rearranging them then it is correctly pointed out you could follow the belt progression (i.e. yellow stays as is, red is fast, blue is bulk (single layer) and green is stack (multiple layers) and then make long reach inserter a special case (whether it's white or purple I trust you to make a better decision).

Actually, long inserters are faster than basic inserters and slower than fast inserters. They are in the correct place, it’s still yellow<red<blue<green in terms of speed

[Ludwig234]

For some reason no one has yet to acknowledge the incredibly funny Monty Python reference so I guess it's about time I do it after waiting for months: https://youtu.be/LFrdqQZ8FFc