[A13] A2B: conveyor belts & co. [v0.13.2]

[1000101]

Testing release of v0.10.2, will only be available for two days.  If you want to get it and test it before an official release, grab it now.

http://expirebox.com/download/3a0e159c4e9f13b774924780fdea995c.html

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Changes:
+ Proper multi-level system for belts, surface belts and underground belts;
+ Undercovers:
   + Are straight-cross-over components - there are no underground corners, selectors, etc;
   + Are unpowered but require a powered undertaker in "lift mode" to operate and be active;
   + Unlike surface belts, if an underground belt goes "offline" it will NOT eject it's contents
     nor will it pick-up an object when becoming active again, it will eject it's item if it's
     destroyed, however;
+ Undertakers operate in one of two modes:
   + Either "powered lift" which powers a connected chain of undercover components and draws
     additional power for each undercover it powers, or;
   + "Unpowered slide" which simple pushes items from the surface to the underground;
   + Will attempt to auto-detect mode but some belt configurations may lead to incorrect results
     due to ambiguity, therefore has a "switch mode" button.

If people download and test this and there are no bug reports, this should be good be pushed to a proper update.

[Adamiks]

Hey i've played some time on this mod and i think that bells-teleporters system isn't really balanced. For example i don't use belts, because they need a loot of steel + energy. it's hard turn off all 100 belts, where on another hand is super easy to just turn off teleporters when player don't need it. And yes, i know that teleporters need a lot of power (cell = x more power), but belts are more expensive in steel and steel can't produced by wind or light, when i will build teleporters i will have steel for building solar panels so it looks that teleporters are in 80% free. + belts need free space etc.

In general - teleporters should be more expensive so players wouldn't use them when they don't need them, and belts should me a more cheeper in costs and power.

Even with underground belts, teleporters are still better.

[Timmiej93]

Immediate download (of course).
I still have a question after reading the description though:
If an underground belt goes offline with objects in it, and later comes back online, does the stuff that was in there still come out? Does it get stuck until it gets destroyed? It makes sense of course that you can't just pick the objects of an underground belt (like you can with the normal belts)

Also, I kinda agree with adamiks. Although I am aware that the teleporter will disappear soon, might still be worth mentioning.
But it's still your mod, you are the only ones that can really judge how not to make the system OP and balance it out.

[Adamiks]

Also, I kinda agree with adamiks. Although I am aware that the teleporter will disappear soon, might still be worth mentioning.
But it's still your mod, you are the only ones that can really judge how not to make the system OP and balance it out.

I think that deleting teleporters is a kinda too drastic. Better option is to just make teleporters more expensive in steel (then teleporters will need more steel like belts + a lot of power).

[1000101]

The undercovers, when they go offline, they don't forget the item they carry.  They simply lock it down until they become active again.  Nor do they pick up any items from the ground when they come online again.

As to teleporter/receiver cost, well, if this implementation of the underground works without issue for the masses, the teleporter/receiver will be moved out of the main mod into it's own add-on like the selector options.

If people are having problems with enough steel for their belt systems, personally I recommend using mipen's Mechanical Defense 2 and it's Industry component.  This allows the creation steam geysers for power and fissures + extractors for the steel.

[Timmiej93]

Aah, that seems to make more sense, yes. Thank you for explaining.

Also, for the lack of steel (I've literally mined out my entire map), the Industrialisation mod is quite fun too. Very expensive to get going though, and not a huge revenue. Personally I'd recommend boosting the outputs a bit.

Great to see the teleporter becoming an add-on. I never really liked the futuristic stuff, only used it as a workaround. There are probably a lot of people who do like it though, so them having the option to use it is great.

[1000101]

Hey all,

This is a full pre-release until noone gets back to me as I can't directly push to the A2B github repositories yet.

This update is a full re-write of the underground belt system from v0.10.1 and should be fully compatible with your existing colonies.

