[Feedback] Awesome Belts :-)

[Drizzt]

Just wanted to say, i love the belt system in this game. It allows you to quickly place long belts in 3 dimensions, with multiple options for fine control.

The auto routing algorithm is good, with very long routes sometimes giving the perfect one desired, while also sometimes being a bit circuitous, but showing some logic to what its parameters are. And importantly being easy to manipulate into doing what the player wants with a few manual routing tweaks. And short connections are usually perfect and very quick. With slightly longer (or sharply turning) belts usually just needed a quick manual curve or elevation.

And the option for placing individual bends and elevations makes designing the belts fun, since for a long route you generally only need to manually build a few important sections manually, and can let the algorithm do the rest. Usually i am just preventing the algorithm from being happy to clip into some things (often other belts), or pass too closely to them vertically (also usually other belts).

The only "big" thing i might suggest would be some kind of "alternate belt removal mode", when you could say shift-x on a belt to lock your cursor to that single "tile", and then "drag" the belt highlight with the camera to select exactly which section of belt will be removed when you hold X. Also because for the moment it does not show the section of the belt that will be removed.

Anyway, awesome belt system. And i have barely used the Alt mode for straight sections, since i love the little curves. And the auto routing does straight sections pretty well. It just needs a little push to do tight curves and to be guided to an elevation. And if the player wants, they can likely hand craft the exact belt they want every time. But i think just a few manual tweaks and then letting the algorithm do the heavy lifting gets its done pretty well. The only thing i could probably suggest might be an elevation modifier, where if the player does not move the cursor, but presses e.g. plus or minus, the end point is raised or lowered, with the rest of the projected belt modified accordingly.

(EDIT: My mistake. The elevation modifier exists. Just hold the left mouse button when placing belts. Thanks to the poster who told me. And to the devs for an awesome belt laying system :-))

But i am not sure if such a thing will be more hassle than its worth. Possibly the accurate removal tool would be more use. But even then, it is so quick to replace belts and items that it is not a big deal. So probably just a highlight of the section that will be removed will be the most bang for buck here :-)

Right. Enough words. I need to get back to bending the very earth of Echo Prime to my will so that i can then move onto Aetheria and give full planetary feedback :-)

But yeah, great belts :-)

Thanks again for the great game :-)

[Drizzt]

also the snapping is good - very easy to connect point to point - and lots of options to pick a point in space to get the belt into a decent spot to let the algorithm take over to route to the snap point

slick and satisfying and effective - plus i haven't really done much building with the drone - and i suspect that adds even more versatility to the system

will try that very soon :-)

(although gonna need some sleep soon - and i shall dream of belts - it's like the early Factorio days all over again lol)

[Drizzt]

quick update - the drone is absolutely awesome for laying belts

yes - couldn't sleep - so playing some more :-)

[Drizzt]

ok - hold the presses - i just discovered that the scroll wheel (or whatever is bound to rotate) changes the belt shape - pretty much giving every permutation of getting from point A to point B (when point B is a point in space, rather than a snap point)

and with the drone providing the vertical mobility to specify where point B is, the system is likely getting close to as good as it can practically be (with maybe the only
reasonable improvement being something like shift+mouse wheel to change elevation of the end point of the shape - and actually Alt will already allow for many ways to make elevation changes using straight line sections)

really awesome - spectacular even - great job devs :-)

[Waywocket]

Originally posted by Drizzt:

maybe the only
reasonable improvement being something like shift+mouse wheel to change elevation of the end point of the shape

I don't think this is mentioned in-game anywhere, but a tip I read in another post yesterday is that you can change the elevation of the end point by holding the mouse button, rather than just clicking, and dragging up or down. Since discovering this, I almost feel like I want to start a new game to get my spaghetti cleaned up.

Belts are a bit glitchy though - sometimes they don't seem to render what's on them, which can make it hard to confirm that they're connected properly. This is made harder by the fact that the entire belt run seems to stop as soon as the exit is blocked, unlike Factorio etc where they keep going and so fill up all the gaps in the belt.

