Transfer Units are too expensive for what they are

[MalReynolds]

• They're made in an Assembly Line L and require more resources than the industry units which actually produce something.
• They only allow one item type to be moved at a time.
• They can pull from multiple containers/hubs, and place into one.

 

My biggest issue with industry is running out of sockets on containers.  For example, the container with my basic connectors has no more output sockets and I want to connect another electronics to it. 

So.. I could create another container, and electronics, and then connect to that.  Or, I could use a transfer unit to spread the output from the first (which is keeping up with demand just fine) to two containers.  The former solution is a lot cheaper than the latter.. but it irks me because it's less efficient in terms of space and optimised production.

 

If transfer units were cheaper, it would be ok.

If transfer units could handle multiple resources, it would be ok.

But, as it stands, it's just plain annoying.

 

I realise that if reached the point where I needed 2 electronics producing basic connectors full time it would cease to be a problem, .. for basic connectors.  But the same issue will simply happen again for something further down the chain.

 

For me, the fun here is building a well oiled machine and to do that I need a bit more flexibility with things like this.

 

 

[joaocordeiro]

I completely agree. 

Any regular industry already moves items from one side to the other and also crafts, why woukd something less complicated cost more? 

[MalReynolds]

19 hours ago, joaocordeiro said:

I completely agree. 

Any regular industry already moves items from one side to the other and also crafts, why woukd something less complicated cost more? 

Yeah. 

 

In fact, as a programmer myself it seems likely that TUs and Industry are coded in fundamentally the exact same way.  Take X units of A, produce Y units of B, in time T.  In the case of a TU, A and B are the same resource, and X and Y are 1.

 

So, rather than create more code to do something different, simply lowering the cost is the pragmatic solution.

[Troikster]

was just mapping out (as probably many many before me) how a semi-large scale base should look like. And just for the ore production with 25 refiners linking each ore to each metal-works, Electronic-works etc, it would take a few hundred transfer units. that is ridiculous, a cheap refiner can have 10in and 10out links, it can transfer anything AND process the ore, but a more expensive TU has only 1 out? that looks to me like a design flaw.

TU's need to either be way cheaper (and smaller in size please) or get at least the standard 10 out that every other industry unit has.

[GraXXoR]

4 hours ago, Troikster said:

was just mapping out (as probably many many before me) how a semi-large scale base should look like. And just for the ore production with 25 refiners linking each ore to each metal-works, Electronic-works etc, it would take a few hundred transfer units. that is ridiculous, a cheap refiner can have 10in and 10out links, it can transfer anything AND process the ore, but a more expensive TU has only 1 out? that looks to me like a design flaw.

TU's need to either be way cheaper (and smaller in size please) or get at least the standard 10 out that every other industry unit has.

A refiner can have 10 outs? Are you certain about that?

[MalReynolds]

I believe it's only 1 output, just like all the other industry units.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 27, 2020 by MalReynolds
removed duplicate description

[Deintus]

On 8/30/2020 at 7:18 AM, MalReynolds said:

 

So, rather than create more code to do something different, simply lowering the cost is the pragmatic solution.

 

Very much this....

 

[Emptiness]

9 hours ago, Troikster said:

a cheap refiner can have 10in and 10out links

Industry units have 7 inputs and 1 output. Containers have 10 in and 10 out.

[Doombad]

On 8/29/2020 at 8:21 AM, joaocordeiro said:

I completely agree. 

Any regular industry already moves items from one side to the other and also crafts, why woukd something less complicated cost more? 

I suspect the higher cost is due to demand.

 

I personally look at is a question of buy or build. I used to buy my L containers; I make them now. I am planning to do the same with TU’s. Basically, things I continually need more of and cost more. 

[MalReynolds]

5 hours ago, Doombad said:

I suspect the higher cost is due to demand.

 

I personally look at is a question of buy or build. I used to buy my L containers; I make them now. I am planning to do the same with TU’s. Basically, things I continually need more of and cost more. 

