Cars on Belts - Not just a highway

[vampiricdust]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTMjxUINNqs

Video for sights & insights.

Concept: Since vehicles are moved by belts, use belts to move cars. Create stations that will block the cars to be unloaded, trains are the only option that moves and is timed. Alternative would be to fill belt with cars, stack bonus would increase belt capacity.

Advantages: Very high item density, inster stack bonus used, and fairly simple to setup
Disadvantages: Finicky as cars can fall off the belts, cars must be blocked & unblocked by a train that may damage each other, really resource intensive (isn't that the point?), inconsistent in train version

Got ideas? Feeling inspired? Share your saves and I may feature them in future build experiments.

[Twinsen]

Hahaha! Super ingenious !

[SHiRKiT]

Great idea. With the new signals and Circuits network updates incoming I think this will become even more powerful.

[Talguy]

Very awesome idea! I would personally use yellow belt when nearing the trains, so cars aren't crashing You can also use cargo wagens to make the trains acellerate slower.

Circuits network updates

Say what? Where can I find more info about this?

[SHiRKiT]

Say what? Where can I find more info about this?

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=5&t=7646

[ssilk]

I think the ropeway conveyors ( https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=7977 ) could work like so: The car is a cabin at the end point and instead of the belts we have the ropes in two directions.

Cabins at the endpoints: Will be filled/emptied, 12 inserters would be possible.
After schedule runs out: Ropeway runs, cabins are moved to the other sides.
Process continues.

That would be the simplest type of ropeway conveyor, later we have also the "continuos" types of ropeways.

Edit: And from the whole enthusiasm from that video I forgot to gratulate for this cool find.

[spikes2020]

Why isnt there more to this?

Has anyone done anything to compare how much this can transport in comparison to a blue belt?

[sckuzzle]

Why isnt there more to this?

Has anyone done anything to compare how much this can transport in comparison to a blue belt?

To compare throughput you would have to pick an item - as different items have different stack sizes. However, for something like copper or iron bars which have a stack size of 100, and assuming a car takes up a 3x3 space, you are looking at a througput approximately 187 times greater.

The problem, of course, lies in getting the items on and off the car.

[Qon]

I'm qonsidering using this to avoid a ~48 tiles wide blue belt bus when I combine 2 busses that are 24 tiles wide each. The problem will be to unload all those belts in a compact way. Unloading a just a single blue belt with fast inserters takes a significant amount of space. I think I might need a loader.

[Xterminator]

Interesting idea! Cars so have su h a large inventory that I can see how you could transfer a ton of items this way.
Might try this out on my own and experiment with it.

[Armentia]

really resource intensive (isn't that the point?).

Since they cars can be loaded/unloaded while moving, you could invest in just fully populating the belt with cars.

[Shekki]

Wow, just wow. Seems like REALLY useful on really huge factories... seems like it.