@Pystro
You are correct in that corners lock those 3 tiles in place forever(*). But kinks in the belt are still almost infinitely flexible, as long as you put the kink in a place where it can be moved 4 or 20 tiles up or down the bus. I think that having kinks in the belts of the bus is easier to work with then zig-zagging your whole bus. I find it funny that your rules are made for the purpose of avoiding conflicts (because conflicts could lead to you having to re-arrange a whole junction(*) ). But your "if a belt occupies a lane of the bus, then it owns that lane for the whole length of the bus" rule means that you have to re-shuffle belts along the whole length of the bus, if there is ever a conflict(*). Or, to look at the irony in a different way: Your rules do a great job limiting the spaghetti in the early parts of construction; which is valid since any spaghetti has a high probability of leading to more spaghetti, and too much spaghetti leads to it being impossible to build anything else. But at some point you know that there are few enough belts or processes to still go in that even if all of them were only possible with spaghetti, it would be far from a nightmare to build. (Might still be a nightmare to look at, that's up to personal preference.) Holding on to your rules after that point means that they go from a utilitarian goal to an intrinsic goal. You're basically practicing the "cult of the straight belt" at that point. Again, nothing wrong with preferring to play that way. It's a sandbox game, so if you're having fun then you're playing it right. I just find it funny that the rules come from a purpose of keeping your options open, but they themselves provide limitations to how you are "allowed" to build stuff. (*) Unless you accept the spaghetti.
@SuwinTzi
"Straight lines, always." Trupen: "Allow me to introduce, diagonal smelting column!"
@UnknownSquid
I always find myself torn between two sides in Factorio. One side sees my slap dash "temporary" solutions, bolted on additions, and frightful two way train madness, and it laments at the lack of elegance, the disregard for future scaling, and such. It compares my efforts to the circuit board looking precision of your factories, and feels inadequate. Amateur. Whilst the other side, it sees my imperfect but generally sensible and pragmatic designs, all a means to an ends, and it laments the lack of any true whimsy. It want's to see artistic chaos akin to the little video segments shown in the main menu. It want's to see those ridiculous belt lines with added wiggles for no reason other than to make things look busy and alive, or to avoid a single stray tree. For everything to be nestled in together like a thrumming swirling insect hive, impossibly compact yet somehow functioning. And I can never pick a side.
@kennyzhang6370
Or, just use trains, and hide all of your spaghetti with lots of buffer and train networks. City-block out your factory with dedicated train unloading and loading resources, and have independent, self-contained belt infrastructure and perfect ratio production lines, interfacing with the train network using lots of buffers. Still can be internally elegant, doesn't require immense foresight and discipline to tear down your entire infrastructure every 20 hours due to one tile of needed clearance.
@R3BootYourMind
I'll fight you over 2 wide gaps. They fit underground belts if you need to split something off your bus and leave room for the spaghetti that will come.
@rogo7330
Or just build multiple buses. You don't have to build everything around a single bus, making you plan your entire factory waay ahead of time and in the end tear down some thing to upgrade them. Just build a new one.
@VikSkiKat
If belts wore pants. Would they wear them like this, or this?
@CaptainOfDoom
I've seen a couple of your videos now, and (I hope this doesn't come across as negging!) it's been a while since I enjoyed videos by somebody with whom I seem to more or less disagree on everything. The reason for that is probably that you seem to acknowledge how much of an emotional/aesthetic game Factorio is, despite it's engineer...ness. So even when I go "no I wouldn't ever even think to do it that way", I can at least feel the aesthetic ethos you're coming from, and hence why you come to the conclusions you do. That's much more compelling to me than optimal smelting block clips or w/e.
@yukito2383
1 Minute in and best advice I've heard for the game in a while: "If you want spaghetti still watch the video just do the opposite"
@tonyholm209
I've been applying this approach to belts for a long time now, I've used different less efficient rules & I haven't thought of it in such a rigourous manner. This video is putting so many of these vague thoughts & principles on belts I've had in my head into action in a far better manner than I've achieved. Massive props this video has done wonders for organizing my base & streamlining expansion.
@mick_io
No other Factorio streamer teaches theory like this. That you for this.
@mineteam0
now this is what i call peak theoratical engineering class, uni profs are jaelous of this
@BeBetterPeople2449
@6:10 the outputs don't need to have a gap if you just extend the belt splitting off the upstream splitter 1 tile before heading West. That'll eliminate all gaps and only cost you +2 tiles instead of +4.
@dragonturtle2703
Nah, people always focusing on the negative and the imperfections to the point of being depressing is just a human thing.
@samuelkland6029
"Spagheti is original sin, it must be clensed from the factory at birth. Otherwise it will only compound until the factory becomes unsavable." -The Omnisiah (Proabobly)
@GROOV3ST3R
So here's an idea: I really like building enough belts to sustain an input of a particular module exactly - idea being that if you split off a belt only to consume all or nearly all of it, you might as well not split it at all and instead eliminate it from the bus entirely. That might create situations where factory is idling longer than it needs to or resources aren't being used to their absolute maximum on the input side (sitting on belt for longer periods of time during low demand), but in the long run it should mean that everything can run at peak capacity unimpeded by pull from another system of a higher priority in the stack. If you try to pull 1.5 belts worth of plates from a single belt, something will bog down and might create a situation where fixing it requires adding another belt. We either accept that inefficiency, plan for it in advance by setting aside excessive amounts of space for future expansion or start stirring the pot, just like mom used to, for that authentic spaghetti flavor :3 In short: By eliminating used or nearly used up belts from the bus, you save yourself the hassle of suddenly finding your later modules running dry because you accidentally picked a belt line that's over capacity. As long as upgrading cannot fix the problem, in my view it's better to ''pull'' production that will always have resources needed than to ''push'' the supply that's bottlenecked by distribution. Space left by those eliminated belts can be used to supplement input from a different point along the bus.
@Felix-ve9hs
Every time I watch some of your Videos, I want to play Factorio even more ^^ I'll soon hit 250 hours, yeah :)
@Templarfreak
i would say i dont entirely agree that a non-straight conveyor is inflexible. you can definitely work with it, though you may need to wiggle things around and change it to be in a different place or move the things around it somehow. there's a weird chaotic elegance to it :D
@TotoLakay
It took me another watch, to finally get it. "split don't bend". So simple, yet it was hard to for to conceptualize.
@HoneyBadgerVideos