I was originally referring to cost to build, not buy "They're made in an Assembly Line L and require more resources than the industry units which actually produce something."

[Warlander]

Agree 100%

 

I think it would be ok if there was a Talent in the Industry Talent Tree somewhere that at T5 would add 5 material types that could be transfered would would out pretty well along with another Talent in the Industry Talent Tree which also  added additional container links to a hub as well.

 

Cureently we are now starting to prep for extra warehouse space for when the Destructive Elements system comes in and currently have a system set up for 10 containers linked for each individual resource type per tier but due to limitations we have to manually transfer from our warehouse hub to our intake hub that is linked to the transfer unit(s) that will eventurally pull into the machine. You can do a lot with the industry but it really needs to be uncapped through talents.

 

Likewise it would be nice if Containers allowed for enough talent upgrades for volume to essentially turn whatever size container into the next step up like XS into an S on putdown or being able to bake in the same stats of the putdown into the item itself in addition to the putdowns since classes (Pilot/Inventory) should be in the crafting side rather then the other trees. Perhaps this is what the new higher tier machines will do but still its not the industry that should be getting those skills but crafters where the industry should be about efficiency while running the machines or production.

 

Along with some kind of Engineer type Talent Tree to add in more links on putdown in general or link cores.

[Underhook]

I saw it as a deliberate tactic to reduce the number of mega factories.  After thinking about it, I dont know what advantage there would be in doing that.

[Mordgier]

1 hour ago, Underhook said:

I saw it as a deliberate tactic to reduce the number of mega factories.  After thinking about it, I dont know what advantage there would be in doing that.

It's a deliberate time sink. The idea was to create a massive time investment in creating a factory and thus create a 'time' value in already produced components. 

 

This worked for the first few weeks where it made way more sense to just pay more for built elements than to spend weeks waiting for your own production line to build them. 

 

Yet a month in, everyone who cared enough had their own lag factory that would freeze their pc for 2 minutes straight when they whipped out their link tool and also produced every element they could ever need. So the price of elements fell below the cost of minerals. Oops.

 

There is a reason Factorio, Satisfactory, Fortress Craft etc all force you to use physical conveyor belts to connect your industry - it's a natural level of complexity that makes mega factories hard to build - but for whatever reason DU decided to use magical links and timesinks. 

 

Now they want to fix the 'problem' of the fact that everyone has a mega factory - and want to do that with crippling factories with power requirements rather than actually adding more design elements that go beyond "Do I have enough containers and transfers?" - because right now that's what factory building is in DU - building enough containers and transfer units. That's it.

[Emptiness]

14 minutes ago, Mordgier said:

There is a reason Factorio, Satisfactory, Fortress Craft etc all force you to use physical conveyor belts to connect your industry - it's a natural level of complexity that makes mega factories hard to build - but for whatever reason DU decided to use magical links and timesinks. 

Counterpoint: Factorio has logistic bots, which given a sufficient supply of and power, are basically the magical links of DU. Also, blueprints make mega factories a lot easier.

 

I would prefer that DU's industry be set up Satisfactory style. It's a nice balance with big factories being possible and big factories also needing time spent to set up.

[Mordgier]

Just now, Emptiness said:

Counterpoint: Factorio has logistic bots, which given a sufficient supply of and power, are basically the magical links of DU. Also, blueprints make mega factories a lot easier.

Sure - but logistic bots throughput is generally not sufficient for mega factories - even if only due to their effect of slowing down the game. Most mega factories try to use bots sparingly or even just for slapping down blueprints.

 

I do agree that Factorio would have been a better game if logistic bots could only build. Either way Fortress Craft and Satisfactory get by with no bots and do so well. I think at this point it is fair to say that Satisfactory has set the bar for what a 3d factory building game should play like - and DU doesn't come close at all.

 

I am very much not a fan of the linking system in DU at all and think that it is a fundamental blocker to interesting factory design in DU - it manages to both make building anything too easy and too tedious all at once.

