Belts And Underground Belts

[BubbaJimBoBob]

Okay, so i took a long while to look at the details involving this and i came to only one conclusion, above ground belts need balanced first in order to make the system as a whole operate imho, better than it does currently. so to address this i spent time running numbers and a lot more time in game to come up with suggested balancing for the above ground belts.

Belts are priced as follows:

Yellow = 1.5 Iron Plates
Red = 10.5 Iron Plates
Blue = 20.5 Iron Plates + 2 Lubricant

I suggest however that belts be priced instead

2 Yellow = 5 Iron Plates = 3 Iron Plates + 1 Iron Gear Wheel
2 Red = 20 Iron Plates = 2 Yellow Belts + 1 Iron Plate + 7 Iron Gears
2 Blue = 40 Iron Plates = 2 Red Belts + 10 Iron Gears + 4 Lubricant

While this is a hefty reduction in cost for above ground conveyor belts overall, when combined with my suggestion for elongating underground belts, I think it makes better sense. I will amend my previous extension from +2 and +4 for red and blue respectively to a +1 for red and a +2 for blue, as the previous suggestion made them much too long i felt. So then to continue on, i will show cost comparisons with the underground belts.

So originally:

Yellow Underground Belts = 17.5 Iron Plates
Red Underground Belts = 57.5 Iron Plates
Blue Underground Belts = 137.5 Iron Plates

Now with an Updated Suggestion:

Yellow Underground Belts = 25 Iron Plates = 6 Yellow Belts + 5 Iron Gear Wheels
Red Underground Belts = 80 Iron Plates = 7 Red Belts + 5 Iron Gear Wheels
Blue Underground Belts = 170 Iron Plates + 16 Lubricant = 8 Blue Belts + 5 Iron Gears

This way each section of underground + entrance and exit for each color has the corresponding number of belts to reach the same distance as above ground belts.

Alternatively i would like to see another balance, but it is not in line with the older concept this being:

Yellow Underground = 6 Yellow belts + some wood and/or some stone blocks
Red Underground = 7 Red Belts + some wood and/or some stone blocks
Blue Underground = 8 Blue Belts + some wood and/or some stone blocks

Lastly i will admit that i am unsure of these balance changes myself, as they are more extensive than my original post on the topic, so please throw back opinions on these, as i doubt i have come up with the best solution for this.
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Original Post:

I am unsure of whether or not this has been suggested before as searches did not turn up anything, but I think that the Red and Blue underground conveyor belts need re-balancing in two specific cases.

- First Red and Blue underground belts should extend further than the base Yellow, possibly +2 spaces for Red and +4 spaces for Blue as compared with the Yellow. My reasoning for this change is both the resource requirement involved, and the research requirement for subsequent logistics research

- Second, the Red and Blue underground belts are based off of the Yellow underground belts, when i think they should be based upon their respective above ground conveyor belts. This of course means a resource re-balance to some degree, but it would fully utilize resources for each tier of belt, meaning no more lubricant free Blue underground belts.

Anyways love the game thus far, really enjoying my time with it.

[ssilk]

I think both suggestions make sense, for the first I don't know if +2 aka +4 is not too much, because I think that you loose the clearness of the layout, if you make it too wide. That's parallel to my critic about the longer underground-pipes yet.

Anyway, both are about balancing, so I move this thread to balancing board.

[Coolthulhu]

I agree with the second suggestion.

Currently upgraded belt-to-ground uses only cheaper belt-to-grounds and iron gears. Iron gears could be replaced by upgraded belts. That way both progression would be retained and better underground belts would actually use aboveground ones, like basic ones do.
Fast belt costs ~5.66 iron gears, fast u. belt could have 20 gears replaced with 3 or 4 fast belts. Express belt costs ~11.66 gears, so express u. belt could have its 40 gears replaced with 4 express belts.

I don't like the idea of belts having different lengths with increasing speed. Sounds "ugly" and non-intuitive to me. The speed should be enough of a reward. If it isn't, it means the cost should go down.
Longer belts could be a different item, like long inserter vs. fast inserter. Would be more interesting if they were different in other ways too - like having 1x2 entrance and exit or even having 2x2 entrances and exits but transporting 4 lanes at once.