[Drizzt]

Originally posted by Waywocket:

Originally posted by Drizzt:

maybe the only
reasonable improvement being something like shift+mouse wheel to change elevation of the end point of the shape

I don't think this is mentioned in-game anywhere, but a tip I read in another post yesterday is that you can change the elevation of the end point by holding the mouse button, rather than just clicking, and dragging up or down. Since discovering this, I almost feel like I want to start a new game to get my spaghetti cleaned up.

thanks - i haven't tried that - i shall see if it adds the last missing dimension

Originally posted by Waywocket:

Belts are a bit glitchy though - sometimes they don't seem to render what's on them, which can make it hard to confirm that they're connected properly.

i have noticed a few glitches, and i will make some bug reports with specifics - but mostly they seem to operate pretty well - just sometimes needing to have sections rebuilt even though they previously seemed properly connected and operating properly

Originally posted by Waywocket:

This is made harder by the fact that the entire belt run seems to stop as soon as the exit is blocked, unlike Factorio etc where they keep going and so fill up all the gaps in the belt.

i don't mind that so much - but it does make it harder to check if a belt is broken or blocked - plus it would be good if a blocked belt would compress like Factorio - to allow slow items to buffer for a quick surge when production restarts

[Drizzt]

Originally posted by Drizzt:

Originally posted by Waywocket:

I don't think this is mentioned in-game anywhere, but a tip I read in another post yesterday is that you can change the elevation of the end point by holding the mouse button, rather than just clicking, and dragging up or down. Since discovering this, I almost feel like I want to start a new game to get my spaghetti cleaned up.

thanks - i haven't tried that - i shall see if it adds the last missing dimension

yes - that was it - awesome - i have edited my main post to mention it

thanks for the tip

and thanks devs for a top notch 3 dimensional belt laying system :-)

[markuswolfe]

I came into this thread hoping they'd tripled the speed of all belts, or introduced a 720/min belt. As you can imagine I'm very disappointed.

[Faith]

Now the belts just need to accurately explain just how many of a item they can carry per minute.

None of the values line up like they should.

[xander.huter]

Hi everyone,

I can only agree with Drizzt and perhaps add something else.

The greatest thing about the Belt system is the automatic tunnel generation. When I started playing the game, I almost fell off my chair at how cool it is. I also loved Satisfactory to no end, but I often wished for this tunnel generation. OK, Satisfactory's treadmill construction is quite something, but I'm sure the devs will top it sooner or later. Unfortunately, fitting splitters into an existing treadmill doesn't work yet. I have found out that it works with the tubes.

Unfortunately I also had to realize that docking in drone mode sometimes doesn't work fine and makes errors.

I think the combination of Planet Crafter and Factorio & Co. is very cool. It's also fun when you leave an area “wild” because it's so nice and frosty and the wind hisses and whistles. “Ice Station ZEBRA” like.

The street scooter planner jeep is also mega. I flattened half a Vulcan earlier. Rapp Zarap, the Vulcan was gone *laughs.

Oh well, I started playing with Atheria. A super planet!

OK, the accuracy of the belt speeds is still a bit spongy, so be it! So far it doesn't bother me that much, but that's also because it's not as important as in Satisfactory or Factorio. It may still change, but I like it the way it is now. Due to the fact that you have what feels like kilometers of ribbons that end in a constructor at some point. The speed is rather unimportant. When the warehouse is full, everything comes to a standstill until you use something again during construction. What I also find very ingenious as a storage purpose is that you can help yourself from the storage “everywhere” when building. After all, that's the purpose of the whole production process and not having to stand around at the workbench for hours on end. Who wants to craft 100 platinums, right?

Best Grettings

Xander

I started playing Eden Crafter on 30. Dec. and until now I spend 95 Hours *ggg*

So Aetheria ist finsished -> next one.

[Curried-Cat]

Think I was just using page up/down to alter the height?

[xander.huter]

But it is defenitively hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse up or down. This changes the height of the end points.

[Curried-Cat]

Just checked and page up/down still do alter the height of the belt end point.