Make inserter speeds simpler (for 2.0?)
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2024 1:18 am
i think inserter rotation speeds are much too complicated to reason about, especially for new players. for example, without looking it up, how many full turns per second does the regular, basic, yellow inserter make? (equivalently, what is its chest‐to‐chest throughput, without any capacity bonus?)
right now, rotation speeds are defined in the game’s files as full turns per tick (where a tick is 1/60 of a second). to find the effective rotation speed, you might think that you could just multiply that number by 60, but no, since the game is tick‐based, inserters have to pick up and drop items on a tick boundary, so inserter speeds must be adjusted to compensate; you must divide 0.5 by that number to find how many ticks it takes to make a half‐turn, then round up to account for tick boundaries, then double it and divide 60 by that to get the final throughput. it’s madness!
even after that, the various speeds have no pattern to them: the burner inserter (0.01 turn/tick) is half the speed of the long inserter (0.02 turn/tick), but is 0.72 times the speed of the basic inserter (effectively 0.013888… turn/tick), which is itself 0.36111… times as fast as the fast inserter (effectively 0.0384615… turn/tick). it kind of seems like they were picked at random.
i propose that yellow inserters have a rotation speed of 1 full turn per second (360°/s): this would make them move like a 120 bpm metronome, diligently keeping time in the precise clockwork that is your factory. it would also make them much easier to understand, with them having an unboosted throughput of 1 item per second (or 60 items per minute, if you prefer).
the other inserters’ speeds can be defined as easy ratios to this basic inserter: 0.5 turn/s (180°/s) for the poor burner inserter, 2 or 3 turn/s (720 or 1 080°/s) for the fast/stack/bulk inserters and 1.5 turn/s (540°/s) for the in‐betweeny long inserter.
the only downside i can think of is that the turn/tick values of these speeds are mostly non‐decimal fractions, with the basic inserter having 0.01666… turn/tick. i’m sure the developers can figure something out and i hope they agree that inserter speeds should be simplified! thank you!
it’s 0.8333…
, which you would have to pull out a calculator (and round a bit) to figure out given the in‐game tooltip “rotation speed: 302°/s
”.right now, rotation speeds are defined in the game’s files as full turns per tick (where a tick is 1/60 of a second). to find the effective rotation speed, you might think that you could just multiply that number by 60, but no, since the game is tick‐based, inserters have to pick up and drop items on a tick boundary, so inserter speeds must be adjusted to compensate; you must divide 0.5 by that number to find how many ticks it takes to make a half‐turn, then round up to account for tick boundaries, then double it and divide 60 by that to get the final throughput. it’s madness!
even after that, the various speeds have no pattern to them: the burner inserter (0.01 turn/tick) is half the speed of the long inserter (0.02 turn/tick), but is 0.72 times the speed of the basic inserter (effectively 0.013888… turn/tick), which is itself 0.36111… times as fast as the fast inserter (effectively 0.0384615… turn/tick). it kind of seems like they were picked at random.
i propose that yellow inserters have a rotation speed of 1 full turn per second (360°/s): this would make them move like a 120 bpm metronome, diligently keeping time in the precise clockwork that is your factory. it would also make them much easier to understand, with them having an unboosted throughput of 1 item per second (or 60 items per minute, if you prefer).
the other inserters’ speeds can be defined as easy ratios to this basic inserter: 0.5 turn/s (180°/s) for the poor burner inserter, 2 or 3 turn/s (720 or 1 080°/s) for the fast/stack/bulk inserters and 1.5 turn/s (540°/s) for the in‐betweeny long inserter.
the only downside i can think of is that the turn/tick values of these speeds are mostly non‐decimal fractions, with the basic inserter having 0.01666… turn/tick. i’m sure the developers can figure something out and i hope they agree that inserter speeds should be simplified! thank you!