[Inzann]

I agree with both of your ideas, especially like the first one. In my opinion it could only make sense if it expanded further underground considering the resources it takes to craft it.

[Bleda]

I always thought that the belts-to-ground should be extended by one tile, so you can under tunnel the refinery and the typical belt-inserter-assembly lines. However, it would be ok to have just the advanced underground belts extending over 5 tiles.

[filippe999]

I agree to this balanicng issue and is less cheaty than potentially unlimited range for ground transport systems.

[BubbaJimBoBob]

Okay, so i took a long while to look at the details involving this and i came to only one conclusion, above ground belts need balanced first in order to make the system as a whole operate imho, better than it does currently. so to address this i spent time running numbers and a lot more time in game to come up with suggested balancing for the above ground belts.

Belts are priced as follows:

Yellow = 1.5 Iron Plates
Red = 10.5 Iron Plates
Blue = 20.5 Iron Plates + 2 Lubricant

I suggest however that belts be priced instead

2 Yellow = 5 Iron Plates = 3 Iron Plates + 1 Iron Gear Wheel
2 Red = 20 Iron Plates = 2 Yellow Belts + 1 Iron Plate + 7 Iron Gears
2 Blue = 40 Iron Plates = 2 Red Belts + 10 Iron Gears + 4 Lubricant

While this is a hefty reduction in cost for above ground conveyor belts overall, when combined with my suggestion for elongating underground belts, I think it makes better sense. I will amend my previous extension from +2 and +4 for red and blue respectively to a +1 for red and a +2 for blue, as the previous suggestion made them much too long i felt. So then to continue on, i will show cost comparisons with the underground belts.

So originally:

Yellow Underground Belts = 17.5 Iron Plates
Red Underground Belts = 57.5 Iron Plates
Blue Underground Belts = 137.5 Iron Plates

Now with an Updated Suggestion:

Yellow Underground Belts = 25 Iron Plates = 6 Yellow Belts + 5 Iron Gear Wheels
Red Underground Belts = 80 Iron Plates = 7 Red Belts + 5 Iron Gear Wheels
Blue Underground Belts = 170 Iron Plates + 16 Lubricant = 8 Blue Belts + 5 Iron Gears

This way each section of underground + entrance and exit for each color has the corresponding number of belts to reach the same distance as above ground belts.

Alternatively i would like to see another balance, but it is not in line with the older concept this being:

Yellow Underground = 6 Yellow belts + some wood and/or some stone blocks
Red Underground = 7 Red Belts + some wood and/or some stone blocks
Blue Underground = 8 Blue Belts + some wood and/or some stone blocks

Lastly i will admit that i am unsure of these balance changes myself, as they are more extensive than my original post on the topic, so please throw back opinions on these, as i doubt i have come up with the best solution for this.

[ssilk]

Well, 2.5 iron will change early game definitely.
And only 10.5 for express will make the players think it's a good idea to use them instead using inserters with stack bonus or logistics.

Is it good or bad? Well, for after the starting phase I mean belts are too cheap. It's much cheaper than anything to place 4 lines of basic belts and transport really big masses of items. But on the other hand you can use these cheap belts to built up your mines and transport it over far distances to a train station. Hm. I won't change them much.

For the other belts I mean they are already too cheap yet. I would double the prices for them, because it is fair. Instead i would built in something which enables me more easy ways of building belts. Drag and drop, automatic underground belts, parallel belts etc. things which enable me to use the parallelization effect of the basic belts.

[BubbaJimBoBob]

okay, so i slept on this and realized i had made a big mistake, as ssilk pointed out, red and blue belts are really cheap, which was an accident, i have fixed this now.

2 Red Belts = 20 Iron Plates = 2 Yellow Belts + 1 Iron Plate + 7 Iron Gears
2 Blue Belts = 40 Iron Plates = 2 Red Belts + 10 Iron Gears + 4 Lubricant

This would make the Underground belts:

Red = 80 Iron Plates = 7 Red Belts + 5 Iron Gears
Blue = 170 Iron Plate = 8 Blue Belts + 5 Iron Gears

so yeah oops, that is what i get for posting late at night, also edited the above posts to reflect correct values.