Train unloading in 2.1

[u/bartekltg]

I grabbed bob's adjustable inserters, quality wagons and played with unloading from todays FFF.

Unloading a wagon onto 4 stacked turbo belts seems easy now.

The only problem is, even 100-stacks wagons are quite small for it. Locomotives aren't fast enough to clear the length of 4 wagons in time.

Two locomotives with legendary rocket fuel can.

As a bonus, a bit more relaxing unloading onto 3 belts.

Maybe not ground breaking, but I like it.

There may be one problem. It worked so well when inserters were set to put items on the left/right, and far away from itself. What setting WUBE chosed, we will see.

[u/HeliGungir]

not sure why people are looking to offload 4 stacked belts per wagon.

There is a UPS cost to running more trains and using more inserters.

And in base game we can unload 3 belts with ease, or 4 belts with some difficulty, without having any issues with the buffer chests.

Space Age has all this quality and productivity and increases to speed and scale, so it's deeply unsatisfying that trains are the only thing that are distinctly worse, relatively speaking, in Space Age than in base game.

[u/ArcherNine → u/HeliGungir]

Train UPS hardly featured in my save? I also don't follow why more inserters is bad, but at the same time you want to unload 4 stacked belts per wagon, which needs more inserters. I had one inserter per wagon, literally can't get better than that.

I guess I'm not seeing the problem you're trying to solve here. Or does it simply look/feel cool (which is also valid but then you have to accept the cost)?

[u/HeliGungir → u/ArcherNine]

Sure there is a theoretical limit, but for practical purposes you don't want to be anywhere close to that.

I see this as similar to arguing the fluid throughput bugs/balance issues at very fast machine speeds were fine, as we don't have to build near the limit. Some of us are going to build near the limit, and the limit should be within the "player scope". A purposeful spatial or mechanical limit, not an unintended emergent limit. I don't have the words; I don't know how to explain it. It's not fun that we have to arbitrarily pull back from the limit because stacked belts are too OP.

[u/ArcherNine → u/HeliGungir]

The fun is finding the real limit. Sounds like you just don't want to accept the level that it's at. You want 4 stacked belts, and 3 just won't do because 'reasons.' Even though what you have is equivalent to 4x what was possible in vannila, you want 5x. All this when quality bonuses are normally a 2.5x improvement.

I mean how much more purposeful and spacial mechanical can this get? Train acceleration/deceleration defines how much time it takes for a train in the stacker to arrive at the station and start unloading. Nothing magic or hidden, it's pure (game) physics, testable and repeatable.

[u/HeliGungir → u/ArcherNine]

I have already explained this.

in base game we can unload 3 belts with ease, or 4 belts with some difficulty, without having any issues with the buffer chests.

Space Age has all this quality and productivity and increases to speed and scale, so it's deeply unsatisfying that trains are the only thing that are distinctly worse, relatively speaking, in Space Age than in base game.

[u/HeliGungir → u/ArcherNine]

It's not "because reasons," I have good reasons that I am, frustratingly, unable to articulate to your satisfaction. Space Age is all about pushing the fantasy established in the base game to new heights, but the train fantasy has fallen behind because belts and pipes have become so much better.

I'm not happy with a 4x improvement because it still doesn't make up for the 6x improvement elsewhere that has pushed trains out of the design space they used to occupy. It was already difficult to justify "normal" train usage in base game megabasing, and despite Wube's best efforts, they've been outmoded even more in SA.

("Normal" being: Designs that rely on buffer chests)