Get rid of different speed belts

[Avezo]

Why not make a single type belt and make its speed increase autamatically when you researching their speed increase? See how inserters and bots are always the same, you just research their greater speed and/or capacity. Just streamline all of it - make EVERYTHING have just a single basic build-item, then let it be upgraded into oblivion through research.

Same things with different capsule things and ammo.

[TheSkiGeek]

>Why not make a single type belt and make it's speed increase autamatically when you researching their speed increase?

...because it makes things too easy and is totally unrealistic?

I actually think they should go in the other direction and not give instant massive free upgrades for things like turrets when you research better versions of them.

Maybe a compromise would be to let construction bots auto-upgrade things. There was a mod for that in 0.12 (not sure if it's been upgraded to 0.13), and it makes upgrading large amounts of belts much much less painful.

[Avezo]

If you went 'the opposite way', you would end up exactly like what you mentioned - mods doing everything automatically.

[siggboy]

If too much is updated automatically, it takes away some sense of progress.

It's why games like WoW and Diablo drop better weapons instead of tokens or points that improve your existing weapons.

[TheSkiGeek]

If you went 'the opposite way', you would end up exactly like what you mentioned - mods doing everything automatically.

You still need to set up production of the new things, and it's only "automatic" to upgrade once you're far enough along to have construction bots covering your whole base (and you'd be tying up all your bots for a while unless you have a lot of them). It's certainly less automatic than everything just magically getting upgraded instantly!

The problem is it's not really particularly fun or challenging to run around clicking hundreds of turrets or belts or assemblers or smelters or whatever to manually upgrade them once you can mass-produce the replacements. And with really large bases it's totally impractical (although typically if your'e gonna scale out real big you'd research everything first, but you might want to do a few tedious things like replace modules with higher-tier ones over time).

Edit:

To clarify, what I'd like to see is, rather than having (for example) a whole bunch of turret upgrades, have a few "tiers" of each turret. Or make the upgrades modular (so to get higher firing speed you'd open up the turret and replace the gun barrel or ammo feeder or whatever). But then it would get really tedious to upgrade them by hand, so if you started doing this all over the place you'd need support to automate it with construction bots in the mid-to-late game.

[siggboy]

They could add something like the "upgrade planner" that helps you with replacing items with higher (or lower) tier versions of themselves (the bots do it, it's a shortcut for "deconstruct + reconstruct").

Regarding offering higher "tiers" of everything, this is more boring than you might think. You can try Bob's Mods if you want a taste of it (it has several tiers of pretty much everything; if there was a toilet entity in Factorio, there would be 5 tiers of it as well in Bob's Mods ).

[TheSkiGeek]

They could add something like the "upgrade planner" that helps you with replacing items with higher (or lower) tier versions of themselves (the bots do it, it's a shortcut for "deconstruct + reconstruct").

Right. If they're gonna add significantly more stuff that needs to be upgraded, I think something like that mod would need to go into vanilla. Maybe as a higher-tier research, rather than being available as soon as you have bots like the mod does it.

Regarding offering higher "tiers" of everything, this is more boring than you might think. You can try Bob's Mods if you want a taste of it (it has several tiers of pretty much everything; if there was a toilet entity in Factorio, there would be 5 tiers of it as well in Bob's Mods ).

Bob's mods does go just a bit overboard.

I definitely don't think they should just make a zillion tiers of everything for the hell of it. But we already have multiple "tiers" of turrets and inserters, they're just implemented as automagic upgrades that retroactively apply to the ones you already manufactured. And module upgrades are already somewhat painful (at least they get copied in blueprints now!)

[Engimage]

I think free upgdrades a waaaay too bad. You still need to produce all the new stuff which will surely require much more materials and technologies compared to lower tiers.
However upgrading stuff automatically makes a lot of sense.

There is a mod "Upgrade Planner". It helps a lot in your case. You can select upgrade scenario and use your bots to complete it. Not sure if the mod is upgraded to fit 0.13 but it will eventually do it.

[ssilk]

You can use the different speeds of the belts to make very complicated stuff very easy.
For example: Fill a side-chain into the main-belt. Side-chain is basic belt, main is minimum one express belt, rest can be fast belt. It is guaranteed, that this sidechain completely fits into one side of the main, without preferring one side of the side-chain. No need for splitter.
And much, much more of such stuff.

Another thing is: The amount of resources between basic and express belt is - I think - about factor 23 or so (it doesn't matter much, much more than 20). Express belt is 20 times more expensive. But only 3 times faster. It is 20 times more cheap to built 3 lines of basic belt, than one of express.

It is a stupidity to use it, when you lack iron. It should be used only in cases, where you really need it.

It is not always: Faster = better!