Update to v0.10.2

bugfixes:
+ Undercover components can properly be built under walls and walls can be built over undercover components without the use of god-mode;
+ Travel time of items through undercovers (see changes below);

changes:
+ Re-write of underground belt system;
+ Underground system is a proper belt system, items move through them like any other belt component;
+ Undercover components:
   + Move items in a straight line from point of entry to point of exit;
   + Can handle cross-overs;
   + Can run under surface belt components, walls, tables, etc;
   + Use no power directly allowing power grid segmentation;
   + Goes offline if there is no active, connected powered lift;
   + Unlike surface components, does not release items when going offline or pick items up when coming online;
   + Are subject to freezing and jamming;
+ Undertaker components:
   + Transfer from surface to underground and vice-versa;
   + Should auto-detect between "unpowered slide" (surface to underground) and "powered lift" (underground to surface) mode;
   + Have a button to force the mode (some component connections may lead to ambiguity such as a curve into an undertaker);
   + When in powered mode, draws additional power for each undercover component connected to it;
   + When in slide mode, does not use power and will not feed the underground if it's offline;
   + Slides are subject to jamming;
   + Powered lifts are subject to freezing and jamming

Update to v0.10.2

changes:
+ Updated code to work with A2B Core v0.10.2;
+ Change in category defs, all future optional components will use this category

Downloads:
A2B Core
A2B Selectors

[Timmiej93]

I ran a quick test, everything seems to be working properly now 1000101.

Only thing I noticed is that the selectors folder has a different name then for the previous version, which means you can't just overwrite the previous one. I forgot about that, had to disable the older version and enable the new version, then everything worked fine.

Thanks for the quick update!

[1000101]

hrm, I did not know changing the designation category would affect that.  The components themselves haven't changed other than the category.

Or did you mean that you just overwrote the addon and had two options categories (the old and the new)?  The file name stayed the same but the category itself changed.

[Timmiej93]

No I meant the folder that comes from the .zip file, if I recall correctly, the previous version had the version number behind it, so something like "A2B Selectors v0.10.1", and the new version is just "A2B Selectors".

I just pasted the new folders in (both A2B Belts and A2B Selectors), which means only the belts folder got overwritten (which the games automatically keeps enabled), and the new selectors folder just got pasted in, next to the old one. The game obviously handles the new folder like a new mod, so you have to activate it, and de-activate the old version.

Since I forgot to do that, I'm guessing more people will forget, so I thought I'd let people know.

There's nothing wrong with the new category name or anything else, just something to be aware of for the end users

[1000101]

Ahh, I didn't realize? that I? put the version number in the directory name.  Somebodies bad (mine?  noone?)

Anyway, proper update now, shouldn't contain any version info in the directory names.

Sorry about that people, will try to make sure it doesn't happen again after this release.

[Djohaal]

These belts are an absolute wonder when used together with the quantum stockpiles. The new undercovers are pretty and elegant too.
I wonder if you could make a compatibility feature with the MD2 deep storage units so the unloaders dump stuff on them properly (they unload 75 units then get sort of jammed...) That'd bring automation to a whole new level. 

[Adamiks]

I don't understand one thing... For what we need underbelts when we have (in my opinion better) teleporters? Teleporters needs power, underbelts needs steel (40 for cell....), for me teleporters are still better (and quicker in transporting).

[1000101]

I don't understand one thing... For what we need underbelts when we have (in my opinion better) teleporters? Teleporters needs power, underbelts needs steel (40 for cell....), for me teleporters are still better (and quicker in transporting).

Some people don't like the sci-fi magic of teleporters.  They will be an add-on in future versions but the core mod will be a magic free zone.

And the underground belts do require power, just not directly.  The undertaker which lifts the items back up draws 10 additional power for each undercover connected to it.

[nmid]

Is there any way to have a "limit the radius for ingredients" type filter for Loaders?
It would make using the "important" status in a far site, much more practical to use.

Edit -
Trying to simply add

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<IngredientSearchRadius>Ingredient radius</IngredientSearchRadius>
was obviously fated to fail.

Looking at JobDriver_DoBill.cs file, but that's beyond my skill set atm.
            

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//Too far away - skip
if( (actor.Position - targetQueue[i].Thing.Position).LengthHorizontalSquared > MaxDist*MaxDist )
continue;

This looks so tempting.

Edit 2 - I wonder how can I make an unholy union of the code from JobDriver_DoBill.cs into BeltLoaderComponent.cs