1 lane belt

[JohnOldman]

We could have another tier of belt to start with that would have only one lane, instead of two lanes like all belts do.

I can see 2 different ways of implementing this:

1. It could either be an additional tier below yellow belt (and yellow belt could become more expensive and require research) or,

2. It could just replace yellow belts, and red belts could be slowed down a little to match half the speed of blue belts.

I think adding a step of complexity progression for going from single lane belt to dual lane belt could be cool. It changes how you handle the logistics and the inserters and going through that change could be a good learning experience for the early game.

[Koub]

There is little to no chance new types of belts will be added one day.
Please have a look at this topic for the reasons.

[ssilk]

Where is the gameplay value? I don't see any use in this.

[JohnOldman]

Where is the gameplay value? I don't see any use in this.

It's an additional step in the learning curve that has a somewhat significant difference from other belts.

If we only had yellow and blue belts today, you could have posed the same question to someone suggesting the red belts.

I know a lot of Factorio regulars here on this board are looking for ways to spice up the end game, so this doesn't seem "useful", but improving new player experience has a ton of value.

[ssilk]

If we only had yellow and blue belts today, you could have posed the same question to someone suggesting the red belts.

Red belts are just faster. Added game-complexity from yellow to red is near zero. They are really easy to learn and maintain.

This suggestion adds a new type of belt, that behaves "seemingly simpler", but that is not clear. And they cannot be replaced by newer belts, cause they behave in many cases completly different. How does side insertion work for example?

And there is the fact, that Factorio belts are a big puzzle. That is a core game part, that the belts have two lanes and using this feature is a completely new concept, which differs them from this suggestion.

I know a lot of Factorio regulars here on this board are looking for ways to spice up the end game, so this doesn't seem "useful", but improving new player experience has a ton of value.

I still don't see the "improvement" for newbies.

See eventually https://forums.factorio .com/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=24061 New Types of Belts (And why they are NOT a Good Idea!)

[ThePiachu]

TL;DR

Mono belts - belts that only have one side, but the same throughput.

What ?

It would be nice to have mono belts - belts that only have one "side" for items, but retain the same throughput of double sided belts (probably by speeding them up).

Why ?

I have recently been playing the Space Exploration mod and found myself some 300 hours in placing another big mining setup with the same belt balancer design and belt mergers I've done like a hundred times this game alone and I thought to myself that it would be nice if we had an option to simplify things a little bit. So the idea of mono belts came in - belts that retain the same throughput as regular belts, but only have one "side" of items.

Something like this would simplify the very basic setups you have to repeat by quite a bit! You wouldn't have to balance your mines, basic electric smelting would be a bit simpler, etc. Heck, it would be a good alternative belt for the V-shaped bases that put everything on the main bus!

Balancing a belt is not really a challenge once you know the one or two designs, after that it's just tedium you repeat for all your future playthroughs of Factorio or suffer lopsided belts...

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into similar older suggestion.

[jamiechi1]

I like the two lane belts. They work well. I do wish that other games would incorporate the two lane belts as well.

[ThePiachu]

I like the two lane belts. They work well. I do wish that other games would incorporate the two lane belts as well.

Honestly, I find them a bit more of a hastle. You have to worry about balancing them (if you consume one part of the belt faster than the other), merging them, using repeatable but weird shapes to accomplish things with them (2-to-2 mixer) and so on and so on.

They are a novel concept, and I don't think Factorio will ever get rid of them, but since nobody is copying this design there may be a reason for it...

[FuryoftheStars]

Nope, not a fan of the 1 lane idea.

Normal speed and thus half throughput is always inferior and so past a certain point will get relegated to niche uses (like burner inserters).

Double speed (equal throughput) is always going to be superior in single item contexts and thus will always be used. Even in some multi-item contexts it would still be superior, probably relegating dual lane belts to niche uses and thus probably pointless to have different speeds.

I don't believe this request is the right way to go about looking for other means of lane balancing the belts, though honestly I'm not sure that's a big enough of a deal to require other mechanics to handle, anyway.

[Illiander42]

Lane balancing isn't even that hard.

2 splitters, 1 underground and its done with even draw.

1 splitter if you don't care about even draw.

[Deadlock989]

Lane balancing isn't even that hard.

Which is precisely why it's boring. When 90%+ of the belts in your megabase are carrying the same item in both lanes, it's nothing more than a chore to stamp down balancers everywhere they're needed. It was a relatively interesting puzzle literally one time.

It took a good chunk of a decade for loaders to be brought up to scratch since they were first introduced (i.e. very recently, with power consumption and wagon compatibility). Loaders will always dump contents onto both lanes at once given enough material, making the second lane absolutely redundant. If single lane belts were an option for mods I'd be all over it, but given the current direction of travel I reckon the chances of it ever happening are basically zero. Regardless, I haven't see anyone suggesting they should be part of the vanilla game.

[FuryoftheStars]

Lane balancing isn't even that hard.

Which is precisely why it's boring. When 90%+ of the belts in your megabase are carrying the same item in both lanes, it's nothing more than a chore to stamp down balancers everywhere they're needed. It was a relatively interesting puzzle literally one time.

Eh, I kind of feel like the same could be said for a lot of different things, but I don't feel the idea to simplify/eliminate the need for them because of that is necessarily a good one. And honestly, lane balancing isn't something that I've found that's typically needed, either, or at least it's only needed in a few areas, so I'm not sure that the introduction of something of this nature is needed. :/ *shrug*

Regardless, I haven't see anyone suggesting they should be part of the vanilla game.

The original 2017 suggestion was for the vanilla game. The subsequent one that was merged into here may have been under modded play circumstances, but it was a suggestion made to be added to vanilla vs a modding support request.

