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I haven't checked, but have they done anything about my personal balancing gripe: trains vs conveyors? Now that they have faster conveyors and stacking, they'v

I haven't checked, but have they done anything about my personal balancing gripe: trains vs conveyors? Now that they have faster conveyors and stacking, they've become quite viable for moving large quantities long distances. Which is fine, but it feels like the right way to do that should be trains. My thought is that quality wagons should be able to hold a lot more and quality trains should move a lot faster, and/or fast fusion trains.

reitzensteinm 4mo ago
Yes. Quality boosts storage for wagons and speed for trains. Also unloading is more compact due to inserter belt side selection. I did a 1m eSPM base though, and I don’t think the totality of all of that would bring me back to trains. Belts are extremely reliable, and I have never managed to make trains so.
- rkuykendall-com 4mo ago
  Trains don't need to be optimal, they just need to be viable. The fun makes them optimal. I think the quality, speed, and belt improvements did enough to return them to this balance (but I have not played, so I can't say myself).
  - reitzensteinm 4mo ago
    I agree they’ll be viable. They’re much harder to use but roughly equally good. Also my late game experience is probably not representative of the phase just after victory where trains may have a slight edge - there could be a sweet spot there where the decoupling is worth it because you can horizontally scale through bottlenecks. By the end I was using dedicated patches for each science so trains just get in the way.
  - tux3 4mo ago
    For complex recipe graphs beyond vanilla train routing is also way more efficient. You get to reuse the same rail network, and sometimes not have to route dedicated belts for 6 low throuput ingredients from all over the map I feel like a lot of the challenge in early Pyanodons is place-and-route and belt congestion. Unlocking trains feels amazing. They're definitely optimal for a lot of recipes in that mod I think
    - VorpalWay 4mo ago
      I haven't played the space expansion, but from old vanilla I only used trains for bringing ores to the main base. For rare low throughout recipies the flying bots (I forget the name for them) worked well, and towards the end of the game they got pretty fast as well. As a longtime fan of trains in games like OpenTTD, it always felt like there wasn't enough of a focus on trains. Arguably this is something that Satisfactory did slightly better, there was more reason to use them there (that game certainly has other weaknesses though, and overall I prefer Factorio).
      - Shish2k 4mo ago
        I'm am curious how you used satisfactory trains - I always found the satisfactory stations to be so overwhelmingly huge that they basically didn't fit anywhere (unless I build a layer of foundations a couple of hundred feet in the sky, which feels like cheating)
        VorpalWay 4mo ago
        I don't care about aesthetics in factory games (which is a reason I prefer Factorio to Satisfactory, there is way less focus on building pretty factories), that probably helps. I'll happily build a massive factory with very few pillars to hold it aloft, with a bunch of train stations on the side. And to be fair, many machines in Satisfactory are also massive. I found that the way the resources are spread out in the games and the amount needed for various recipes and the amount of scale you needed to beat the game lead to more trains in Satisfactory. In particular it made it such that spread out smaller factories near resources that then transported intermediate products to big central factories made more sense. In addition, since resource nodes are infinite you don't need to keep moving the mines all the time like in Factorio, so building additional local infrastructure is more viable than in Factorio. Because the world is hand crafted and more rugged it also means running belts all over the map is less viable, building one long difficult rail that can be used by a bunch of separate transports makes even more sense than in Factorio. So in summary, I think it is a bunch of small things that all nudge me more towards trains in Satisfactory than in Factorio.
    - 4mo ago
  - redsocksfan45 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - dbt00 4mo ago
    they are getting better in 2.1. They get bigger and faster with quality, but the biggest win is the ability to direct unload from the landing pad to bigger trains via the new landing pad unloading bay, within a reasonable range of the landing pad.
bigstrat2003 4mo ago
The right way to do that is trains. A fully compressed, stacked belt is 960/s, but a train can easily hit that throughput as well (and even exceed it). And they are much easier to set up across long distances than belts are.
- LorenPechtel 4mo ago
  A train can easily move more than 960/s, but the train isn't always moving. To actually exceed 960/s over time with trains gets some massive stations. And a track is two spaces, thus two belts can fit. Even just blue belts gives 1440/s for the same space. Your first item delivers a lot faster with trains, and when you're dealing with stuff that spoils the faster transit is a big benefit, but for the most part I find trains underwhelming other than on Fulgora where you don't really have a choice.
  - rcxdude 4mo ago
    You can also fit multiple trains in that 2-wide space, though. The flexibility of a train network is pretty powerful.
- jswelker 4mo ago
  The throughput of the rail is nearly infinity, but you will still be bottlenecked by the speed of inserters and belts on loading and unloading. I think of trains in best case as a highway that temporarily merges many belts together across a long distance before splitting off again at the end. Ultimately they are about saving space and keeping the infra tidy.
  - computably 4mo ago
    Inserters have a max throughput of 120/s each chest-to-chest, 12 inserters can (un)load a single cargo wagon so 1440/s per-wagon. So 6:1 belts:wagons, a massive speed advantage over long distances, and much more flexible M:N distribution.
    - 4mo ago
remarkEon 4mo ago
I’ve wanted the ability to hang pipe or wire along elevated rail.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

reitzensteinm 4mo ago

Yes. Quality boosts storage for wagons and speed for trains. Also unloading is more compact due to inserter belt side selection. I did a 1m eSPM base though, and I don’t think the totality of all of that would bring me back to trains. Belts are extremely reliable, and I have never managed to make trains so.