[Emptiness]

19 minutes ago, Mordgier said:

logistic bots could only build

construction bots build/repair. logistic bots move items, and at larger scales require a lot of power.

21 minutes ago, Mordgier said:

even if only due to their effect of slowing down the game.

When was the last time you played a bot-based megabase? There have been a lot of optimizations over the years.

 

also, Factorio can scale up to levels that Fortress Craft / Satisfactory only dream of.

[Mordgier]

3 minutes ago, Emptiness said:

construction bots build/repair. logistic bots move items, and at larger scales require a lot of power.

When was the last time you played a bot-based megabase? There have been a lot of optimizations over the years.

 

also, Factorio can scale up to levels that Fortress Craft / Satisfactory only dream of.

I admit I last played Factorio back in May 2018 according to Steam - so my memory of bots is rusty - but I know they lagged the shit out of my Bobs an Angels modded base.

 

I can't imagine DU handling logistic bots - although it'd be neat and sure better than magic links.

[Troikster]

I agree that power management won't fix DU Factories, I doubt it will really be an issue and is mainly focussed on ship design anyway. It also goes beyond the limits of this thread, but it bothers me that Industry isn't designed with conservation of energy in mind.  where is the mass going, or where is it coming from in some cases when you create something that has a different mass than your input ingredients? It would be better and more logical if mass would be conserved and we would get a certain amount of waste product and efficiency gains via skills would mean, we get more product and less waste.

 

Anyway, as for links, I agree a conveyor belt system that physically transports good where they need to go, and take time to get there, would be far superior to magical links where you can only have a certain number of for some reason. Transfer units won't fix magic links. It's more annoying than anything else. If we have the means to build a few dozen/hundred containers and industry elements, Transfer Units won't stop anybody, but for what they do inside the game and in the games own logic, they are too expensive.

[Emptiness]

1 hour ago, Troikster said:

It would be better and more logical if mass would be conserved

Mass isn't conserved at all right now. It is, in fact, generated from nothing. With max skills, refining hematite, 278.46 kg of hematite ore becomes 406.24 kg of pure iron... even with no skills, 327.6 kg of hematite becomes 353.25 kg of pure iron.

 

Makes no sense at all.

[Hiturn]

On 12/1/2020 at 7:32 AM, Emptiness said:

Mass isn't conserved at all right now. It is, in fact, generated from nothing. With max skills, refining hematite, 278.46 kg of hematite ore becomes 406.24 kg of pure iron... even with no skills, 327.6 kg of hematite becomes 353.25 kg of pure iron.

 

Makes no sense at all.

This also further destroys the pure/refined market for all minerals/pure except Natron Petalite and Limestone which are lighter than minerals.There is a penalty to be paid for refining the minerals in the mining colony (which is what other planets are) as they are not weight efficient.  The extra weight adds to the cost of transportation. It would be much better if the mineral to pure ratio were reversed. I could go further and say that it would be better if there were different variations of the minerals that require different talents on the planets and that you could gain by being on the planet for example. It will create opportunities for locals to specialize in generating supply lines and transportation jobs.People will seek to move out naturally seeking said opportunities.

 

It doesn't make sense that the talent tree is so short in time because it also contributes to destroying not only pure markets but also intermediaries. The factories must be difficult to obtain and have a maintenance cost (cost of time) so that the products have added value that is sustained in the time.Ironically now the only temporary cost is to fix the bugs in the machines, "unknown server errors" and recipes never finishing.

 

PVP could be a solution to this problem but it requires that NQ applies it of a cautious form that does not require the permanent monitoring and that limits the amount of losses in a defeat/raid.The only problem is that the factories would move to zones without PVP what is discouraged (it does not prohibit) with the mass adjustments before mentioned that should be present in all the productive line.

 

There are many ways and ideas to energize the economy by creating the possibility of new ways to make money, this is just one, you can think it's not going to work or it's terrible and that's okay. The system needs changes because what we have now is not going to work in the long run because it has problems at the beginning that are becoming apparent now.