[Illiander42]

Lane balancing isn't even that hard.

Which is precisely why it's boring. When 90%+ of the belts in your megabase are carrying the same item in both lanes, it's nothing more than a chore to stamp down balancers everywhere they're needed. It was a relatively interesting puzzle literally one time.

Same can be said for smelting arrays. There is a non-electric smelting array design that is all optimal in every way other than aesthetics (ok, there are several, but the differences don't matter because they're all equivilent. They all use the same amount of material to build, have the same bounding box, the same amount of internal spaces free, and can fit a yellow underground belt through the middle)

Some problems in Factorio are actually solved now. If you think this is a problem, then the right answer is to introduce something new that makes the solved design one end of a spectrum of meaningful trade-offs, not introduce a "black-box of the solution."

[ThePiachu]

Yeah, the problem isn't that lane balancing is hard, it is that it is boring and probably the first thing you will ever solve. So now a thousand hours into Factorio I am planting the same belt balancer at the end of EVERY lane in EVERY mining setup, at the start of every bus lane in my starting base, everywhere. It's one extra step that you always do.

It would kind of be similar to how way back when you had to put blue belt on every corner of a red belt balancer because belt compression. It was optimal play to get around the game's mechanics, and it was boring...

[mmmPI]

The original suggestion is to add some 1 lane belt. Why not ? there's a bunch of reasons viewtopic.php?f=80&t=24061

Then the following 2 arguments are against the 2 lanes belts. ( not so much in favor of the 1 lane)

1) "It's boring to do lane balancing" i don't fint it a convincing argument to me if you consider introducing 1 lane belts as a solution because 1 lane belts i find boring.

2) "Other game don't do it" is also not convincing me as an argument. Factorio being my favourite game i can see a tons of things that they do and that other games don't do. It's part of what makes factorio such a good game. I don't think it should take inspiration from other games that are "not as good".

If you as a player always put the same items on the two sides of the belts it's your choice, but it's clearly not mine and it would ruin the gameplay to me to remove/replace the 2 lane belts. There are countlesss setups where you use the 2 side of a belt with 2 different items, especially when you start playing with mods that have receipes with 6 or 7 inputs before robots are available. Think about feeding labs , where so many setups use 2 different lane for different science pack.

You don't HAVE to put a lane balancer everywhere, you don't even have to use balancers at all. If one playstyle is to use them and complain about the need of using them, i would rather advice to take example on some bases one can find on the internet that manage to be balanced without balancer, by having symetrical production and consumption or using half lane or any other mean.

Especially when one is already using mods, as there are mods like loaders that trivialize lane balancing if you just go loader=>chest=>loader. Space exploration mod, one can use with AAI loaders.

So now a thousand hours into Factorio I am planting the same belt balancer at the end of EVERY lane in EVERY mining setup, at the start of every bus lane in my starting base, everywhere. It's one extra step that you always do.

It would kind of be similar to how way back when you had to put blue belt on every corner of a red belt balancer because belt compression. It was optimal play to get around the game's mechanics, and it was boring...

You don't HAVE to do this ! you can try to make your train loading station have equal draw on each side of the belt(s) utilizing the fact that you can load from both side of the wagon and that makes mirror-inserter that can consume 1 belt equally from both side to put into 1 wagon and can be repeated for several wagon. ( no need for lane balancer then) You can use combinators to avoid building belts balancers altogether , you only need a few priority splitters and connected belts be it in main bus or in mining stations.

I don't think 1 lane belt are likely, that's why i'm attempting to give advice on how to circumvent the original problem as part of the reasons that make me think they are not likely is also because there are alternative methods already in vanilla game to deal with it, some of them added AFTER balancers became widely used as a reference for many players like splitters priority.

I have never seen anyone else in random multiplayer connect mining drills with wires to monitor the quantity of ressources and balance their mining drill this way, but it's there somehow and you can have this in your mining outpost blueprint to throttle the mines in the side of the belt that has more ressources covered than the other. Maybe it's just me but i found those kind of intricate puzzle more satisfying experience than the tedium you describe, which i also experienced, my way out was to spend a little more time making my designs "smarter" before i scale them too much. It doesn't always end up actually smarter, but i find fun to try different things

What you describe is a space exploration modded game experience, which is a mod requiring very large scale base compared to vanilla factorio and that can yield to a feeling of repetition if one attempt to solve the tasks proposed using only vanilla tools or designs that would be "fine but could be refined" in vanilla, that may feel obsolete at larger scale.
The other thing you mention was changed when the curved belt speed differential in the 2 lanes was reworked, and that was before they added priority and filter on splitters (most functionnal large scale friendly) and ability to connect mining drills to network (most puzzling), one could think Space Exploration is balanced around using the latest vanilla functionnality, whereas the late game vanilla factorio's difficulty wasn't increased when those where added.

[FritzHugo3]

I really dont need mono belts. for what. 15/s items are more as slow enought.
If you want a mono belt use a yellow and use only one side.
For me a mono belt are complete pointless. I can really not see one argument what speaks for a mono belt.

(Yes i saw and followed the link with pictures - with tunnels and spliters and belts you can make any mix you want)

The only thing what i yould imagin whats usefull. a better way to garantee that the belts are 100% full - this is an factor in big bases for the performance. (100% full belts Factorio will handle as long blocks). Yes ther are ways in the game you can do this with programming belt and with merging but maybe this could be implemented in splitters. So they could buffer an half second the item oder so. Than the half spaces are gone.

[dog80]

If you want a mono belt use a yellow and use only one side.

or use 2 lanes with the same item

but monobelt would be kinda cool