rkuykendall-com 4mo ago
Trains don't need to be optimal, they just need to be viable. The fun makes them optimal. I think the quality, speed, and belt improvements did enough to return them to this balance (but I have not played, so I can't say myself).
- reitzensteinm 4mo ago
  I agree they’ll be viable. They’re much harder to use but roughly equally good. Also my late game experience is probably not representative of the phase just after victory where trains may have a slight edge - there could be a sweet spot there where the decoupling is worth it because you can horizontally scale through bottlenecks. By the end I was using dedicated patches for each science so trains just get in the way.
- tux3 4mo ago
  For complex recipe graphs beyond vanilla train routing is also way more efficient. You get to reuse the same rail network, and sometimes not have to route dedicated belts for 6 low throuput ingredients from all over the map I feel like a lot of the challenge in early Pyanodons is place-and-route and belt congestion. Unlocking trains feels amazing. They're definitely optimal for a lot of recipes in that mod I think
  - VorpalWay 4mo ago
    I haven't played the space expansion, but from old vanilla I only used trains for bringing ores to the main base. For rare low throughout recipies the flying bots (I forget the name for them) worked well, and towards the end of the game they got pretty fast as well. As a longtime fan of trains in games like OpenTTD, it always felt like there wasn't enough of a focus on trains. Arguably this is something that Satisfactory did slightly better, there was more reason to use them there (that game certainly has other weaknesses though, and overall I prefer Factorio).
    - Shish2k 4mo ago
      I'm am curious how you used satisfactory trains - I always found the satisfactory stations to be so overwhelmingly huge that they basically didn't fit anywhere (unless I build a layer of foundations a couple of hundred feet in the sky, which feels like cheating)
      - VorpalWay 4mo ago
        I don't care about aesthetics in factory games (which is a reason I prefer Factorio to Satisfactory, there is way less focus on building pretty factories), that probably helps. I'll happily build a massive factory with very few pillars to hold it aloft, with a bunch of train stations on the side. And to be fair, many machines in Satisfactory are also massive. I found that the way the resources are spread out in the games and the amount needed for various recipes and the amount of scale you needed to beat the game lead to more trains in Satisfactory. In particular it made it such that spread out smaller factories near resources that then transported intermediate products to big central factories made more sense. In addition, since resource nodes are infinite you don't need to keep moving the mines all the time like in Factorio, so building additional local infrastructure is more viable than in Factorio. Because the world is hand crafted and more rugged it also means running belts all over the map is less viable, building one long difficult rail that can be used by a bunch of separate transports makes even more sense than in Factorio. So in summary, I think it is a bunch of small things that all nudge me more towards trains in Satisfactory than in Factorio.
  - 4mo ago
- redsocksfan45 4mo ago
  [dead]
- dbt00 4mo ago
  they are getting better in 2.1. They get bigger and faster with quality, but the biggest win is the ability to direct unload from the landing pad to bigger trains via the new landing pad unloading bay, within a reasonable range of the landing pad.

bigstrat2003 4mo ago

The right way to do that is trains. A fully compressed, stacked belt is 960/s, but a train can easily hit that throughput as well (and even exceed it). And they are much easier to set up across long distances than belts are.

LorenPechtel 4mo ago
A train can easily move more than 960/s, but the train isn't always moving. To actually exceed 960/s over time with trains gets some massive stations. And a track is two spaces, thus two belts can fit. Even just blue belts gives 1440/s for the same space. Your first item delivers a lot faster with trains, and when you're dealing with stuff that spoils the faster transit is a big benefit, but for the most part I find trains underwhelming other than on Fulgora where you don't really have a choice.
- rcxdude 4mo ago
  You can also fit multiple trains in that 2-wide space, though. The flexibility of a train network is pretty powerful.
jswelker 4mo ago
The throughput of the rail is nearly infinity, but you will still be bottlenecked by the speed of inserters and belts on loading and unloading. I think of trains in best case as a highway that temporarily merges many belts together across a long distance before splitting off again at the end. Ultimately they are about saving space and keeping the infra tidy.
- computably 4mo ago
  Inserters have a max throughput of 120/s each chest-to-chest, 12 inserters can (un)load a single cargo wagon so 1440/s per-wagon. So 6:1 belts:wagons, a massive speed advantage over long distances, and much more flexible M:N distribution.
  - 4mo ago

remarkEon 4mo ago

I’ve wanted the ability to hang pipe or wire along elevated rail.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]